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Gaming Motion is a technology that provides smooth motion and clean image quality without blur - even in fast-paced game content. As ever with Samsung TVs, the 50QN90A supports neither Dolby Vision HDR nor Dolby Atmos sound. However, you do get HDR10+, Samsung’s home-grown rival for Dolby Vision which, like that rival, adds extra scene by scene image data to the video stream to help compatible TVs achieve punchier images. It remains a shame Dolby Vision is not supported, though, given how much Dolby Vision content there is these days. Especially now the latest Xbox consoles have embraced the format. The Tizen smart platform itself has changed very little, but that's no bad thing – it was already the best in the business in terms of its app offering and usability.
Samsung’s Tizen OS continues to be the best TV interface this year and we don’t see that changing any time soon. While Sony and LG suffer the temporary hiccups of missing UK catch-up services and, in the case of the former, an HDMI update for VRR that never seems to come, Samsung and Tizen are as solid, fully-featured, graphically appealing and easy to use as ever. We hope that whoever came up with it has a suitably large office with a top-floor panoramic view. They deserve it.
Product Features
The only processing area that lets the QN95C down is its default motion handling. The Auto setting for the Picture Clarity system creates too many unwanted processing distractions/glitches and smoothes 24p films so much that they start to look like soap operas. Turning Picture Clarity and its multiple sub-settings off improves things, but this can lead to judder coming on a bit too strong with horizontal pans. Fortunately, a very workable solution is achievable by selecting the Custom Picture Clarity setting and then adjusting the judder and blur motion control elements to somewhere around their level two or three settings. Very dark scenes can look a little hollow in the QE65QN94A’s default and in many ways most alluring Standard picture mode, thanks to the way some subtle shadow detailing can be lost in the darkness. There is a dedicated shadow detail adjustment that can help, but you can’t really push this more than one or possibly two levels above its default zero point without it also having an unwanted impact on bright parts of the picture. That isn’t to say, though, that the issue has completely gone away; Samsung’s hatred of haloing still means that even smaller light halos cannot be tolerated, meaning small bright picture highlights can still take a brightness hit that denies them the sort of intensity and local contrast dynamism they would enjoy on a self-emissive OLED screen. It’s still a big relief to find this issue appearing less commonly than it did on 2022’s equivalent model, though. In addition, the Samsung QE65QN95A is the first TV to support gaming at the 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios that some PC games offer for players who want to get a wider field of vision.
Samsung QE65QN95A design – Diminished depth makes the QN65A a more effective option for wall-mounting The sharpness and purity of the QN95C’s images keeps the good news coming. This is pretty typical of Samsung TVs, in truth, but the latest processing engine helps the sharpness feel more natural and organic than it has tended to before. Source noise is better handled as well (especially when the TV is upscaling an HD source), and any sharpness enhancement that may be applied by default to some of the picture presets does its work while generating remarkably few unwanted side effects. That said, Sony, Panasonic and Philips have all upped their game with forward-facing sound solutions that tend to offer better precision and good sound projection. While Samsung hasn’t gone down that route for the QN94A, it does seem to have responded to the challenge. The audio from this TV is a significant improvement on previous seasons. Dynamic is the more lurid option, with its blue tint but bolder and more vivid colours, while Natural exacerbates greens and whites, and Standard is the most balanced out of the three. Standard isn’t as punchy as Natural, which I feel is more suited to sports – but I prefer a more balanced and natural-looking image. The Neo Quantum processor also specialises in upscaling, using AI/machine learning to add the millions of extra pixels needed to turn HD and SD into 4K more intelligently.You’re in need of super-fast gaming with the next-gen consoles: Boasting just 5.8ms of lag at 120Hz and 9.2ms with a 1080p/60Hz game, the QN95A is seriously fast for gaming The QN94A’s class-leading brightness levels are partnered with a colour range that won’t quit. Samsung uses metal-clad Quantum Dots in its Neo QLED TVs, since these can be driven harder/brighter without becoming unstable. This results in a massive colour volume (the combination of brightness and saturation) that marries perfectly with HDR content’s extra brightness and wider colour range. Fortunately, the precise sort of content that causes this dimming/brightening effect is pretty rare, and you can actually stop it happening if you turn off the Standard preset's Contrast Enhancer function. Doing this inevitably reduces the picture’s luxurious dynamism a bit, but the trade-off in immersive consistency – especially if you’re about to watch an HDR presentation of a film that contains a lot of dark scenes – is worth it. And the picture still looks seriously spectacular by any normal TV standards.
Haloing barely becomes more noticeable when viewing the TV from quite wide horizontal angles this year, either. It’s only if you look at the screen from a fairly sharp vertical angle that haloing suddenly becomes distractingly apparent. Samsung has moved its branding towards the side to firm up the set’s minimalist tastes, while the bezel that frames the screen gives full prominence to the images the TV (spoiler alert) rather wonderfully creates. As mentioned above, the new Motion Xcelerator Turbo tech is designed to deliver a 4K@120Hz-like experience despite the set's native refresh rate being 60Hz. It also gets OTS Lite, which adds two virtual speakers that add height to the sound produced by the two physical speakers along the bottom. This all contributes to a much more natural and immersive picture experience. One, moreover, that delivers levels of local contrast intensity that see dark scenes feeling as intense as bright ones in a way that you’d never expect to see from LCD technology. More important than how it fares against its discontinued sibling, though, is how it fares against similarly priced 2020 TVs from rival manufacturers. Essentially, we’re talking about OLEDs such as the LG OLED55CX and Philips 55OLED805.
After only achieving a relatively mild improvement over their predecessors with its 2022 Mini LED TVs, Samsung has moved things on much more convincingly with the QN95C. Nearly doubling the number of dimming zones has elevated almost every aspect of picture quality, aided and abetted by an also much-improved video processing system. The spectacular new pictures are partnered, too, by far more immersive and impactful new sound. Not surprisingly, the extreme contrast and colour capabilities of the QE65QN95A rein themselves in beautifully for SDR content. Although this set practically begs to be fed as much HDR content as possible. Samsung's entry-level QLED model, the Q60A, will be available in more sizes than any other, and is the only one that comes in a 43-inch version.
Intelligent modes adapt picture and audio by recognising the content playing as well as the environment around the TV. They include Adaptive Picture, Adaptive Sound+, Active Voice Amplifier and Adaptive Volume. You can toggle each one on/off in the settings, and out of the bunch I’d say Adaptive Sound+ is worth a go, but the others aren’t wholly necessary. In particular Adaptive Picture, which can either subtly change brightness and colours or drastically affect them. OTS Lite consists of two physical speakers at the bottom and two 'virtual speakers' that provide height. It's available on the most premium LCD models. The standard version of OTS adds physical speakers to the top of the set, OTS+ adds side-firing speakers, and OTS Pro adds extra tweeters, taking the complete speaker array up to a total of 6.2.2 channels. While the QE65QN95A’s star attraction is its Mini-LED-inspired picture quality, it’s no slouch on the audio front.
Even the much more sensible Standard picture preset still offers just over 2000 nits. And this time that level of brightness can appear on a much more sustained basis. Information about whether there is a possibility for wall mounting according to the VESA Mounting Interface Standard (MIS).
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