Samsung QN990F 8K  TV Review

The Samsung QN990F has excellent peak brightness in HDR. Bright daytime shots are incredibly bright, and small specular highlights in dark scenes stand out well. The most demanding scenes are considerably darker, but still bright enough to deliver an impactful HDR experience.

There are some odd differences between the way this TV processes HDR metadata and the Samsung QN900F 8K. Some scenes are much brighter on this TV, while other real scenes and even test slides are dimmer.

Our results above are with the TV set to its most accurate settings after calibration, with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Static' to preserve creative intent as much as possible. Below are the results with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active,' which significantly increases the TV's luminance but makes the image less accurate.

• Hallway Lights: 1219 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 753 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 693 cd/m²

Although it's still impressively bright, the Samsung QN990F is slightly dimmer in most scenes when using Game Mode.

Results with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active':

• Hallway Lights: 1010 cd/m²
• Cityscape: 472 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 560 cd/m²

The Samsung QN990F gets incredibly bright in SDR. It has no trouble overcoming glare even in a very bright room. When watching sports, it doesn't get quite as bright, but it's still bright enough for most daytime viewing.

The Samsung QN990F's contrast is great. The native contrast of the panel is quite low, but since local dimming can't be disabled, nobody will ever experience the TV in this mode. The local dimming feature is very effective at boosting contrast, resulting in deep blacks.

The local dimming feature has great precision overall. There's some distracting halo effect around bright highlights, especially when watching with subtitles on, but it's not very noticeable if you're watching from directly in front of the screen.

Unfortunately, the backlight transitions are mediocre. The leading edge of moving objects is noticeably darker than it should be, as it takes a few frames before the TV fully illuminates the scene. This results in a halo effect trailing behind moving objects. There's also a noticeable flicker effect as bright objects move between dimming zones.

Unfortunately, the zone transitions are slightly worse in Game Mode, resulting in slightly worse dark details overall.

The TV has okay black uniformity with local dimming enabled. Blacks are deep and uniform across dark areas of the screen, with no blooming or backlight bleed along the edges. There's some noticeable blooming around bright objects on a dark background, though. 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 with an RGB value of {5,5,5} as black.

The SDR color volume on this TV is just decent. It has full coverage of the BT.709 color space, most commonly used with SDR content, but it can't display the full range of the DCI-P3 color space, and BT.2020 coverage is limited. It struggles a bit with brighter shades of any color, but bright greens and reds are particularly bad.

The Samsung QN990F has excellent color volume in HDR. Thanks to its high contrast ratio, dark, saturated colors are displayed nearly perfectly. Bright colors are also displayed well, and they're not washed out at high luminance levels.

Unfortunately, the Samsung QN990F has disappointing accuracy in SDR. The white balance is poor, especially in lighter shades of gray. Most colors are okay, but the overall color temperature is a bit too warm. Gamma is also noticeably off, and dark shades, especially, are too bright in SDR.

Thankfully, the SDR accuracy is much better after calibration, and it's pretty easy to calibrate. The white balance and gamma are nearly perfect, and the remaining color inaccuracies aren't noticeable.

You can see our full calibration settings.

The TV has mediocre pre-calibration accuracy in HDR. Blues are severely underrepresented in most shades of gray, making the overall color temperature way too warm overall. Color accuracy is decent, though.

The TV has excellent accuracy in HDR after calibration. The white balance and overall color temperature are much better, but bright shades of gray are still a bit off. Color accuracy is much better, but there are still a few noticeable color mapping issues.

Update 07/30/2025: Samsung has removed HGIG with firmware update 1125.9. Their intention was to move it to the "Original" Game Genre setting, but it's not working properly. This means that most games won't be displayed at the correct brightness level, and it's especially problematic for Switch 2 players, as HGIG is needed to properly calibrate that console's HDR output.

The PQ EOTF tracking on the Samsung QN990F 8k TV is fantastic. Near-blacks and all shadow details are all displayed well. Very bright highlights are boosted a bit higher than they should be, and there's a sharp cutoff near the TV's peak brightness.

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.

This TV has excellent sharpness processing when watching upscaled content. This is especially important on this TV, as the vast majority of content will need to be upscaled to match it's native 8k resolution.

Unfortunately, the gradient handling on this TV is mediocre. There's noticeable banding, especially in brighter shades of gray.

Unfortunately, the Wireless One Connect box adds a considerable amount of latency. It's fine for casual gaming or watching media from an external player; you'll feel some latency when navigating menus but it's not too bad. It's too high for any sort of competitive or fast-paced gaming, though.

The input latency when gaming with an 8k @ 120Hz signal through the Wireless One Connect box is 54.1 ms

There's a single Micro HDMI port directly on the back of the TV for gaming. When using that port the input lag is considerably lower:

The Samsung QN990F supports a wide range of input formats and refresh rates, including up to a maximum resolution of 8k @ 120Hz, but you'll need a very recent, high-end GPU to take full advantage of it. Chroma 444 is displayed properly with all supported resolutions, ensuring text is displayed properly when connected to a PC.

This TV works with all three variable refresh rate formats, and it works across an extremely wide range of refresh rates. It also works with sources that support Low-Framerate-Compensation (LFC), ensuring your games remain nearly tear-free even when your PC or console can't keep up with the action.

Unfortunately, even when gaming at the absolute max refresh rate of 240Hz with a 4k signal, this TV has just an okay CAD. There's very little overshoot, which is great, but most transitions are slow. This results in more noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects. Many of the transitions take multiple frames to complete, which causes some noticeable color artifacts and image duplication in real content, as the TV can't completely draw each frame before it's time to draw the next one.

Surprisingly, the CAD when gaming at 8k @ 120Hz is better than at the max refresh rate. Most transitions complete much quicker than at 240Hz, resulting in a much clearer image with less blur. There's still some noticeable image duplication, though, and there's overshoot in most transitions.

The CAD at 60Hz is decent. There's a lot less overshoot than at 120Hz, but there's more noticeable persistence blur.

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. As it's an 8k TV, it can also take advantage of the few PS5 Pro games that support 8k gaming.

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 noticeable stutter when watching movies or TV shows. It's especially noticeable in slow panning shots.

The motion interpolation feature on this TV does a great job reducing stutter. It significantly reduces the frame hold time while maintaining a very consistent frame time, so motion is smooth. You'll still see some stutter in very wide, slow panning shots, though.

The TV automatically removes judder from all sources. The frame timing isn't quite perfect with 25p content sent from a 60p source, but it's not noticeable.

There's no micro judder on this TV.

The Samsung QN990F has a good cinematic response time. There's some very slight overshoot in shadow details, which causes a very slight halo effect, but it's not too noticeable.

Unfortunately, this TV has severe color artifacts. It's especially noticeable around light skin tones, but there are unwanted intermediate colors around all transitions.

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 18, and in Game Mode, where it flickers at 960Hz when the brightness is below 23.

This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). Unfortunately, it's only supported at 60Hz on this TV.

The matte anti-reflective coating on the Samsung QN990F does a superb job at reducing direct reflections. Similar to the Samsung S95F OLED, direct reflections are barely noticeable.

Unfortunately, this TV does a poor job of displaying deep blacks in a bright room. Since the matte screen coating reduces reflections by scattering light across the screen, blacks look increasingly gray as your room becomes brighter.

Overall, taking direct and indirect reflections into account, this TV has decent reflection handling. Moderate direct reflections are barely visible, but bright lights are spread out across the screen and are still a bit distracting in a bright room.

This TV has okay color saturation in a bright room. Mid-luminance colors look the best, as both dark and bright shades lose saturation in a bright room.

The Samsung QN990F has a decent viewing angle. Colors fade and look washed out at a moderate angle. There's also a noticeable red shift.

This TV has just okay uniformity. There's very little vignetting, but there are a few more noticeable issues in the center of the screen. The grid pattern from the LED backlights is visible in uniform content, and there's a slight discoloration in the center. It's hard to see in real content, but there's also a sort of seam in the center of the panel. We first noticed it when running our reflections test.

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 matte coating causes the pixels to look hazy. However, it's not noticeable with real content.

Most of the inputs are housed on the external Wireless One Connect box. The HDMI ports on that support up to 48Gbps. The TV itself has three inputs: a One Connect port that's used to connect the external power supply, a USB-C port, and a Micro HDMI port. The Micro HDMI port on the TV is limited to 40Gbps. Unlike the lower models in Samsung's 2025 models, this TV supports Wi-Fi 6.

This TV supports many audio formats, including all Dolby Digital options. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks. LPCM 7.1 isn't officially supported in the EDID, so it only works with sources that can override the EDID, like a PC. On other sources, it's limited to 5.1. Unlike the Samsung S95F OLED and the rest of Samsung's 4k lineup this year, Dolby Digital Plus supports up to 7.1 channels.

Like all Samsung TVs, the Samsung QN990F doesn't support Dolby Vision, but it does support the similar HDR10+.

The Samsung QN990F has a very premium design, with nearly invisible bezels and a premium-looking stand. It has an extremely thin, uniform profile that looks great in any setup. It's key selling point is its Wireless One Connect box, which vastly simplifies cable management.

The center-mounted stand is solid and small, supporting the TV well. The stand lifts the display 3.4 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the viewable portion of the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 14.6" x 11.3".

The back of the TV is very plain, and since it uses the Wireless One Connect box to house all of the inputs, there's only a small cutout that houses the cable for the external power supply and a few inputs. The only cable that needs to go to the TV is for the external power supply, which can be mounted either on the back of the TV for clean cable management, or anywhere you like using the included long One Connect cable.

This TV has an extremely thin, uniform profile.

The Samsung QN990F has excellent build quality. It's a solid TV with a premium metal stand, but there's more flex in the back panel than similar Samsung TVs.

The Samsung QN990F ships with 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
• USB-C power adapter
• USB-C cable
• External power supply (not shown)
• Remote control
• Accessory clips
• User guide
• Short One Connect cable (8 inches)
• Long One Connect cable (98 inches)

The Samsung QN990F has an okay frequency response. Like most TVs there's very little deep bass, but dialogue is clear and balanced.