Review: Samsung S95B OLED 4K Smart TV (2022)
Samsung is selling OLED TVs after an absence of nine years. We review its first model.
Samsung is selling OLED TVs after an absence of nine years. It had confined itself to alternatives such as QLED, neo QLED, LCD and quantum dot technologies until now.
OLED or organic light-emitting diode TVs, naturally emit light in response to an electric current and are regarded as the highest quality TV panels with precision imaging, and perfect blacks and whites with no colour bleeding.
I reviewed the original 2013 Samsung OLED TV. The set was curved and had an oddball feature called “multiview”, which lets two people sitting together watch two different TV programs simultaneously. They wear special 3D glasses with individualised audio.
This 2013 set may have saved relationships where couples feuded over what to watch, but the OLED set didn’t sell and Samsung discontinued it. Yet Samsung had trail blazed ahead of rival LG, which said its Australian OLED sets were “not far away”.
Nine years on, LG is the doyen of top-of-range OLED TVsand Samsung is undergoing a reconversion on the return journey from Damascus. But Samsung’s new S95B 55-inch and 65-inch sets don’t challenge the supremacy of top LG and Sony OLED TVs.
Samsung instead chose to re-enter the OLED market at a more affordable level with the two sets priced close to LG’s C2 range, rather than the more expensive G2 sets. They sit in similar markets to Sony’s A80K range as well.
My review, undertaken at a swanky Sydney hotel room paid for by Samsung, included its very thin S800B S-series 3.1.2-channel soundbar. I watched several documentaries along with The Tomorrow War with Chris Pratt, and the TV offered what you’d expect from OLED TVs: incredibly dark blacks and bright whites, and naturally strong colours. Darker scenes retained their detail.
I did my usual trick of taking a photo when holding the phone super close to the screen, and you could see some refracted colour at the edges but images were still sharp compared with older LED panels. However, what you see is different to what we snapped with an LG OLED TV at an earlier review.
OLED panels haven’t been as bright as many would like. LG’s recent response is OLED Evo, a newer technology which makes use of the hydrogen isotope deuterium to improve the brightness and colour quality. The C2 range uses this technology.
Samsung instead incorporated its quantum dot technology with OLED. I found the idea of mixing self-emitting light particles and quantum dot nanoparticles confusing.
As Samsung Australia AV product manager Aaron McNamara explains, the blue light from the self-emitting particles stimulates the quantum dot nanoparticles to emit red and green light.
The result is brighter and better colours from those three sources.
“We get this amazing brightness with quantum dots that our QLED and Neo QLED TVs are known for, but mixed with the pixel level control of our OLED technology and that incredible colour purity.”
Samsung OLED doesn’t use filters to produce red and green light.
In practice, parts of an image do look brighter but you don’t necessarily get the brightness of an LED display. McNamara cites a peak brightness of up to 1500 Lumens with an average of 500 to 700 Lumens. LED TVs can offer 2000 to 5000 Lumens.
This TV includes much of what Samsung offers on premium sets but omits some features. The S95B OLED TVs are extremely thin, apart from a small midsection housing the guts of the set. You get 4 HDMI 2.1 ports supporting 48 gigabits per second speeds, Dolby Atmos with upfiring speakers at the back and HDR10+.
The ultra-slim S800B S-series soundbar made a huge difference, to the point where I no longer wanted to listen to the TV without it. The sound bar worked seamlessly with the TV remote. The natural TV sound seemed a bit flat by comparison.
With its HDMI 2.1 connectors, the TV supports 4K gaming at up to 120 frames per second and the OLED set controls support Xbox gaming and cloud gaming; I played Fortnite with Xbox Cloud Gaming and, while the initial load took considerable time, I didn’t notice latency issues during gameplay.
The two OLED sets support three voice assistants: Alexa, Google Assistant and Samsung’s own Bixby. I installed Google Assistant and then Alexa. I became concerned about the swapping of personal information between Samsung and Google when signing up.
Sadly these S95B OLED sets don’t come with a One Connect box which is a star Samsung TV feature. A single cable goes up the wall when the TV is wall mounted, with devices such as gaming consoles and media players connected to the box at the base.
Samsung is promoting its two S95B models below its premium Neo QLED sets in terms of quality; it’s unusual for OLED to be billed as less than the ultimate. Samsung is adamant that Neo QLED 8K is the future of its technology.
McNamara could not say whether there would be sizes beyond the 55 and 65-inches.
These TVs come with Samsung’s slimline remote which supports solar and USB-C charging. The TVs use the same menu system as the rest of Samsung’s 2022 line-up. ABC iView, SBS On Demand and Australian commercial TV catch-up services can be installed.
Samsung’s 55-inch and 65-inch S95B OLED TVs go on sale this week at a recommended $4079 and $5249 at the usual Australian retailers, but look around; some are already substantially discounting these models.
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