The Samsung QN95D is a high-end 4k TV released in 2024. Like its predecessor, the Samsung QN95C QLED, the higher-end QN95D has nearly twice the number of dimming zones as the step-down model, the Samsung QN90D. It's powered by Samsung's NQ4 AI Gen2 Processor and is advertised by Samsung to deliver better upscaling and sound processing. Like all Samsung TVs, it runs Samsung's proprietary Tizen OS interface, which offers a large selection of apps and games. It's compatible with the Bixby and Alexa voice assistants, supports Auto HDR remastering, and has Samsung's minimalistic Infinity One Design. We bought and tested the 65-inch model, but it's also available in 75 and 85-inch sizes. Outside of North America, it's available in a 55-inch model as well.
Our Verdict
The Samsung QN95D is a versatile TV that is very good for a variety of usages. It easily overcomes glare in a bright room, so you don't have to worry about distracting reflections. However, picture quality does take a bit of a hit in well-lit rooms. In dark reference conditions, the TV looks great thanks to its excellent black levels, high peak brightness in HDR, and vibrant colors. It offers a ton of modern gaming features, so it makes a great pairing with modern consoles. The TV's viewing angle is pretty wide for an LED model, so its image quality doesn't degrade much from a slight angle, but it's not quite good enough for wide seating arrangements.
Excellent black levels with little haloing.
Excellent HDR brightness for impactful highlights.
Superb SDR brightness and solid reflection handling means it easily overcomes glare in most bright rooms.
Colors are bright and vibrant, especially in HDR.
The Samsung QN95D is great for a home theater. It has excellent black levels, which leads to very deep blacks in a dark room, with minimal haloing around highlights and subtitles. Colors are rich and bright, especially in HDR, so the image looks vibrant and punchy. The TV has excellent HDR brightness that makes highlights and entirely bright scenes really pop out, leading to impactful HDR content. Low-resolution content is upscaled well, but there's still visible artifacts in low-quality content. Unfortunately, like most TVs with a relatively quick response time, there's some stutter that's noticeable in slow panning shots.
Excellent black levels with little haloing.
Excellent HDR brightness for impactful highlights.
Very good upscaling capabilities.
Colors are bright and vibrant, especially in HDR.
No Dolby Vision or DTS audio support.
Only okay low-quality content smoothing leaves some artifacts in the image.
The Samsung QN95D is excellent for a bright room. It has superb SDR brightness and does a solid job handling both indirect and direct reflections, so it easily overcomes glare in a bright room. Unfortunately, blacks levels are raised and low-luminance colors are a bit desaturated in a room with ambient light, so you don't get the same level of image quality as you do in a dark room.
Superb SDR brightness and solid reflection handling means it easily overcomes glare in most bright rooms.
Blacks lose some depth and low-luminance colors lose some saturation in brighter rooms.
The Samsung QN95D is great for watching sports. The TV's superb SDR brightness and great overall reflection handling means you can watch the game on a sunny afternoon with the curtains open, and you aren't distracted by reflections on your screen. Colors are vibrant and accurate enough that the image looks punchy and lifelike, and low-resolution feeds are upscaled well enough that they looked detailed and sharp. The TV does an okay job cleaning up low-quality streams, but there's still visible artifacts present. The TV's viewing angle is pretty good for an LED model, so image quality mostly holds up from a slight angle. However, it's still not the best choice for very wide seating arrangements.
Very good upscaling capabilities.
Superb SDR brightness and solid reflection handling means it easily overcomes glare in most bright rooms.
Colors are bright and vibrant, especially in HDR.
Some noticeable dirty screen effect towards the center of the screen.
Only okay low-quality content smoothing leaves some artifacts in the image.
The Samsung QN95D is very good for gaming. Its combination of excellent black levels, high HDR peak brightness, and very good colors mean that the image looks vibrant, punchy, and impactful. The TV has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, supports up to 4k @ 144Hz, and supports VRR for nearly tear-free gaming, so it complements the features found on modern consoles. Its input lag is quite low, so gaming feels responsive. However, the TV's pixel response times are mediocre overall, so fast motion is a bit blurry and lacks sharpness.
HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four ports, all capable of up to 4k @ 144Hz with VRR support.
Low input lag for a very responsive experience.
Colors are bright and vibrant, especially in HDR.
Mediocre pixel response times lead to blurry motion when gaming.
The Samsung QN95D has amazing brightness capabilities. Its superb SDR brightness means the TV easily overcomes glare in most bright rooms, and its excellent HDR brightness means highlights and entirely bright scenes really pop out in HDR content.
Excellent HDR brightness for impactful highlights.
Superb SDR brightness and solid reflection handling means it easily overcomes glare in most bright rooms.
The Samsung QN95D has excellent black levels overall. Its excellent contrast and outstanding black uniformity means blacks are very deep and even across the screen, so it looks great in a dark room. The TV has very good lighting zone precision, so haloing around highlights and subtitles is kept to a minimum.
Excellent black levels with little haloing.
The Samsung QN95D has very good colors overall. The TV's HDR color volume is excellent, so dark colors are rich, and bright colors are punchy. Color accuracy is very good in HDR out of the box, so the image doesn't stray from the content creator's intent. The TV's SDR color volume is decent, and most SDR content looks colorful, but it doesn't cover very much of the widest BT.2020 space. The TV's SDR accuracy out-of-the-box is satisfactory, but there's enough inaccuracies to bother those who want the most accurate colors possible.
Colors are bright and vibrant, especially in HDR.
Very good HDR color accuracy out of the box.
Note: We're in the process of improving our tests related to image processing, but this score should give you a general idea of how a TV performs overall with its image processing capabilities.
The Samsung QN95D has decent processing capabilities overall. The TV has excellent gradient handling in HDR, so you barely see any banding on this model. It does a very good job upscaling, so low-resolution content looks sharp and doesn't lack detail. On the other hand, it only does an okay job cleaning up low-quality content, so artifacts remain in low-bitrate streams. The TV's PQ EOTF tracking is adequate, but most scenes are displayed a bit dimmer than intended by the filmmaker.
Very good upscaling capabilities.
Almost no visible banding in color gradients.
Only okay low-quality content smoothing leaves some artifacts in the image.
The Samsung QN95D has decent responsiveness in its dedicated gaming mode. The TV has a ton of gaming features such as HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four ports, up to 4k @ 144Hz, and VRR, so it's compatible with the features offered by modern consoles. The TV's input lag is low, so gaming feels snappy. Unfortunately, the TV's pixel response times are on the slower side across the board, so there's visible motion blur when gaming at any refresh rates.
HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four ports, all capable of up to 4k @ 144Hz with VRR support.
Low input lag for a very responsive experience.
Mediocre pixel response times lead to blurry motion when gaming.
We're in the process of fixing the way we evaluate a TV's overall motion handling. This section is currently broken, and the score isn't indicative of how well a TV handles motion overall.
Performance Usages
Changelog
- Updated Sep 24, 2025: Converted to Test Bench 2.0.1. We did this to fix an issue with our scoring in the Supported Resolutions section, since TVs with a refresh rate higher than 144Hz were being penalized for not supporting 144Hz.
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Updated Sep 24, 2025:
We wrote text for the new tests and rewrote text throughout the review after updating pre-existing tests and scores for Test Bench 2.0.
- Updated Sep 24, 2025: We converted the review to Test Bench 2.0. With this new methodology, we've added new tests to expand the scope of our testing, adjusted our scoring to better align with current market conditions, and added performance usages that group related tests together to give more insight into specific aspects of a TV's performance. You can find a full list of changes in the TV 2.0 changelog.
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Updated Jan 20, 2025:
We retested the TV's pre-calibration accuracy after purchasing a second unit and updated the score and text in that section.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 65-inch Samsung QN95D, and these results are also valid for the 75-inch and 85-inch models. The 55-inch model isn't currently available in the U.S. but is widely available in other regions, and we expect it to perform about the same. There are currently no other variants of this TV available. Note that the last five letters in the model number (AFXZA in this case) vary between retailers and individual regions, but there's no difference in performance.
| Size | US Model | Short Model Code |
|---|---|---|
| 55" | - | QE55QN95D |
| 65" | QN65QN95DAFXZA | QN65QN95D |
| 75" | QN75QN95DAFXZA | QN75QN95D |
| 85" | QN85QN95DAFXZA | QN85QN95D |
Our unit was manufactured in August 2024.
Popular TV Comparisons
The Samsung QN95D is a great TV that delivers fantastic picture quality and has an impressive selection of additional features. It's a fantastic choice if you're looking to upgrade your home theater or living room setup, but it's pricey and doesn't really perform any better than the cheaper Samsung QN90D. One exception to that is in Game Mode, where the QN95D maintains its HDR brightness better than the QN90D does. You can also save some money and get a better overall TV like the TCL QM8K.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best TVs, the best QLED TVs, and the best 4k gaming TVs.
The Samsung QN95D and the Samsung QN90D are almost identical, with only slight differences between them. The QN95D has slightly better contrast with local dimming enabled. The QN90D is inversely a tad brighter in HDR, although the QN95D maintains its brightness better in Game Mode. Additionally, the QN95D's HDR Native Gradient handling is much better than the QN90D's. Overall, you should get the cheapest one you can find.
The Sony BRAVIA 9 is better than the Samsung QN95D. The Samsung has very few advantages over the Sony, although it does have a slightly wider viewing angle and better HDR gradient handling. The Samsung also has four HDMI 2.1 ports, each capable of up to 4k @ 144Hz, while the Sony only has two HDMI 2.1 ports that are capped at 120Hz. Otherwise, the Sony is the better TV in basically every way.
The Sony BRAVIA 7 and the Samsung QN95D are closely matched. The Sony is more accurate out of the box than the Samsung and has better upscaling and low-quality content smoothing. While they're very similar when it comes to brightness, the Samsung does have vastly superior reflection handling, giving it the edge when watched in brighter rooms. Finally, the Samsung also has the edge for gamers with its four HDMI 2.1 ports, all capable of 4k @ 144Hz, while the Sony is limited to only two 120Hz HDMI 2.1 ports.
The Samsung QN95D and the Samsung QN95C are almost identical, and you should get the cheapest one you can find. The QN95D is a bit more colorful, but in turn, the QN95C is more accurate in the default 'Warm 2' Color Temperature setting.
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 are done with 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
The Samsung QN95D has excellent 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. Combined with its fantastic contrast, this TV provides a very impactful HDR viewing experience.
Results with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active':
- Hallway Lights: 1432 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 955 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 554 cd/m²
Unlike the Samsung QN90D, this TV doesn't lose a ton of its HDR brightness when set to Game Mode. Although the small drop in brightness is noticeable, it definitely still delivers an impactful HDR experience when gaming.
Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Active':
- Hallway Lights: 784 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 806 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 193 cd/m²
The Samsung QN95D has superb SDR brightness and easily overcomes glare in even the brightest of rooms.
The Samsung QN95D has excellent contrast, and the TV does a fantastic job displaying deep blacks even in complicated scenes with bright highlights.
Unfortunately, like the Samsung QN95C QLED, Samsung has removed the ability to fully disable the local dimming feature through the service menu. To calculate the native contrast ratio, we used this inverse contrast pattern. We took the average black levels of the four corners with the white area set to 200 cd/m².
The TV has great lighting zone precision, but there's some noticeable haloing around bright objects and subtitles when displayed against a black background.
The TV has good lighting zone transitions. Unfortunately, the leading edge of bright highlights when they quickly move across the screen is visibly dimmer, and there's noticeable haloing.
Dark scenes look great even in the low-latency Game Mode, but it's a bit worse than in the 'Movie' calibrated Picture Mode, as the haloing is more noticeable.
The TV's black uniformity is outstanding. Note that you can't turn local dimming completely off on this TV due to a more limited service menu, so the Native Black Uniformity picture is with local dimming set to 'Low.' With that setting, the TV's black uniformity is still outstanding, with only a bit more haloing around bright highlights than with the local dimming set to 'High.'
The Samsung QN95D has decent SDR color volume. Like most TVs released in the past few years, it covers the full range of colors in the commonly used BT.709 color space. It also has very good coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, but its coverage of the widest BT.2020 color space is unremarkable. In both of these wider color spaces, the TV struggles as colors become lighter, and there's a big drop off in coverage with the lightest colors.
| Volume ΔE³ | DCI-P3 Coverage |
BT.2020 Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| L10 | 90.08% | 69.27% |
| L20 | 91.43% | 69.21% |
| L30 | 90.53% | 68.40% |
| L40 | 89.62% | 69.38% |
| L50 | 88.88% | 69.20% |
| L60 | 87.65% | 65.67% |
| L70 | 86.23% | 55.59% |
| L80 | 86.60% | 53.40% |
| L90 | 85.34% | 53.34% |
| L100 | 65.02% | 43.92% |
| Total | 87.02% | 61.05% |
The Samsung QN95D's HDR color volume is amazing. Colors are bright and vibrant and stand out well against bright whites. Dark, saturated colors are also displayed well, thanks to its high contrast ratio.
The Samsung QN95D's pre-calibration SDR color accuracy is decent. Gamma is mostly off-track, as all scenes except for bright ones are too dark. Greens and reds are underrepresented in most shades of gray, while there's not enough blue in all shades, giving the TV a slightly warmer color temperature than the target of 6500K. Finally, the TV's color accuracy is satisfactory, but there are some color mapping errors in whites and most light shades.
Note: Samsung informed us that our pre-calibration results weren't normal for the first unit we tested, so the current results are from a second unit we purchased and retested. For comparison, you can see the original results.
The TV is easy to calibrate and has fantastic SDR accuracy afterward. White balance and color temperature are all nearly perfect, although all colors are underrepresented in near-blacks. Color accuracy is much better now, but all colors are still a little bit off the mark. Gamma is significantly improved, although dark scenes are still too dark, and very bright scenes are too bright.
See our calibration settings.
The Samsung QN95D has very good HDR color accuracy before calibration. The white balance is excellent overall, but dark grays are a bit off. However, the TV's color temperature is incredibly close to 6,500K. Unfortunately, the accuracy of colors overall is just decent, since there's mapping errors throughout its range of colors.
After calibration, the TV has outstanding HDR color accuracy. The white balance is fantastic, with only minor errors that aren't noticeable, and the color temperature remains incredibly close to 6,500K. The overall color accuracy is excellent, and most remaining inaccuracies aren't noticeable.
The TV has adequate PQ EOTF tracking, but outside of near-blacks, all scenes are darker than they should be, especially midtones and brighter highlights. There's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to maintain details in very bright highlights. This is important for content mastered at 4000 nits since the TV doesn't get that bright, but the TV is bright enough to fully display most content mastered in 600 or 1000 nits, so the roll-off isn't necessary for content mastered at those levels.
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 Samsung QN95D 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.
This TV displays gradients in HDR extremely well. There's some very slight banding in shades of gray and some near-black colors, but it's very minor.
This TV has low input lag when set into Game Mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience.
The Samsung QN95D supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions when the TV's input label is set to 'PC,' except at 1440p above 60Hz, which is important for text clarity.
Unfortunately, the TV can't display 1440p @ 144Hz natively with both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards and instead displays a scaled 4k image. 1440p @ 120Hz works fine on the Series X and the PS5, although we had some difficulty getting it to run properly on AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.
The Samsung QN95D 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 144Hz is acceptable. There's visible blur behind fast motion, and this model does struggle a bit when going from very bright shades to very dark ones, and vice versa, which leads to black smearing. Fortunately, there's barely any overshoot, so you don't see any inverse ghosting.
The Samsung QN95D's CAD transitions are a bit faster at 120Hz than at 144Hz, but not by much, and there's still visible motion blur. Transitions to and from dark shades aren't quite as slow, but they're still slower than the rest, leading to some black smearing.
The TV's CAD at 60Hz is poor. Most pixel transitions are very slow, which leads to very apparent motion blur when the action ramps up. Transitions to and from dark shades are extra slow, and there's persistence blur, so motion looks blurry most of the time when gaming at 60Hz on this model.
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 worry about manually switching 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 quick response time, there's some noticeable stutter when watching movies or TV shows, and it's most apparent in slow panning shots.
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 Samsung QN95D has a great response time when watching content. There's no excessive blur when watching movies or shows, and even fast-paced sports are mostly free from distracting blur.
Unfortunately, the backlight isn't flicker-free, as Samsung uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight. The exact flicker frequency varies between picture modes and with certain settings:
- Movie: 960Hz, with a secondary 120Hz flicker
- FILMMAKER MODE: 120Hz
- Dynamic: 120Hz
- Eco: 120Hz
- Standard: 120Hz
The backlight flicker behaves very differently in Game Mode depending on the extra features and settings enabled:
- Game: 960Hz, with a secondary 120Hz flicker
- Game Motion Plus w LED Clear Motion: 60Hz
- With VRR: 960Hz, with a secondary flicker at 120Hz
When connected to a PC, the flicker frequency also varies depending on the settings and picture mode used:
- Entertain: 120Hz
- Graphic: 120Hz
- Game: 960Hz, with a secondary 120Hz flicker
This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion or BFI. Sadly, it only works at 60Hz, so you can't use it when gaming at 120Hz.
This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does an okay job at smoothing out slower scenes, with only some minor artifacts present. In faster-moving scenes, it can't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts and haloing.
The TV does a very good job of reducing the intensity of direct reflections. Reflections from direct sources of light, such as a lamp or window placed opposite the screen, are dimmed considerably, so they blend in well with the rest of the image during most scenes. However, you still see direct reflections during dark scenes.
The Samsung QN95D does a decent job retaining its black levels in a bright room. Blacks become noticeably raised as the amount of light in your room increases, but they remain just deep enough that they don't look too gray.
The TV does an excellent job with total reflected light. Reflections are mostly contained and aren't spread out across the screen, and there's no diffraction artifacts. Combined with the TV's amazing brightness capabilities, you barely see reflections on this TV except during very dark scenes.
The TV does a decent job retaining color saturation in a bright room. High-lumiance and mid-luminance colors are mostly unaffected by light, but low-luminance colors are noticeably less saturated than they are in a dark room.
The Samsung 65QN95D 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.
The TV has okay gray uniformity. The screen is relatively uniform in scenes with bright uniform colors as well as in darker scenes, but there's minor, yet noticeable, dirty screen effect throughout.
This 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 uses quantum dots to achieve high color peaks with excellent separation between blues, greens, and reds. This gives the TV great color purity and allows it to display a very wide color gamut.
The Samsung QN95D 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, like if you own both current-gen consoles and a high-end gaming PC.
The TV has eARC support, which allows it to pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source to your home theater system or soundbar. Unfortunately, it doesn't support any DTS formats commonly used on Blu-rays.
The Samsung 65QN95D has a very premium design, although it looks very similar to the Samsung QN95C QLED. Nevertheless, it has a modern and sleek look, and the bezels are incredibly thin.
The center-mounted stand is thin and occupies very little space. It lifts the TV about 3.07 inches above the table, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen.
Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 15.35" x 9.33".
The back of the Samsung 65QN95D looks great, with a nice textured design to the back panel. There are grooves along the back and through the stand to help with cable management and a cover that hides the cables on the stand for a really clean setup. There's also a connector near the top of the TV that allows you to connect a Samsung camera add-on, sold separately.
The Samsung 65QN95D has excellent build quality. It's built with premium materials, including a solid metal stand and premium plastic on the back.
The TV runs the 2024 version of Tizen OS, which is fast and easy to use. The Smart Hub interface is smooth and has many advanced options, and it's easy to find your favorite content.
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 is slim and compact, has quick access buttons for the most popular streaming apps, and is easy to use. It 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. The TV is compatible with the Bixby and Alexa voice assistants, and its remote has an integrated microphone for voice commands.
A single button is located at the bottom right of the TV. You can use it to power the TV on/off, change channels, adjust the volume, and switch inputs. You can control the TV hands-free with your voice using the TV's built-in microphone, but you can also turn the microphone off using a small switch located on the bottom right of the TV.
The frequency response is alright. Like most TVs, there's very little bass, but the sound profile is well-balanced, and dialogue sounds clear. It doesn't get very loud, though, so it's not a good choice for a loud environment.