First tests of Samsung’s 2022 OLED TV

GadgetGuy’s Valens Quinn tests Samsung’s first Quantum Dot OLED TV in this latest video! Re-emerging in the OLED space for the first time since 2013, can this movie-lover’s TV take on the likes of LG and Sony?

Transcript

So when it comes to buying a television at Gadget Guy we’re always asked should I buy an OLED TV, or should I buy an LED TV? LG has traditionally made OLED televisions and Samsung has normally made LED televisions, but now Samsung is doing its own OLED version and it’s bringing across a lot of really cool technologies. So we’re here in a hotel room and we have an opportunity to have a first look at Samsung’s new OLED TV, so let’s check it out!

What we have here is Samsung’s 65 inch (65″ S95B OLED 4K Smart TV QA65S95BAWXXY) OLED, there’s also a 55 inch (55″ S95B OLED 4K Smart TV QA55S95BAWXXY) too. It’s also paired with their new Samsung HW S800B. This is their S Series Ultra Slim Soundbar and it’s amazingly low profile, meaning that it doesn’t rise up and cover any of the screen and it will work in conjunction with the speakers in the TV as well.

Okay let’s talk specifications. So this is a 4K panel and it has 8 million self lit pixels. Because it’s OLED technology it doesn’t have a backlight, but what Samsung has done is they’ve actually brought over some of their Quantum Dot (QD) technology from their backlit LED panels into this and that’s really used sort of in terms of how it creates the colour. So in terms of the sub pixels, they’re made up of their RGB subpixel so red green blue sub pixels where the colour is created by shining blue light from the base colour onto the red and green ones. Blue is already blue and that really creates an incredibly vibrant effect where when colours get brighter, they actually don’t get mixed with white which is more of a technology that LG uses for its OLEDs and that means they stay pure as they get brighter. So we’re getting incredibly great contrast, the nature of OLED is always about these super black blacks and very good viewing angles and we’re definitely seeing that on this panel. But we’re also getting the benefit of QD or Quantum Dot technology when it comes to really really bright pure colours and that’s also that high dynamic kind of punch as well.

So this TV is really intended for what Samsung describes as light controlled environments. That means rooms that you you might want to draw the curtains, kind of keep the really bright sunlight out and that’s something across all of OLED TVs. They’re actually not as bright as LED TVs and so if you’re using them in the middle of the day in a really brightly lit room, you’ll see a lot of reflections on the screen because it does have a glass panel, again that’s across all OLEDs not just Samsungs. But Samsungs is quite bright, it hits 1500 nits peak brightness which is actually quite good. The technology is really stepping forward, but this is a TV for people who love watching great quality Cinema, they really want to see all those details in the darker parts of the image, loving lots of sort of dark moody shots. It’s also really great for gaming too because it’s a very fast response panel, meaning that there’s barely any delay and it runs at 120 hertz. There are two HDMI 2.1, so basically it’s got everything you need as a gamer as well and it’d be a really attractive set for that kind of thing.

It really is a beautiful looking TV, not just a screen but the actual design. So it has a nice metallic back, if you do actually see the back of it. But in terms of its dimensions it’s 38.9mm thin and that’s at its widest part. It’s kind of wider near the back bottom and base area, but the panel extends upwards it’s really really thin probably about four or five millimetres at the most and that’s thanks to the OLED panel technology. In terms of the base, it’s also quite simple. There’s really just one piece that it sits on or otherwise you can mount it on a wall unit.

Now on the sound front this has built-in speakers which uses Samsung’s Q-Symphony functionality. What that means is it can actually work in conjunction with the sound bar to create a broader sound effect like a wider sound stage. Also it has object tracking so it can simulate the sound moving across the screen using an array of speakers behind the panel. The TV also supports Wireless Atmos, so in conjunction with this the sound bar you can actually have Atmos transmitted wirelessly to the sound bar which really helps clean up your cable situation, and I believe that this is the first sound bar that’s able to do that. So it’s a really cool technology and you can use the speakers and you can use the sound bar in conjunction with each other thanks to Q-Symphony to kind of get a really nice full sound effect. Also the the sound bar does come with its own subwoofer too.

So being a Samsung TV it also gets a lot of the great features that we’ve come to love in other Samsung models. For example, for gamers it has the game bar which basically is an overlay that shows you all kinds of interesting gaming information like your frames per second and it can auto sense the gaming type that you’re playing and give you the best settings for that type of game. We also like Multi-View, which is a sort of a picture-in-picture technology that allows you to have multiple sources open on screen at the same time. So you could have Netflix in a big window and you could have say a web browser and YouTube in the smaller windows and then you can just select which one you want to become the big window, or just have it go back to full screen. It can usually support up to about five different sources, but we were only able able to find two for some reason. But we think Multi-View is a great technology too. Lastly, it uses Samsung’s Smart Hub. Now this is a really easy way of surfacing all kinds of different content, whether it be from free-to-air, or from digital channels, or all kinds of other sources into one place and you just kind of scroll up and down. There’s plenty of selections and it can make recommendations for you, as well as put apps and all kinds of other commonly used sources up for you.

This is also the first time we got to experience Xbox’s cloud gaming solution on the television itself. So what that means is you don’t necessarily have to have the brand new Xbox Series X console, you can actually stream games over the internet, onto the TV and all you need to do is connect an Xbox controller to the television itself and then you can play these games. So it pretty much saves you the purchase price of buying one of these latest generation consoles. Because it was streaming it from the internet we thought there might be some latency, maybe a bit of delay that wouldn’t make it very playable, but we were playing some Forza 5 and it was actually a really good experience and the detail was great. It’s a really interesting view into where gaming can go and you can do it right square on your TV without even having a gaming console.

Of course picture quality is what this television is all about and moving into OLED is really really exciting for Samsung. I have to say that both myself, James my cameraman were absolutely blown away about the quality of what we are seeing on screen. There’s basically no blooming when you have light objects moving across darker backgrounds, there’s incredible detail in the darker types of scenes where you still see a lot of colour. There isn’t really any black crushing until probably the very very darkest darkest parts. It is a HDR panel, this one supports HDR10+. Samsung traditionally doesn’t go with Dolby Vision, which is a bit of a shame, but we did see some HDR10+ content and we’re really really impressed with the punch and the brightness, while still maintaining good dark and black levels as well. Overall, the motion is incredibly smooth, it is a 120 hertz panel, it does have HDMI 2.1 as I was mentioning before, but also we were just really impressed with the way it all comes together, especially when you’re looking at it off angle. So we tried looking at the content from different viewing angles it didn’t degrade the brightness, it didn’t degrade the colour, we were really really impressed with it.

We’ve only spent a little bit of time with it but it is an incredible picture, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed whatsoever. And as you can expect, there are all kinds of anti-burn-in technologies in this panel too so you don’t have to worry about the traditional burn-in that OLED does suffer from over time. But really it is a great looking screen. I have to say it’s probably one of the best Samsung panels I’ve ever seen, and in terms of the OLED space it is right there, up at the top compared to what LG and Samsung are putting out as well. So it’s a really great top contender from Samsung in its new OLED TVs.

Cost-wise the 55 inch is $4,079 and the 65 inch is $5,249. But there you go, there’s our quick look at Samsung’s amazing new OLED televisions. We’re super excited about this technology and where it’s heading.