Samsung 65S95D review: The best QD-Oled TV gets rid of reflections

Spring 2024 marks the return of Samsung’s S95 series. The S95D thus logically succeeds the S95C that we loved so much last year. To stand out from the competition in the OLED market, Samsung is relying as usual on its in-house QD-Oled panel, which was announced to be 20% brighter than in 2023, and its slim One Connect remote box. The innovation, which caused a stir at CES in Las Vegas last January, is the manufacturer’s anti-reflection filter, a small revolution that we were eager to test in the lab.

Obviously, this is a high-end model and so you’ll need to budget accordingly. Count on €3,700 for the 65-inch 65S95C we’re testing here, €2,800 for the 55-inch 55S95C version and €5,000 for the larger 77-inch 77S95C.

All brightness and colorimetry measurements reported in this article were conducted with a SpectraCal C6-HDR probe and Calman Ultimate software.

A QD-Oled panel’s subpixels are arranged in a triangle, displaying only green, red, and blue colors. We see an unusual haze in the image due to the presence of the manufacturer’s new anti-reflective filter.

Samsung has gotten us used to good calibration on its televisions and the S95D remains on track in 2024. We measured a delta E of 2.6 in Filmmaker mode (the most faithful), which is below the threshold of 3 where the human eye perceives a difference in noise. The color temperature is a little cooler, as is often the case with the South Korean manufacturer, as it is 7150 K, which is a little far from the expected 6500 K.

Apparently, QD-Oled technology, Oled’s cousin, allows the panel to turn off pixels independently and therefore contrasts are infinite, allowing you to enjoy really deep blacks in movies and series. Gamma is stable around 2.4 which means that grays will be properly reproduced on the screen, although pure whites are slightly underexposed.

QD-Oled also offers excellent viewing angles and we measured a brightness loss of only 6%, while poor LCD panels can lose more than 60%. Specifically, users will be able to see without necessarily looking in front of their screen.

The Neural Quantum Processor 4K is still there and delivers effective scaling of Full HD content. Motion compensation is also excellent, an interesting argument for sports fans, but we can only advise you to turn it off if you are watching movies. Filmmaker mode will disable the option anyway.

The TQ65S95D is HLG, HDR10 and HDR10+ compatible, but Dolby Vision is, as usual, absent.

In HDR, colorimetry is also accurate with a delta E of 2.3. Otherwise, we measured DCI-P3 color space coverage at 97%, which is excellent, and 84% for Rec.2020. This is again good value, even though this space is rarely used in cinemas.

The EOTF curve follows well up to 60% brightness, then is slightly smoothed before returning to follow the reference curve from 85 to 100%. So we risk losing detail in the brightest areas of the image (called the effect Clipping).

Samsung advertised 20% more brightness, which we actually measured. The light peak is simply unmatched in OLED at the moment with a peak of 1600 cd/m² over a 10% window compared to 1350 cd/m² in 2023 on the S95C. LG Display’s 2023 OLED Meta panel is still limited to 1500 cd/m², but the OLED Meta 2.0 model should arrive soon and the situation could change again.

l’Input lag With a latency of only 9.4 ms (display latency) is even lower. So players won’t see any delay between the moment they press the buttons on their controller and the moment the image is acted upon. Remanence is almost zero, because we are in the presence of a QD-Oled panel. So we won’t see ghost trails behind moving objects.

there Game bar It’s clear and effective as always from Samsung and you only need to press the play button on the remote control for a few seconds to make it appear. In game mode, color fidelity is clearly affected, unless you change an important setting: you must select the original image mode on the left so that the rendering comes closer to what was intended by the game creators. Once done, Delta E is limited to 2.6 in SDR and 2.7 in HDR, values ​​close to those obtained in Filmmaker mode.

In terms of functionality, the One Connect box has it all with four HDMI 2.1 ports compatible with 4K 120 Hz, variable refresh rate and FreeSync Premium Pro certification and ALLM (auto) to avoid image tearing and micro-judgers in games. Low Latency Mode) that automatically switches the TV into game mode when it detects a console. While the S95D can climb to 144 Hz, which is enough to offer PC gamers good fluidity, consoles are still limited to 120 fps (images per second).

As a bonus, Samsung offers its Gaming Hub on the home page to directly access its console and its cloud gaming services, provided you have the right subscriptions of course.

The S95D still benefits from the Samsung Slim One Connect remote box, which lets you enjoy ultra-thin television and mount the box on the wall by hiding it in a piece of furniture.

In this case only one (large) transparent cable will come out, but you can attach the box to the back of the TV for classic use. The stand is unfortunately not rotatable, but there are four HDMI 2.1 inputs, three USB 2.0 ports, an optical digital audio output, an Ethernet port, a common CI+ interface and everything in terms of connectivity with DTT antenna, cable and satellite. Bluetooth 5.2 is included, as is WiFi 5.0.

This year, Samsung’s in-house operating system, Tizen, is evolving a bit with customizable profiles, practical for avoiding content recommendations from other users in the home. As a minor feature, Samsung offers integrated apps from the four major TV box operators (Orange, SFR, Boygues and Free). So you can use the S95D without a box, a significant advantage for those who don’t want to pay extra or deal with the hassle of an extra box.

SmartThings Hub has also been integrated into the TV for some time and you can control your connected devices directly from the TV as needed. If Tizen sometimes suffers from some slowdowns, this top model is not affected and the OS has proven to be efficient and fluid overall. Start-up is also very fast with a wake-up time of less than 2 seconds and a cold start that takes barely 12 seconds.

Another new feature, this time a little less brilliant: now we have to create a Samsung account and log in to use any application on the television. An innovation that we would have done without, even if it is true that other manufacturers are starting to do the same.

The Samsung remote recharges with solar power, which is nice. And in case of insufficient battery, it will be possible to recharge it with USB-C port. If the numbered keys are excluded, as is the backlighting, the design is well thought out and navigation will be easy.