A QD-OLED miracle? Testing Samsung’s best TV ever

Luca Fontana

22.8.2023

Translation: Katherine Martin

Last year, Samsung made a revolutionary OLED comeback – and smoothly outperformed LG, the OLED top dog. This year, the company’s revolutionary QD-OLED has reportedly become even better. So who’ll be crowned victor of the latest TV battle?

The reason behind this was Samsung’s consistent efforts to develop OLED technology – something that had previously made LG a seasoned player in the TV market. Remember, QD-OLED is a display technology that combines the advantages of QLED and OLED. This means:

1. Perfect black levels thanks to OLED technology.
2. A considerably brighter picture than conventional OLEDs.
3. Reduced risk of burn-in.
4. Even purer colours thanks to nanoparticles aka quantum dots.

If you want to get right into the nitty-gritty of this, I’ve got just the thing for you:

Let the duel begin.

Full disclosure: the TV, a 65-inch version of the S95C, was provided to me by Samsung for testing.

Design: finally, a OneConnect box!

This aside, Samsung has stayed true to itself on the design front: modern, slim, narrow edges, no frills. The TV is held together by an elegant, aluminium frame at the front and a black plastic cover at the back. Then there’s the curved, wafer-thin stand. Although hardly noticeable, it measures a whopping 27 centimetres deep. Depending on the TV unit you have, getting a soundbar in front of the TV might be tight.

Compared with LG, Samsung leaves a bit more space between the lower edge of the panel and the TV cabinet: 6.5 centimetres. That should be enough for most soundbars. If the infrared sensor for the remote control is covered, switching the TV on and off becomes a bit of a pain.

Let’s move on to the connections. These include:

• 4× HDMI 2.1 ports (4K 144 Hz, ALLM and VRR)
• One of them is equipped with eARC (HDMI 3)
• 3× USB 2.0 ports
• 1× Toslink output
• 1× LAN port
• 1× CI+ 1.4
• Antenna- and satellite ports
• Bluetooth 5.2

All four HDMI inputs support HLG, HDR10 and HDR10+. Still no Dolby Vision, though. Unfortunately. This is also unlikely to change in the future. In an interview just this year, Nathan Sheffield, Samsung’s Head of TV and Audio Europe, told me, «I’m not sure what Dolby Vision would do for Samsung that we can’t already do anyway.»

The S95C can, however, handle Dolby Atmos, including passthrough, if you route the sound to an external sound system. DTS audio formats, on the other hand, are neither supported by the built-in speakers nor transmitted by the TV. Instead, they’re played back and transmitted as lower quality multichannel PCM 5.1 audio.

Measuring up: Samsung shines with tremendous colour

I’m about to take a deep dive into the subject matter. If you’re not into charts and diagrams, just skip it all and scroll straight to the section entitled «The picture: OLED-worthy reference material – even head-to-head with LG». From that point onwards, you’ll get my subjective impressions and quite a bit of video material.

The best values for all content types were achieved in HDR Filmmaker mode – except for gaming, in which case you should always select Game mode. With this in mind, all the measurements listed below refer to HDR Filmmaker mode.

Maximum brightness

Another advantage of quantum dots? They can produce an image of at least equal brightness, with even more intense colours, using less energy than LG’s conventional OLED technology. In theory, that is. Not only that, but the risk of burn-in is reduced.

So, let’s do a brightness test to see how the panel fares in practice. The chart shows a direct comparison between the S95C, Sony’s 2022 A95K (also equipped with a Samsung-made QD-OLED panel) and this year’s LG flagship, the G3.

There are two axes: the vertical one represents brightness, while the horizontal one represents the section where the brightness was measured. At two per cent of the total screen, i.e. in selected, very small image sections, Samsung’s S95C reaches a total of 1,275 nits in Filmmaker mode. By OLED standards, that’s exceptional. Taking measurements with the TV in Dynamic mode (the brightest, but most poorly calibrated mode) I even get a reading of 1,330 nits.

Just a year ago, numbers like these would’ve knocked my socks off. But not anymore. Not now that LG’s G3, despite its «outdated» technology is an even brighter TV – at least in certain places, in small image sections. LG’s Vivid mode even took it up to more than 1,800 nits. Crazy! In terms of overall brightness, however, both TVs come in at around 230-250 nits.

The white balance

To measure the accuracy of the white balance, I need two tables:

1. Greyscale delta E (dE)
2. RGB balance

The greyscale dE shows how much the greyscale generated by the TV deviates from the reference value. The RGB balance indicates in which direction the greyscale levels produced by the TV deviate from the reference value. Why’s this important? Let’s take the S95C as a specific example:

If you were to put the TV right next to a reference monitor, that would mean:

• Value is 5 or higher: most people will see the difference to the reference monitor.
• Value between 3 and 5: only experts and enthusiasts will be able to tell the difference.
• Value between 1 and 3: only experts will see the difference, enthusiasts won’t.
• Value below 1: even experts won’t see any difference.

The colour gamut

Time to measure the colour gamut, that is, the coverage of the most common colour spaces. These are:

• Rec. 709: 16.7 million colours, standard colour space for SDR content such as live TV and Blu-rays
• DCI-P3 uv: 1.07 billion colours, standard colour space for HDR content, from HDR10 to Dolby Vision
• Rec. 2020 / BT.2020 uv: 69 billion colours, still barely used in the movie and TV industries

The large blob of colour, including the darkened areas, shows the full range of colours detectable by the human eye. The lightened area on the left shows the BT.2020 colour space. On the right, you’re seeing the same, only in the smaller DCI-P3 colour space. The white boxes show the actual boundaries of the respective colour spaces. The black circles, on the other hand, represent the limits actually identified during the measurement.

The measurement showed the following colour space coverage:

• Rec. 709: 100% (good = 100%)
• DCI-P3 uv: 99.49% (good = >90%)
• Rec. 2020 / BT.2020 uv: 90.89% (good = >90%)

The S95C achieves an excellent 99.49 per cent coverage in the important DCI-P3 colour space. However, every OLED TV does well in this aspect – LG’s G3 reached 98.67 per cent.

The colour error

Reflections

Here’s the result:

Both the Samsung S95C and the LG G3 have made serious progress in handling reflectiveness. Compared to their respective predecessors – the S95B and the G2 – the lamp is much less visible on both. As far as the one-on-one duel is concerned, however, I’d say LG is slightly further ahead. With their significantly improved overall brightness, these two TVs are the first OLED models I’ve tested that have also shone in bright rooms.

My interim verdict after taking measurements

I’m thrilled with the new QD-OLED generation. Not only has it improved in overall brightness, but it also produces an incredibly reference-worthy image. And that’s right out of the box, without calibration. As long as you’ve got it in Filmmaker mode, that is. The other modes are significantly less well calibrated. So from a theoretical point of view, Samsung has managed to come up with a TV that sets the bar pretty damn high. Let’s see how it fares in practice.

The picture: OLED-worthy reference material – even head-to-head with the LG

So the picture’s bright and the colour fidelity’s excellent – even right out of the box, with no calibration. At least in theory. But how are things in practice?

Colour rendering

Whenever I test a TV for its colour rendering, I go for Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. In particular, the scene when Ego’s golden palace is bathed in the fierce red glow of sunset. And amidst it all, Drax’s greenish skin covered in blood-red tattoos. It’s hard to see any significant differences compared to the LG G3. Little wonder, since both TVs are characterised by excellent colour fidelity. As is the QD-OLED competition from Sony.

That’s why I took a scene from Avatar: The Way of Water (from 00:45, featuring a predominance of blues and greens, to draw a comparison. In this instance, Samsung’s colour rendering actually looks warmer than LG’s. It does, however, look less dynamic – i.e. less intense than its competition.

Black crush and shadow details

Brightness gradations

For my final image test, I’ll be looking at brightness gradations. It’s interesting that the Samsung again looks slightly more measured and less dynamic in this scene, but all the more natural for it. The Samsung’s reddish-blue tint is present in all of the videos above, while LG’s is slightly green. As for the sun in the background, no TV in the video has a distinct advantage over the others. It’s very visible as a ball in the sky.

Processor: the usual strong level

The processor is the TV’s brain. Its main task is to receive, process and then display image signals. In this context, processing means recognising poor image quality and enhancing it. Here’s how Samsung puts it: «Brilliant 4K AI Upscaling technology completed by 20 neural networks ensures you feel the power of 4K. Perceptional colour mapping and OLED brightness booster provide unrivaled brightness, colour, contrast and detail.»

Well, duh.

What they’re actually saying through all this elaborate marketing speak is that the processor’s built to remove noise, enhance colours, smoothen edges, make movements more fluid and add any missing pixel information.

Motion processing and judder

Sure, the beam scene will push any TV processor to pain limits. That’s what it’s there for. On this occasion, however, the judder is simply too striking for me to put the blame squarely on the manufacturer. Something seems to have gone wrong during my review. If anyone has an inkling what that could be, go ahead and let me know in the comments section.

In the meantime, I decide to try another scene from 1917. After all, the predecessor might actually turn out to be that bad. It’s a good choice of scene – here, too, Mendes’s camerawork provides an immense challenge for most processors. Hard edges in front of a blurred background – like the helmets of the two soldiers below – are particularly tricky. That’s where both the processor and the pixels have to react incredibly fast.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. You can barely see any judder, even in comparison with LG’s or Sony’s processor. Sony is the only one that comes off slightly worse here. This, however, was a conscious decision – in Sony’s eyes, movies have to be a bit jerky. Like they were at the cinema before the digital age. Nice and old-fashioned.

Pixel response time

Next up, the Apple original For All Mankind. I want to see how long a single pixel takes to change colour. You can tell if the pixels aren’t changing colour fast enough when the image looks smeared – an effect known as «ghosting». When the camera pans over the surface of the moon, pay attention to the superimposed text.

Upscaling

Now for one of the most difficult tests: upscaling. I want to see how well the processor upscales lower quality material, such as Blu-ray or live television. Or, even better, The Walking Dead. The series was deliberately shot on 16 mm film to preserve the old-fashioned grain that creates the feeling of a broken, post-apocalyptic world.

Gaming: input lag and game mode

Nothing like this happened on the Samsung S95C. Perhaps because Samsung’s QD-OLED isn’t as bright as the LG G3. Or maybe I just had more confidence in Samsung’s QD-OLED panels than in LG’s WOLED panels.

So, what else? When measuring the colour accuracy in Game mode, I get a less-than-groundbreaking average delta E of 9.86 (read the section on colour error further up if you’re interested in more detail). In fact, the image often seemed a bit gaudy to me. With a delta E of 4.44, the LG G3’s colour rendering was much more natural.

Now to test the input lag. Using a measuring device from Leo Bodnar, I recorded an average input lag of 9.7 milliseconds for a UHD picture with 60 frames per second. That’s very good. In addition, the TV supports all features relevant for gamers:

• 4x HDMI 2.1 ports (4K 144 Hz)
• Auto Low-Latency Mode (ALLM)
• Variable frame rates (AMD Freesync Premium Pro)

Samsung, like LG, Sony, Philips, TLC and Panasonic, has entered into a partnership with many large gaming studios – the HGiG, or HDR Gaming Interest Group. According to the manufacturer, this ensures that HDR is displayed as the game developers intended. Let’s take Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS5 as an example.

In this comparison, the LG G3 quickly makes it clear which of the two TVs conjures up more accurate colours. Even so, I notice that black really is black, the edges look sharp and the picture stays clear even during fast and jerky camera pans. Look out for Miles’s dark silhouette against the light, the detailed textures of snow-covered New York and the detail in the clouds. I like Samsung’s Game mode, even if there are game modes with better colour fidelity.

Nice! Like last year, Samsung has provided a dedicated submenu where you can fine-tune settings for gaming and see the current frame rate. Crucially, the Samsung S95C supports the PS5’s VRR-120Hz mode without issue.

Smart OS: Tizen

Samsung uses the operating system Tizen. Since it was overhauled in 2021, it’s been slightly reminiscent of a Google TV. In other words, pressing the Home button opens a whole window full of tiles. From there, you can access your TV apps and a variety of HDMI inputs.

There’s really not much else to say. As with Google TV, there are still annoying movie and TV recommendations that I never need – LG thankfully nipped these in the bud this year. Even so, the menu navigation feels fluid and responsive thanks to the TV’s good processor.

And there’s an extra treat. In Ambient mode, which you can briefly see in this video at 00:37, the TV switches to an art mode. Once there, I can choose to transform the display into either a clock, a painting or a moving image. This is meant to liven up the rectangular black hole that a TV otherwise is when off, at low power and low brightness.

Verdict: a close two-horse race with one winner

All this considered, I’d probably go for the LG G3. But it’s a close race. Very close. But who knows? If the QD-OLED and META technologies become affordable in the next two to three years, I really will buy a new TV – for the first time in seven years.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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