Our Verdict
The Samsung Q90R is an excellent TV for most uses. It delivers a great HDR experience with vibrant colors and bright highlights, and lower resolution content like cable TV or sports are upscaled without any issues. It has an exceptionally low input lag for gaming, and it supports FreeSync for a nearly tear-free gaming experience. It's also a good TV to use as a monitor, as it can display chroma 4:4:4 properly.
- Excellent peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
- Outstanding low input lag and FreeSync support.
- Remarkable motion handling.
- Some gray uniformity issues at the edges.
The Samsung Q90R is a great TV for watching movies. It can display deep uniform blacks in a dark room thanks to the high native contrast ratio and good local dimming. Motion is crisp and the TV can remove 24p judder no matter the signal source.
The Samsung Q90R is an excellent TV for watching TV shows. It can get very bright and can handle the reflections of a bright room very well. The 'Ultra Viewing Angle' technology allows the image to remain accurate when viewed from the side, so you can move around the room while watching your favorite TV show without losing image accuracy.
The Samsung Q90R is an excellent TV for watching sports. It's suitable for any room as it can get very bright and can handle reflections well. The TV displays fast-moving content with just minimal blur trail, and the image remains accurate when viewed from the side so you can watch your favorite game in a wide room with a group of friends. Finally, the game field is displayed free from annoying dark shades, thanks to the decent gray uniformity.
The Samsung Q90R is an amaing TV for playing video games. It has a remarkably low input lag, which makes it very responsive, and it has a fast response time, delivering a clear picture with minimal motion blur. It supports FreeSync for a nearly tear-free gaming experience and it can even interpolate lower frame rate games without adding significant input lag.
The Samsung Q90R is a great TV for watching HDR movies. It can display a wide color gamut, delivering rich and vibrant colors, and it can get extremely bright to bring out small highlights. With its full-array local dimming, this TV has an outstanding contrast ratio to produce deep blacks, making it a great choice for dark room viewing.
The Samsung Q90R is an excellent TV for playing HDR games. It's very responsive with a low input lag in HDR mode, and at the same time, it can display HDR content remarkably well. HDR content is full of rich colors and highlights that pop, thanks to the wide color gamut and the excellent HDR peak brightness.
The Samsung Q90R is an excellent TV for use as a monitor. It has a very low input lag to make your desktop experience feel responsive and snappy, and it can display proper chroma 4:4:4, which is great for text clarity. It supports most common resolutions and there's no risk of permanent burn-in with its VA panel.
Changelog
- Updated May 21, 2020: Converted to Test Bench 1.5.
- Updated Feb 21, 2020: Converted to Test Bench 1.4.
- Updated Aug 02, 2019: We retested the Q90R with the latest firmware. The SDR Peak Brightness, HDR Peak Brightness, and Input Lag measurements and scores have been updated, and 4k @ 120Hz is no longer skipping frames.
- Updated Apr 18, 2019: Review published.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the 65" (QN65Q90RA) version AA01/QRQ90. For the most part, we expect our review to be valid for the 75" version (QN75Q90RA) and the 82" version (QN82Q90RA). There's also a 55" model available only in Europe that we expect to perform similarly, except for local dimming.
If someone comes across a different type of panel or if their Samsung Q90R doesn't correspond to our review, let us know and we will update the review.
| Size | Model | Model Short | US | Canada | UK | Europe |
| 55" | QN55Q90RA | QN55Q90 | N/A | N/A | QE55Q90RATXXU | QE55Q90RATXXC |
| 65" | QN65Q90RA | QN65Q90 | QN65Q90RAFXZA | QN65Q90RAFXZC | QE65Q90RATXXU | QE65Q90RATXXC |
| 75" | QN75Q90RA | QN75Q90 | QN75Q90RAFXZA | QN75Q90RAFXZC | QE75Q90RATXXU | QE75Q90RATXXC |
| 82" | QN82Q90RA | QN82Q90 | QN82Q90RAFXZA | QN82Q90RAFXZC | N/A | N/A |
The 65" Q90R we tested was manufactured in Feb. 2019.
Popular TV Comparisons
The Samsung Q90R is an excellent TV that delivers an excellent performance in any usage. See our recommendations for the best TVs, the best HDR gaming TVs, and the best smart TVs.
The Samsung Q90/Q90R QLED and the LG C9 OLED use different panel types, each with their advantages and disadvantages. The C9 looks much better in a dark room, as the OLED panel delivers a nearly infinite contrast ratio and near-perfect black uniformity. The Q90R is significantly brighter, and the brightness doesn't change as much with different content (ABL). The C9 has better gray uniformity and better viewing angles. The C9 has a risk of permanent burn-in when exposed to static content, but the Q90 doesn't.
The Samsung Q90/Q90T QLED and the Samsung Q90/Q90R QLED have similar performance overall. The Q90T is the Q90R's replacement in name only, as it doesn't have the One Connect Box and its feature set is closer to the Q90R. The Q90T has better viewing angles due to the new implementation of the 'Ultra Viewing Angle' layer, and it has a lower input lag. The Q90T gains eARC support, but its black uniformity is noticeably worse compared to the Q90R.
The Samsung Q90/Q90R QLED and the Samsung Q80R have very similar performance. The Samsung Q90R has a slightly faster response time, which some enthusiasts might notice when watching sports. Also, the Q90R has more effective local dimming thanks to the greater number of local dimming zones than the Q80R. Although our Q90R test unit was a larger variant, we expect this to be true for the same size variants of the Q80R. All of the other differences are mainly in the design. The Q90R has a One Connect box, supports a no-gap wall mount, and its stand has a smaller footprint.
The LG CX OLED is better than the Samsung Q90/Q90R QLED, but their differences come down to their panel differences. The LG is an OLED TV, so it's able to produce perfect blacks and it has a near-instantaneous response time. It also has wider viewing angles and better out-of-the-box color accuracy. The Samsung gets significantly brighter, it supports FreeSync VRR to reduce screen tearing, and it has slightly better reflection handling.
We buy and test dozens of TVs yearly, taking an objective, data-driven approach to deliver results you can trust. Our testing process is complex, with hundreds of individual tests that take over a week to complete. Most of our tests use specially designed test patterns that mimic real content, but we also use the same sources you have at home to ensure our results match the real-world experience. We use two main tools for our testing: a Colorimetry Research CR-100 colorimeter and a CR-250 spectroradiometer.
Test Results
Older Test Bench: This product has been tested using an older TV test methodology, before a major update. Some of the test results below aren't directly comparable with other TVs. Learn more
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