Samsung R95H  TV Review

The Samsung R95H has fantastic peak brightness in HDR. Small specular highlight details get incredibly bright, so it delivers a very impressive HDR experience with most content. Large areas of brightness, like a daytime scene outside, are dimmer than small highlights due to the TV's automatic brightness limiter (ABL), but even those types of scenes are very bright.

The posted results are with the TV in its most accurate picture mode with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with the setting set to 'Active,' which significantly increases the brightness of most content but isn't as accurate.

• Hallway Lights: 1,305 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 942 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 611 cd/m²

Switching to Game Mode gives you an even brighter image, so you don't have to worry about sacrificing brightness for the best possible gaming performance.

The posted results are with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with the setting set to 'Active,' which significantly increases the brightness of the image but isn't as accurate.

• Hallway Lights: 1,383 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 983 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 543 cd/m²

The peak brightness in SDR is outstanding. You really don't have to worry about glare as it's bright enough to avoid reflections in even the brightest rooms.

The Samsung R95H has very good contrast. The native contrast of the panel is only decent, but the local dimming feature does a great job of dimming darker areas of the screen to improve contrast. You can't disable local dimming on this TV, so its native contrast was measured with an inverted contrast pattern.

The TV's lighting zone precision is outstanding. There's barely any haloing around subtitles and bright lights in darker scenes, and it's so subtle that most people won't notice it.

The zone transitions on this TV are okay. The leading edge of bright, fast-moving objects is noticeably dimmer than it should be, and there's a subtle flicker as objects move quickly across zones.

Switching to Game Mode causes a bit more haloing, but it's still hard to notice. Outside of that, there's no difference in dark scene behavior.

The Samsung R95H has exceptional black uniformity. There's no noticeable flashlighting, and blacks are very deep and uniform across the screen.

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 Samsung R95H has outstanding color volume in SDR. It covers almost the entirety of the DCI-P3 color space, and it also has excellent coverage of the very wide BT.2020 color space, so color are punchy and vivid regardless of the content.

Due to the new Micro RGB technology, the presence of white on the screen influences the TV's color volume. We ran our tests with a custom pattern that adds a white cross to the colored squares that we typically use during testing. Although there's not a big difference in color space coverage overall, whites do slightly dilute well-saturated colors.

Additionally, white objects tend to take on the tint of the color they overlap with, and it can take a couple of seconds for the tint to disappear before white objects return to normal. In more static content, like a green soccer field with white lines, the white lines take on a green tint.

The Samsung R95H has exceptional color volume in HDR. Dark, saturated colors look very rich, and it can display bright, vivid colors that don't look washed out.

Just like in SDR, the presence of whites on the screen influences the TV's HDR color volume. We took additional measurements with custom color patterns, and the TV's color space coverage does decrease. It's not a massive difference, but anytime whites are close to colors on the screen, the TV's color volume is affected.

Unfortunately, the Samsung R95H has awful color accuracy in SDR before calibration. There's significantly too much blue and not nearly enough red in most shades of gray. This leads to a color temperature that is drastically too cold, giving the TV a very apparent blue tint. Overall color accuracy is bad, since all hues are too blue.

Fortunately, calibrating the TV leads to outstanding color accuracy in SDR, and it's easy to calibrate in SDR. The white balance is essentially perfect now, and the blue tint is now gone since the color temperature is almost exactly 6500K. The overall accuracy of colors isn't perfect, but there are only subtle inaccuracies that are incredibly hard to notice in real content.

See our full calibration settings.

The TV has poor color accuracy in HDR before calibration. Similar to SDR, there's way too much blue in most shades of gray. This leads to a color temperature that's too cold, and the image has a noticeable blue tint to it. The overall accuracy of colors is sub-par, since all hues lean more towards blue than they should.

Calibrating the TV in HDR helps to improve color accuracy, but since it's so inaccurate to begin with, it's hard to fully calibrate in HDR. The overall white balance is good now, but reds are slightly underrepresented in some lighter greys. The color temperature is much better now, but it's still a bit too cool. The overall accuracy of colors is okay, but many hues are too warm now.

The TV has excellent PQ EOTF tracking. Blacks are slightly raised, shadow details are a bit crushed, and some highlights are brighter than intended, but the TV mostly respects the content creator's intent. There's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness with content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits, and slightly more gradual rolloff with content mastered at 4,000 nits that helps to retain some detail in specular highlights.

These results are with the TV calibrated and the ST.2084 setting at -2, since the TV overtracked with the default setting of 0.

In Game Mode with 'Game HDR' set to 'Basic,' which is the proper setting for HGiG, the TV overbrightens the entire image.

The TV does an excellent job smoothing out low-quality content. Macro-blocking and other artifacts are essentially gone, but some details are lost in the process.

The upscaling on this TV is great. Fine details are clear and easy to make out, and there's no obvious over sharpening.

The Samsung R95H has very good gradient handling. There's some visible banding in greens, but outside of that, all other gradients only have subtle banding or none at all.

The Samsung S95H has low enough input lag to provide a snappy feel when gaming, but it's about 1.5 to 3 ms higher than it is on other similar TVs, depending on the refresh rate.

This TV supports most common formats, up to a maximum of 4k @ 165Hz or 1080p @ 240Hz. The higher 240Hz refresh rate is only supported with 1080p signals, it doesn't work with 1440p or 4k inputs. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly across all supported formats, which is important for clear text from a PC.

The TV supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and is G-SYNC certified, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source. It works well across the TV's entire refresh rate range and supports sources with Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

Unfortunately, the TV's CAD at its maximum 4k refresh rate of 165Hz is bad. Most pixel transitions are very slow, leading to visible motion blur that's especially noticeable in fast-paced games.

The TV's CAD in 4k @ 120hz is poor. Some transitions are a bit quicker than others, but overall, they're quite slow, which leads to visible motion blur when gaming.

The TV's CAD in 4k @ 60Hz is bad. Transitions to blacks are fairly quick, but all other transitions are very slow. This leads to a heavy amount of motion blur when gaming at 60Hz.

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 switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

The TV is almost fully compatible with 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 switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Dolby Vision isn't supported on the TV, so gaming in Dolby Vision isn't possible.

Due to the TV's very slow response time, there's very little stutter even in slow-panning shots.

The Samsung R95H's motion interpolation feature does a good job of reducing the little amount of stutter the TV has. The hold time of frames is slightly reduced overall, but the feature only has decent consistency, which can make the appearance of motion look a bit uneven.

The vast majority of content is played perfectly, with no noticeable judder. The frame timing is only slightly off with 25p content played from a 60p source, like when watching some European content through an older cable box or a streaming stick that can't match the content frame rate, but it's not very noticeable.

There's no micro judder on this TV.

The TV's response time is poor. Pixel transitions are very slow almost entirely across the board, which leads to blurry motion, especially in fast-paced scenes and sports.

The Samsung Micro RGB R95H does a good job of avoiding transition artifacts, but it's not perfect. There are some unintended intermediate colors when colorful objects move across the screen, but it's hard to notice. However, the edges of fast-moving objects are noticeably blurrier than the center.

The TV uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, which introduces flicker that can bother people who are sensitive to it. It flickers at 120Hz in the 'Eco,' 'Standard,' and 'Dynamic' picture modes, and flickers at 960Hz in the 'FILMMAKER Mode,' 'Movie,' and 'Game Mode' picture modes. The backlight setting has no impact on the flicker frequency.

This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature that helps to improve the appearance of motion, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). Unfortunately, it's only supported at 60Hz on this TV, and there's some visible image duplication.

The matte coating does an incredible job reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections. They're basically impossible to see on this TV.

The TV's black levels raise in brighter contexts, but blacks stay deep enough that the image doesn't look washed out.

The TV does an excellent job with total reflected light. The reflections of direct light sources are more spread out than they are on TVs with glossy coatings, but they're much softer and blend in well with the rest of the image, without any undesirable artifacts like rainbow smearing.

Colors remain incredibly vivid and punchy in a room with ambient lighting.

The Samsung R95H 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 Samsung R95H has mediocre gray uniformity. The corners of the screen are a lot darker than the center, and there's some dirty screen effect towards the middle. It's more uniform when displaying near-blacks.

Note: The red tint you can see in the image is an interaction between the camera sensor and the very strong red peak emitted by the TV. It's not noticeable in person.

The Samsung R95H uses a new Micro RGB panel, which is mainly designed to increase color volume. There are high peaks on reds, blues, and greens, and there's excellent separation between them, giving the TV great color purity. It uses an RGB subpixel arrangement, which helps with text clarity when used with a PC.

Below are additional photos so you can see how the subpixels react when displaying different colors depending on the color space setting the TV is set to.

The TV supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1 on all four HDMI ports. It can also be paired with Samsung's Wireless One Connect box, which is sold separately. This option expands the number of available inputs, allowing you to connect up to eight HDMI 2.1 devices at once.

The Samsung R95H supports all Dolby audio formats, but it doesn't support any DTS formats that are commonly used on physical media.

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

The Samsung R95H has a very sleek and premium design, with very thin bezels and a modern-looking stand.

The center-mounted stand is solid and small, supporting the TV well. The stand lifts the display 3.1 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" x 11.9".

The back of the TV is uniform, with all the inputs located in a shallow cutout on the side. The inputs are hard to access if you have the TV mounted flush to a wall. There are grooves on the back that can be used to help with cable management.

The Samsung R95H has excellent build quality. It's a solid TV with a premium metal stand, and there's very little flex on the back since it uses high-quality plastic.

The Samsung Micro RGB R95H runs the 2026 version of Samsung's Tizen OS, which feels noticeably snappier compared to older versions of the OS.

There's a minor bug that can sometimes make the TV's automatic brightness optimization turn on when hand shaking with another device.

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 guide

This TV was initially tested on firmware 1122.

The TV speakers have a decent frequency response. Dialogue is fairly clear at most volume levels, but there's some thumping. The sound profile is more unbalanced at maximum volume, causing the speakers to sound a bit bright. The speakers get pretty loud, but like most TVs, they don't produce any meaningful low bass.