Samsung QN90F TV Review

The Samsung QN90F has amazing HDR brightness. Highlights really pop out during darker scenes, and the TV is bright enough that very bright specular highlights even stand out in well-lit scenes. While brighter scenes aren't nearly as bright as smaller highlights, they're still impressively bright, even when the entire screen is bright.

Our results are done in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static'. If you prefer a brighter image, these are the results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Active':

• Hallway Lights: 1008 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 921 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 485 cd/m²

There's no noticeable difference in brightness when using Game Mode. The above results are with Game HDR set to 'Basic' and HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Static.'

Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Active':

• Hallway Lights: 1041 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 535 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 301 cd/m²

The Samsung QN90F has fantastic SDR brightness. Even though small bright areas are a lot brighter than larger ones, the TV is consistently bright and easily overcomes glare in even the brightest of rooms no matter the content.

The Samsung QN90F's contrast is great with local dimming on 'High', as it provides very deep blacks in a dark room, and they stay deep when bright highlights are also on screen. You cannot disable local dimming on this TV, so its native contrast was measured with an inverted contrast pattern. Overall, even though this TV's contrast is very impressive, it's a downgrade from the Samsung QN90D/QN90DD QLED.

The TV's lighting zone precision is good, but there's some noticeable blooming around bright objects and subtitles when displayed against a black background.

The TV has decent lighting zone transitions. Unfortunately, the leading edge of bright highlights when they quickly move across the screen is visibly dimmer, and there's very noticeable haloing.

The TV is slightly brighter in Game Mode, but this comes at the cost of noticeably worse zone transitions, with long trails behind fast moving objects, and a noticeably slower backlight.

The TV has good black uniformity with local dimming enabled. Blacks are deep and uniform across the screen, with only a bit of blooming around bright objects on a dark background. Local dimming can`t be turned off on this TV, so we tested its native black uniformity with Local Dimming set to 'Low' and Shadow Detail to '1', with a uniformity image set to pure black.

The TV's SDR color volume is alright. It has good coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, although it can't quite fully display bright greens, yellows, and oranges. The TV has mediocre coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space; its color volume isn't quite good enough to fully display most colors, although it fares much better with very light colors than it does others.

Results above are with Color Space set to 'Native.', with Color Booster Pro set to 'Off.'. The TV is, however, more colorful, although less accurate, with Color Booster Pro set to 'High.', in both the DCI-P3 and BT.2020 color spaces.

The TV has amazing HDR color volume. It displays a wide range of colors at high luminance levels, and dark, saturated colors are displayed well due to its great contrast.

The Samsung QN90F has mediocre SDR pre-calibration accuracy. The white balance is off, as greens are overrepresented in brighter grays, while blues and reds are underrepresented in all grays. This makes the TV's color temperature slightly too cold. Its color accuracy is decent; colors deviate from what they should be, and desaturated colors have mild accuracy issues across the board. Gamma is unfortunately too dark in dim and bright scenes.

After calibration, the TV has fantastic SDR accuracy. However, due to local dimming always being on, it can be a bit tricky to calibrate since the TV's dimming zones adjust to the presence of the calibration window. Overall, it's a noticeable improvement on all fronts, with nearly perfect white balance and color temperature. While color accuracy is also vastly improved, it's not perfect, as most colors are still slightly off the mark.

You can see our full calibration settings.

The TV has decent pre-calibration accuracy in HDR. Its white balance is good, although blues and reds are underrepresented in brighter grays, while greens are overrepresented in the same range. This does make the color temperature a bit too cold overall, but it's good. Color accuracy is its biggest weakness, as it's only mediocre, with noticeable color mapping issues in almost every color.

The TV's accuracy is very good after calibration. The white balance is vastly improved, as greens are now mostly on target, and reds are also much more accurate. Blues are also more on target, but there are still some accuracy issues in brighter whites. Unfortunately, the TV's color temperature is a bit colder than it was pre-calibration, but not by much.

Color accuracy is also vastly improved, but it's far from perfect, as there are still some noticeable color mapping issues in many colors. 

The Samsung QN90F has decent PQ EOTF tracking. Still, blacks and near-blacks are too dim in all mastered content, and it's especially noticeable in content mastered at 1000 nits. 

There's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to retain detail in highlights in all mastered content, although the TV is bright enough to full display content mastered at 600 nits and 1000 nits.

The TV has alright low-quality content smoothing. It does a good job with preserving detail, but it only does an okay job at actually smoothing out artifacts, so there's still visible macro blocking present in low-bitrate content.

The TV has an optional feature to help reduce artifacts from interlaced sources. To use it, 'Film Mode' must be set to 'Auto.'

The TV does a very good job at upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are clear enough, but finer details are hard to make out.

The TV has decent HDR native gradient handling. Most colors have minimal banding, but bright grays, greens, and blues have more noticeable banding.

This TV has extremely low input lag at all refresh rates when set to Game Mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen. Outside of Game Mode, its input lag is a lot higher, so you feel a slight delay when scrolling through menus or pausing content.

The Samsung QN90F supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 165Hz, although it doesn't support 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions when the TV's input label is set to 'PC,' which is important for text clarity.

The Samsung QN90F supports all three types of variable refresh rate (VRR) technology to reduce screen tearing. It works well across a wide refresh rate range and supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

The TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 165Hz is acceptable. This model does struggle a bit when going from very bright shades to very dark ones, but it performs better when going from darker shades to brighter ones. Furthermore, there's barely any overshoot, so you don't see any inverse ghosting.

The Samsung QN90F's CAD transitions are a bit faster at 120Hz than at 165Hz, but not by much. Here there's some overshoot when going from a dark state to a brighter one, leading to some inverse ghosting.

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is similar to its performance at 120Hz and 165Hz. Like at 165Hz it's slower when going from brighter states to darker ones. There's also some notable persistence blur due to its slower refresh rate. There's some minor overshoot when going from dark states to brighter ones, but not enough to cause any truly noticeable inverse ghosting.

The TV 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 manually 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 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to manually switch to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Unfortunately, Dolby Vision isn't supported on the TV, so gaming in Dolby Vision isn't possible.

Due to the TV's relatively quick response time, there's some stutter when watching movies or TV shows, but it's alright, and won't bother you unless you're sensitive to it.

The TV automatically removes judder from all sources when watching movies or shows that are in 24p, even if they're in a 60Hz signal, like from a cable box.

The TV has a good response time on average, but many of its transitions are noticeably slower, which can lead to some noticeable motion blur in some content.

The TV uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, which introduces flicker that can bother people who are sensitive to it. The TV flickers at 120Hz in most picture modes and brightness levels, except in the 'Movie' Picture Mode, where it flickers at 960Hz when the brightness is below 20.

It has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). This feature reduces blur caused by the TV's fast response time, otherwise known as persistence blur. It works well at both 60Hz and 120Hz, as even though there is some minor image duplication, it's hard to notice.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does a decent job of smoothing out slower scenes, but there are some noticeable artifacts present during slow panning shots. In faster-moving scenes, it doesn't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts, and small details in fine elements, like hair, get lost.

The Samsung QN90F has excellent direct reflections handling. Its matte coating does an outstanding job at significantly reducing direct reflections, such as from sources of light placed directly opposite the screen. Furthermore, the intensity of the brightness of reflections is greatly reduced, so it performs amazingly well in a bright room.

The TV's black levels raise a little in brighter contexts, but blacks stay deep and don't look overly washed out.

The Samsung QN90F does a great job with total reflected light. Its matte coating significantly reduces the intensity of indirect reflections, and it does so without any visual artifacts like rainbow smearing or light banding, although it does end up spreading out the reflections more than a glossy coating would.

The TV has sub-par color saturation in a bright room, as the saturation of low-luminance colors noticeably drops in a room with ambient lighting. It fares much better with mid-luminance and high-luminance colors, but they also lose some saturation in brighter rooms, but it's harder to notice.

The Samsung QN90F has a decent viewing angle. The image is consistent when viewed from a slight angle, but there's color shifting, color washout, and brightness loss the more you move off-center. Still, its black levels don't raise at all from an angle, and overall it's a satisfactory choice for a wide seating arrangement.

The TV has satisfactory gray uniformity. The corners of the screen are slightly darker than the middle area, and there's some minor dirty screen effect in the middle.

The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone notices this.

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

The Samsung QN90F supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1 on all four HDMI ports. This allows you to take full advantage of multiple high-bandwidth devices. Unfortunately, it only has an ATSC 1.0 tuner, so 4k over-the-air isn't possible.

The Samsung QN90F supports Dolby Digital audio formats. However, it doesn't passthrough Dolby Digital Plus 7.1. Unfortunately, it also doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

Like all Samsung TVs, the Samsung QN90F doesn't support Dolby Vision, but it does support the similar HDR10+.

The Samsung QN90F looks similar to previous models, like the Samsung QN90D and Samsung QN90C, with thin bezels and a centrally mounted stand. It looks like a premium model.

The TV uses a metallic central stand, which doesn't take up much space. The stand lifts the TV about 3.1 inches, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the bottom of the screen.

Footprint of the 75-inch stand: 16.38" x 11.8".

The back of the TV has a nice textured design. There are grooves that can be used to guide wires into the TV's stand to help with cable management. Unfortunately, the inputs are housed in a recessed cutout, making them hard to access when the TV is mounted flush to the wall.

The TV has very good build quality overall. There are no concerning issues with quality control, but the back panel does flex quite a bit, especially near some of the VESA mounting points.

The TV runs the 2025 version of the Tizen OS, which is quick and easy to use.

Like most TVs on the market, it has ads throughout its interface, and although you can disable targeted ads, there's no option to disable them completely.

The remote has a built-in rechargeable battery with a solar panel on the back of the remote. You can also recharge it via USB-C if it dies unexpectedly.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• User guides

The TV has an okay frequency response. Like most models, the bass is almost non-existent, and it sounds noticeably more unbalanced at max volume than at moderate levels. The speakers are good enough for clear dialogue at moderate listening levels, however.