Samsung S95H OLED  TV Review

The Samsung S95H has fantastic peak brightness in HDR. Small specular highlight details get incredibly bright, delivering a very impressive HDR experience with most content. It's considerably dimmer when more of the scene is bright at once due to its aggressive automatic brightness limiter (ABL), but it's still bright enough to deliver an impactful HDR experience.

The TV can't sustain bright highlights for extended periods of time, as they're dimmed by the TV's automatic static brightness limiter (ASBL) feature. This is meant to protect the panel when displaying static content like our test slides; it's not an issue with real content.

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: 2,071 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 1,465 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 882 cd/m²

Switching to Game Mode has no significant impact on peak brightness. The TV processes some real scenes slightly differently, but the overall peak brightness is roughly the same.

The TV can't sustain bright highlights for extended periods of time, as they're dimmed by the TV's automatic static brightness limiter (ASBL) feature. This isn't an issue with real content.

The posted results are with the TV in Game Mode with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with the setting set to 'Active', which noticeably increases the brightness of some content but isn't as accurate.

• Hallway Lights: 1,380 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 1,080 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 392 cd/m²

The peak brightness in SDR is outstanding. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare in a very bright room. It dims considerably when more of the screen is bright at once, like when watching sports or in bright outdoor shots. It's still bright enough with that content to overcome most glare.

The Samsung S95H 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 S95H has outstanding color volume in SDR. It has perfect coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, with no drop in color saturation in lighter scenes. It's coverage of the much wider BT.2020 color space is also excellent, with far more saturated, brighter colors than WOLED panels like the Samsung S90H or the LG C6H OLED are capable of.

The color volume in HDR on this TV is superb. It has perfect color volume relative to a 1,000 nit TV, so colors in most HDR content are displayed perfectly. It can't fill out the full HDR color volume in a 10,000 nit gamut, but no TV can.

The Samsung S95H is exceptionally accurate in SDR before calibration. The color temperature is slightly warm, and there's a bit too much red in most shades, but it's extremely minor and not noticeable. Gamma is nearly perfect, and colors are extremely accurate.

This TV is easy to calibrate and delivers exceptional results after a full calibration. The perceived difference in accuracy is very minor, though, as this TV is already incredibly accurate out of the box.

See our full calibration settings.

The Samsung S95H OLED has superb HDR accuracy before calibration. The white balance is fantastic, with just a few minor issues in brighter shades and near blacks. The overall color temperature is nearly perfect, and color accuracy is excellent. Reds are a bit undersaturated, but they're not too bad.

Calibrating this TV in HDR has very little impact on the HDR accuracy, as it's already fantastic out of the box.

The Samsung S95H OLED has excellent PQ EOTF tracking. Most HDR content is displayed extremely close to the brightness level intended by the content creator. Content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits cuts off sharply at the mastering level. Content mastered at 4,000 nits rolls off more gradually, preserving fine details and gradation in extremely bright scenes.

This TV has good low-quality content smoothing. It does just a decent job smoothing out areas of macro blocking and posterization, but there's barely any loss of fine details.

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 S95H has fantastic gradient handling. There's some extremely minor banding in dark shades of gray and blue, and brighter shades of green, but it's barely noticeable.

The Samsung S95H has superb input lag, ensuring a very responsive gaming experience with any supported format. It supports low input lag motion interpolation, which Samsung calls Game Motion Plus, and new this year there are two different levels. The results in the review are with it set to 'Level 2', the most aggressive setting. Setting it to 'Level 1' instead decreases the input lag to 13.8 ms.

This TV also supports virtual ultrawide aspect ratios. The input lag is a bit different in those modes, but still very low:

This TV supports a wide range of resolutions and refresh rates up to a maximum of 165Hz. It also supports chroma 4:4:4, which helps with text clarity from a PC. Unlike Samsung's 2026 LED models, this TV doesn't support their Dual Line Gate (DLG) technology, which unlocks higher refresh rates by limiting the resolution.

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.

The TV's CAD at 120Hz is outstanding. It displays fast-moving objects without noticeable blur, so fast motion is clear.

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

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, the TV's nearly instantaneous response time results in noticeable stutter, especially in slow panning shots.

The motion interpolation feature does a mediocre job reducing stutter. It has decent consistency, but it does a poor job reducing the overall hold time, so there's still noticeable stutter.

The vast majority of content is played perfectly, with no noticeable judder. The frame timing is slightly off with 25p content played from a 60p source, like an older cable box or a streaming stick that can't match the content frame rate. Still, it's a considerable improvement over the 2025 models like the Samsung S95F OLED, which had terrible frame timing with 25p content sent via a 60p signal.

There's no micro judder on this TV.

The Samsung S95H has a nearly instantaneous response time. Fast motion is incredibly crisp and clear, with no distracting artifacts like inverse ghosting. 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 coating does an incredible job reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections. They're basically impossible to see on this TV.

Unfortunately, like all QD-OLED panels, black levels rise considerably when viewed in a bright room. This results in lower perceived contrast during the day, but doesn't impact picture quality in a dark room.

The total amount of reflected light is extremely low. There are no distracting diffraction artifacts, and lights and windows opposite the TV are barely noticeable.

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

The Samsung S95H has an incredibly wide viewing angle. The image remains consistent even when viewed at an extremely wide angle. This makes it a fantastic choice for a wide seating arrangement.

The Samsung S95H has good gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center and almost no vignetting. There are some faint vertical lines visible in very dark content, though, but this is very common for TVs with OLED panels.

This TV uses a QD-OLED panel, with a triangular subpixel structure. This unique structure doesn't impact video content at all, but can affect text clarity when used as a PC monitor.

The TV uses quantum dots to achieve high color peaks with excellent separation between blues, greens, and reds. This gives it great color purity and allows it to display an incredibly wide range of colors.

Unlike the Samsung S95F OLED that this TV replaces, all of the inputs are directly on the TV. All four HDMI inputs support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1. 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.

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. Dolby Digital+ passthrough is also limited to 5.1 channels instead of the full 7.1 support.

7.1 channel LPCM only works with sources that allow you to manually override the EDID, like a PC. If you can't override the EDID, it's limited to 5.1.

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

The Samsung S95H has a unique design, with a large metallic bezel around the display portion of the screen that makes it look like it's floating. Similar to Samsung's Frame lineup of TVs, Samsung plans on offering additional frames that will snap on top of the metallic bezel to change the look of the TV to match your decor.

The stand consists of two blade-style feet placed at the ends of the TV. There's no alternative mounting position, and they're wide-set, so you'll need a wide media console if you're not planning on wall-mounting it.

Footprint of the 77-inch TV: 49.6" x 12.5" x 3.2"

The back of the TV is fairly plain. The inputs are housed in a cutout on the right side (when facing the screen), and they're hard to access when it's wall-mounted. There are grooves in the back to help with cable management, or you can route them along the feet using the included clips.

The bezel around the screen itself measures 0.27 inches (0.7cm).

The Samsung S95H has excellent build quality. It's well-built with no obvious issues. The feet are made of a slightly less solid material than the pedestal stand of the Samsung S95F OLED, but they support the TV well.

The Samsung S95H ships with the 2026 version of Samsung's One UI Tizen operating system, which feels noticeably snappier compared to older versions of the OS. Samsung also promises up to seven years of software updates for their TVs, so that version is expected to change. The Art Mode that was previously limited to Samsung's LED models is now available on the S95H.

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.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• Cable management clips
• User guide

The Samsung S95H has a good frequency response. While there's very little low bass, the sound profile is well balanced above that, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand. It gets very loud, but there are some compression artifacts at max volume.