Samsung S89C OLED TV Review

The TV looks and feels like a premium TV. It's heavy and sturdy and held in place decently well by its small plastic feet. The panel is thin and feels modern and classy.

The feet are small, narrow, and made of plastic, but they hold the TV surprisingly well. They lift the screen about 3.39" above the table, so almost any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen, although the feet stick out 5.9" from the face of the display.

Footprint of the 77-inch feet: 14.17" x 12.6"

The back of the TV is identical to the Samsung S90C OLED. The central panel housing the inputs is made of smooth plastic, with included covers used to help with aesthetics and cable management. The inputs are hard to reach if you wall-mount the panel with a fixed mount, so a mounting arm is recommended if you don't want to use the included feet.

The TV has excellent build quality. The materials used feel premium, and while there's some flex on the component housing on the back, the panel itself is made of metal and is resistant to flexing. Due to the small, narrow-set feet, there's some wobble when the TV is pushed forward or backward, but it quickly settles.

As OLED displays use self-emissive pixels instead of a backlight, pixels can independently brighten themselves up to their peak brightness, or inversely, they can fully turn themselves off for perfect blacks. This ability to fully turn its pixels off gives OLEDs a nearly infinite contrast ratio, with bright highlights right next to perfect blacks with no blooming or haloing.

Since this TV uses self-emissive OLED technology, there's no blooming around bright highlights or subtitles in otherwise dark scenes.

The panel doesn't have a backlight, but thanks to its nearly infinite contrast ratio, it has the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature with no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a TV that has local dimming.

The TV's contrast and dark details in Game Mode are nearly identical to Movie Mode.

The Samsung S89C has excellent HDR peak brightness. Bright highlights are vibrant on this TV, although, like all OLEDs, the TV has an aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), which significantly dims bright highlights when they take up a large portion of the screen. Thus, scenes with a lot of bright areas, like a bright sunny day at the beach, are significantly dimmer on this TV than they are on a non-OLED panel.

You can set Peak Brightness to 'Off' in HDR if the brightness fluctuations bother you, but this just makes every scene much dimmer, so now highlights never stand out.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Filmmaker
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Contrast Enhancer: Off
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, you can set HDR Tone Mapping to 'Active':

• Hallway Lights: 1000 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 782.3 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 370.1 cd/m²

The TV is very slightly overbrightened in HDR Game Mode. As a result, it looks bright and vibrant but not as accurate.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game Mode
• Game HDR: Basic
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, you can set HDR Tone Mapping to 'Active':

• Hallway Lights: 941.3 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 759.5 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 430.4 cd/m²
• EOTF

The TV has superb PQ EOTF tracking, so content is displayed at the correct brightness level. Very dark scenes are a bit too dark, and the TV is very slightly overbrightened in most other scenes, but it's very minor. The panel clips anything above its peak brightness for content mastered at 600, 1000, and 4000 nits, so there's a loss of fine detail.

The TV has decent SDR peak brightness. It's bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. The panel's brightness is dimmed considerably by its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), so large bright scenes are significantly dimmed. It's distracting when watching bright content, like hockey, for extended periods. Setting Peak Brightness to 'Off' minimizes the impact of the ABL feature but reduces the peak brightness to about 200 nits in all scenes.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Tone: Warm2

If you need a TV with better SDR brightness, check out the Sharp AQUOS XLED FV1.

As is typical of TVs with QD-OLED panels, the Samsung S89C has an incredibly wide color gamut. It can display the full range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space used by most HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space isn't as good, albeit still excellent. The tone mapping is a bit off in Rec. 2020, so highly saturated colors aren't displayed accurately.

This TV has exceptional color volume. The panel shows very bright colors well and gets very close to the same brightness as pure white. It can also display dark, saturated colors very well and highlights how good QD-OLED panels are at showing vibrant colors.

The TV has good pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Still, dark scenes are way too dark, and there are some significant white balance accuracy issues throughout. The color temperature is a bit warm, meaning it leans towards red. The color accuracy is great, but there are minor accuracy issues throughout. If you're looking for a very similar TV with better pre-calibration accuracy, check out the Samsung S90D/S90DD OLED.

After calibration, the Samsung S89C has fantastic accuracy, with no noticeable issues. Plus, it's relatively easy to calibrate.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The panel has excellent gray uniformity. There's very little variation in brightness across the screen, which is great for any content. Looking closely, you see vignetting in the corners and very faint vertical lines along the panel, which are more obvious in a dark room.

Since OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the Samsung S89C has perfect black uniformity, with no distracting blooming or halo effect around bright areas of the screen in dark scenes.

The screen has an exceptionally wide viewing angle. Although nearly perfect, the image fades slightly at extremely wide angles. The colors also shift very slightly when viewed from those same extreme angles. In practice, however, you can move around the TV and see a consistent image at almost any angle.

The Samsung S89C handles direct reflections incredibly well. The glossy anti-reflective coating significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections. Still, due to the lack of a polarizer, the TV has a pink tint in a bright room even when turned off.

The Samsung S89C has superb gradient handling in HDR. There's some barely noticeable banding in dark grays and saturated greens and blues, but you must look hard to see them.

This TV's low-quality content smoothing is alright. It can't smooth out macro blocking very well, so it's very noticeable in dark scenes. Fine details are preserved very well.

The TV has very good sharpness processing with low-resolution or low-bitrate content. Almost no small details are lost, and the image is upscaled well.

Sharpness processing was calibrated for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 6

The Samsung S89C uses a unique subpixel structure. Instead of having all three subpixels in a row, each pixel forms a triangle, with the larger green subpixel at the top. This is especially noticeable when displaying any content with horizontal lines and especially bad when used as a PC monitor. Text has just okay clarity from a PC, as Windows ClearType settings aren't designed for this subpixel structure and can't correct for it. You can see a few examples below:

• Top edge of a white line - horizontal lines like this have a green fringe at the top, as the top-most line of subpixels are all green.
• Pixel example 1
• Pixel example 2.
• Pixel example 3.

Our TV has the new second generation QD-OLED panel, as seen in the spectral power distribution (SPD) of the panel here.

The Samsung S89C has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some noticeable persistence blur when gaming at 60Hz, but it's hardly noticeable at higher refresh rates.

This TV isn't technically flicker-free, as a small decrease in brightness corresponds with the display's refresh cycle. This is very different from pulse width modulation flicker (PWM) on TVs with LED backlights, and it's not noticeable.

The TV has an optional black frame insertion feature (BFI) that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. It can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve motion clarity. It doesn't work well on the Samsung S89C; there's lots of artifacting around small, fast-moving objects, even in slower scenes. In fast scenes, where motion interpolation tends to struggle, there's a higher-than-usual amount of artifacting and haloing.

Unfortunately, due to the nearly instantaneous pixel response time of the Samsung QN77S89CBFXZA, there's noticeable stutter with low frame rate content. It's especially noticeable in panning shots. The black frame insertion feature and the motion interpolation feature can help reduce the appearance of stutter, but they both have their drawbacks.

The TV is judder-free when watching 24p movies or TV shows, even from sources that can only send a 60Hz signal, as long as you set Picture Clarity to 'Custom'. If you would rather enable Black Frame Insertion (BFI) with the Clear Motion option, you can set Judder Reduction to 10 to greatly reduce judder, but it doesn't eliminate it completely.

The Samsung S89C supports 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), ensuring your games remain nearly tear-free even when your framerate drops very low. It's also compatible with all three types of VRR, ensuring it's fully compatible with all sources that support that feature.

This TV has incredibly low input lag, ensuring a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen.

The Samsung S89C supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions, which is important for text clarity. Unfortunately, even though it can display chroma 4:4:4 properly, text from a PC isn't clear due to the unusual subpixel structure (see the Pixels section of the review for more on this issue). Note that the TV can only currently output 144Hz at 4k; 1080p @ 144Hz and 1440p @ 144Hz are unavailable. The TV can do 120Hz without issue at all resolutions, however.

This TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4K @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also has four ports supporting HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, which is great if you have multiple HDMI 2.1 consoles or want to connect a PC.

This TV is nearly fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. All four HDMI ports support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, which is great if you have both consoles or a PC you plan on using with the TV. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't support Dolby Vision gaming.

The Samsung S89C supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1 on all four HDMI ports, as seen here. 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. Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn't support Dolby Vision but supports HDR10+ instead, which is similar overall but not as widely supported. The TV also has variable analog audio out, so you can change the volume of any plugged-in analog devices, like headphones, using the TV's remote.

The TV's inputs face down and to the sides, and there's a separate section for the headphone jack.

This Samsung S89C supports many audio formats, including many Dolby Digital options. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many UHD Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The Samsung S89C can't produce much bass but has an overall well-balanced sound profile, so dialogue is clear. It sounds good at or near its maximum volume but doesn't get very loud.

This TV has decent distortion performance. It performs very well in the treble range, and there isn't much distortion at max volume, but, again, this is helped by the TV's low maximum volume.

The Samsung S89C runs the 2023 version of Tizen OS, which is easy to use. The Smart Hub interface is smooth and has many advanced options, making it easy to find your favorite content.

Like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the interface of the Samsung S89C, and there's no option to disable them completely.

The included apps cover most of the common streaming services, and a great selection of additional apps is available in Samsung's app store.

The remote is identical to the one included with the Samsung S90C OLED. The remote is slim and compact 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. Voice controls work well and allow you to launch apps, change inputs, or adjust certain settings.

The controls are on the bottom bezel of the TV near the center. A single button lets you power the TV on/off and change channels, volume, and inputs.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• 3.5mm to RCA adapter
• Cable management clips
• User guide