Samsung 100QN80F  TV Review

The Samsung 100QN80F has great peak brightness in HDR. Small specular highlights stand out well, and it's bright enough to deliver an impactful viewing experience in outdoor scenes.

Our results are done in the 'FILMMAKER' Picture Mode with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' If you prefer a brighter image over an accurate one, you can adjust the picture settings to suit your needs. You can see some measurements with those different settings.

This TV handles some scenes a bit differently in Game Mode, resulting in a slightly brighter experience in certain scenes.

This TV has fantastic peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare in a bright room.

The Samsung 100QN80F has mediocre contrast. Blacks are raised, giving the TV a noticeable bluish glow in dark scenes.

Unfortunately, the lighting zone precision on this TV is mediocre. There's significant haloing around bright highlights, and they spread out from the bright, so in mixed scenes with bright and dark areas, a significant portion of the screen is brighter than it should be. This also makes subtitles very distracting in dark content.

The lighting zone transitions on this TV are just okay. It struggles to keep up with fast-moving content, so the leading edge of a bright highlight appears darker than it should, and a long trail remains behind it as the zones are slow to turn off. There's very little flicker, though.

Contrast is actually a bit better in Game Mode, as blacks get a bit deeper with Local Dimming on 'High'. Other than that, though, it's roughly the same experience.

This TV has decent black uniformity. The native uniformity of the panel is just okay, and there are noticeable bright bands on both sides of the TV that don't go away. Thankfully, enabling Local Dimming clears this up well, and the screen has good uniformity in dark scenes.

The Samsung 100QN80F has mediocre color volume in SDR. It does well with low-light scenes, where it covers nearly all of the DCI-P3 color space, but as the image gets lighter, the TV's colors wash out rapidly. In very light scenes, it struggles to display the full range of reds and greens. This washout effect is even more noticeable with BT.2020 content. It's not a good choice if you like to force content into a wider color space.

This TV has great color volume in HDR. Colors are a bit desaturated at high luminance levels, but it's not nearly as noticeable as it is in SDR. Dark, saturated colors are displayed relatively well, but it's limited a bit by its low contrast.

This TV has great accuracy out of the box in SDR. The white balance and color temperature are both impressive. It has good color accuracy overall, but there are mapping errors across the board that are noticeable to enthusiasts. Unfortunately, gamma tracking is extremely off in midtones and bright shades, and it's severely boosting bright highlights.

This TV has fantastic accuracy after calibration, but it's a bit tricky to calibrate as Local Dimming can't be fully disabled. The color accuracy isn't much better after calibration, but the mapping errors are small enough that only enthusiasts with a trained eye will notice it.

See our full calibration settings.

This TV has just okay accuracy in HDR out of the box. The biggest issue is the color accuracy, which is mediocre out of the box. The white balance and color temperature are slightly improved, but midtones are off a bit, and it's a bit cool out of the box.

The Samsung 100QN80F has excellent HDR accuracy after calibration. The white balance and color temperature are fantastic, and while there are still noticeable color errors, it's not nearly as bad.

The Samsung 100QN80F has very good PQ EOTF tracking. All shades are slightly raised from the target, but it's not too bad. The TV hard clips at its peak brightness with content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits, but there's a slight roll off with content mastered at 4,000 nits.

Unfortunately, following a firmware change pushed by Samsung earlier this year, this TV and all other 2025 Samsung models no longer support HGIG properly. This is disappointing for gamers, as it's difficult to calibrate HDR brightness. The Game Mode EOTF shows that it's crushing shadow details and over-brightening midtones. Calibration improves it, but it's still not perfect.

The TV has alright low-quality content smoothing. It effectively smooths out macro-blocking and pixelization, but there's also a loss of fine details, and the image has a slightly waxy look.

This TV has good sharpness processing when upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Fine details are a bit hard to make out, but the image is sharp and clear overall.

This TV has excellent gradient handling in HDR. There's almost no noticeable banding in any color.

The Samsung 100QN80F has great low input lag across all supported resolutions and modes. The 120Hz input lag is a bit higher than expected, but still low for console gamers.

This TV supports most common formats, up to a maximum of 4k @ 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly across all supported formats, which is important for clear text from a PC.

The Samsung 100QN80F supports all three types of variable refresh rate (VRR) technology to reduce screen tearing. It works well across a wide refresh rate range, and it's compatible with sources that support Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

Unfortunately, this TV has a mediocre CAD at its max refresh rate of 144Hz. It struggles the most with shadow details, and the CAD is very slow there, leading to significant motion blur. It also struggles coming out of black to any shade.

Unfortunately, the sluggish shadow transitions are even worse at 120Hz. Shadow details are extremely blurry and hard to make out in fast motion. It's a bit better with midtones and transitions within bright shades.

The CAD at 60Hz is bad. The TV transitions quickly enough for most slow content, and pixels transition most of the way from one shade to the next quickly. It's slow to actually complete the transition, though, and motion is blurry overall.

The Samsung 100QN80F is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about manually switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

The TV is fully compatible with almost everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to manually switch to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Unfortunately, Dolby Vision isn't supported on the TV, so gaming in Dolby Vision isn't possible.

Thanks to this TV's slow response time, there's very little stutter when watching low-framerate content.

The TV automatically removes judder from all sources when watching movies or shows that are in 24p, even if they're in a 60Hz signal, like from a cable box.

The Samsung 100QN80F has a mediocre cinematic response time. Like with Game Mode, it struggles the most in shadow details, so this is really not a good TV for darker content, as motion is incredibly blurry. Bright scenes look a bit better.

The TV uses a combination of pulse-width modulation (PWM) and direct dimming to adjust the backlight intensity. It flickers at 120Hz in most picture modes, except in the 'Movie' Picture Mode, where it flickers at 960Hz at all brightness levels.

This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). Unfortunately, it's only supported at 60Hz, and the pulse timing is bad, creating a double image on the screen.

The motion interpolation feature on this TV is pretty bad. It doesn't do much to improve the smoothness of motion, and there are noticeable artifacts even in simple scenes.

The TV's direct reflection handling is poor. It does very little to reduce the intensity of direct mirror-like reflections, so any source of light opposite the screen is clearly visible.

Ambient light has no noticeable impact on black levels.

The total reflected light on this TV is sub-par. Bright direct reflections are very distracting, and there's a noticeable rainbow smear.

Color saturation on this TV doesn't change much when used in a bright room.

The Samsung 100QN80F has a sub-par viewing angle. Not only do colors wash out and shift very quickly, but there is also a significant color divergence, resulting in a noticeable red shift, even at a moderate angle. Black levels rise quickly as you move off of center, so the screen looks slightly washed out.

Unfortunately, this TV has disappointing gray uniformity. There's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, which can be a bit distracting when watching sports. The sides of the screen are considerably darker than the center, which is even more noticeable.

The Samsung 100QN80F uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.

The TV uses quantum dots for both green and red, and there's a nice separation of colors.

All four HDMI inputs support the maximum HDMI 2.1 bandwidth of 48Gbps, so you don't need to worry about connecting high-bandwidth devices to specific ports.

This TV supports many audio formats, including all Dolby Digital options. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks. LPCM 7.1 isn't officially supported in the EDID, so it only works with sources that can override the EDID, like a PC. On other sources, it's limited to 5.1.

Like all Samsung TVs, this TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, but it does support the similar HDR10+.

The Samsung 100QN80F is a premium-looking TV with a nice design.

The 100-inch version of this TV features two feet at either end, replacing the center-mounted stand found on the 65-inch version. The feet are quite simple, but they support the TV well. The feet only lift the bottom of the screen about three inches above the table, so most soundbars fit in front of the TV without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 100-inch stand: 70.2" x 16.3".

The back of the TV has a nice textured finish. The inputs are housed in a recessed cutout, so they're difficult to access when the TV is mounted close to the wall. They all face to the side, though, so HDMI connectors won't stick out the back. There are some grooves along the back of the TV and the stand to help with cable management.

The Samsung 100QN80F has good overall build quality. It's a bit cheaper than higher-end Samsung models, and there's more plastic used, but it's well-built with no obvious issues.

The TV runs the 2025 version of the Tizen OS, which is quick and easy to use.

Like most TVs on the market, it has ads throughout its interface, and although you can disable targeted ads, there's no option to disable them completely.

The remote has a built-in rechargeable battery with a solar panel on the back of the remote. You can also recharge it via USB-C if it dies unexpectedly.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• User guides

This TV has a decent frequency response. The biggest issue is with its low-frequency extension, which struggles to reach the threshold set for our test. It's not as bad as the test suggests, and it's only slightly worse than most similar TVs on the market. The sound profile is well-balanced at low and moderate volume, but it struggles a bit to deliver clear dialogue at max volume.