Samsung QN90A Neo QLED 4K HDR TV Review (QN65QN90A)
"The QN90A is a TV knockout."
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Impressive brightness
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Fixed black levels
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Excellent overall contrast
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Brilliant color
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Ideal for playing
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One HDMI 2.1 input
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Possible screen uniformity issues
If the chatter I see online is any clue, a lot of people have questions about Samsung's Neo QLED TVs. I'm happy to say I have answers. AND some opinions on it. Let's take a look at the QN65QN90A Neo QLED TV, a device that comes with thousands of mini LED backlights and nearly 800 zones of local dimming.
But does it look great? Let's find out.
Jump to: Out of the box | Details | User experience | What is Neo QLED? Test results | About this brightness | Color | From the sweet spot | Image quality | Sound quality | Play | My attitude
Out of the box
A quick fix to the video review (above): Samsung strongly recommends not using the stand mounting method as in the video – and I have to agree. I may prefer my method, but there is a reason manufacturers create these instructions and I would hate it if someone had a bad experience because I made up my mind to become a villain and disregard the instructions. So do what I say (now) and not like me and we'll all be right like rain.
The assembly of the stand is a bit precarious, no matter how you proceed. A positive note, however, is the appearance of the stand. While the TV will flex a little on the stand, this is a safe arrangement. Because it is centralized, there is less of a concern that a media stand has to be wide enough to support it.
Of course, if you're wall mounted – and if so, I recommend Samsung's own no-gap wall mount bracket for the best look – the stand isn't an issue.
Everything else about the unboxing experience is great. There's not a lot of lint, just a bit of plastic peeling off the edges of the TV, and when you're done you're staring at a very attractive TV with almost invisible bezels and a surprisingly thin profile.
Samsung QN90A Neo QLED 4K HDR details
While we tested the 65-inch model QN65Q90A, our test also applies to the other screen sizes available in the series.
| Screen size | Model no | RRP |
| 55 inches |
QN55QN90AAFXZA |
$ 1,800 |
| 65 inches | QN65QN90AAFXZA | $ 2,600 |
| 75 in | QN75QN90AAFXZA | $ 3,500 |
| 85 in | QN85QN90AAFXZA | $ 5,000 |
User experience
Spoiler Alert: I have very few negative things to say about this TV, but one thing I would love to see is the Samsung smart TV interface is being redesigned. That doesn't seem like a big deal if Chromecasts with Google TV and Roku sticks are so cheap these days, but if you used the TV's apps and the like, we'd all benefit from a little update to Tizen.
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Fortunately, Samsung gets almost all good apps, sometimes before others. If you want to use intelligent assistants, you can choose from the most popular options. We like to have decisions.
While we talk about menus and the like, I have to say hello to Samsung for making this TV so easy to set up and tweak. Choose your preferred SDR picture settings and do some HDR picture adjustments. These are global – across all HDMI inputs and apps – which is a great remedy for headaches for all of us. So yes.
What is this Neo QLED about?
Now let's talk about this Neo QLED business. Neo is Samsung's trademark for its mini backlit LED TVs. You can still get QLEDs with standard LED backlighting – these are a little cheaper – or you can raise extra cash and get into a Neo QLED. For those unfamiliar, mini LED backlighting means the TV has thousands of tiny LED lights instead of hundreds of larger ones. It also has a lot more control zones – just under 800 on this set. In theory, this means that the TV should be able to get brighter, especially on HDR highlights, while keeping bloom and halo effects at bay – this is where you get a glow of light around a bright object on a black background and have a long time the plague of LCD-based televisions.
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
I'll get into brightness, uniformity, and black level performance soon, but first I'd like to point out that the backlight system seems a little slow. I noticed that when a bright image comes up on the screen after a darker scene, the television says, "Oh, I need to get lighter," and then it does. It may take a second for the TV to catch up at times. To be clear, this is something you don't see often when looking at most of the content – but I've seen it in the content at times before I started taking measurements and noticing it on color window test patterns. It's not something to be upset about, just an indication that there may be room for improvement.
Test results
Speaking of measurements, let's ditch a little. I tested the QN90A with Portrait Display's Calman software, an X-Rite i1 Pro meter, and a SpectraCal C6 meter. In SDR movie mode without adjusting the brightness setting from 23, I got 275 nits straight away, which is great for SDR in most cases. You can increase the brightness to a maximum of 50, and I measured 638 nits with my meter. When I jumped back to HDR in movie mode, I got about 1,583 nits. In standard mode, the TV shot past it and hit just under 1,900 nits – 1867 to be precise.
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Now I've seen some comments about these peak brightness numbers being disappointing and I'll have to respectfully disagree. More is not always better. Take the Hisense H9G, for example. The maximum HDR brightness in a similar movie frame setting was a little over 1200 nits, and yet I found it to be unobservably bright at times, most likely due to the processing. On the flip side, the Vizio P-Series Quantum X-Series measures a bit brighter, but honestly, I'd rather see this TV (I'll explain why in a moment). My point is that I am completely satisfied with the HDR presentation of this TV. Part of it has to do with the black levels and backlight controls. Let's look at that.
Brightness, black levels and contrast
I often use a test pattern where white boxes are placed in each corner of the TV screen on an otherwise black background. In this case, I did. I started with SDR and if I look at the pattern with the naked eye you would probably see a little bit of halo around the edges of the white boxes.
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
The HDR enhancement makes the boxes brighter and again it seems like there is more halo, albeit much less than on previous TVs, including the already excellent Samsung Q90T from last year. However, over the years I've learned that bright images on a black background in a dark room can play tricks on the eye.
The brightness and contrast of the QN90A are excellent.
In the video above, you can see that I cover the white box with a piece of cardboard up to the edge. When I do this, the halo or blooming appears noticeably reduced. Why? It has to do with our vision. This isn't the time for an anatomy lesson, but anecdotally we've seen the same pattern supposedly blooming on an OLED TV, and yet we know it can. On an OLED, the black pixels are black. Totally turned off.
What I'm saying is that sometimes what we find blooming when we're in a pitch black room with a white box in our eyes doesn't actually bloom. Don't get me wrong, it's blooming here, but it's less than I've seen in the past, and let me be clear here – the black uniformity on this TV is excellent.
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
The problem of shadow detail (often referred to as Black Crush) – or a lack of it – is always an issue, especially for players who need to see details in the shadow in order to play competitive first-person shooters. So I ran low-luminance and high-luminance star field patterns and found that the QN90A came out of black very well. For those who want to purposely increase black for gaming, Samsung offers an adjustment of the settings for just such things.
To sum it up, the QN90A's brightness and contrast are excellent.
colour
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
In the film preset, my measurements immediately indicated that red was a little too far ahead, so I undid that a bit in the two-point white balance menu, and – bam – the color mixing of this TV has reached an extremely impressive area. With HDR, the TV sometimes overshoots or undershoots some colors. Again, this isn't perfection, but the color on this TV is scary good.
From the sweet spot
One of the dangers of using a VA LCD panel is that off-axis issues, blooming, and color shifting become very apparent. I think one of the things that impresses me the most about the QN90A is the off-axis viewing experience. You can see that there is more blooming from the extreme side, but even less than in the Q90T last year, which was again well ahead of the pack. There's also very little color shift – overall, it's one of the best off-angle TVs we've tested here. That means a better place in the house for everyone.
The anti-glare agent is also excellent. If a lot of light comes into the room and you're watching a dark scene, you might see a rainbow effect, but I'd argue that this is better than looking in a black mirror.
Real picture quality
Enough with the nerd stuff. What does this TV look like when you watch normal content in SDR or HDR? It's really damn good. This is proven to be a better TV than the previous Q90T, and that was a pretty good TV already – I know, I repeat myself.
This TV has a very fast response time, which is great news for gamers and movie fans alike.
The images are lush and vivid, colors and HDR highlights pop, and the superior black levels convey a sense of depth that you normally can't get with an LCD-based television. I did notice some screen evenness issues with large swaths of light colors, but overall there was very little dirt-screen effect.
The movement processing is a mixed bag. This TV automatically removes all stuttering from 24p movie content – there isn't even a setting you can access to turn this off, which I think will be fine for most people.
But stuttering. That’s a different story. This TV has a very fast response time, which is good news for gamers, but for movie fans – just like with OLED – stuttering effects can occur. The only way to counter that is by smoothing motion, which creates a soap opera effect that most people seem to hate far less than I do. So maybe it's not a big deal. Movie fans will likely want to choose the lowest setting they can tolerate.
Sound quality
The sound quality of the QN90A is above average. There's not a lot of bass – that's typical – but overall it's balanced and bearable while many of the TVs I test make me wince. It's a little strange that you have to turn the volume up pretty high to get a normal volume in the room, but I suppose that means more precise control over the volume levels.
I'll say that Samsung's object tracking sound is pretty effective too, but not on par with a Sony OLED where the screen is the speaker. Samsung's soundbars go well with the TV, and the Samsung Symphony sound, where the TV's speakers work together with the soundbar, is particularly impressive.
Play
This TV is an excellent choice for gaming because it has remarkably low input lag – less than 10 milliseconds in game mode for all resolutions at 60 Hz and less than 6 milliseconds for all resolutions at 120 Hz. The TV also supports Freesync, but unfortunately no G- Sync. I'm not sure if this is a huge loss for most people as the variable refresh rate is there regardless.
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Dan Baker / Digital Trends
Either way, HDR gaming is great on this TV too, with very little crushing of the blacks. If you're playing a really dark game, you can turn up the blacks a bit for slightly better shadow detail. I didn't really need to play it in a dark room, though. The TV comes out of black pretty well and retains most of the shadow detail. However, it's the bright highlights that really sold me. Games popping on this TV.
On the other hand, the TV only has one HDMI 2.1 input. So if you own both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, you'll have to manually swap them out, or opt for a full-featured HDMI 2.1 A / V receiver to switch between them. Add a gaming PC to this mix – and it's more of the same.
My attitude
With only one HDMI 2.1 input, no Dolby Vision and a smart TV interface that can withstand a facelift, the Samsung QN90A is not a perfect TV. But by the most sensible measures it is really excellent. Setting all the numbers aside, I like to do a simple gut check – I watch a lot of TVs and some of them are a letdown, some are okay, some are great, and some are real knockouts. I have to put the Samsung QN90A in this last category. I just love to see it.
Is there a better alternative?
At this point, I haven't tested a better LCD TV than the QN90A. I'm excited to see what the Sony X95J looks like this year, and LG's top-notch TV looks promising too, but it's hard to imagine that the QN90A will be significantly outperformed. Another alternative could be the brighter LG G1 OLED, although it comes at a pretty high price.
For more options, check out our best 2021 TVs.
How long it will take?
Although the QN90A only offers one HDMI 2.1 input, it supports the latest and greatest in connectivity and backlight technology. It should last owners for many years.
warranty
Samsung offers a one-year parts and labor warranty for home use and a 90-day parts and labor warranty for commercial use.
Should you buy it?
Yes. The QN90A is a remarkable television with excellent picture quality.
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