The worst part of buying a big television is no longer the price. They’re really quite affordable now! It’s that you have this 65-inch black box hanging on the wall in your living room, like a black hole leaching away your own good taste.
Now, Samsung has designed what could be the perfect solution–by giving your TV its own invisibility cloak. The company’s new line of 4K QLED televisions, announced this week, feature an Ambient Mode that lets them blend right into your wall. How? After you hang the TV, you take a photo of the TV of your wall. Then the TV creates its chameleonic screensaver. As a result, the TV more or less turns invisible, with only its tiny bezel standing between you and Marie Kondo nirvana.
How well will these new QLED TVs really blend in with drywall or wood grain? Almost surely not as well as you’d hope–at least not in every environmental circumstance. But the core design stunt here is actually quite sound. It’s downright clever! And the displays will only get better at juggling intricacies of ambient light and color temperatures. So until we literally have displays that can turn themselves invisible, Samsung may have cracked the code to get us 90% of the way there.