Samsung Q7FN/Q7/Q7F QLED 2018 TV Review

The design of the Samsung Q7FN is excellent and up to par with last year's Q7F. It comes along with the OneConnect box incorporating some improvements over last year's design. The cable that connects the box to the TV is very long (195") and it also provides power thus eliminating the need for an extra power cord.

The stand is quite stylish and sturdy and resembles last years Q7F. Although the TV wobbles a little bit as with most center stands, it is well balanced and should please most people.

Footprint of the 55" TV stand: 33.5" x 11.4"

The back is plastic with small grooves and a matte finish. It looks very much like last years' Q7F. There is practically no need for cable management channels due to the OneConnect box, here.
This also facilitates wall mounting, but at the same time requires planning for the placement of the OneConnect box.

The borders of the Samsung QN55Q7FN are very thin with a metal finish. They look nice and are very similar to the 2017 Q7F.

The TV is remarkably thin. The OneConnect Box removes the need for an inputs cabinet, thus enabling the TV design to be thinner

The build quality of the TV is great. There are no obvious gaps in the unit. It is mostly plastic, with some metal parts, including the stand and the borders, which contribute to its solid feel.

The contrast on the Samsung Q7FN is superb. It's about 20% higher that the 2017 Q7F. When set in a dark room, the Q7FN can produce deep black scenes.

When measured with local dimming activated, there is almost no change due to poor performance of local dimming.

The local dimming feature on the TV is bad. Performance is very similar to the NU8000. It focuses on the moving highlights, but the rest of the screen is hardly dimmed. It was a bit noticeable when the highlights were at one edge of the screen.

The TV has excellent SDR brightness and outperforms both the Q9FN and the Q8FN, but still falls behind last year's Sonys X930E and Z9D. Edge lighting is more efficient than full array used in both the Q9FN and the Q8FN. We assume that this extra power budget is what makes the Q7FN brighter.

The high brightness values on the 2% and 10% windows will make small highlights stand out in dark scenes.

The great performance in this category makes it a great candidate for anyone looking for a TV for a bright room.

Just like in the SDR brightness, the performance of Samsung Q7FN in HDR is remarkable and certainly better than last year's Q7F. Bright highlights in HDR content will be shown quite bright, and at times within the 1000-4000 cd/m² level they're intended to be.

The gray uniformity of the Samsung Q7F is good. The borders are darker than the rest of the screen, but the center remains relatively clear. This avoids any disturbing dirty screen effects and sport viewing and game playing should not have any issues.

Dark scene uniformity is very good. It is hard to notice any cloudiness.

The viewing angle is disappointing but typical for a VA panel. It is worse than the 2017 Q7F, but it doesn't differ a lot from the 2018 Samsung family, even though it presents a slight improvement in the black levels

The black uniformity of the Q7FN is remarkable and certainly a major improvement over last year's Q7F. There is very little clouding around the test cross that is hardly noticeable.

The standard deviation is higher when local dimming is set to high and clouding is a little more obvious. This happens because of the way local dimming works. We must set the backlight to higher levels to reach a luminance of 100 at the center of the test cross. This causes more blooming in general, and explains the higher measurement than the native black uniformity.

The Samsung Q7 handles reflections in the same excellent way the Q7F does. The glossy screen finish along with the anti-reflection coating work well in diffusing most of reflections. The TV is a good choice for a bright room.

Out of the box, colors are good with the 'Movie' picture mode and most people won't notice the difference. White balance is high, gamma is very high and doesn't track our target.

Update 04/12/2019: This TV was incorrectly measured with Brightness +2, instead of at 0. This only has a small impact on the results (slightly dimmer dark scenes below about 30 IRE) and so we don't plan to retest it.

The color management system wasn't very effective at correcting color accuracy. Most of the corrections were done on the white balance, which in turn corrected some of the color accuracy. After calibration, the gamma follows our target 2.2 almost perfectly, and white balance is almost perfect.

Calibration had to be done with a 100% window, as the local dimming feature was interfering with our calibration.

For most people, setting the gamma to +2 with the 'warm 2' color temperature will be good enough.

See our recommended settings here.

Lower resolution 480p content like DVDs is upscaled well, with no obvious artifacts or quality issues.

720p content is displayed without any issues.

1080p content including Blu-rays and non-4k console games is displayed well, and looks almost as good as native 4k content.

Native 4k content is displayed perfectly without any issues. The artifacts seen in the 2017 Q7F are no longer present thanks to the new sub-pixel structure.

The pixel structure is quite different between the 2017 Q7F and this year's model. This is good as last year's model had some artifacts due to the strange blue sub-pixel structure. This is also a different pixel structure to the other 2018 QLEDs we've tested (Q8FN and Q9FN).

The 2018 Q7F has an impressive color gamut. It covers practically the entire P3 color space, and has the best Rec 2020 coverage of any TV we have reviewed. HDR content will look very close to what the creator intended.

The color gamut is even wider than the Q8FN. This is not due to panel variance as the two are definitely not the same panel, as shown by the difference in the Q7FN and Q8FN pixel photos.

The EOTF curve follows our input stimulus nearly perfectly, and it has a slightly smoother roll off at the TV's peak brightness, so there will be less clipping in bright scenes. The PC and Game EOTFs approximately follow our input stimulus, which is good.

The Samsung Q7 has excellent color volume. It can create outstanding bright colors but can't produce deep, dark colors. The color volume is very similar to the Q8FN and is a noticeable improvement over the 2017 Q7F/C.

Decent gradient quality. There is some faint banding visible almost everywhere. Dark green and blue gradients have major banding. These results aren't horrible, most people won't notice this much.

There was no temporary image retention on the 2018 Q7FN.

We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

The 2018 Q7 has an excellent response time. There is a bit of overshoot in the 0-20%,0-80% and 20-80% transitions, but this shouldn't cause any issues. It is a bit worse than last year's Q7F but nearly identical to the Q8FN. There is very little blur due to response time, most of the blur in the photo is due to persistence.

The Samsung Q7FN uses PWM to dim the backlight. There is visible flicker at all backlight settings. At low backlight settings the flicker becomes more apparent.

The 2018 model has a 240Hz flicker, which is a marked improvement over the 120Hz backlight on the 2017 version. People sensitive to flicker could consider the Q8FN instead which has a much less noticeable 480Hz flicker.

The backlight changes depending on the motion processing options enabled, as shown here.

The Q7FN has an optional black BFI mode. This is enabled by setting Auto Motion Plus to Custom, and enabling LED Clear Motion. This changes the backlight to a 60 Hz flicker, even in game mode. Changing the flicker frequency will help reduce stutter but people sensitive to flicker might notice it more.

The backlight changes depending on the motion processing options enabled, as shown here.

The QN55Q7FN is able to interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120Hz. The Samsung Q7F does a good job interpolating with few artifacts, but the accuracy does decrease with medium amounts of motion, and the TV stops interpolating in scenes with heavy motion.

The backlight changes depending on the motion processing options enabled, as shown here.

There is some stutter on the Q7FN, due to the fast response time. This is especially noticeable with 24p Blu-ray movies. If this bothers you, motion interpolation or BFI can help reduce the perceived stutter.

The Samsung Q7FN is able to remove 24p judder from most sources. It is inconsistent with 24p content played at 60i from a cable box.

To enable the judder removal on the Q7FN for 24p content played from a Blu-ray, set 'Auto Motion Plus' to Custom with both sliders set to '0'.

The backlight changes depending on the motion processing options enabled, as shown here.

The TV does not yet support any of the Variable Refresh Rate technologies like AMD's Freesync 2. This was tested with an Xbox One S and on a PC with a Radeon RX 580.

Update 05/23/2018: Firmware version 1103 has added Freesync support. We are currently testing it and will update the review shortly.

Update 06/08/2018: FreeSync has been tested and the score has been updated. FreeSync was supported from our Xbox One S and our Radeon RX 580 GPU, in 1080p, 1440p and 4k resolutions. FreeSync is activated by enabling the TV's Game mode and FreeSync settings; PC mode is not required. We tested in Ultimate mode because it has the widest range, and we only recommend Basic mode when you experience problems with Ultimate.

1440p @ 120 Hz: 10.0 ms

Excellent low input lag across all resolutions and refresh rates, as long as Game Mode is activated. Outside of Game Mode, input lag is high, but not terrible.

High-end 2018 Samsung TVs like the Q7FN and NU8000 can interpolate lower frame rate games up to 60 Hz or 120Hz without adding much input lag. When interpolating up to 60Hz (With the 'Judder' slider set to 10 and the 'Blur' slider at 0, input lag is 21.7 ms, which is still very low. When interpolating up to 120 Hz (with both sliders at 10), input lag is 27.5 ms.

The Q7FN supports the new Auto Low Latency Mode. When connected to a supported device (like the Xbox One or PS4), the TV will automatically switch to game mode when a game is detected.

Update 06/08/2018: The input lag with VRR has been tested and added to the review.

Update 06/11/2018: 1440p @ 120 Hz performance has improved as of firmware version 1103. The 1440p @ 120 Hz input lag is now 10.0 ms, down from 24.8 ms.