Samsung QN85B QLED TV Review

The Samsung QN85B looks great, with very thin bezels that help it to blend into the décor. The stand has been updated for 2022, and the new hexagonal base is unique and stylish, although it looks a bit more like a gaming monitor than a TV.

The center-mounted stand is small, so it doesn't require a large desk to mount. Sadly, the stand doesn't quite prevent the TV from wobbling, but it's not bad.

Footprint of the stand on the 65" model: 15.4" x 11.3". The stand lifts the TV about 2.5" above the surface of your table, so most soundbars fit in front of it without blocking the screen.

The back is plastic with a textured brushed metal finish. There are channels along the back and a space in the stand for basic cable management. Unfortunately, the inputs are inset into the back of the TV, so they're difficult to access if you wall-mount the TV with a fixed bracket.

The Samsung QN85B has fantastic build quality. It's well put together, with premium materials that feel well-built. There's some flex on the back panel, but this isn't unusual and doesn't cause any issues. The gap between the bezel and the screen isn't quite uniform, which indicates a less precise final assembly process, but this isn't really noticeable. Sadly, the TV tends to wobble a bit.

The Samsung QN85B has a decent contrast ratio. The contrast with local dimming on 'High' is much higher than the native contrast, and blacks don't look gray at all in a dark room. Note that the 85 inch model uses a different panel type, and it has much better native contrast. The Samsung QN90C/QN90CD QLED has a similar panel, with nearly identical contrast.

Unlike most other brands, the local dimming feature can't be disabled from the picture settings menu. The native contrast is measured on Samsung TVs by disabling local dimming in PC mode through the service menu and then changing the input label to 'PC' for this measurement only.

Unfortunately, as with most recent Samsung TVs, the local dimming feature is a bit worse in 'Game' Mode. In 'Game' Mode, there's more noticeable blooming around bright highlights or subtitles, and they seem to be spread out over a greater number of dimming zones. The processing also seems to be a bit slower, and zone transitions are more noticeable.

The Samsung QN85B is remarkably bright in HDR. Small specular highlights stand out extremely well, but large bright scenes are considerably dimmer, but still good. Bright highlights stay bright even if they're on-screen for a while. It tracks the PQ EOTF well, as almost all scenes display at the correct brightness level. There's a smooth roll-off near the TV's peak brightness, so fine details are preserved in really bright scenes.

These measurements are in the 'Movie HDR' Picture Mode with Brightness and Contrast at max, Local Dimming set to 'High', and Color Tone set to 'Warm2'.

If you want to make HDR even brighter, as seen in this EOTF, then set Contrast Enhancer to 'High' and ST.2084 to 'Max'. These settings result in considerably brighter scenes, but the overall peak brightness of the TV is the same. The 'Dynamic' Picture Mode is even brighter, reaching a momentary peak brightness of 1673 cd/m² with a 10% window, but it can't maintain those brightness levels, and it dims significantly after a few seconds.

There's no noticeable difference in HDR peak brightness in 'Game' mode with the default settings. Adjusting the HDR10+ Gaming and the Game HDR settings has a small impact on the color gamut and PQ EOTF tracking, though. There's no noticeable difference in peak brightness between the different settings, but the brightness tracks the PQ EOTF better with Game HDR on, and the 'Advanced' mode delivers slightly better tone mapping, but it's not really noticeable.

These measurements are with the same settings as the HDR Brightness box, but with Dynamic Black Equalizer set to 'Max'.

The Samsung QN85B has incredible peak brightness in SDR. It's definitely bright enough to overcome glare, even if you have a lot of natural light. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are dimmed considerably by the TV's Automatic Brightness limiter (ABL).

These measurements are after calibration, in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with Backlight set to max, Local Dimming on 'High', and the Color Tone set to 'Warm2'. The 'Dynamic' Picture Mode with the 'Cool' Color Temperature is a bit brighter, but less accurate, reaching a peak of 1205 cd/m².

The Samsung QN85B has a very good color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content. Colors don't quite pop the way they should in some content, but it's not really noticeable unless you're comparing this TV to another one with a wider color gamut. It has limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, and the tone mapping isn't very good when displaying Rec. 2020 content, so there's some loss of fine details in some scenes.

The Samsung QN85B has just decent color volume. It's mainly limited by its incomplete color gamut, as most colors are displayed well at various brightness levels, and colors are just as bright as pure white. Dark saturated colors are displayed well, which is impressive for an ADS panel.

The Samsung QN85B has great accuracy out of the box. The white balance is a bit off, especially in brighter shades of gray, but most colors look great. The white balance is a touch warm, but it's not really noticeable, and gamma is very close to the 2.2 target for a dark room, but bright scenes are over-brightened a bit.

After calibration, the Samsung QN85B has fantastic accuracy. Any remaining issues with the color accuracy, white balance, or gamma aren't noticeable. The color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target.

This TV has a new "Smart Calibration" feature that lets you partially calibrate your TV using your smartphone. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to improve picture quality compared to the out-of-the-box results. After running this calibration, you can't reset the picture settings; the TV has to be reset to change the picture settings or calibrate it normally.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Samsung QN85B has good gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are noticeably darker than the center. There's just a bit of dirty screen effect, which is mainly noticeable when watching sports.

Unfortunately, the Samsung QN85B has just okay black uniformity. The screen appears cloudy throughout due to the low native contrast when local dimming is disabled. Enabling local dimming reduces the cloudiness significantly, but despite the high number of dimming zones, there's a bit of blooming around the test cross. The 85 inch model uses a different panel type, and it has much better black uniformity.

The Samsung QN85B has a very good viewing angle. The image fades a bit at moderate viewing angles, causing it to appear washed out, but there's very little color shift. It's a very good choice for a wide seating arrangement, as the image remains accurate at an angle, or if you're using it as a PC monitor, as the sides of the screen remain accurate if you're sitting close to it. Note that the 85 inch model uses a different screen type with a worse viewing angle.

The Samsung QN85B has decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss coating diffuses reflections across the screen a bit, making them appear larger but less bright overall. Thankfully, this TV can get incredibly bright, so despite the limited reflection handling, you can increase the brightness to overcome glare.

480p content, like DVDs, is upscaled well, with no issues at all.

Like the 2021 Samsung QN85A QLED, the Samsung QN85B QLED uses an ADS panel, which performs similar to IPS technology. The red-green-blue subpixel structure is great for use as a PC monitor, as text is rendered properly. Note that the 85 inch model uses a VA panel and has a blue-green-red subpixel structure, so text isn't as sharp.

The Samsung QN85B has a great response time. Most transitions are very fast, with minimal overshoot, so motion looks relatively clear with little blur behind fast-moving objects. There's significant overshoot in dark transitions, though, causing inverse ghosting behind dark areas.

The Samsung QN85B uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, and the flicker frequency varies between picture modes and with certain settings. In 'Movie' mode with the backlight set to at least 40, the backlight flickers at 120Hz, but it increases to 960Hz with a backlight setting below '40'. The flicker frequency drops to 120Hz in the 'Dynamic', 'Natural', 'Standard', and 'Filmmaker' Picture Modes, or if you enable the Picture Clarity settings. In 'Game' Mode, it flickers at 960Hz with the backlight set to 30 or below, and at 120Hz above 30. This low flicker frequency can cause headaches if you're sensitive to flicker, and it also causes image duplications with 60Hz content.

The Samsung QN85B has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. This feature helps reduce blur caused by the TV's fast response time, otherwise known as persistence blur. It works at both 60Hz and 120Hz, but the timing is a bit off, causing a duplicated image. Note that our scoring only reflects the range of flicker frequency and not how well the BFI performs.

The Samsung QN85B has a feature to increase the frame rate of low frame rate content up to 120Hz. It's okay overall on this TV, but it looks best in slow-paced scenes. In busy scenes with a lot of action, there are a lot of artifacts. Unlike some TVs, which stop interpolating when they can't keep up, this one keeps going, so there are more and more artifacts in busy scenes.

Due to the relatively quick response time of the Samsung QN85B QLED, low frame rate content, like movies, appears to stutter. It's mainly noticeable in slow panning shots. If this bothers you, the optional motion interpolation or backlight strobing features can both help with this, but they have other issues, too, so there's no perfect solution.

The Samsung QN85B automatically removes judder from all sources; no additional settings are needed. It's great for watching movies, as motion appears smooth.

The Samsung QN85B supports variable refresh rates, and it works across a very wide refresh rate range. Low-frame rate compensation (LFC) automatically engages at low refresh rates, multiplying frames to ensure a tear-free gaming experience even at very low frame rates. It's compatible with all three major types of VRR.

The Samsung QN85B has fantastic low input lag in 'Game' Mode, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. Gaming at 120Hz offers even better input lag, very close to high-end gaming monitors. If you're a fan of motion interpolation, Samsung's 'Game Motion Plus' feature allows you to interpolate low frame rate games, improving motion clarity without adding much input lag. With the 'Game Motion Plus' settings at max, there's 23.6ms of input lag, which is definitely higher than with the setting disabled, but it's still good for casual gamers.

The Samsung QN85B supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz. Except for 1440p @ 120Hz, all supported formats can display chroma 4:4:4 properly, which is important for clear text from a PC. 4k @ 120Hz signals are displayed properly, with no resolution-halving or other issues.

The Samsung QN85B is fully compatible with the PS5 and Xbox Series X; there are no issues at all. It also works with Sony's recently added variable refresh rate feature on the PS5.

Unlike the 2021 Samsung TVs, the Samsung QN85B supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports. It's great, as it gives you the flexibility to connect multiple high-bandwidth devices, like if you have both the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn't support Dolby Vision. However, it's compatible with HDR10+, which is very similar.

The Samsung QN85B supports eARC, allowing it to pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source through to your soundbar or home theater system. Sadly, it doesn't support any DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many UHD Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The Samsung QN85B has a decent frequency response. Like most TVs, the low-frequency extension (LFE) is high, so there's very little deep rumble or thump. The frequency response above the LFE is well-balanced at moderate listening levels, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand. However, there's noticeable compression at max volume, and there's a significant decrease in the frequency response in the low-treble range, making dialogue harder to understand. The Samsung QN85B has an optional room correction feature, which was enabled for these measurements.

The Samsung QN85B has decent distortion performance. There's very little harmonic distortion in the treble range, where it's most noticeable, even at max volume.

The updated 2022 version of Tizen OS is fast and easy to use. The interface now fills the entire screen instead of the bar that appeared on the previous version. This makes it easier to find your favorite content.

Unfortunately, like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the interface, and there's no option to disable them completely.

The included apps cover most of the common streaming services, and there's a great selection of additional apps available in Samsung's app store. It's also compatible with Google Duo, which supports video calls with up to 32 people by connecting a webcam to the TV.

The remote is slim and easy to use but has a very limited selection of buttons, so you have to change most things through menus on the TV. There are four quick-access buttons for the most popular streaming services; unfortunately, there's no way to remap these to your favorites. You can recharge the remote via a solar panel on the back or with a USB-C cable (sold separately).

The Samsung QN85B is compatible with multiple voice assistants, including Bixby, Google Assistant, and Alexa, but you have to use the remote as it doesn't have a hands-free mode. Voice controls work well and allow you to launch apps, change inputs, or adjust certain settings. Sadly, you can't use it to search for content within specific apps.

Unfortunately, the remote included with the TV we bought wasn't working properly, so we had to use a different remote for our testing. We believe this to be an isolated issue with our unit, but let us know if you experience the same thing.

The controls are beneath the Samsung branding on the bottom right side of the TV. There's a single button that lets you power the TV on/off and change channels, volume, and inputs.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• User guide