Samsung S90H OLED  TV Review

The Samsung S90H has good HDR brightness overall. Small highlight details are bright enough to deliver an impactful viewing experience, but it's considerably dimmer when more of the scene is bright at once due to its aggressive automatic brightness limiter (ABL). 

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 increases overall brightness in most real scenes but isn't as accurate.

• Hallway Lights: 850 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 788 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 238 cd/m²

Switching to Game Mode results in slightly higher peak brightness than the calibrated picture mode.

The posted results are with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with the setting set to 'Active', which increases the overall brightness of the image, but it's not as accurate.

• Hallway Lights: 895 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 746 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 196 cd/m²

The Samsung S90H has very good peak brightness in SDR. Combined with its effective matte screen coating, it's bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room. It's dimmer when watching content with large areas of brightness, like hockey, but it's still bright enough that the image doesn't look too dim. 

The Samsung S90H has a nearly infinite contrast ratio, giving it perfect contrast. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, it displays bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use lighting zones and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no haloing when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

This TV is an OLED without a backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as a TV with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video so you can see how it compares to an option with local dimming.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior when the TV is set in Game Mode.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has perfect black uniformity with no haloing around bright objects.

The Samsung S90H has excellent SDR color volume. It displays nearly all of the DCI-P3 color space, but has just decent coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space.

This TV has great HDR color volume. Thanks to its nearly infinite contrast ratio, it displays dark, saturated colors in shadow details extremely well. It struggles a bit more in brighter shades, though, as it relies on its white subpixel to boost highlight details. This causes some colors to appear a bit washed out.

The Samsung S90H has good SDR accuracy before calibration. Its white balance is off, with blues underrepresented in brighter grays, which contributes to its slightly too warm color temperature. Gamma tracking is also a bit off, since the image is a bit brighter than it should be. Fortunately, overall color accuracy is still great, but cyans and whites are greener than intended. 

This TV has fantastic accuracy after calibrating it in SDR, and the calibration process is easy. The white balance and gamma tracking are nearly perfect, and the color temperature is extremely close to the 6,500K target. Colors are much more accurate after calibration, with no noticeable issues.

See our full calibration settings.

This TV has good HDR color accuracy before calibration. The white balance is excellent, with just a bit too much blue in some brighter grays. Unfortunately, the color temperature is noticeably too cool and there are color inaccuracies across the board, most notably undersaturated reds. 

The TV has great HDR color accuracy after calibration, but it's not perfect, and it's a bit harder to calibrate in HDR than SDR. The white balance is excellent, but there are still errors in certain shades of gray. Still, its color temperature is now almost perfect. Color accuracy has improved overall, but reds are still undersaturated and most other colors are off target. 

The Samsung S90H has excellent PQ EOTF tracking. Near blacks are bit raised, while midtones and highlights are slightly dimmer than intended. There's a sharp cutout at the TV's peak brightness with content mastered at 600 and 1000 nits. However, there's a gradual rolloff with content mastered at 4000 nits, which helps to retain details in highlights that are brighter than the TV's capabilities. 

This TV does an excellent job preserving fine details when streaming low bitrate content, but there's still noticeable macro blocking and other artifacts in the image. 

The TV does a very good job of upscaling DVDs, standard definition streams, and other low-resolution content.

The Samsung S90H has excellent native gradient handling. There's some very subtle banding in some gradients, but it's hard to notice in real content. 

This TV has very low input lag when set into Game Mode, especially at higher refresh rates, which ensures a responsive gaming experience.

The TV supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 165Hz, and it supports chroma 4:4:4, which helps with text clarity from a PC.

The TV supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and G-SYNC, 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 TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 165Hz is fantastic. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly, so fast motion is very sharp. There's some very minor overshoot in shadow details, but it's hard to notice.

The TV's CAD at 120Hz is outstanding. It displays fast-moving objects without noticeable blur, so fast motion is clear. There's more overshoot when transitioning from blacks than there is at 165Hz, but it's still hard to notice inverse ghosting. 

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is fantastic. Most transitions from one RGB level to another are nearly instantaneous, with very little overshoot. 

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.

Unfortunately, there's noticeable stutter in slow panning shots due to the TV's nearly instantaneous response time.

When using motion interpolation to increase the frame rate of 24p content to 30 fps, the TV does an okay job at reducing stutter. Unfortunately, the feature only has decent consistency, so the cadence of motion looks a bit uneven. 

This TV removes 24p and 25p judder from native apps and external devices that send a 24Hz or 25Hz signal, like an Apple TV with the 'Match Frame Rate' feature enabled. The TV also properly removes judder from 24p content that's being sent in a 60Hz signal, like an older streaming device, but it doesn't entirely remove 25p judder from 60p signals. 

The TV is completely free from micro-judder regardless of the source. 

The TV has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects when watching content. There's some overshoot in near-black transitions, but it's hard to notice. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some persistence blur at 60Hz, but it's not very noticeable when watching movies or shows.

There are no noticeable transition artifacts like intermediate colors or soft edges on this TV.

This TV doesn't have a traditional backlight and doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim each pixel, but it's not completely flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh rate. This is very different from the PWM flicker on TVs with LED backlights and occurs on every OLED we've tested.

This TV has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature that reduces the appearance of persistence blur at 60Hz. Unfortunately, it can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate, and there's still some blur present.

The matte anti-reflective coating on the TV does an outstanding job at reducing the intensity of direct reflections, so you barely see any reflections on this TV.

The Samsung S90H does an excellent job retaining its black levels in a room with ambient lighting. There's some minor black level raise, but blacks remain deep enough that they don't look charcoal. 

Blacks aren't quite as deep as they are in a bright room on similar OLEDs with glossy coatings, like the LG C6 OLED. However, blacks are much deeper than they are on QD-OLEDs like the Samsung S95F OLED. 

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.

The TV has very good color saturation overall in a bright room. Low-luminance colors do lose some perceived saturation in a bright room, but mid-lumiance and high-luminance colors are barely affect by ambient lighting, so the image still looks vibrant. 

The Samsung S90H has an excellent viewing angle. There's a slightly noticeable green shift as you move off-angle, but it's not too bad. It's a great choice for a wide seating arrangement, as the image doesn't lose brightness, and blacks remain deep when viewed at an angle.

The Samsung S90H has good gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center, which is great. There are vertical lines in darker scenes, but they're barely noticeable from a normal viewing distance. 

The Samsung S90H uses LG's OLED-EX WOLED panel, which is the same panel used in the LG C6 OLED. The white subpixel does an excellent job helping the TV display bright whites, but it also leads to a weaker separation of colors between red and green, limiting color purity. 

It has a restructured subpixel layout, and the new RGWB is a bit better for text clarity from a PC. It's not perfect, though, as ClearType on Windows isn't well optimized to non-RGB subpixel layouts.

The TV 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, such as if you own both current-gen consoles and a high-end gaming PC.

The 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. Dolby Digital+ passthrough is limited to 5.1 channels instead of the full 7.1 support. Unlike the Samsung S90F OLED, 7.1 channel LPCM works as it should and doesn't require you to override the EDID. 

The Samsung S90H looks nearly identical to the Samsung S90F OLED. It has a premium design and is extremely thin, with a slim, uniform profile that looks great in any room.

The stand is small but is solidly built from metal. It holds the TV very well and lifts the screen about 3.35 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 14.37" x 10.51"

The back of the TV is basically the same as the Samsung S90F OLED. The central panel housing the inputs is made of smooth plastic, and there are grooves on the stand to help with cable management. 

The Samsung S90H has good build quality overall. The panel is extremely thin, and ours has a subtle backwards bow, but it's not noticeable when viewed straight on.

The Samsung S90H runs the 2026 version of Samsung's Tizen OS, which feels noticeably snappier compared to older versions of the OS. 

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
• Spacers for wall mounting
• User guide

The TV speakers have a decent frequency response. The sound profile is well-balanced at most volume levels, but dialogue is harder to understand if you have the speakers at maximum volume. There's a bit of bass, but it's not very impactful, and the speakers don't get very loud.