Samsung Q80C [Q80, Q80CD] QLED TV Review

The Samsung Q80C looks simple but functional. It has a clean hexagonal stand, thin bezels, and a clean-looking design. It looks nice enough to fit in any room without being distracting.

The center-mounted stand is small, so the TV doesn't require a large desk or media center. There's some side-to-side wobbling and a fair amount of front-to-back wobbling. It's not concerning if you don't move the TV around, but it's certainly more wobble than on premium models. The stand lifts the screen 3.12" above the surface of your table, so almost every soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 15.38" x 11.25".

The back panel is made of textured plastic with vertical etched lines. There are grooves in the casing to help with cable management, which then get funneled into the stand. The stand has a removable cover that helps with hiding cables. The inputs are recessed and are hard to access if the TV is wall-mounted.

Like the Samsung Q80B QLED, the Samsung Q80C is a rather thick TV but looks good when wall-mounted due to its flat back.

The Samsung Q80C's build quality is very good. There's flex around the VESA holes on the back, and the TV is pretty shaky on its stand, but otherwise, it looks good and shows no issues.

The TV has adequate contrast. It's a solid improvement over the Samsung Q80B QLED, helped by having double the local dimming zones of its predecessor. Still, blacks look gray in the dark, and overall this TV's contrast doesn't impress in a dark room. If you want something in a higher-tier with much better contrast, check out the Samsung QN85C/QN85CD QLED.

While the Samsung Q80C QLED has more dimming zones than the Samsung Q80B QLED, it's still insufficient to provide a truly satisfactory dimming experience. As a result, bright highlights show significant blooming in dark scenes, and it's distracting when watching.

The lighting zone transitions on the Samsung Q80C are mediocre. On big bright objects, there's massive blooming when the object is in multiple zones at once. For smaller objects, there are noticeable brightness fluctuations both on the object and in its blooming as the object moves from zone to zone.

The contrast and dark details in Game Mode are similar to those outside but with some differences. The dimming is less aggressive in Game Mode; this results in less aggressive blooming as it spreads out over fewer zones. There are also fewer flickering or brightness fluctuations as bright objects move from zone to zone, as the dimming is slower to react when compared to the 'Movie' mode. Unfortunately, this comes with the caveat that the perceived contrast isn't as high in Game Mode as in 'Movie' mode due to the slower, less aggressive local dimming.

The TV has satisfactory HDR peak brightness. Interestingly, it's slightly dimmer in real content than the Samsung Q80B QLED. Ultimately, while satisfactory, the Samsung Q80C doesn't get bright enough to get the full HDR experience.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Color Tone: Warm2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Local Dimming: High
• Color Space Settings: Auto

While we tested with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Static' as it's more accurate, setting it to 'Active' makes the image brighter in some scenes, as you can see with the results below:

• Hallway Lights: 456.6 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 438.5 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 147.5 cd/m²

The TV is brighter overall in Game Mode versus 'Movie' mode, so games look a bit more vibrant.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Color Tone: Warm2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Local Dimming: High
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• HDR10+ Gaming: Off
• Game HDR: Basic

The Samsung Q80C has very good PQ EOTF tracking. It's overbrightened through the entire range, but it never gets excessive. When the TV is near its peak brightness, the panel hard clips, resulting in clipping and a potential loss of detail in very bright scenes, but inversely it also lets the TV display bright highlights to the best of its capacity.

The TV has great SDR peak brightness. It's easily bright enough to overcome glare or a bright room. Large areas of bright color do get dimmed by the Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), but not by much; this TV's brightness in SDR is relatively consistent as bright highlights get smaller or bigger.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie (Calibrated)
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Local Dimming: High
• Color Tone: Warm2

The Samsung Q80C has a very good HDR color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, so the vast majority of HDR content looks vibrant and pleasant to the eyes. The panel's colors are slightly off; greens are too yellow, yellows and magenta are too red, and blues are too purple. The deviations are slight but widespread. The TV's coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space is limited; it's not a future-proof panel, as Rec. 2020 will become more prevalent.

The TV has good color volume. It can't show very bright colors, nor dark saturated ones, and many of its colors deviate from the ideal, as seen in the Color Gamut section. Aside from that, it shows bright, full colors, leading to colorful scenes.

The TV has mediocre pre-calibration accuracy; you need to calibrate this TV to get the most accurate image possible. Its white balance is off, with issues throughout its brightness range. Namely, blues are overemphasized in the whites. Colors are inaccurate, and gamma is too bright for a moderately-lit room. Finally, its color temperature is very cold, further emphasizing the presence of exaggerated blues.

The TV is tough to calibrate, especially considering how bad it is pre-calibration. Once you do, the white balance and color accuracy are greatly improved, and the TV provides a pleasant and accurate viewing experience.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Samsung Q80C has satisfactory gray uniformity, but it shows some problems. There's a significant difference in brightness in the corners, and the brightness shift does bleed towards the center. It's unfortunately quite noticeable when watching content with large areas of uniform color, like hockey.

Sadly, this TV has bad black uniformity. Without local dimming enabled, the screen fills with a cloud-like blue color, with almost no black in sight. It looks much better with local dimming enabled, but there's significant blooming around bright elements, which again looks like a cloud of blue around the highlight. Note that you can't disable local dimming without going into the service menu, which requires using an older Samsung remote.

The TV has a very good viewing angle. The image becomes less colorful and loses brightness at wide angles, but it's still quite watchable and is good enough for a wide seating area.

The TV has only decent reflection handling. It's not terrible, but bright light sources, like lights or windows, are distracting on this TV. Thankfully the TV is quite bright, so it's still pleasant to watch, even with noticeable reflections.

The TV has impressive HDR gradient handling. Some banding is noticeable in all color bands except dark reds and blues, but overall it's a stellar performance, and you won't notice anything in practice.

Unfortunately, the TV has unremarkable low-quality content smoothing. Low-bitrate content, or content watched from low-quality sources, has significant macro-blocking in dark areas, and there's a fair loss of sharp detail.

The Samsung Q80C has good upscaling performance. Lower-resolution content is upscaled well without noticeable or annoying issues.

The Samsung Q80C uses an ADS panel, a type of IPS panel with many of the same characteristics. As it uses an RGB subpixel layout, this TV is well suited for text clarity when used as a PC monitor, as Windows ClearType handles RGB layouts well.

This TV has a great response time. There's overshoot with transitions occurring in very dark scenes, and it causes inverse ghosting. Still, it quickly settles and won't be distracting unless you're sensitive to overshoot artifacts.

The Samsung Q80C uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, and the flicker frequency changes depending on the picture modes and settings you use. Unlike the Samsung Q80B QLED, the only flicker-free mode here is when you set the TV to ECO Mode with the brightness to 50 (Max). Movie Mode flickers at 960Hz, which you won't notice in practice. All other modes flicker at 120Hz at all brightness levels or 60Hz if BFI is enabled.

The panel has an option backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. Unlike 2022's Samsung Q80B QLED, you can't make BFI work at 120Hz on this TV, so you're stuck at 60Hz if you want to use it. It's meant to reduce motion blur, but it duplicates images and reduces the panel's brightness, so it's distracting to use.

The Samsung Q80C's motion interpolation feature, which goes up to 120Hz, is disappointing. Small objects leave blocky artifacts as you move them. For real content, any motion leaves significant artifacts which are distracting. As is typical of motion interpolation, it only worsens as the action ramps up.

The Samsung Q80C has a very good response time, resulting in noticeable stutter when playing 24 fps content. It's very evident in slow-panning shots. If it bothers you, try enabling motion interpolation, although that brings its own share of problems, especially on this TV. Unfortunately, there's no perfect solution.

The Samsung Q80C automatically removes judder from any source, which is fantastic and greatly improves perceived motion in movies.

The Samsung Q80C works with all VRR technologies, so you can get a tear-free gaming experience no matter your gaming system. It also supports sources with Low Framerate Compensation (LFC). If your framerate dips below the VRR range, the TV will support multiplying frames, ensuring a tear-free experience even in the heaviest gaming scenes. Note that the 50" model is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and doesn't have VRR.

The TV's input lag is superbly low. You must set the TV to Game Mode for the lowest input lag possible. If you enable Samsung's Game Motion Plus, the motion interpolation feature, the input lag jumps to 23.2 ms, which is still good enough for casual gaming.

The Samsung Q80C supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz. It also displays clear text with proper chroma 4:4:4, as long as you set the input to PC.

This TV can take full advantage of the PlayStation 5, with full 4k @ 120Hz and HDMI Forum VRR support. Note that the 50" model is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate.

This TV can take full advantage of the Xbox Series X or S, with full 4k @ 120Hz support and both HDMI Forum VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. Note that the 50" model is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and does not have VRR.

All four HDMI ports support 2.1 bandwidth, which is great for connecting multiple modern consoles or high-end PCs to this TV. The TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, but it does support the less supported HDR10+ format. Its tuner also only supports ATSC 1.0, so you can't use it to watch over-the-air 4k content in the United States. Note that the 50" model of the Samsung Q80C is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all four ports.

The Samsung Q80C has eARC support, so you can pass lossless Dolby Atmos audio to a compatible receiver. Unfortunately, it doesn't support any DTS audio formats, so DVDs and Blu-rays don't sound their best on this TV as they use DTS for their audio tracks.

The TV has a mediocre frequency response. As on most TV speakers, the bass is basically absent, and its sound reproduction becomes less accurate as you raise the volume. The output frequencies deviate significantly from what they should be at the TV's max volume, which isn't that loud, so the sound feels like it's not quite what it should be. There's also a fair amount of compression artifacts, so it doesn't sound good at max volume.

The Samsung Q80C has good distortion performance. It's surprisingly good for total harmonic distortion; most happens in the bass range and lower mid-range, which is less audible to human ears. Once you get to the middle point of the mid-range all the way to the treble, there's very little distortion, which is solid. It doesn't perform as well when you crank up the volume, but even then, it's decent.

The TV uses the 2023 version of Samsung's proprietary Tizen OS, which is fast and easy to use. Finding content is easy, and moving between apps and inputs becomes intuitive.

Like with most TVs, there are ads in the interface, and you can't fully disable them.

The Samsung app store has a ton of apps available, and you're sure to find any popular mainstream streaming app in the list of options.

The Samsung Q80C QLED uses the 2023 version of Samsung's remote control. There are buttons dedicated to specific streaming apps, which can vary by region. It has an integrated microphone for voice commands, and it works well; you can change the input, ask to open specific apps and search within them, and ask for time or the weather. The remote has a rechargeable battery, which you can charge through USB-C or solar energy.

There's a button below the bezel at the very center of the screen. You can use it to turn the TV On or Off, and change the channels, the volume, and the input source.

• Remote Control
• Power cable
• User guides and manuals