Samsung R95H  TV Review

The Samsung R95H has fantastic peak brightness in HDR. It's significantly brighter than the lower-end Samsung R85H, but it's not quite as bright as the Hisense UR9SG. 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 fantastic contrast with firmware 1235. The panel's native contrast is decent, so black levels remain fairly low in more complicated scenes when the local dimming can't keep up. The local dimming feature does a fantastic job of boosting contrast, though, and blacks are incredibly deep in most real content.

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.

Samsung's approach here is a bit more aggressive than Sony's implementation of RGB Mini LED technology. On the Sony BRAVIA 7 II, for example, switching to a lower local dimming level improves this, as the TV simply falls back to a white backlight in complex scenes, so the vast majority of real content looks fine, with no cross-talk.

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 poor accuracy in SDR before calibration, even with firmware 1235. 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. The Sony BRAVIA 9 II delivers a far more accurate image in both SDR and HDR, even before calibration.

Calibrating the TV leads to excellent color accuracy in SDR, and it's easy to calibrate in SDR. The white balance is essentially perfect now, and the blue tint is 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 sub-par accuracy in HDR before calibration as of firmware 1235. The white balance is decent, but there are noticeable issues in all shades of gray. It also has an extremely cool average color temperature, with a noticeable blue tint, especially in brighter shades. It has mediocre color accuracy, with significant color mapping errors across all shades.

The TV has much better accuracy after a full HDR calibration with firmware 1235. The average color temperature is still a bit cool, but the blue tint is mostly gone. The white balance is a lot better, but midtones are still a bit off. Finally, color mapping is better but still not great.

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.

The CAD at the TV's maximum 4k refresh rate of 165Hz is decent as of firmware 1235. Most motion is clear and crisp, with minimal blur behind fast-moving objects.

The CAD at 120Hz is decent as of firmware 1235. Motion is crisp and clear for the most part, but it struggles coming out of black, resulting in more noticeable blur in very dark shadow details.

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is mediocre as of firmware 1235. It struggles going to and from dark shades, so shadow details are blurrier than bright ones. There's some overshoot in certain transitions, but it's extremely minor and remains close to the target shade, so it's not noticeable.

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 relatively quick response time as of firmware 1235, there's some noticeable stutter. It's especially present in slow-panning and wide shots.

Adding low levels of motion interpolation helps reduce stutter a bit. It decreases the frame hold time noticeably, but it's not very consistent, which can cause motion to appear choppy.

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 response time when watching content is great. It improved significantly with firmware update 1235, and while there's still some ghosting, especially when coming out of a dark shade, it's great overall. There's some undershoot in certain transitions, but it's extremely minor and remains close to the target shade, so it's not noticeable.

The Samsung Micro RGB R95H has very even transitions. As of firmware 1235, there are no edge artifacts, and most color transitions are clean. There are a few minor color artifacts, but they're not noticeable in most real content.

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).

The matte coating does an incredible job reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections. They're basically impossible to see on this TV. This coating gives it a significant advantage over glossy screens, like the TCL RM9L, when watching TV during the day.

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.