Samsung QN85D  TV Review

The TV's HDR peak brightness is good. Small specular highlights stand out well, and while large bright scenes are dimmer, they're still very bright. The TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) isn't aggressive at all, so variations in brightness are kept to a minimum, although they're still there.

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

• HDR Picture Mode: Filmmaker
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Contrast Enhancer: Off
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Tone: Warm2

The TV's peak HDR brightness in Game Mode is slightly lower than in 'Filmmaker,' but it's still decent. Highlights still stand out, although with more blooming than in other picture modes.

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

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Game HDR: Basic
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Contrast Enhancer: Off
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Tone: Warm2

The TV's SDR peak brightness is excellent. It's bright enough to overcome glare in even extremely bright rooms with lots of natural light. The TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) isn't aggressive, although large, bright scenes are still dimmer than scenes with smaller highlights. However, despite the ABL, the TV is still bright enough to overcome glare.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Color Space: Auto
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Peak Brightness: High

The Samsung QN85D has a decent contrast ratio. Its native contrast ratio is good, but with local dimming set to high, the TV produces deep blacks that don't look gray.

If you want a Samsung TV with perfect blacks, check out the Samsung S85F OLED.

The TV has good lighting zone precision. There's some noticeable blooming around bright highlights and subtitles in dark scenes, but it looks good overall. If you want a TV with no blooming at all, look at the Samsung S85D OLED.

Lighting zone transitions on the Samsung QN85D are decent, but the algorithm that controls the local dimming feature can't quite keep up with fast content, so transitions are noticeable. When bright highlights move quickly across the screen, the leading edge is darker due to the TV not turning on zones fast enough. There's also a bright halo behind bright highlights that move quickly across the screen.

The TV's contrast and dark details in Game Mode are satisfactory, even if a bit worse than in the other picture modes due to lower peak brightness and more blooming around bright highlights.

The TV's black uniformity is decent. With local dimming set to 'High,' there's some noticeable blooming around bright elements, but the image is uniformly black outside of that. If you turn off local dimming, the entire image will be blue or grayish when bright highlights are present.

The Samsung QN85DD has just okay SDR color volume. Its DCI-P3 coverage is good, but it does struggle as colors become lighter. The TV has subpar coverage of the very wide BT.2020 color space, and like DCI-P3, its coverage is worse with lighter shades.

The Samsung QN85D has good HDR color volume. It has bright, vibrant colors and can display bright colors very well, although it's not quite as vibrant as 2023's Samsung QN85C. If you want a TV with even better color volume, check out the Hisense U8/U8N.

The Samsung QN85DD has excellent pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Its white balance is great, with greens barely underrepresented in most grays and a bit too much red in brighter shades of gray. The color temperature is only slightly cooler than 6500K, but it's barely noticeable. The TV's color accuracy is excellent overall, with only minor errors that aren't noticeable to most people. Gamma is extremely close to 2.2, although most scenes are a bit too dark, while very bright scenes are too bright.

After retesting the TV on firmware 1201, it's confirmed that there are no longer clamping issues with the color space set to 'Auto.'

After calibration, the TV has outstanding SDR accuracy. Minor errors in white balance, color temperature, and gamma are gone. Colors are even more accurate than before, with only very minor errors that aren't noticeable with real content.

As of firmware 1201, there are no longer color space issues with the color space set to 'Auto.'

See our full calibration settings.

The TV has decent HDR pre-calibration accuracy. It has too much blue and not enough red in most shades of gray, which contributes to the TV's cool color temperature. Colors have acceptable accuracy, but most colors are undersaturated and off the mark.

The TV has excellent HDR post-calibration accuracy. Most issues with white balance are gone, and the TV's color temperature is incredibly close to the industry standard 6500K. Color accuracy is okay, but there are still mapping errors throughout.

The Samsung QN85's PQ EOTF tracking is excellent in 'Filmmaker' mode. It behaves strangely in brighter midtones, as it suddenly dips below the curve, indicating that midtones are too dark. The curve also behaves erratically after the TV hits its peak. The curve is more typical when testing with an industry-standard 10% window. Still, this indicates that some highlights might look weird depending on the scene.

Overall, the TV follows the curve extremely closely. There's a slight roll-off with content mastered at all levels when the TV reaches its peak brightness, preserving bright detail in highlights.

The TV's low-quality content smoothing is alright. It does a good job of preserving details, but it does just an okay job when smoothing out any macro-blocking in dark scenes.

The TV has good sharpness processing when upscaling content. It's good enough that low-resolution content looks sharp, although you lose some fine details in the process.

Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content, with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 5
• Picture Clarity: Off

If you need a Mini LED TV with better upscaling capabilities, check out the Panasonic W95A.

The Samsung QNX1D has excellent HDR gradient handling. However, there's very noticeable banding in dark blues and minor banding in dark grays, reds, and greens, as well as in brighter blues. Light grays and reds are free of any banding.

The TV has low input lag in Game Mode. It results in a very responsive gaming experience, especially at 120Hz. Unfortunately, the input lag outside Game Mode is too high for gaming or PC use.

The TV supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz. All supported formats display chroma 4:4:4 signals properly, which is essential for clear text from a PC. There are no resolution-halving issues on this TV at any resolution.

The Samsung QN85 series is compatible with all three variable refresh rate (VRR) formats, and it works across a very wide refresh rate range, which ensures that your games remain nearly tear-free when gaming. It also supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

Unfortunately, there's an issue when using AMD graphics cards where the LFC doesn't activate when the frame rate drops below 48 fps.

The TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz is mediocre. Its pixel transitions are quite slow overall, especially when exiting both dark states and very bright states. This leads to fast motion that lacks clarity.

The TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz is mediocre. Its pixel transitions are quite slow overall, especially when exiting both dark states and very bright states. This leads to fast motion that lacks clarity.

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is disappointing. Transitions from pixel to pixel are very slow across the board. Combined with the persistence blur that's present in 60Hz games, fast motion is distractingly blurry.

The Samsung QNX1D is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

The TV is fully compatible with almost everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't support Dolby Vision.

Low frame rate content, like movies and shows, has some stutter. It's mainly noticeable in slow panning shots, but not everyone will be bothered by it.

The TV does a reasonable job of reducing stutter in 24 fps content with the motion interpolation setting that's equivalent to 30 fps. The hold time of frames is reduced, and the feature has pretty good consistency, so motion looks smoother.

This TV automatically removes judder from all sources, except when watching 25p content via a 60p signal, so motion only looks jittery if you're watching certain European content from an older streaming device.

The Samsung QN85D only has micro-judder present in scenes with complex motion when watching 25p content via a 60p signal, like when using an older streaming device that doesn't have a feature to match the outputted signal to the frame rate of the content.

The TV has a good response time, so movies, shows, and sports don't have distracting blur during fast motion.

The Samsung QN85D does a decent job of avoiding transition artifacts overall. There are no edge artifacts at all, so the edges of fast-moving objects and people are just as clear as the center. However, there are visible intermediate colors present. For example, there are visible trails of yellow behind the edges of blues, and magenta behind greens, which affects color consistency in fast-paced scenes and sports.

The Samsung QN85D uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, so it's unfortunately not flicker-free. The flicker frequency varies between picture modes and at different brightness settings. Below max brightness, 'Movie' mode flickers at 960Hz, while 'Game' Mode and 'Filmmaker' mode flicker at 120Hz. At max brightness, all three flicker at 120Hz. Standard, Eco, and Dynamic flicker at 120Hz at any brightness setting.

The TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). The feature helps reduce blur caused by the TV's fast response time, otherwise known as persistence blur. It works at both 60Hz and 120Hz, which is great, but unfortunately, its timing is off, causing a duplicate image when enabled.

The TV's direct reflection handling is subpar. While it does reduce the intensity of direct reflections by a small degree, they're still very obvious, leading to an unpleasant viewing experience when bright lights or windows shine directly on the TV.

The TV does a fantastic job retaining its black levels in a bright room. Blacks are barely raised as more light is added to your room, so you get very similar black levels regardless of your lighting.

The amount of total reflected light is subpar. While the TV's handling of ambient lighting is passable, it shows some obvious light banding.

The TV has decent color saturation when used in a well-lit room. Overall, there's barely any difference in the vibrancy of colors, whether you're in a dark room or a bright one.

The TV's viewing angle is passable if you're looking at the screen from a slight angle, but its image quality degrades drastically at more aggressive angles, making it a poor choice for wide seating arrangements.

The TV has adequate gray uniformity. There's some vignetting, where the sides of the image are slightly darker than its center, and the dirty screen effect is noticeable in content with large sections of bright colors, such as when watching sports like hockey. However, its uniformity with very dark colors is excellent.

Unlike past models in the QN85 series, the Samsung QN85D uses a VA panel rather than an ADS/IPS panel. This gives it better contrast at the cost of a worse viewing angle. Furthermore, the QN85D has a Blue-Green-Red (BGR) subpixel layout. For multimedia use, this doesn't cause any issues, but it affects text clarity when you use this TV as a PC monitor.

The TV has good separation between colors, which helps with its color purity and its ability to display a wide range of colors.

The Samsung QN85D supports full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports, making it very flexible for users with multiple HDMI 2.1 devices. Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn't support Dolby Vision; instead, it supports the less widely used HDR10+ format.

This TV supports eARC, which lets it pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source to your receiver without sacrificing audio quality. Sadly, it doesn't support DTS audio formats, which is disappointing as many UHD Blu-rays and DVDs use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

7.1 channel LPCM only works with sources that allow you to manually override the EDID, like a PC. If you can't override the EDID, it's limited to 5.1.

The Samsung QN85D has a nice design, although it looks like a much thicker version of 2023's Samsung QN85C. From the front, it has thin bezels and a sleek look that'll fit in any room.

The Samsung QN85D's center-mounted stand is small and doesn't take up much space, so the TV doesn't require a large table or desk. The stand's small size doesn't stop the TV from wobbling, but it's not concerning.

Footprint of the stand on the 65-inch model: 15.2" x 11.2".

The stand lifts the TV about 3.15 inches above the table, so most soundbars will fit in front of the TV without blocking the screen.

The back of the TV looks good, with a nice textured design. There are slots on each side of the TV for alternate feet, but none are included in the box. There are cable channels on the back for cable management. There are also cable grooves in the stand, hidden with a cover, to further channel cables towards the stand's bottom and out of the TV. Note that the TV's inputs are in a recessed inlet on its back panel. They're hard to access if you wall-mount the TV with a fixed bracket.

The build quality of the Samsung QN85D is great. The TV wobbles from front to back and from side to side due to its small stand, but it's not concerning. However, there's a lot of flex near the TV's VESA holes and its inputs; it's pretty typical, but worth noting. Aside from that, the TV feels sleek and is made from premium plastic.

The Samsung QN85D runs the 2024 version of Tizen OS, which is easy to use. Unfortunately, at times, the interface is slow to open for no obvious reason, and sometimes, the TV doesn't register when you change the input label, requiring you to do it again.

Like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the TV interface, and although you can turn off targeted ads, you can't turn them off entirely.

The TV comes with a slim, easy-to-use remote. It's minimalistic, with few intuitively laid-out buttons. It has a built-in rechargeable battery that you can charge via USB-C, either through the bottom port or the solar panel on the back. The TV is compatible with Bixby and Amazon's Alexa, and both the remote and TV have integrated microphones. The voice commands work well; you can tell the TV to change inputs, open apps, or adjust brightness. Unfortunately, you can't search for content within apps using voice.

The button is under the Samsung branding on the bottom right of the TV. With it, you can turn the TV on and off, change the channel and the volume, and switch input sources. There's also a small toggle to turn the internal microphone on or off if you're worried about privacy.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• User guide
• Plastic covers for alternate stand (feet not included)

The TV's frequency response is okay. There's a bit of bass on the TV, and it sounds sharp and clear at moderate volume. However, when you raise the volume near or at max, the TV's sound reproduction shows noticeable compression, with dialogue not sounding as clear.