Samsung Q80/Q80T QLED TV Review

The Samsung Q80T is a mid-range TV in Samsung's high-end 4k QLED TV lineup. It sits below the flagship Samsung Q90/Q90T QLED and above the Samsung Q70/Q70T QLED. Since Samsung has shifted its entire lineup this year, this is a replacement of the Samsung Q80/Q80R QLED in name only, as its performance and features are closer to that of the Samsung Q70/Q70R QLED. Its main competitors are the Sony X950H, Vizio P Series Quantum X 2020, and the Hisense H9G.

The Samsung Q80T has a simple and minimalist design with thin bezels on all sides. It's center-mounted on a pedestal-style stand.

The stand is a mix of metal and plastic. It provides decent support for the TV, but there's still a fair amount of wobble. Luckily, it's fairly small and doesn't take up much space, making it easier to place a soundbar in front.

Footprint of the 55 inch stand: 15.4" x 10.3".

The back of the TV is plastic, and it's plain except for the fine horizontal texture etched into it. The inputs are side-facing and are easily accessible when the TV is wall-mounted, and grooves guide the cables towards the stand, which is hollow and serves as cable management.

The bezels on the Samsung Q80T are thin and aren't distracting.

The TV is quite thin without the stand and shouldn't stick out much when wall-mounted.

Build quality feels excellent. It's mostly plastic, but it feels well-built and sturdy overall. The TV does wobble when nudged, mostly due to the design of the stand.

The Samsung Q80T has a great native contrast ratio, but it's lower than typical for a VA panel. This is likely due to the implementation of Samsung's 'Ultra Viewing Angle' layer, which improves viewing angles at the expense of contrast ratio. The contrast does improve when local dimming is enabled, but blacks can still appear grayish in some scenes.

The 49 inch variant doesn't have the 'Ultra Viewing Angle' layer and is expected to have a higher native contrast ratio.

Great SDR peak brightness. It's more than enough to fight glare in bright rooms, but there's quite a bit of variation in brightness when displaying different content.

We measured the peak brightness after calibration, using the 'Movie' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to maximum, and Local Dimming set to 'High'.

If you don't mind losing a bit of image accuracy, you can get a brighter image by setting the Picture Mode to 'Dynamic', Local Dimming to 'High', and Brightness to max. We achieved a peak brightness of 761cd/m² in the 10% window with these settings.

This TV has a decent full-array local dimming feature. The implementation has been tweaked to light up more zones at once, which has the effect of reducing intense blooming around bright objects but also causes a larger section of the screen to appear grayish. That said, it isn't as noticeable in real content, and subtitles are handled well. It's still a bit slow in reacting to changes and can sometimes cause the corners of the screen to flash when the whole screen is gray. The performance is very close to that of the Sony X900F.

In 'Game' mode, the local dimming doesn't do much, especially with real content. There's very little black crush or other noticeable flaws with the local dimming, but neither is there much noticeable improvement in dark scenes. For instance, the local dimming barely reacts to subtitles. When there is a long stretch of dark content, it may dim the scene a little but not by much. Because it's less aggressive, transitions between zones are quite smooth and not very noticeable. However, sometimes the local dimming seems to behave differently, as with the moving circles where it dims the background more aggressively and zone transitions become more visible, but it quickly goes back to its more ineffective behavior. What all of this means is that you likely won't notice the effects of local dimming much when in 'Game' mode.

Good HDR brightness. HDR content looks especially good if you're watching in a dark to moderately-lit room. Overall scenes are a little brighter than they should be, but very bright highlights don't quite pop as intended. As with SDR, there's quite a bit of variation in brightness depending on the content.

We measured the HDR peak brightness before calibration, using the 'Movie HDR' Picture Mode, with Local Dimming set to 'High', and all other image processing disabled.

If you find HDR too dim, you can make it brighter by setting Brightness and Contrast to maximum, set ST.2084 to maximum, and set Contrast Enhancer to 'High'. Using these settings, you can make HDR appear significantly brighter, as you can see in this EOTF. If you want a TV with higher HDR peak brightness, check out the Sony X950H.

In 'Game' mode, the HDR brightness is okay. It's a bit more consistent across content but doesn't get as bright overall and highlights don't stand out as much. The replacement to this TV, the Samsung Q80/Q80A QLED, gets significantly brighter in 'Game' mode.

We tested the brightness in the 'Game' Picture Mode, using the 'Warm 2' Color Temperature, with Local Dimming set to 'High', Color Gamut on 'Auto', Dynamic Black Equalizer set to '2', and Sharpness set to '0'. Motion interpolation and other additional settings were disabled.

The Samsung Q80T has decent gray uniformity, although this can vary between units. The corners of the screen look darker, and there's a bit of dirty screen effect throughout the screen. Luckily, uniformity is much better in darker scenes.

The Samsung Q80T has great black uniformity, but this can vary between individual units. There's a bit of clouding throughout the screen, and the overall image looks a bit more grayish. With local dimming enabled, the clouding is less noticeable, and there's a bit less blooming around the test cross.

The Samsung Q80T has decent viewing angles for a VA panel TV. It has Samsung's 'Ultra Viewing Angle' layer, which improves viewing angles at the cost of a lower contrast ratio. Gamma shift happens rather quickly once you move off-center, but black level remains fairly consistent until you reach moderate viewing angles. To take our measurements, we had to perform two runs, one with local dimming set to 'Low' to measure color, and the other with local dimming disabled to measure lightness, black level, and gamma. Overall, viewing angles are better with the local dimming disabled.

The TV's local dimming can't be disabled through the normal settings menu. To turn it off, you must first disable PC Mode Dimming within the TV's service menu, and then activate PC Mode.

The 49 inch variant of this TV doesn't have the 'Ultra Viewing Angle' layer, and we expect it to have worse viewing angles.

Superb reflection handling. The screen's anti-reflective coating performs remarkably well at reducing the intensity of reflected light, making it a great choice for fairly well-lit rooms. However, the light scatters across the screen, creating a rainbow-like effect. This can be most noticeable in rooms with a lot of light, especially when you're watching dark content here. You can see examples of it from Reddit here.

The Samsung Q80T has excellent color accuracy out-of-the-box. There are only minor inaccuracies that are very difficult to spot with the naked eye, and white balance is also fantastic. However, the color temperature is a bit on the warm side, and gamma doesn't follow the target all that well, causing most scenes to appear brighter than they should. Note that color accuracy can vary between units.

Update 09/30/2020: We've changed the status of the Auto-Calibration function from 'Untested' to 'Undetermined', as the Samsung Q80T isn't yet listed as being compatible with CalMAN.

After calibration, color accuracy is incredible. White balance, gamma, and color temperature are right on target, and any remaining inaccuracies shouldn't be noticeable without the aid of a colorimeter.

You can see our recommended settings here.

480p content like DVDs is upscaled without any obvious artifacts, and it looks very similar, if not identical, to the Samsung Q70/Q70R QLED and the Samsung Q70/Q70T QLED.

720p content such as cable TV is upscaled well, with no signs of upscaling artifacts.

There are no issues upscaling 1080p content.

Native 4k content is displayed perfectly.

The Samsung Q80T can't display an 8k signal.

The pixels are a bit blurry due to the 'Ultra Viewing Angle' layer. It is, however, much clearer than what we had observed on the Samsung Q80/Q80R QLED. You can also see the filter in this photo.

The Samsung Q80T has a great color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space, which is used for most HDR content, and it has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space. If you want a TV with a wider color gamut, check out the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2020.

Good color volume. It's slightly better than the Samsung Q80/Q80R QLED, but it can't reproduce dark colors as well due to its lower contrast ratio.

Very good gradient performance. The most visible banding is with the color green, but there's also some fine banding when displaying shades of gray, red, and blue. If this bothers you, enabling Noise Reduction in the Picture Clarity Settings menu can remove most of it, although it may cause the loss of some fine details.

There are no signs of temporary image retention, but this can vary between individual units.

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

This tv has an excellent response time. There should be very little blur trail behind fast-moving objects. That said, there's significant overshoot in some transitions, which is more visible when motion interpolation is enabled. If you want an even quicker response time, check out the LG CX OLED.

This TV uses Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, but since it flickers at such a high frequency, it shouldn't be noticeable to most people. In 'Movie' mode, the flickering frequency drops to 120Hz when Picture Clarity is set to 'Custom' or 'Auto'. The flickering is also at 120Hz when using the 'Dynamic', 'Standard', 'Natural', or 'Game' mode.

This TV has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature that can help reduce motion blur, called LED Clear Motion.

Just enabling Picture Clarity lowers the flickering frequency to 120Hz, and turning on LED Clear Motion reduces the frequency further to 60Hz.

In 'Game' mode, the backlight always flickers at 120Hz, and enabling LED Clear Motion in the Game Motion Plus Settings menu lowers the flickering frequency to 60Hz.

The Samsung Q80T can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120Hz, a feature also known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. There are very little artifacts in regular content, even in intense scenes. To use it, set Picture Clarity to 'Custom', then set Judder Reduction to '10' for 30fps content, or Blur Reduction to '10' for 60fps content.

Due to the TV's fast response time, lower frame rate content can appear to stutter, as each frame is held on for a longer period. If this bothers you, enabling Picture Clarity or LED Clear Motion can help.

Note: We received reports that the Q80T has visible stuttering and judder when watching sports. This could be most noticeable with cable sports. If you've experienced the same thing, let us know.

The Samsung Q80T can remove judder from all sources. To do so, set Picture Clarity to 'Custom', and leave the Blur Reduction and Judder Reduction sliders at '0'.

The 49 inch variant of this TV has a 60Hz panel and likely can't remove judder at all. If you have the 49 inch model, please let us know in the discussions below.

Note: We received reports that the Q80T has visible stuttering and judder when watching sports. This could be most noticeable with cable sports. If you've experienced the same thing, let us know.