Samsung QN900D tested: Is the 8K AI convincing?

Luca Fontana

10.12.2024

Translation: machine translated

Samsung's QN900D promises a revolutionary TV experience with 8K resolution and generative AI. The new processor does indeed impress with excellent upscaling and smooth picture display. However, the QN900D also reveals major weaknesses.

Full Disclosure: The TV, the 65-inch version of the QN900D, was loaned to me by Samsung for testing. However, Samsung has no influence on the test result, my evaluation and the test procedure.

Finally an 8K television again. I rarely put them on the test bench (i.e. in my living room). Not entirely without reason - I've been told a few times that manufacturers don't like to give me 8K televisions to test because I've already spoken negatively about the sense and nonsense of high resolution on several occasions.

Like here:

The above article is five years old, and my opinion remains unchanged: There is still too little 8K content to justify an 8K TV. Manufacturers do advertise the upscaling of low-resolution sources to 7680×4320 pixels. This works, but it only looks like upscaled content. The difference to native 4K or UHD is minimal, my conclusion remains: 8K is not (yet) worth it.

Why am I testing an 8K TV again? Firstly, my last test was over four years ago, and I want to see what has changed technologically. Secondly, Samsung is now using generative AI instead of interpolation to "revolutionise" projection. I was recently introduced to this at a media event:

Euphoric, I set about testing. Spoiler: The generative AI really knocks my socks off. More about this under "Upscaling". But Samsung's 8K TV has a completely different problem: blooming.

Design: slim and sleek - a good thing

Samsung remains true to its elegant, modern design: narrow edges, a sleek look and the striking "Infinity Air" design, which I particularly appreciate. The aluminium frame on the front and the black plastic back complement each other stylishly, while the curved, ultra-thin stand ensures stability. However, it is 26 centimetres deep, which could limit the space for a soundbar in front of the TV.

On the other hand, the TV offers seven centimetres of free space between the bottom edge of the panel and the piece of furniture - enough for most soundbars. If the infrared sensor is covered, this can quickly become impractical.

Samsung's One Connect Box, which is standard on top models, is part of the overall package. It replaces the usual connections in the panel: a single, inconspicuous cable connects the box to the TV and transmits both signals and power. The box can be stowed away or attached to a bracket directly behind the TV, making cable management much easier.

About the specs. Samsung's QN900D offers the following:

• 4x HDMI 2.1 (one of them with eARC)
• 2x USB-A, 1x USB-C
• 1x Toslink output
• 1x LAN port
• 1x CI slot
• Antenna connections
• Bluetooth 5.3
• WLAN (Wi-Fi 6E)
• Voice control with Bixby

All HDMI inputs support HLG, HDR10 and HDR10+, only Dolby Vision is still excluded - a point that Samsung says will not change in the future. Nathan Sheffield, Samsung's former Head of TV and Audio Europe, once told me: "I'm not sure what Dolby Vision brings to Samsung that we can't already do."

At least the QN900D supports Dolby Atmos - thanks to membranes built into the panel with a 6.2.4 speaker system and 90 watts of output power, including pass-through for external sound systems. DTS audio formats, on the other hand, are not directly supported and are not forwarded. Instead, the TV outputs them as a Dolby multichannel PCM 5.1 signal.

Measurements: Colour accuracy top, brightness flop

*What comes next goes deep into the subject matter. I measure with professional tools from Portrait Display to get an objective classification of the image quality. If you are not interested in details and diagrams, you can read the following short version and then scroll to the chapter "The picture: colour fidelity top, local dimming flop".

The most important findings in brief:

About the measurements. I measured all screen modes of the TV without calibrating it - just as the device comes out of the box. I only made a few changes to the settings:

As always with Samsung, the Filmmaker mode achieved the best measured values for all types of content. Except for gaming, for which you should always use the gaming mode due to the input lag. If you are looking for a good TV for gaming - here you will find my guide article.

The maximum brightness

Let's take a look at the brightness of the QN900D. In the graph below, I compare it with its big mini-LED rival, namely the Bravia 9 from Sony. I'm using a two-year-old mini-LED TV from Samsung and Samsung's OLED flagship from this year - actually an unfair comparison because OLED TVs are less bright than mini-LED TVs due to their technology.

The result: sobering.

Samsung's 8K flagship, the orange line, is not even as bright as Samsung's UHD mini LED TV from 2022. In terms of peak brightness, even Samsung's S95D is on a similar level. On the one hand, this speaks in favour of the OLED TV. But on the other hand, I would have expected more from the 8K model, currently Samsung's most expensive TV.

Why these differences in brightness, even between Samsung's 8K and UHD models? There is no official explanation. If I had to guess, I would say that 8K panels require more power than UHD panels, which in turn generates more heat. This leads me to conclude that Samsung limits the brightness on its 8K model not only to save power, but also to control heat generation and prevent damage to the panel.

White balance, colours and shades of grey

Let's take a look at how well Samsung's 8K flagship displays whites, colours and shades of grey. I'll answer that in three questions:

1. EOTF and white balance: How accurately does the TV display neutral grey tones?
2. Colour space coverage: How many different colours can the TV display?
3. Colour fidelity: How accurately does the TV match the colours?

Each of the 33 million pixels in the Samsung QN900D consists of a red, green and blue sub-pixel. White is created when all of them shine at the same time and with the same intensity. Full brightness therefore produces the brightest white. The lowest brightness, on the other hand, produces the darkest white. Or rather: black. In between are shades of grey of varying brightness. This is why the English term "grayscale measurement" is used.

The greater the difference between the brightest and darkest pixels, the better the contrast values. With an OLED TV, I don't need to measure the contrast because OLED pixels can switch off completely. This means that the contrast ratio tends towards infinity. Samsung's QN900D, on the other hand, achieved a contrast ratio of 398,812:1 in my measurement, which is an excellent value for an LCD television.

I measure the coverage of the colour spaces:

• Rec. 709: 100% (good = 100%) - the standard colour space for SDR content such as live TV, DVDs and Blu-rays.
• DCI-P3: 94.2% (good = >90%) - the standard colour space for HDR content, for example in HDR10 or Dolby Vision.
• BT.2020: 75.75 % (good = >90 %) - the colour space of the future. Current content hardly or never uses it.

The third question: colour fidelity. This describes how accurately colours are displayed. As with greyscale, the deviation from the TV to the reference value is referred to as DeltaE. The white boxes show the reference colours sent to the TV by the test pattern generator, the black circles show the colours actually measured.

Samsung's 8K TV also achieves an excellent DeltaE of just 1.49 here - the best value! LG's G4, for example, has a DeltaE of 2.95. Sony's Bravia 9 even has a rather mediocre DeltaE of 4.07. As a reminder: Samsung does not support Dolby Vision, LG and Sony do. Out of the box, i.e. without calibration, Samsung still has greater colour fidelity in Filmmaker mode than LG's G4 or Sony's Bravia 9 in Dolby Vision mode. At least in numbers.

Reflections

Reflections on the screen are not measurable per se. Nevertheless, it is important to analyse them in tests. In the first comparison, I'm including a picture from my test with Sony's Bravia 9, a mini LED TV. The photos were taken around midday and without me having darkened the room especially for this:

The clear winner here is Samsung: In the Sony Bravia 9 on the right, however, not only the orange room lamp is clearly visible, but even the photographer (me) and the entire flat! Plus: unsightly rainbow streaks.

With the picture switched on, even Sony's Bravia 9 with its peak brightness of over 3000 nit is bright enough to conceal the streaks and reflections even in dark scenes. But they are not completely gone. Neither is Samsung's QN900D with only 1442 nit peak brightness, but they are somewhat less visible. For example, at the beginning of "Blade Runner 2049":

This year, Samsung itself demonstrated how to perfectly handle reflections - albeit with its OLED flagship, the S95D. Here is the comparison with the TV switched off:

This is not a mistake or a retouch, the picture on the right is actually the switched off display of the Samsung S95D photographed in exactly the same way. Reflections? Reflections? Nada. It's really bright in my living room. And now the comparison with the TV switched on:

I've been writing for years that LCD televisions are better suited to bright rooms than OLED televisions because they are brighter. And then Samsung comes along, slaps a new anti-reflective coating on its display and changes all the applicable laws. I'll tell it like it is: I'll probably sorely miss the anti-reflective layer that Samsung has given its QD OLED TV on any TV that doesn't have something similar.

The picture: colour fidelity top, local dimming flop

The picture is rather less bright for a mini LED TV, but offers excellent colour fidelity ex works. In theory. But what does it look like in practice?

Let's move on to a direct comparison with Sony's current mini-LED flagship, the Bravia 9, and LG's top OLED model this year, the G4 - so we also have a comparison with a different display technology. Where appropriate, I will also include comparisons with other TVs.

If you are interested in the tests of the other TVs, you can find them here:

Local dimming and blooming

For years, I have made it anything but easy for TVs in my local dimming and blooming test. In the comparison below from the series "Westworld", watch the face of the Asian man as he gets up from the table. Or the shirt of the South American gentleman. Or the dark area to the left of the woman's face. Or on the light in the background.

Sorry, Samsung, but what the QN900D produces is inadequate. The first comparison with LG's 8K television from 2020 shows how local dimming can be even more of a failure; I have never seen a television with such unbearable blooming. But the second comparison, with Sony's Bravia 9, paints a completely different picture.

In the third comparison with Samsung's mini-LED predecessor from 2022, I notice something interesting: despite significantly fewer dimming zones, black appears blacker, but the blooming is much stronger. Apparently, Samsung opted for more aggressive local dimming back then, which leads to deeper blacks and thus higher contrast values, but also to more blooming in certain areas. Conversely, this could mean that the 8K television might lack punch here and there.

In any case, the control of the dimming zones and the handling of blooming on the QN900D are - unfortunately - not worthy of reference.

Colour reproduction

To put the colour accuracy of a TV to the test, I like to choose "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2". One scene is perfect for this: the TV has to show the fine details of Drax's tattoos without overexposure, have a certain image dynamic and let Ego's palace shine in a rich evening glow. The Samsung QN900K captures the kitschy "Golden Hour" atmosphere of the planet intended by the director very well.

Compared to LG's G4 and Sony's Bravia 9, however, I find the Samsung picture a tad too bland. As if it lacked "punch". In other words, exactly what I feared after the local dimming test above. I prefer the warm, golden skin tones of LG and Sony, even if Sony's picture has a slightly too strong yellow-greenish tint for my taste.

For an additional comparison, I have used a scene from the film "Avatar: The Way of Water", which is characterised by green and blue tones. This shows that the two mini LED TVs from Samsung and Sony could do with more dynamism in their colours. LG's OLED TV simply looks a little crisper and stronger overall.

I think Samsung's mini-LED image in "James Bond - Skyfall" is almost perfect, in the scene in which James and Q look at a particular painting in the museum: an imposing, ageing warship that is destined to be scrapped. A subtle allusion to Bond's own situation.

Samsung's QN900D has a pleasantly warm effect on me - typical of the very accurate filmmaker mode. I like that. LG's G4 and Sony's Bravia 9 have a slightly more realistic picture. I pay particular attention to the skin tones, which have a realistic pink colour. A matter of taste, I guess. Then there's the wallpaper in the background: in most of the tests I do, it's blue rather than turquoise.

Black Crush and Shadow Details

How does Samsung's 8K TV perform in dark scenes? For this test, the first scene from "Blade Runner 2049" comes into play.

Apart from this, however, all televisions produce a wonderfully dark picture. If you film against the light, it is normal for details in black silhouettes to be "swallowed up" - this is called black crush. I like that.

Brightness gradations

A final image test: Detail reproduction in bright image areas. In the following "Jurassic World" example on the Samsung QN900D, pay attention to the sun in the background: Even in such a bright image area, the gradations of the orange tones in the sky remain fine enough to clearly recognise the sun as a sphere. As a result, there are no visible white rings around the sun.

Sony's Bravia 9, LG's G4 and Samsung's S95D are no slouches in this discipline either. In fact, I would even say that all three TVs manage the gradation a little better. However, I had to set the smooth gradation for HDR content to "Medium" in the settings for LG.

The processor: muscle man with an AI brain

The TV processor acts as the TV's central control unit. As a "brain". It receives incoming image signals, analyses them and prepares them for display on the screen. In doing so, it optimises the picture quality by reducing image noise, intensifying colours, smoothing edges, displaying movements more smoothly and reconstructing missing pixel information.

This is exactly where Samsung's new generative AI, which has been specially developed for the QN900D, comes into play. After all, there is practically no native 8K content to stream or receive yet. This means that almost everything you will ever watch on this TV is upscaled - even UHD content.

Motion processing and Judder

Time for the demanding Judder test, which all the TVs I tested have to undergo. Judder, a jerking or even stuttering during slow camera movements, is a phenomenon that can occur on all TVs. The film "1917" by Sam Mendes with its long, smooth camera movements is ideal for observing this. Pay particular attention to the vertical bars in the barn when making a comparison: do they run smoothly through the picture or do they show the aforementioned slight stuttering?

The only annoying thing is - once again - the blooming around the dark wooden beams.

Next scene from "1917". Here, too, Mendes' camera work poses an immense challenge for most processors. Especially with hard edges against a blurred background, for example around the helmets of the two soldiers. Here, both the processor and the pixels have to react incredibly quickly.

Samsung's new processor also outperforms its competitors in this example. Even if only just. I look for differences in the display of the highly fluid camera movement with a magnifying glass.

Reaction time of the pixels

Next up is the Apple original "For All Mankind". Here I want to test how long it takes for a single pixel to change colour. If this doesn't happen quickly enough, it looks to you as if the image is blurred - this effect is known as "ghosting". Pay particular attention to the text displayed at the bottom left when the camera pans across the lunar landscape.

Upscaling

Now for the most demanding test: I want to find out how well the processor can improve low-quality sources, be it Blu-rays, live TV or "The Walking Dead". This series was deliberately shot on 16mm film to convey a damaged, post-apocalyptic atmosphere through the old film grain and image noise. Pay particular attention to the dark area between the two hostile men.

Okay, I can't say it any other way: Samsung's new processor is pure madness! There is virtually no image noise. Hardly any compression artefacts. In addition, the picture is sharply defined, pleasantly warm, rich and at most a tick too red.

The aforementioned imperfections are also barely visible on LG's G4 - but the QN900D still beats LG's flagship - at least in this discipline. Sony's Bravia 9 and Samsung's S95D even fall significantly behind. This is despite the fact that I even tried to reduce the image noise in the settings of Samsung's S95D.

Gaming: Input lag and game mode

When measuring the colour accuracy in gaming mode, I achieved an average Delta E of a good 3.28 (see "White balance, colours and grey tones" above if you are interested in the details of this topic). This is one of the better values I've measured in gaming mode on a TV - even slightly better than LG's G4.

Apart from this, the TV supports all features relevant for gamers:

• 4x HDMI 2.1 connections (4K144Hz)
• Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM)
• Variable frame rates (AMD Freesync Premium Pro and HDMI Forum VRR)

To this end, Samsung, along with Sony, LG, Philips, TCL and Panasonic, has entered into a partnership with major gaming studios. The result is the HGiG - the HDR Gaming Interest Group. According to the manufacturer, the aim is to ensure that HDR is displayed as intended by the game developers, for example when playing "Spider-Man 2" on my PlayStation 5.

What Samsung delivers here is a feast for the eyes. At a buttery-smooth 120 frames per second, I dash through the urban canyons, take down enemies in heated battles thanks to minimal input lag and float effortlessly over New York's skyline. Vibrant colours, perfect contrasts with rich blacks and a razor-sharp picture even during fast-paced action make gaming mode a real highlight.

Smart OS: Tizen

Samsung relies on Tizen, which was completely overhauled in 2021 and is now more reminiscent of Google TV. In other words, when you press the home button, a whole window full of tiles opens. From there, you can access your TV apps or various HDMI inputs.

There's not really much more to say. As with Google TV, there are still annoying film and series recommendations that I don't need. At least navigation through the menus and between the apps is very smooth and responsive thanks to the powerful processor.

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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