Samsung QN70F  TV Review

The Samsung QN70F has good peak brightness in HDR. It's bright enough to display most HDR content at the brightness level intended by the content creator. Due to its limited local dimming feature, though, small specular highlights don't stand out from the background.

These measurements are in the FILMMAKER MODE with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Active,' which increases the brightness of some scenes slightly, while not changing the actual peak brightness of the display.

• Hallway Lights: 681 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 562 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 303 cd/m²

There are some minor differences in brightness when you switch to the lowest-latency Game Mode. Most real content is slightly dimmer, but it's not a significant difference. Large, bright scenes, on the other hand, are slightly brighter.

Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Active':

• Hallway Lights: 613 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 470 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 216 cd/m²

This TV has excellent peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome indirect glare in a bright room. There's very little variation in brightness with different content.

The Samsung QN70F has mediocre contrast. The native contrast of the panel is decent, which helps maintain black levels in dark areas of the screen. It has a very poor local dimming feature, though, which is ineffective at boosting contrast as it can only control the backlight across large columns at a time.

The zone precision on this TV is terrible. Since it can only control entire columns at a time, it can't dim precisely around any objects. With most real content, the entire backlight is lit up all the time, so the local dimming feature has no impact.

Zone transitions look bad on this TV. It can't keep up with fast-moving objects on a dark background, resulting in more zones remaining lit up than necessary. Since each zone covers a relatively large portion of the screen, this results in a very significant halo effect around bright highlights.

Switching to Game Mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

This TV has sub-par black uniformity. There are noticeable bright spots on the screen in dark areas. Since the local dimming is very ineffective, it can't dim the backlight behind those brighter areas, resulting in a patchy image.

The Samsung QN70F has mediocre color volume in SDR. It has full coverage of the BT.709 color space typically used in SDR, but limited coverage of the wider DCI-P3 and BT.2020 color spaces. Saturated reds are significantly desaturated in lighter scenes, resulting in lower color volume overall, which is unusual for LCD TVs but similar to the Samsung U7900F.

This TV has good color volume in HDR. Unlike in SDR, there's no issue with reds losing saturation in lighter scenes. It can't display deep shades, though, due to its low contrast ratio, and colors aren't quite as bright as pure white.

This TV has excellent accuracy in SDR before calibration. The white balance is nearly perfect, and gamma tracks close to the 2.2 target for most content, but it's a bit too bright in the brightest content. It has great color accuracy, with just a few minor issues with saturated reds and blues. The overall color temperature is just a bit warm.

The calibration system is very effective and easy to use, and the results are fantastic for the most part. The color accuracy didn't change much after calibration, though, and shadow details are slightly crushed.

See our full calibration settings.

This TV has excellent accuracy in HDR before calibration. The white balance is excellent, and the color temperature is nearly perfect. Colors are a bit worse, though, with noticeable luminance errors across the board.

Unfortunately, calibrating this TV has little impact on HDR accuracy. The white balance is slightly better after calibration, but color accuracy is worse.

The Samsung QN70F has great PQ EOTF tracking. Very dark, near-black details are a bit raised by the TV's low contrast ratio, but lighter shadows and midtones track the creator's intent well. There's an odd double-step near the TV's peak brightness, but this isn't noticeable with real content.

Unfortunately, Samsung has removed HGIG from their 2025 and 2024 models, including this one. Their intention was to move it to the "Original" Game Genre setting, but it's not working properly. This means that most games won't be displayed at the correct brightness level.

This TV does a decent job of smoothing out low-quality content, but some fine details are lost in the process.

This TV has just okay sharpness processing when upscaling low-resolution content.

The Samsung QN70F has good gradient handling in HDR. There's some noticeable banding in darker shades of gray, and bright reds are limited by the range of colors the TV can display. Everything else looks great, though, with a few noticeable issues.

This TV has excellent low input lag in all supported modes.

This TV supports all common resolutions and refresh rates up to a maximum of 4k @ 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly with all supported modes, which is essential for clear text from a PC.

This TV supports a variable refresh rate, and it works across an extremely wide range of refresh rates. It also works with sources that support Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), ensuring the screen remains nearly tear-free even when the frame rate drops.

This TV has a mediocre CAD at the max refresh rate of 144Hz in Game Mode with VRR enabled. There's very little overshoot, but the panel is very slow to transition from one shade of gray to another. It's especially bad in shadow details.

Disabling VRR improves the gray-to-gray response time, but introduces 120Hz backlight flicker. Visually, it's a bit worse overall with VRR disabled due to the extra flicker.

• Transitions 1
• Transitions 2
• Heatmap

Dropping down to 120Hz actually improves this TV's CAD slightly. Shadow details are still especially bad, but most other transitions look a bit better.

Unfortunately, the CAD at 60Hz on this TV is sub-par. It's slower on average than at higher refresh rates, and midtones look almost as bad as shadow details.

This 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.

This TV is fully compatible with almost everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 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. Of course, like all Samsung TVs, it doesn't support Dolby Vision.

Despite this TV's relatively slow response time, there's noticeable stutter when watching low frame rate content like most shows and movies. It's especially noticeable in slow panning shots.

Setting the motion interpolation feature to increase 24p content up to 30fps does a decent job at reducing stutter. It's still noticeable in some slow panning shots, but the frame timing is very consistent, so motion is smooth.

This TV can't remove judder from 25p content sent via a 60p signal.

Most people won't see any micro judder on this TV. There's some micro judder present when watching 25p content over a 60p signal, like from an older cable box or streaming stick that can't match the content frame rate.

The Samsung QN70F has a sub-par response time in Movie Mode. While most transitions get close to the target shade quickly, some transitions are exceptionally long, especially in dark shadow details and when going to a very bright shade.

While edges are clean and sharp on this TV, there are noticeable color artifacts in fast-changing colors.

The TV uses high-frequency flicker with pulse width modulation (PWM) to control the backlight. The amount of flicker varies depending on the picture mode the TV is set to and what settings you're using.

It flickers at a very fast 960Hz in the 'Movie' Picture Mode, but most other picture modes flicker at a much slower 120Hz, which causes image duplications and could cause headaches if you're sensitive to flicker.

It flickers at 960Hz in Game Mode, but if you disable VRR, there's an additional 120Hz wobble. The available picture modes change when connected to a PC, and both the Entertain and Graphic modes flicker at 120Hz.

This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly called black frame insertion (BFI). It only flickers at 60Hz, but the flicker timing is quite good, so there's no noticeable image duplication. BFI isn't available at 120Hz, but the TV's backlight flickers at 120Hz in some modes, which helps improve motion clarity.

The glossy screen coating does very little to reduce the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections.

Ambient light has no noticeable impact on black levels.

The total amount of reflected light is just okay. There are slight diffraction artifacts with extremely bright lights, but it's extremely minor and not distracting.

Ambient light has very little impact on the perceived color volume on this TV. It struggles to display high luminance colors even in a dark room.

The Samsung QN70F has an okay viewing angle. The image washes out quickly as you move to the sides, and there's a noticeable color shift as blues shift differently from red and green.

This TV has just okay gray uniformity. The center of the screen is fairly clean, which is great for watching sports, but the sides all around it are noticeably darker.

The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.

The spectral power distribution on this TV shows an okay separation of red, green, and blue. There are very few impurities between each primary, but the peaks aren't as precise as they should be.

This TV has a good selection of ports. All four HDMI ports support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, so you can take full advantage of the latest consoles and gaming PCs. It doesn't support ATSC 3.0, though, so cord-cutters are limited to 1080p broadcasts.

This TV supports most Dolby Digital audio formats. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The Samsung QN70F has a similar design to other 2025 Samsung TVs, like the step-up Samsung QN80F. It looks somewhat premium, but the bezels are a bit thicker than most competing models.

The center-mounted stand supports the TV well and doesn't take up much space.

The footprint of the 55-inch stand is 10.3" x 9.76". The stand lifts the TV about 3.14" above the table, so most soundbars fit without blocking the screen.

The back of the TV has a nice textured look that matches other 2025 Samsung TVs. The inputs are recessed into the back of the TV, which makes them hard to access when the TV is mounted close to the wall. There's nothing to help with cable management, either.

The Samsung QN70F has good build quality. There are no obvious quality control issues, but it's mostly made of plastic.

The TV runs the 2025 version of the Tizen OS, which is quick and easy to use. It's a bit buggy, though, and the interface is very slow to use for the first few minutes after it's turned on.

Like most TVs, there are ads on the home screen. You can't disable them completely, although you can turn off targeted ads.

• Remote control
• Power cable
• User guides

This TV has an okay frequency response. The sound profile is well-balanced, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand at low volume levels, but there's very little bass.