Samsung Q60C [Q60, Q60CD] QLED TV Review

Although it's an entry-level 4k TV, the Samsung Q60C looks surprisingly premium, with thin bezels and a modern design.

This TV isn't part of our long-term accelerated longevity test, but its predecessor, the Samsung Q60/Q60B QLED, is.

The stand has wide-set plastic feet which support the TV well. Because the stand is so wide, you'll need a big table to place it on. The stand can be placed in the lower position as shown, which raises the screen about 1.9" above the table, or in the raised position (shown here), which raises the screen about 2.9" above the table. Most soundbars fit in front of it in the raised position without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch TV: 42.4" x 10.9".

The back of the TV is made of plastic and has a nice brushed finish. Unfortunately, there are no clips or guides for cable management, so it's hard to maintain a clean setup. Sadly, the inputs are recessed into the TV, so they're hard to reach if you wall-mount the TV with a fixed bracket, so a mounting arm is recommended.

The Samsung Q60CD has decent build quality. The stand supports the TV fairly well but wobbles front and back easily. The TV is almost entirely made of plastic, and there's some flex to the large panel on the back, but this won't cause any issues. Overall, its build quality has no major flaws or issues, but it's not very premium, and some of the materials used feel a bit cheap.

The Samsung Q60CD QLED has okay contrast. Its native contrast ratio is great, so blacks look very good in a dark room. Dark scenes look washed out when bright highlights are present due to the lack of local dimming.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. But as the TV can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the image, dark scenes look washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. But this means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

Unfortunately, this TV has poor peak brightness in HDR. Highlights don't stand out, and it doesn't have a local dimming feature to help make bright objects pop.

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

• Picture Mode: FILMMAKER Mode
• Brightness 50
• Contrast: Max
• Color Temperature: Warm 2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static

Changing HDR Tone Mapping to 'Active' results in a slightly dimmer image overall.

Scene	Brightness	Photo
Hallway Lights	294.7 cd/m²
Yellow Skyscraper	111.3 cd/m²
Landscape Pool	84.3 cd/m²

Switching to Game Mode increases the peak brightness a bit, but it's not a noticeable difference, and it's still too low for a good HDR experience.

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

• Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness 50
• Contrast: Max
• Color Temperature: Warm 2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Game HDR: Basic

The PQ EOTF tracking is superb on this TV. Dark scenes and midtones are displayed close to the content creator's intent. Like most LED TVs, near-blacks are raised a bit, but other than that, it tracks the content creator's intent well. There's a sharp cutoff near the TV's peak brightness, though, which causes a loss of fine details in bright highlights.

The Samsung Q60CD QLED has very good peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare in a moderately-lit room, and there's no variation in brightness between most scenes. The TV's global dimming feature (also known as CE dimming) dims fine details in low APL scenes, though.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Backlight: Max
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color Tone: Warm 2

The HDR color gamut is great. It has excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, which is used in most HDR content. The TV's tone mapping is great with saturated colors, but muted colors are slightly off. However, it's not future-proof because it has limited coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space, which more content will start to use, and its Rec. 2020 tone mapping with green and cyan is off. You can see the spectral power distribution (SPD) for this TV here.

Although it can display a wide color gamut, this TV's color volume is just decent. It can display dim colors well for the most part, but bright shades of blue aren't as bright as other colors.

The Samsung Q60 has great accuracy in SDR even before calibration. Color accuracy is excellent, with no noticeable issues. The white balance is slightly off in all shades of gray, but not noticeably. Gamma doesn't follow the 2.2 target for a moderately-lit room, especially in dark scenes, which are crushed a bit.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. It's a bit tricky to calibrate, and although the white balance after calibration is nearly perfect, colors are still a bit off, and gamma below 30% is still a bit too dark.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The gray uniformity is decent. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but it's not noticeable with most real content. There's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center of the screen, which is distracting when watching sports. Near-dark scenes look much better, with no significant issues.

The black uniformity of this TV is superb. There are a few cloudy patches on the screen, but they're barely noticeable, even in nearly black scenes.

Sadly, the viewing angle of the Samsung Q60CD QLED is sub-par. The image fades rapidly as you move off-center, and colors shift, giving the image a more yellow tint. Black levels rise rapidly, and brightness decreases, causing the image to appear washed out. Overall, this isn't a good TV for a wide seating arrangement or if you like to move around with the TV.

The reflection handling is decent. The semi-gloss coating helps reduce the intensity of strong light sources but doesn't eliminate glare entirely.

The Samsung Q60 has mediocre gradient handling in HDR, and there's considerable banding in areas of similar color.

Unfortunately, this TV has poor low-quality content smoothing. Even with all processing settings enabled, macro-blocking and pixelization are still very noticeable. On the other hand, fine details are still preserved well.

The Samsung Q60 QLED has decent upscaling and sharpness processing. Fine details in low-resolution content are displayed well, but text is a bit blurry, and the image is a bit soft overall.

The optimal sharpness settings for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, are as follows:

• Sharpness: 6
• Picture Clarity: Off

This TV uses a BGR subpixel layout, which doesn't impact the image quality, but it makes text look blurry in some applications that don't support the BGR layout, which is important if you want to use it as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

Unfortunately, the Samsung Q60 QLED TV has an inadequate response time. All motion looks blurry, and there's noticeable black smearing with dark objects, so dark scenes and shadow details look even worse.

The Samsung Q60 TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight at all brightness levels. It flickers at 480Hz in Movie mode, which can be distracting if you're sensitive to the flicker, and it drops down to 120Hz in the 'Dynamic', 'Standard', 'Filmmaker', and 'Game' modes, or with Picture Clarity enabled. This lower flicker causes image duplication with 60 fps content and can cause headaches if you're sensitive to image flicker.

There's an optional feature to introduce backlight strobing to reduce persistence blur, commonly known as Black Frame Insertion (BFI). It flickers at 60Hz when enabled, but the timing is off, resulting in noticeable image duplication. This feature also reduces the panel's brightness.

There's a motion interpolation feature to bring lower-frame-rate content up to 60 fps, but it doesn't look very good on this TV. There are tons of artifacts on screen with any fast motion, and there's haloing present around characters in pretty much any scene.

Thanks to its slow response time, this TV has very little 24p stutter.

The Samsung Q60C can remove judder from any 24p source, like a Blu-ray player or a streaming device with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature. Unfortunately, it can't remove judder from 60Hz sources, like most cable boxes.

This TV is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and doesn't support a variable refresh rate to reduce screen tearing.

The Samsung Q60C has fantastic low input lag, ensuring a responsive gaming or desktop experience.

The Samsung Q60C supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 60Hz. It displays chroma 4:4:4 properly with any signal, which is important for reading clear text from a PC, but you need to ensure you're in PC Mode.

As this TV has HDMI 2.0 bandwidth and no VRR support, it has limited compatibility with the advanced gaming features of the PS5. The Auto Low Latency Mode automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when you play a game from a compatible device, and you don't need to change any settings.

Since this TV has HDMI 2.0 bandwidth and no VRR support, it has limited compatibility with the advanced gaming features of the Xbox Series X and S. The Auto Low Latency Mode automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when you play a game from a compatible device; you don't need to change any settings.

The Samsung Q60C has eARC support, allowing you to passthrough lossless Dolby Atmos audio to a compatible receiver. However, as it doesn't support any DTS or DTS:X signals and many Blu-rays use this audio format, you'll need to connect your Blu-ray directly to your receiver to get the best audio experience.

This TV has an okay frequency response. The sound profile is well-balanced at moderate listening levels, so most dialogue is crisp and easy to understand. It doesn't get very loud, though, and like most TVs, there's very little bass. A soundbar or a dedicated surround sound setup is recommended for the best sound possible. See the best soundbars for watching movies.

The distortion handling is okay. There's very little noticeable distortion at moderate listening levels. It's a bit worse at max volume, but still not distracting.

The TV has the same Tizen smart interface as higher-end models but a simpler interface with fewer animations. It doesn't have a room correction feature or Intelligent Mode settings, but it's user-friendly, and navigating the menus feels smooth and easy.

Sadly, there are ads throughout the interface, and there's no way to disable them.

The Samsung app store has an impressive selection of apps in its app store, with apps for all major streaming services.

The remote is compact and has very few buttons. It has built-in voice control, though, which you can use to change inputs, launch apps, or search for content. The remote has a built-in battery; you can recharge it via USB-C or the solar panel on the back.

A single button underneath the Samsung branding on the bottom right side lets you turn the TV on/off, adjust the channel and volume, and change inputs.

• Remote control
• Power cable
• User guides