Shifting the picture quality battleground from contrast to colour, Samsung's quantum dot QLED televisions are vying for pride of place in Aussie lounge rooms.

It's that time of year when all the major television makers show off their new wares launched back at CES in January. Samsung continues to back the LED-backlit LCD camp (let's just call it LED) in its war with LG's OLED, but this year Samsung has scrapped the SUHD branding in favour of QLED – referring to the "quantum dot" screen technology which takes LED to new levels of brightness and colour.

On paper

Samsung offers three QLED models this year; the Q7 and Q8 pump out 1500 nits brightness while the Q9 bumps it up to 2000 nits – Samsung's brightest television yet. It's a major step up from the 1000 nits offered by last year's SUHD models, although cheaper 1000-nit M-series Samsung televisions are coming later in the year.

SUHD's performance boost is thanks to Samsung's new quantum dot alloy material, which improves the colour and brightness to offer the full DCI-P3 colour space and "100 per cent colour volume" – which sounds like marketing speak but is actually an industry term.

While colour space is typically represented as a two dimensional area, colour volume turns this graph on its side to create a three dimensional graph – showing the brightness at which a screen can display each colour. The phrase "100 per cent colour volume" means that it can display colours at every brightness level, rather than distorting at peak brightness.

QLED's extra screen brightness offers more headroom to reveal fine detail in the brightest and darkest areas of the picture, along with displaying more fine colour shades. The QLED televisions offer the enhanced contrast and colours of High Dynamic Range, available on Netflix and Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, but Samsung's televisions only support HDR10 and not Dolby Vision.

Graded on the curve

The QLED Q7 and Q8 are identical except that the Q8 offers a curved screen. Unlike some TV makers Samsung expects you to pay a significant premium for these curves, with the 55-inch Q7/Q8 selling for $4499/$5499, 65-inch $6499/$7499 and 75-inch $1,0999/$12,449.

Personally I don't think it's worth it, as a curved screen adds very little to the viewing experience and it's not surprising that LG has abandoned curves completely. The fact that Samsung's top shelf Q9 isn't available with a curve speaks volumes, for the Q9 you're paying $9499, $14,999 or $39,999 for 65, 75 or 88 inches respectively.

Shine a light

Curved or not, Samsung's new QLED televisions rely on a super-thin design which looks great in your lounge room, in part thanks to a choice of stands and the OneConnect breakout box which means you only need to run a single cable to the television (aside from power). Unfortunately the slender build comes at the expense of picture quality.

LED screens start with a bright backlight and shine it through pixels to create colours, whereas OLED starts with a dark screen and lights up the individual pixels. As a result LED tends to be brighter than OLED but in return struggles to create OLED's really deep blacks – although, to be fair, both technologies have come a long way in addressing their weaknesses in the last few years.

The very best LEDs are "Full Array backlit" meaning the backlight is directly behind the screen. This makes the television thicker, but in return it's easier to dim the backlight in areas where it's not needed, which helps improve the contrast.

Meanwhile Samsung's QLED range is "edge-lit" LED, shining the backlight in from the sides. Try as it might, edge-lit LED simply can't match the contrast and overall picture quality of OLED or Full Array backlit LED like Sony's amazing Z9D.

Admittedly not everyone is obsessed with picture quality and some people place more of a premium on style, but the problem here is that Samsung is charging top dollar for QLED. At these prices you could afford to switch to a better screen technology, or else save some cash and opt for a more affordable fashionable edge-lit LED.

Look closer

Put to the test, Samsung's QLED offers truly impressive colours but, in terms of overall picture quality, its price tag is writing cheques that its screen technology simply can't cash. Unfortunately only the 1500-nit Q8 was on show and not the brighter 2000-nit Q9, but Samsung' QLED range isn't found wanting due to its brightness.

Ultra HD Blu-ray movies like The Martian and The Revenant look impressive on the default HDR+ picture mode; the picture is crisp with plenty of detail, the colours are spectular and the contrast is respectable if not awe-inspiring. It looks fantastic in brightly lit room but unfortunately this default mode is a little too bright for my liking once you draw the curtains and kill the lights for movie night.

At this point the tell-tale halos and blooms around bright objects on a dark background betray that it's an edge-lit screen, especially if you're watching on an angle rather than directly in front of the television. It's far from the worst I've seen, but you're entitled to expect better considering the price tag. For another $400 you could step up from Samsung's 65-inch QLED Q7 to an entry-level 65-inch LG OLED with zero bloom and excellent viewing angles.

If you're fussy about picture quality you're not going stick with QLED's default settings, but then you'll run into the television's limitations when you switch to Movie picture mode and dive into the advanced settings to tweak the picture to taste for a dark room.

The first step is to drop the brightness and backlight a notch, in the pursuit of blacker blacks. Next you'll want to adjust the colour temperature and gamma, as well as wrestle with Auto Motion Plus motion interpolation which is a little troublesome on the Q8.

The problem is that these kinds of tweaks can come at the expense of brightness and colour reproduction, which are QLED's strengths and what you're paying for. After a while you're forced to concede that edge-lit televisions demand comprises and something has to give.

Get Smart

You're also paying for Samsung's Smart TV features, assuming you're not happy to let your set-top boxes do all the heavy lifting, and there are a few gems to be found.

You've got the usual suspects like Netflix, Stan (co-owned by Fairfax Media) and the various free-to-air Catch up TV services. There's support for screen mirroring and gamers will appreciate built-in support for Steam Link, letting you stream Steam games directly to the television.

Overall the "Smart Hub" interface is respectable, although it's not quite as slick as LG's WebOS, plus it doesn't offer as many apps as Sony's impressive Android TV implementation.

So what's the verdict?

There's no getting around it, Samsung is asking you to pay top-shelf prices for a second-rate screen technology which can never go head to head with LG's OLED range or a Full Array backlit LED television from the likes of Sony or Panasonic. If picture quality for movie night is your absolute highest priority and you're prepared to spend decent money then this isn't the television for you.

While QLED's panel is no slouch, you're also paying a premium for design and the app ecosystem – so consider whether they're important to you. There's no shame in admitting that you care more about style than substance, but if you've got some serious cash to splash then make sure you weigh up the competition.