Samsung Q70C [Q70, Q70CD] QLED TV Review

The Samsung Q70C has a clean and simple look. The stand is center-mounted, so the TV fits well on smaller tables.

As part of our two-year test, which has so far subjected 100 TVs to over 10,000 hours of accelerated testing, we found that edge-lit TVs like this one have significant durability issues. These issues range from warped reflector sheets and cracked light guide plates to completely burnt-out LEDs. You can read the full results of our investigation here.

The stand feels a little cheap; it's made of plastic and feels hollow when you tap it. However, it's big and supports the TV very well; there's minimal wobble when you touch the TV. The stand lifts the TV about 3.15" above the table, so most soundbars fit in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 13.6" x 11.5".

The back of the TV is plastic with fine horizontal etchings, and it feels solid overall, without excessive flex around the VESA holes or inputs. There are grooves on the back of the TV and the stand for cable management. The inputs are recessed in an inlet on the side of the TV, and they're hard to reach if the TV is wall-mounted.

Overall, the Samsung Q70C has good build quality. The TV has an all-plastic build, but it still feels solid. The stand holds the TV well, and there's minimal wobbling when pushing or moving the TV. The back panel exhibits minimal flex, although there's more of it around the VESA holes or the inputs, but it isn't excessive and won't cause any issues.

The Samsung Q70C has a very good native contrast ratio, but there's no local dimming to improve it further. This means that blacks look good in a dark room but look a bit blue when bright highlights are on the screen, as the TV can't emphasize bright highlights without impacting dark areas.

As this TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, there's no blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. The entire backlight is always on at the same intensity, so blacks look blue when bright highlights are present.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature; as bright highlights don't move from zone to zone, there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as they move across the screen.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

The Samsung Q70C has adequate HDR brightness. It doesn't vary from scene to scene, but as the TV lacks a local dimming feature, highlights don't stand out against the rest of the image.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: FILMMAKER Mode
• Brightness 50
• Contrast: 50
• Color Tone: Warm 2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Space Settings: Auto

While we tested with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Static' as it's more accurate, setting it to 'Active' makes the image brighter in some scenes, as you can see with the results below:

• Hallway Lights: 275.8 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 345.2 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 155.5 cd/m²

If you like this TV but need better HDR brightness, check out the 2024 Samsung Q70D QLED.

The TV is slightly brighter overall in Game Mode, but it's not a noticeable difference, and it's still too low for a truly good HDR experience.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness: 50
• Contrast: 50
• Color Tone: Warm2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• HDR10+ Gaming: Off
• Game HDR: Basic

While we tested with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Static' as it's more accurate, setting it to 'Active' makes the image brighter in some scenes, as you can see with the results below:

• Hallway Lights: 342.4 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 407.6 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 202.8 cd/m²

The PQ EOTF tracking is excellent on this TV. Dark scenes and midtones are displayed close to the content creator's intent. Near-blacks are raised, however, but this is typical of LED TVs. Besides that, the TV tracks the content creator's intent very well. There's a sharp cutoff near the TV's peak brightness, though, which causes a loss of fine details in bright highlights.

The Samsung Q70CD has very good SDR peak brightness. It's bright enough to overcome glare in a moderately-lit room, and there's minimal variation in brightness in most scenes.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie (Calibrated)
• Brightness: 50
• Color Tone: Warm2

The Samsung Q70CD has a good color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the common DCI-P3 color space, which is used in most HDR content. Unfortunately, most of its color range is undersaturated, even more so in greens and yellows. Its coverage of the less widely used Rec. 2020 color space is passable, but it's even more undersaturated here than in the DCI-P3 space.

The TV has a decent color volume. However, it struggles with both dark saturated colors and very bright colors; in particular, the TV has a really hard time with greens, as they're not nearly as bright and saturated as they'd be on an ideal TV. Yellow and reds also deviate from the ideal, as they are undersaturated.

The Samsung Q70C has mediocre pre-calibration accuracy. Its color temperature is very cold, leading to an exaggerated blue tint in all scenes. Its white balance is also off, with dark grays being too red and brighter whites being too blue. Gamma doesn't follow our 2.2 target for moderately-lit rooms, and all scenes end up being darker than they should be, especially very dark scenes.

The TV is challenging to calibrate, taking some work to make the TV look good. Blues and reds are especially hard to calibrate here. Still, it looks fantastic afterward.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The TV has satisfactory gray uniformity. There are some visible uniformity issues, with noticeable vignetting. There's some banding in parts of the screen and a bit of dirty screen effect. These uniformity issues are noticeable if you want to use the TV as a PC monitor or watch content with large areas of bright uniform color, like hockey. On darker colors, there's noticeable backlight bleeding, with the corners and sides of the image being blueish compared to the center.

The TV has good black uniformity. There's noticeable backlight bleeding, but the blooming around bright objects is minimal.

The Samsung 75Q70C has a sub-par viewing angle. The image shifts significantly when viewed at an angle, so this isn't a good TV for a wide seating arrangement or if you like to move around the TV while watching it.

The TV's reflection handling is decent. It does very well with glare from ambient lights, but it has a harder time with glare from lights or windows directly facing the TV.

The Samsung Q70C has okay HDR gradient handling. There's noticeable, but not egregious, banding in every color gradient except light grays/whites and bright reds.

The TV has mediocre low-quality content smoothing. There's significant macro-blocking in dark scenes when watching low-bitrate or low-quality content, and some fine details are lost.

The TV has decent upscaling and sharpness processing. Fine details in low-resolution content are displayed well, but text is a bit blurry, and the scene looks a bit soft overall.

The optimal sharpness settings for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, are as follows:

• Sharpness: 6
• Picture Clarity: Off

The Samsung Q70C uses a BGR subpixel layout. This doesn't affect the image quality, but non-RGB subpixel layouts cause issues when used as PC monitors, as they reduce text clarity. There are workarounds, however, and you can read more about it here.

The TV has a good response time. There's still some blur around fast-moving objects, but this isn't annoying in practice. However, the TV is very slow, with transitions occurring in very dark scenes, resulting in black smearing.

The Samsung Q70C uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight at all brightness levels. It flickers at 960Hz in the 'Movie' Picture Mode, which is fast enough that most people won't notice it. It does, however, drop down to 120Hz if any form of motion interpolation is enabled. The TV flickers at 120Hz in all other modes and at 60Hz with LED Clear Motion enabled in the 'Movie' or 'Game' Picture Modes.

The TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. It can only flicker at 60Hz on this TV, which is slow enough to be noticeable. It's meant to reduce persistence blur, but it duplicates images and reduces the panel's brightness, so it's distracting to use.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the appearance of motion. It can increase the frame rate of content up to 120fps. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well on this TV, resulting in image duplications and artifacts, especially during fast action scenes.

The TV's performance regarding stutter is decent; there's visible stutter with low-frame rate content, like when watching movies, but 60fps content looks fantastic.

The TV removes 24p judder from any source, ensuring a smooth movie-watching experience. Picture Clarity must be set to 'Custom' with the sliders set to 0 to remove 24p judder from 60Hz sources.

The Samsung Q70C supports every variable refresh rate (VRR) technology, so you can get a nearly tear-free gaming experience no matter your gaming system.

The TV has superbly low input lag in Game Mode, ensuring a responsive gaming and desktop experience.

The TV supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz. It also displays clear text with proper chroma 4:4:4, as long as you set the input to PC and have Input Signal Plus enabled on the HDMI port that your PC is connected to.

This TV can take full advantage of the PlayStation 5, with full 4k @ 120Hz and HDMI Forum VRR support. The Auto Low Latency Mode automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when you play a game from a compatible device.

This TV can take full advantage of the Xbox Series X or S, with full 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync support. The Auto Low Latency Mode automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when you play a game from a compatible device.

The Samsung Q70C doesn't support Dolby Vision, but it does support Samsung's less widely used HDR10+ format. Otherwise, the TV has four HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports, all capable of up to 4k @ 120Hz.

The TV has eARC support, which allows it to pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source to your home theater system or soundbar. Unfortunately, it doesn't support any DTS formats commonly used on Blu-rays.

The TV has a mediocre frequency response. It has barely any bass, and its sound reproduction becomes less accurate as you raise the volume. There's also a fair amount of compression artifacts, so it doesn't sound good at max volume. The TV's midtones sound good at a moderate listening volume, so dialogue is easy to understand.

The TV's distortion performance is middling. At or near max volume, the TV's speakers significantly distort the sound. It's better at moderate volumes but still not great. Distortion depends on the content, and not everyone is sensitive to it.

The Samsung Q70C uses the 2023 version of Samsung's Tizen OS. It's a bit slow right after you turn on the TV, but it's smooth and fast afterward. Finding content is easy, and moving between apps and inputs is intuitive.

Like with most TVs, there are ads in the interface, and you can't fully disable them.

The Samsung app store has a ton of apps available, and you're sure to find any popular mainstream streaming app in the list of options.

The Samsung Q70C uses the 2023 version of Samsung's remote control. There are buttons dedicated to specific streaming apps, which vary by region. It also has an integrated microphone for voice commands, and the TV comes with Bixby and Amazon's Alexa voice assistants. Aside from the mic in the remote, the TV itself has an integrated microphone for hands-free voice control. Voice commands work well; you can change the input, ask to open specific apps, ask for time or the weather, or even tell the TV to change the intensity of its backlight. The remote has a rechargeable battery, which you can charge through USB-C or with solar energy.

A single button underneath the Samsung branding on the bottom right side lets you turn the TV on/off, adjust the channel and volume, and change inputs. There's also a switch that lets you turn off the TV's integrated microphone, in case you're worried about privacy.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• User guides