The QN90F Neo QLED is Samsung’s highest‑end LCD TV for 2025… at least below the stratospherically priced 8K models. I’ve got the 65″ version in for testing, currently selling for $1599, which carries over the same quantum dot technology and much of the design and performance of last year’s QN90D, but there have been a few notable changes: a small bump in max refresh rate to 165 Hz (up from 144 Hz), and last year’s glossy screen has been replaced with the matte anti-glare coating directly from the S95F OLED. Whether the latter is an improvement is up for debate. Fullscreen and HDR brightness also gets a small but welcome boost from last year’s model – I measured more than 2300 nits on a test slide and real-world HDR highlights can easily hit 1100. Samsung also touts its NQ4 AI Gen3 processor, but I don’t usually comment on these because Samsung (and other manufacturers, to be fair) rarely, if ever, provide performance metrics for its chips, and besides, the specific processing chip inside these TVs seems to have a nebulous, at best, connection to how they perform in our own, real-world testing.
And our testing reveals that, much like last year’s QN90D, the QN90F really struggles with blooming. A combination of Samsung’s local dimming algorithm and the physical construction of the backlight produces blocky, grid-like zones that are ruinous to dark scenes. This shouldn’t happen. At this price level, or even cheaper, Hisense and TCL offer more and better controlled backlight zones, and Samsung’s own QD-OLED models, like the S90F, offer substantially better all-around performance at a like-for-like price. Yes, the QN90F is colorful and bright, but there’s much more to a top-of-the-line TV for gaming, and Samsung’s LCD offering is falling too far behind to recommend.
Setup, Design, and First Impressions
Unpacking, maneuvering, and assembling the stand for the 65” QN90F was relatively straightforward. Four screws hold the stand on the base plate and another four screws attach it to the TV. The stand itself is a hefty chunk of metal, satisfying to hold and reassuringly sturdy, and it does a good job of minimizing wobble.
It’s hard for manufacturers to differentiate their TVs via their physical design, especially from the front – they’re all big gray rectangles – but I love the look, feel, and weight of the QN90F. It’s sleek and thin without being OLED-dangerously-thin. The first thing that caught my eye (and not my fingerprints), though, was the matte screen coating, unusual for a TV, which I’ll touch on later in the review.
The power cable is closer to the center of the TV, which is a great change from every other TV having power and IO on completely different sides of the display. I still think the power cable is a bit too short, especially once it’s routed through the clever channels built into the back of the display. The rear of the TV is plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap.
IO is excellent, as it should be at this price point. Samsung includes 4 full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, all supporting 165 Hz at 4K. Great news if you’re hooking up multiple consoles. Additionally, there’s an optical audio out, Ethernet, and an RF connection for broadcast. No headphone jack, sadly, which is an omission becoming more and more common.
Samsung is using a common remote across multiple SKUs; this is the same remote (with a neat little solar cell on the rear) that shipped with the S90F. Annoyingly, like LG’s remote, an input selection button is nowhere to be found. Switching inputs means going back to the Home/Start screen, moving left and then down to “Connected Devices,” and waiting for Tizen to catch up to you. Speaking of Tizen…
Tizen: “Preparing. Please Try Again Later.”
“Preparing. Please Try Again Later.” This is an actual error message that Tizen displayed when I tried to use the quick settings menu to adjust the QN90F’s brightness. I thought I’d experienced it all – the slow navigation, laggy menus, loading throbbers (!) – (read my S90F review for more), but Samsung keeps finding new ways to annoy me. Whether using the Home screen to load a streaming app, switching inputs, or diving into the settings menu, Tizen continues to feel like a low-end mobile phone or some off-brand tablet given away free as part of a promotion.
I may be old school, but I think all the fundamental, device control touch-points of a TV’s menu should be as close to the metal as possible, and they should be fast. Backlight brightness, color temperature, local dimming, sound volume, the current input… these are things that shouldn’t be knotted up and entangled with the same code that opens and closes your Samsung Motorized Smart Blinds. Yet, with Tizen, every should-be-easy adjustment brings up a loading throbber:
It’s unbelievably frustrating. Samsung needs to take a good look at the Google TV interface from something like the Hisense U8QG. Navigation there is fast and easy. Even Amazon’s FireTV on a lower end model like the U65QF is a joy to use compared to Tizen.
Setting all that aside, once the menu is actually loaded, Tizen behaves like you’d expect for a modern TV smart OS. The Home screen can be cleaned up and calmed down a bit after diving into the Advanced Features menu (turning off auto-playing video is a must!), but Samsung devotes a bit too much screen space to its TV “recommendations,” leaving the app list, which is what you’re likely looking for, as a small, horizontally scrolling band of icons. As a contrast, Google TV surfaces apps in a large format grid, which is much faster to navigate.
Sound
Sound quality on the QN90F is surprisingly good… for TV speakers. Of all the displays I’ve tested so far, I’ve been the most impressed with Samsung’s engineering effort here. Bass extends deep enough to be satisfying for movies and games without booming, mechanical noises, or distortion, and, importantly, speech intelligibility is good. A-OK for general use.
But for the best, engrossing audio experience, we still recommend a surround sound setup or soundbar. Our top pick happens to be Samsung’s own HW-Q990F, which includes a subwoofer for a good reason: TVs simply don’t have the form factor – no front facing drivers for stereo imaging – or enough chassis volume for deep bass.
Reflection Handling and Viewing Angles
Samsung takes the unusual path, certainly for a TV, of shipping the QN90F with a matte AR coating. For those that find the mirror-like reflections from glossy screens annoying, this is definitely a plus, but manufacturers have made great progress on their high-end models, especially in the last few years, at delivering really excellent glossy coatings.
The comparison image above shows the reflection of a compact fluorescent bulb in all of the screens I’ve tested so far, shot with the same exposure, and ranked generally in the order of quality. Samsung’s QD-OLED S90F (currently at the same price as the QN90F) takes the top spot with a truly incredible AR coating, followed closely by Hisense’s U8QG. For those that find the mirror-like reflections from glossy screens annoying, I think the QN90F offers a decent alternative to something like LG’s C5, which is a bit too reflective and a bit too purple.
The macro image above shows how the matte coating diffuses the light from the subpixels behind. This is a fairly coarse and aggressive coating, not my favorite, but the slight reduction in clarity is only visible very near the screen. At typical TV distances, it’s not an issue.
Also worth noting while looking at the macro is that the QN90F uses a BGR subpixel layout, rather than a traditional RGB stripe. If you’re using the Samsung as a PC display, you’ll want to adjust your ClearType settings to reduce color fringing on text. And like many VA panels, the pixels are dimmed in a one third on, two thirds off manner between rows, so the picture is susceptible to a “scanlines” effect.
Viewing angle performance is typical of most VA panels: loss of color and contrast off angle, and dark scenes are especially susceptible to a gamma shift on the periphery of the screen. This is one of the largest drawbacks of VA panels compared to the OLED competition, and Samsung’s own S90F is much better here.
This purple-blue shot, inspired by a fullscreen ad for Amazon Luna during the TV’s setup, shows the color shift off axis, although the photo doesn’t fully capture how it looks in person. I also noticed that the QN90F has a patchy appearance, but only when displaying blue. Otherwise, the matte coating does a good job handling the reflection of the flash.
Color, Calibration, and SDR
For every display I test, my calibration process begins by measuring the backlight spectrum for each of the individual RGB primaries along with a white spectrum. This allows for subsequent performance metrics to be accurately measured with my colorimeter. The color slide above shows three important aspects of the QN90F’s color performance:
White spectrum against a mercury referenceIndividual, normalized RGB responseSubsequent chromaticity coordinates compared to the DCI-P3 reference
The peak wavelengths of the primaries, their shape, and their separation (or purity) define the corner coordinates of the gamut triangle. Samsung’s quantum dot backlight does an excellent job of covering (and over-covering) DCI-P3: the three primaries are smooth, separated, and distinct, giving the QN90F rich, vivid color.
In the Expert Settings menu, the default Color setting of 30 gives the best compromise of coverage and accuracy without clipping. Green is spot on, but red and blue do extend a bit past reference. While not perfectly accurate, I’m a sucker for colorful images, so I welcome a bit of over-coverage.
Before I get into the calibration, I need to mention that Samsung doesn’t allow local dimming to be turned off on the QN90F. This is a problem for me, as a reviewer, because I can’t fully disentangle the performance of the LCD panel itself from the behavior of the backlight, making my job quite a bit more difficult (or impossible in the case of lag measurements).
But it’s also a problem for you. Yes, local dimming is one of the reasons you’d buy a TV like the QN90F in the first place, but Samsung ships the TV with a 165 Hz mode, presumably for PC use. Not being able to disable local dimming when in Windows is a bit nuts, and I can’t think of a good reason why Samsung would omit the option altogether. I’ve done my best to mitigate the issue for all subsequent measurements, but I wanted to mention that up front.
Because I’m primarily looking at the TV as a gaming display, I test calibration in the display’s Game mode, making sure that the TV can deliver the same accuracy and performance as in its Film modes but without the processing that can cause input lag.
Out of the box, Samsung has tuned the QN90F extraordinarily well for SDR content. Grayscale tracking is excellent, hitting 6500K in the default Standard WB mode with low Delta E’s across the board. Great job here. BT 1886 gamma is the default, but setting gamma to 2.2 is the right move to better match most sRGB content. Once done, gamma nicely follows the 2.2 target throughout.
Brightness is one of the QN90F’s major strengths. With a 10% window on a black background, local dimming set to high, it’ll do an eye-searing 2370 nits. That’s extraordinarily bright, but still not quite as good as the U8QG, which’ll hit 4000. You’ll likely never see this in real content, though; a white test patch is really the best-case scenario for manufacturers to show off how hard they’re willing to drive (and cool) their backlight LEDs. With a more reasonable 5% gray background, the QN90F tops out around 1400 nits, tapering off to around 760 nits fullscreen. This is a great result, and very good for daytime viewing. 760 nits is roughly 3x what an OLED can deliver, so FALD LCDs are still superior for bright room viewing.
Samsung also does a very good job of keeping the gray background with the 5% slides roughly the same luminance. Other panels really struggle to maintain that 5% level, prioritizing the white patch and letting the background go dim.
HDR, Contrast, and Local Dimming
HDR on the QN90F varies depending on what you’re looking at. Bright content is very, very good: colorful, bright; but dark content is seriously let down by weak, splotchy local dimming performance.
My first impressions of the TV’s local dimming performance were watching Severance and The Gorge on Apple TV, where I saw egregious blooming on dark scenes. It was so bad, I had to double check to make sure the QN90F was actually a VA LCD rather than an IPS. The image above shows the ridiculously distracting, grid-like blooming around Miles Teller’s silhouette.
Checking the native contrast of the panel is very difficult because Samsung doesn’t allow local dimming to be completely turned off. When the TV is first powered on, there is a brief window where LD is disabled, so I was able to get a shot of the panel’s true uniformity:
A little splotchy, but that doesn’t explain the LD performance in The Gorge. The panel’s native contrast ratio is probably around 4600:1, much better than the 1000:1 typical of IPS, but in dark scenes, the QN90F might as well be an IPS.
Samsung’s LD algorithm seems to push near max brightness instead of using a more open LCD position with less backlight output. Exacerbating this is the very grid-like appearance of the zones, which I counted. The 65” version I have in for review uses a 40×18 grid, or 720 zones. In the comparison shot above, check out how blocky and unnatural the backlight zones look for the warning text, compared to something much smoother like Hisense’s U8QG. The U8QG, and other competitors like TCL’s QM8K, at the same price or lower, are offering 2K+ zones, with a smoother, less boxy transition between the neighboring zones.
Unacceptable performance at this price point.
All that said, bright HDR content is pretty impressive. Day racing in The Crew: Motorfest is vivid, colorful, and very bright. The sun in the image above measured at 1008 nits, and the splotchy blooming isn’t visible at all.
EOTF tracking is only OK. With a black background, Samsung does a good job of tracking target luminance all the way up to a peak of around 2200 nits, but tracking (and brightness) gets worse with a 10-nit background, more typical of real content. I’ve noted the 10 nit background peaks on the slides above, and both max out a little north of 1100 nits.
Real content brightness is excellent, nearly topping the chart, but tracking is generally too dark, leading to a fairly high error rate.
Gaming on the QN90F
I’ve been a fan of The Crew series for years, and testing the QN90F gave me a nice opportunity to dive back into Motorfest, a game which usually sees me completely lose track of time. As I mentioned in the previous section, cruising around during the day is awesome: bright (real bright!), and colorful. Dark scenes are still colorful, but Samsung’s LD algorithm leads to too much blooming.
The QN90F supports VRR with FreeSync Premium Pro, and it worked especially well with Motorfest, which is limited to 60 fps. I was using PC mode at 165 Hz, and gameplay was smooth with no stuttering or tearing. One small niggle I found was that 60 fps content in VRR causes the panel to exhibit a faint vertical jailbar effect. As crazy as it is to use a 65” TV as a desktop monitor, it does allow me to catch a few pixel quirks that you might otherwise miss at couch distances.
Another issue is that 60 fps content – a new frame every 16.7 ms – can do a lot to hide the effect of slow response times, which can get lost in the general sample-and-hold blur. Higher refresh rates, like 165 Hz (with a smaller 6 ms window), demand much faster response times, and the QN90F really falters here: its VA panel is the slowest I’ve tested so far, with gamma-corrected response times averaging out to over 22 milliseconds.
That 22 millisecond average comes from a mix of some relatively fast and some very slow gray-to-gray transitions. The slide above highlights (really low-lights!) the rising and falling behavior from RGB 31 to RGB 191. Rising takes 36 ms and falling an even slower 42 ms.
If Samsung implemented some amount of overdrive, like it does on its LCD gaming monitors, many of these could be dramatically sped up, reducing the amount of blurring and trailing behind objects in motion.
The TestUFO pursuit shot of the QN90F at 165 Hz shows off the smearing and trailing behavior behind each UFO, but very dark scenes in games can often be worse, since VA panels tend to have trouble with dark transitions. For example, the 0 to 31 transition takes 46 ms.
Check out the pursuit shot on my S90F review to see the type of motion clarity that can be achieved on an OLED, even at a slightly lower 144 Hz. For gaming, especially high refresh rate gaming, nothing beats OLED. The QN90F is a bit frustrating in two aspects: 1) Samsung could have closed the gap slightly with some overdrive tuning, and 2) Samsung is selling the QN90F at the same price as the far-superior S90F. For almost any scenario where gaming performance is a priority, outside of perhaps the very brightest rooms where the QN90F’s impressive max luminance could come in handy, OLED is the better choice, especially at price parity.
The latency chart is just here for reference. Because Samsung doesn’t allow local dimming to be turned off, I can’t get accurate click to photon times. My testing relies on measuring how long it takes before a USB input/keypress causes the screen to change from black to white, but the backlight behavior is delayed by several frames, so it doesn’t represent real-world latency.
To be sure, though, I spent a lot of time in Game Mode using the QN90F as a PC monitor, and I didn’t notice any particularly bad input lag. I’d expect latency numbers comparable to the other LCDs on the chart.
The Competition
In the LCD realm, Hisense’s U8QG and TCL’s QM8K are simply better than the QN90F. Both are cheaper. The U8QG is brighter, has better HDR EOTF tracking, and Hisense offers way more dimming zones for better control of blooming. The TCL might not be as bright, but, of the three, its response times are much better tuned so high refresh rate gaming will be clearer.
If you’re already looking for a TV at or around the $1300 mark, my suggestion would be to bite the bullet and take the small price jump for an OLED. Samsung’s own S90F OLED is the same price and thoroughly better: similar real scene HDR brightness, lower EOTF error, excellent AR coating, amazing contrast from the perfect blacks and individually controlled pixels, and top-tier motion performance for gaming. LG’s WOLED C5 is another option that won’t disappoint, but at the same price, the S90F is better.
