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May 11, 2024

Samsung 65

Samsung has been enthusiastic about OLED screens for its phones for years, but it's pointedly shied away from the technology in favor of its own QLED lines of LCD TVs. As we've been consistently

Samsung has been enthusiastic about OLED screens for its phones for years, but it's pointedly shied away from the technology in favor of its own QLED lines of LCD TVs. As we've been consistently impressed by OLED TVs since we first started testing them, and less so with QLED, we've been skeptical of that choice. With the Q90R, Samsung's 2019 flagship TV, the company finally proves us wrong. The Q90R is a very expensive 4K LCD model ($3,499.99 for the 65-inch QN65Q90RAFXZA we tested) that shows some of the best color and contrast performance we've seen. Usually good LCDs can show terrific color but falter at contrast, and OLED TVs show superlative contrast but have weaker color. The Q90 excels in both fields, earning it our Editors' Choice.

The Q90R looks simple and stylish, with a thin, matte silver bezel around the screen and running along the TV's sides. It rests on a simple, gunmetal stand with a single rectangular foot in the center. The back of the TV is made of dark gray plastic and curves outward slightly, and very notably has only a single wired connection.

Instead of plugging all of your devices and a power cable into the TV itself, everything is handled by the separate One Connect box that plugs into the back of the Q90R through a single, thin wire. The One Connect box is a gunmetal plastic slab about the size of a cable or satellite box, with all of the Q90's ports and most of its electronics. Because it's designed to be tucked in a cabinet, the front is flat and nondescript. The back holds four HDMI ports, an Ethernet port, an antenna/cable connector, a 3.5mm EX-Link port, a connector for the power cable, and a connector for the One Connect cable that plugs into the back of the TV. Three USB ports sit on the right side of the box. The Q90R has no analog video connections, so if you want to use a component or composite video source, you'll have to get an HDMI converter.

The Q90R's remote is identical to the one included with the lower-end Samsung RU8000, a slim, simple black plastic wand built around a circular direction pad. Its scant controls include volume and channel rockers; Home, Back, Pause/Play, Voice, and Power buttons; a number/color button that brings up an on-screen number pad and additional controls; and three dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Netflix. A pinhole microphone on the top lets you speak into the remote to use voice search and Samsung's Bixby voice assistant.

In typical Samsung style, the Q90R's smart TV interface is sophisticated and very Samsung-centric. The platform is also just like the RU8000's, with a powerful Universal Guide that aggregates live TV and streaming content into a single space; a functional but modest app ecosystem that covers most major streaming services including Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Google Play Movies & TV, Hulu, Netflix, SiriusXM, Sling TV, Spotify, and Tidal; and support for Apple's AirPlay 2 for local streaming from iOS and OS X devices.

The Q90R also features Bixby, Samsung's voice assistant that remains a largely unwanted runner-up to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It works perfectly well for controlling the TV itself, and can even control smart home devices if they're compatible with the Samsung-owned SmartThings platform, but it simply isn't as useful, powerful, or broadly compatible as Amazon's or Google's voice assistants.

Fortunately, you can simply ignore Bixby by not pressing the Voice button on the remote, and if you have Alexa or Google Assistant smart speakers you can use them to control the TV instead. Unless you're a very dedicated Samsung fan with a home filled with the company's devices, Bixby just isn't very useful.

The Samsung Q90R is a 4K TV that supports high dynamic range (HDR) content in HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG. It does not support Dolby Vision.

We test TVs with a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays' CalMAN software using methodology based on Imaging Science Foundation's calibration techniques. In Movie mode, with Local Dimming set to High and Black Level set to low, the Q90R shows remarkably high peak brightness at 548.2cd/m2 for a full-field pattern and 1,510.8cd/m2 for an 18-percent pattern. This is almost as bright as the Sony Master Series Z9F, the brightest TV we've tested (1,677.49cd/m2 with an 18-percent field). Combined with an 0.01cd/m2 black level, the Q90R has an effective contrast ratio of 151,080:1, by far the highest we've measured on an LCD TV. Only OLED TVs can show better contrast, with their ability to display perfect blacks, and are at best only half as bright.

Color performance is similarly impressive. The above chart shows DCI-P3 color levels as boxes and measured color levels as dots. Out of the box, with the HDMI input set to the full color range, the Q90R almost completely covers the DCI-P3 color space, with spot-on whites. Greens and yellows are slightly undersaturated, but all colors are very nicely balanced with no noticeable shifting.

The fantastic color and contrast comes through in BBC's Planet Earth II. In the "Islands" episode, the blues and teals of the water and greens and yellows of the plants look vibrant and accurate. Fine details like fur and bark appear clearly both in shade and direct sunlight. It's a natural, crisp picture.

The Q90R's accurate colors are also easily apparent in Deadpool. In the opening fight on the highway, Deadpool's costume can appear slightly purple under the overcast, fairly cool light on some TVs, but is a properly saturated red on the Q90. The flames in the burning lab fight also show a wide range of yellows, oranges, and reds, and details in the shadowy parts of the scene are easily visible without looking washed out.

The party scene in The Great Gatsby demonstrates the Q90R's strong contrast. The contours and textures of the black suits can be clearly seen against the bright whites of the shirts and lights. Shadow and highlight detail are both visible without lacking brightness, and skin tones look natural.

Input lag measures how long it takes for a TV's screen to update after it receives a signal, and can be important for video games that require responsive controls. In Movie mode, using a Leo Bodnar signal lag tester, the Q90R shows a lag of 79.6 milliseconds. This is fairly high, but enabling Game Mode improves input lag considerably at the expense of some picture quality, cutting it down to 24ms. This is still higher than the 20ms threshold at which we would consider a TV to be among the best for gaming.

To be fair, the environment in which we tested the Q90R prevented us from using our newer HDFury Diva 4K 18Gbps HDMI matrix to test input lag, which we have found to be capable of producing more accurate and generally lower numbers on newer displays.

Samsung's Q90R TV is one of the best-looking LCDs we've tested. It's also one of the most expensive, at $3,500 for the 65-inch version. That puts it in OLED territory, where we previously thought LCDs couldn't quite reach. The Q90's remarkably bright panel and impressively low black levels come close, though, and its color reproduction out of the box is far superior to any OLED we've tested. This is an excellent TV for anyone looking for a centerpiece to their pricey home theater, and professional calibration can potentially coax even better performance out of it. It's pricey and it doesn't have Dolby Vision, but it still earns our Editors' Choice for its sheer picture quality.

If you want the slimmer profile and better black levels of an OLED TV, and don't mind a dimmer picture and less accurate colors, the Sony Master Series A9G and LG OLEDC9P are both excellent alternatives. If you simply want to spend much less while still getting strong color and contrast performance, the Hisense H8F and TCL 6-series remain our favorite budget TVs.

The Samsung Q90R series combines remarkable contrast with excellent color performance out of the box for one of the best pictures you'll find on an LCD TV.

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