The Samsung QN900D 8k QLED is Samsung's 2024 flagship 8k option that sits above the Samsung QN800D 8k QLED. The TV replaces the Samsung QN900C 8k QLED and features Samsung's proprietary Quantum Matrix Technology Pro, which allows for more precise control of the TV's local dimming zones when compared to their regular Quantum Matrix Technology. It supports 8k @ 60Hz on all four of its HDMI 2.1 ports, but it's also capable of up to 4k @ 240Hz, with full VRR functionality. It utilizes the latest NQ8 AI Gen3 Processor, which is said to be at least twice as fast as the processor used in Samsung's 2024 4k Neo QLED TVs, leading to better upscaling performance in general. Like many of Samsung's super high-end offerings, the TV uses the external One Connect Box to help keep your setup tidy and organized. It uses the 2024 version of Samsung's Tizen OS and is available in 65, 75, and 85-inch sizes.
Our Verdict
The Samsung QN900D is a great TV for mixed usage. It overcomes glare easily in a bright room thanks to its excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling, so it's very good for watching TV shows or sports. It's great for use in a dark room due to its fantastic contrast, making it a solid option for watching movies. It's an excellent TV for gaming or to use as a PC monitor due to its incredibly low input lag, 4k @ 240Hz or 8k @ 60Hz with VRR capabilities, quick response time, and chroma 4:4:4 support, so it delivers a colorful and responsive experience that has little noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects. Unfortunately, its viewing angle is a bit tight, leading to color shifting when you're sitting too close to the screen.
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Effective Local Dimming feature leads to fantastic contrast.
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Excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling to overcome glare.
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Excellent upscaling capabilities.
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Easy-to-use smart interface with a wide selection of streaming apps.
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Its viewing angle is only alright.
The Samsung QN900D is very good for watching TV shows in a bright room. The built-in Tizen smart interface is loaded with a big selection of streaming apps, so it's easy to find your favorite shows. It has excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling, so it easily overcomes glare in a bright room. It has an okay viewing angle, especially for an LED TV, but anyone watching from a more aggressive angle will see a washed-out image. The TV has excellent upscaling, which helps it upscale content to its 8k screen. Unfortunately, it has unremarkable low-quality content smoothing, so there are still noticeable artifacts with low-quality streaming content.
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Excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling to overcome glare.
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Excellent upscaling capabilities.
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Easy-to-use smart interface with a wide selection of streaming apps.
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Its viewing angle is only alright.
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Passable low-quality content smoothing.
The Samsung QN900D is great for watching sports. The TV has an amazing response time, so fast motion is clear, with little noticeable blur behind fast-moving balls and players. It also has excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling, making the screen easy to see in a bright room. While its viewing angle is alright, especially for an LED TV, it's still not the best option for a wide seating arrangement. The TV's uniformity is good, so while there's some dirty screen effect when watching sports with large areas of the same color, like hockey or football, you kind of need to look for it to notice it.
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Excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling to overcome glare.
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Amazing response time for clear motion with minimal blur.
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Excellent upscaling capabilities.
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Easy-to-use smart interface with a wide selection of streaming apps.
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Aggressive automatic brightness limiter.
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Its viewing angle is only alright.
The Samsung QN900D is an amazing TV for playing video games. It has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four of its ports that allows you to play games in up to 4k @ 240Hz or 8k @ 60Hz with VRR, so you have many options when pairing the TV with a modern console or gaming PC. The TV gives a responsive gaming experience thanks to its incredibly low input lag, and motion is clear, with very little blur behind fast-moving objects due to its amazing response time.
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Incredibly low input lag.
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Amazing response time for clear motion with minimal blur.
The Samsung QN900D is very good for watching movies in a dark room. The TV has fantastic peak brightness in HDR, so bright highlights pop. With the TV's very effective local dimming feature turned on, contrast is also fantastic, and blacks are deep and uniform, leading to a very impressive presentation even when there's some blooming around subtitles and other bright objects. The TV has a wide color gamut, so it displays a wide range of colors, and those colors appear vibrant and bright due to its impressive color volume. Unfortunately, the TV supports HDR10+ but lacks support for the more widespread Dolby Vision format. It also has mediocre low-quality content smoothing, so there are some noticeable artifacts present with low-quality content.
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Fantastic HDR peak brightness.
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Effective Local Dimming feature leads to fantastic contrast.
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Easy-to-use smart interface with a wide selection of streaming apps.
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Wide color gamut leads to vibrant colors in HDR content.
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No Dolby Vision support.
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Aggressive automatic brightness limiter.
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Passable low-quality content smoothing.
The Samsung QN900D is an excellent TV for HDR gaming. Games look vibrant and lifelike in HDR thanks to the TV's great color gamut and impressive color volume, and highlights pop due to the TV's fantastic HDR peak brightness. The TV has an amazing response time, so there's little noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects, and the incredibly low input lag delivers a responsive gaming experience. The TV supports the latest gaming features, such as the ability to game in up to 4k @ 240Hz or 8k @ 60Hz with VRR, thanks to the TV's four HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports.
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Incredibly low input lag.
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Fantastic HDR peak brightness.
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Effective Local Dimming feature leads to fantastic contrast.
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Amazing response time for clear motion with minimal blur.
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Wide color gamut leads to vibrant colors in HDR content.
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No Dolby Vision support.
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Aggressive automatic brightness limiter.
The Samsung QN900D is an amazing TV to use as a PC monitor. The TV's good uniformity means that while there's some dirty screen effect when looking at large areas of the same color like when browsing the web, you need to be looking for it to notice it. It provides a responsive desktop experience thanks to its incredibly low input lag, and there's very little blur behind fast cursor movements due to its amazing response time. The TV's excellent SDR peak brightness and reflection handling make it a great choice in a bright room, as it overcomes glare easily, and the TV properly displays chroma 4:4:4, so text is clear and easy to read. Unfortunately, its viewing angle, while alright for an LED TV, is a bit tight, leading to some color shifting when you're sitting close to the panel.
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Incredibly low input lag.
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Amazing response time for clear motion with minimal blur.
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Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly for clear text from a PC.
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Its viewing angle is only alright.
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No 1440p @ 240Hz support.
- 8.3 Mixed Usage
- 7.9 TV Shows
- 8.1 Sports
- 8.6 Video Games
- 8.3 HDR Movies
- 8.6 HDR Gaming
- 8.8 PC Monitor
- Updated Sep 11, 2024: Review published.
- Updated Sep 05, 2024: Early access published.
- Updated Aug 20, 2024: Our testers have started testing this product.
- Updated Jul 26, 2024: The product has arrived in our lab, and our testers will start evaluating it soon.
- Updated Jul 16, 2024: We've purchased the product and are waiting for it to arrive in our lab.
- Updated Jul 16, 2024: The product has won our suggestion poll, so we'll buy and test it soon.
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 65-inch Samsung QN900D, but these results are also valid for the 75 and 85-inch models. Note that the last five letters in the model number (DFXZA in this case) vary between retailers and individual regions, but there's no difference in performance.
| Size | US Model | Short Model Code | UK Short Model Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| 65" | QN65QN900DFXZA | QN65QN900D | QE65QN900D |
| 75" | QN75QN900DFXZA | QN75QN900D | QE75QN900D |
| 85" | QN85QN900DFXZA | QN85QN900D | QE85QN900D |
Our unit was manufactured in March 2024; you can see the label here.
Compared To Other TVs
The Samsung QN900D is a great TV, but it has rather limited appeal due to the lack of 8k content available. This means that other high-end 4k TVs, such as the LG G4 OLED or the Sony BRAVIA 9 QLED, offer better image quality overall even with the lack of 8k capability, as they are brighter, have better contrast, and with better image processing overall. Still, for gamers with extremely powerful PCs, the Samsung is an enticing proposition due to its 4k @ 240Hz and 8k @ 60Hz with full VRR support, but you'd still be better off buying another high-end 4k LED or OLED TV.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best 8k TVs, the best 4k TVs, and the best QLED TVs.
In most ways, the LG C4 OLED is better than the Samsung QN900D 8k QLED. While the Samsung is an 8k TV, there is almost no 8k content available, so it doesn't provide it with an advantage over the 4k LG C4. The LG is an OLED, so it has even better contrast than the otherwise fantastic contrast of the Samsung, with no blooming or lighting zone transitions. While the Samsung can get brighter in HDR, the LG is close in real content, although the Samsung does have the edge in SDR brightness. Otherwise, LG is the far better gaming TV due to its faster response time, although Samsung is interesting for those with extremely fast computers because of its 4k @ 240Hz or 8k @ 60Hz support with VRR. Finally, the LG has a far better viewing angle, making it far superior for a wide seating arrangements.
The Sony BRAVIA 9 QLED is definitely better than the Samsung QN900D 8k QLED. The Samsung is an 8k TV, but due to the lack of 8k content, it doesn't give it any advantage in image quality over the Sony since almost all content is at 4k resolution or lower. While the Sony has slightly worse contrast with local dimming enabled, it has, in turn, far less blooming and less visible zone transitions than the Samsung. The Sony is also brighter in HDR and SDR, and has far better image processing overall, leading to better image quality in all scenarios. The Samsung is, however, capable of playing games in 4k @ 240Hz or 8k @ 60Hz, which is enticing for gamers with very powerful rigs, but it can't quite make up for the Sony's edge in image quality.
The Samsung QN900D 8k QLED is an incremental improvement over the Samsung QN900C 8k QLED. The newer QN900D has slightly better contrast, gets a bit brighter in HDR, and is capable of 4k @ 240Hz and 8k @ 60Hz with full VRR support. The QN900C is, however, slightly brighter in SDR content, but overall the QN900D has the edge in every other metric.
The LG G4 OLED is better than the Samsung QN900D 8k QLED in almost every way, with the exception of the Samsung's ability to play games at 4k @ 240Hz and 8k @ 60Hz. Aside from gaming, there is almost no 8k content, so 8k doesn't give the Samsung TV a noticeable advantage in image quality over the 4k LG G4. The LG OLED also has far better contrast than the otherwise fantastic contrast of the Samsung. Plus, the LG is extremely bright for an OLED, almost matching the brightness of the Samsung LED, except in SDR, where the Samsung still has the edge. Overall, there are a few contexts where the Samsung is the better-looking TV, and the LG has a far better viewing angle, making it far superior for wide seating arrangements.
Test Results
The Samsung QN900D has a nice premium design. It has very thin bezels with a sleek metallic stand, making the TV look quite nice overall.
The center stand is great if you have a small table or cabinet since it takes up very little space. It supports the TV well enough, but the TV wobbles when pushed, although it settles quickly. The included One Connect box can be attached to the back of the stand, or you can place it elsewhere.
Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 14.7" x 10.4". The stand lifts the screen about 3.4 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen.
From the back, the TV looks very similar to other premium Samsung TVs, like the Samsung QN900C 8k QLED and the Samsung S95D OLED. It uses Samsung's One Connect Box, so only one cable goes into the TV, and you can place the box anywhere you want, giving you many options when it comes to cable management. This also means that there a no clips or channels for cables on the back of the TV for cable management, as most of the cables come out of the One Connect Box itself.
The Samsung QN900D has excellent build quality overall and is an improvement over the Samsung QN900C 8k QLED. It's not perfect, however, as there's noticeable wobble when pushed, but it settles quickly. Just like the QN900C, the back panel doesn't seem to be properly attached to the TV, and there's noticeable flex in the corners where the speaker grills are. Still, none of these will cause any issues in practice.
The Samsung QN900D has fantastic contrast with local dimming on 'High.' The TV's native contrast ratio is inadequate, but its effective local dimming feature provides very deep blacks in a dark room, and they stay deep when bright highlights are also on screen.
The TV has very good blooming performance, but there's some noticeable blooming around bright objects and subtitles when displayed against a black background.
The TV has decent lighting zone transitions. Unfortunately, the leading edge of bright highlights when they quickly move across the screen is visibly dimmer, and there's very noticeable haloing.
When the TV is set to Game Mode, its local dimming performance is slightly worse overall, with more noticeable blooming and zone transitions.
The Samsung QN900D has fantastic HDR brightness. Highlights really pop out during darker scenes, and the TV is bright enough that very bright specular highlights even stand out in well-lit scenes, although not if you're watching in a brighter room. Combined with its fantastic contrast, this TV provides an impactful HDR viewing experience.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: Filmmaker
- Brightness: 50
- Contrast: 50
- Contrast Enhancer: Off
- HDR Tone Mapping: Static
- Color Tone: Warm 2
- Color Space: Auto
- Peak Brightness: High
If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, here are the results with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active':
- Hallway Lights: 966 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 688 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 419 cd/m²
The Samsung QN900D is visibly dimmer when set to Game Mode. It's still bright enough for highlights to stand out, however, and it provides an impactful HDR experience while gaming.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: Game Mode
- Game HDR: Basic
- Brightness: 50
- Contrast: 50
- HDR Tone Mapping: Static
- Local Dimming: High
- HDR10+ GAMING: Basic
- Game HDR: Basic
- Color Tone: Warm 2
- Color Space: Auto
- Gamma: ST.2081 (0)
Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Active':
- Hallway Lights: 664 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 584 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 287 cd/m²
Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Off':
- Hallway Lights: 596 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 475 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 285 cd/m²
The Samsung QN900D has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking, as the TV follows the curve almost perfectly until it reaches the TV's maximum brightness. With content mastered at 600 or 1000 nits, there's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, but since the TV is often bright enough to display content mastered at those levels, a roll-off isn't necessary. With content mastered at 4000 nits, there's a more gradual roll-off to preserve detail in very bright highlights.
The Samsung QN900D has excellent peak brightness in SDR and easily overcomes glare in a well-lit room, although it doesn't perform as well as 2023's Samsung QN900C 8k QLED in real content.
These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: Movie
- Brightness: 50
- Local Dimming: High
- Color Tone: Warm 2
- Gamma: 2.2
- Color Space: Auto
The Samsung QN900D has a great color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, but most colors are a bit undersaturated. The TV has okay coverage of the less common Rec. 2020 color space, but highly saturated greens and cyans are inaccurate and very undersaturated; other colors are also off the mark.
The Samsung QN900D has excellent color volume. Colors are very bright and vibrant, and dark, saturated colors are displayed well due to its fantastic contrast.
The Samsung QN900D has very good pre-calibration SDR accuracy, although its white balance is only decent, with most colors underpresented in all shades of gray. Gamma is off our target of 2.2, and the entire image is darker than it should be. Thankfully the TV's color temperature is very close to the 6500K target, and color accuracy is great overall, with only whites showing noticeable mapping errors.
The TV is easy to calibrate, and Gamma, white balance, and color temperature are all nearly perfect afterwards. Color accuracy is much better now, but all colors are still a little bit off the mark, albeit barely.
You can see our full calibration settings here.
The Samsung QN900D has good gray uniformity. The corners of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but it's slight. There's also some dirty screen effect towards the middle of the screen with large areas of uniform color. On a very dark or near-black screen, its uniformity is excellent, but the edges are a bit brighter than the center.
With local dimming enabled, the TV has fantastic black uniformity, and there's no noticeable clouding. Blacks are deep and uniform across the screen, with only a bit of blooming around bright objects on a dark background.
The Samsung QN900D has an okay viewing angle. As you move off-center color shifting, color washout, and raised blacks occur. This makes it a generally poor choice for a wide seating arrangement, although it's alright overall for an LED TV.
The TV has excellent reflection handling. Its glossy coating significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections, so glare isn't too noticeable in a bright room. Unfortunately, there's rainbow smear across the screen, which is noticeable even with lights that aren't directly opposite the TV, like overhead lights.
The Samsung QN900D has decent HDR native gradient handling. Most colors have minimal banding, but dark greens have very noticeable banding in them, and brighter blues have some visible banding.
The TV has mediocre low-quality content smoothing. It smoothes out a bit of macro blocking from low-bitrate content, but with only passable preservation of details.
The Samsung QN900D does an excellent job at upscaling low-resolution content like from DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are clear, but finer details are still hard to make out.
Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content, with the following setting:
- Sharpness: 8
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 notices this.
The Samsung QN900D has an excellent response time for minimal blur behind fast-moving objects. Unfortunately, the response time is slower when coming out of dark states, so there's some noticeable black smearing in dark transitions.
Here are the results when testing the TV with our monitor methodology for those of you considering using this TV as a monitor:
| Refresh Rate | CAD Heatmap | RT Chart | Pursuit Photo | Compliance Sequence |
| 239 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
| 165 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
| 144 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
| 120 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
| 100 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
| 80 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
| 60 | Heatmap | Chart | Photo | Sequence |
The TV uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, which introduces flicker that can bother people who are sensitive to it. The amount of flicker varies depending on what picture mode the TV is set to, and what settings are being used.
- In 'Dynamic', 'Standard', 'Eco', and 'Filmmaker' modes, the backlight constantly flickers at a low flicker frequency of 120Hz, which can cause headaches if you're sensitive to flicker.
- In 'Movie' and 'Game' mode, the backlight flickers at 960Hz with blips of 120Hz.
- With the input label set to 'PC', it flickers at 120Hz in both 'Entertain' and 'Graphic' modes, but it flickers at 960Hz with blips of 120Hz when in 'Game' mode.
- Finally, enabling any of the 'Picture Clarity' settings changes the flicker to 120Hz.
The TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). The feature works well, even if the timing is a tad off, causing a slightly duplicated image. It's hard to notice with the naked eye, however.
This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does a good job at smoothing out slower scenes, with only some minor artifacts present, although it does lead to a softer background image. In faster-moving scenes, it can't keep up, leading to distracting artifacts.
Due to the TV's quick response time, there's some noticeable stutter when watching movies or TV shows, and it's most apparent in slow panning shots.
The TV automatically removes judder from all sources when watching movies or shows that are in 24p, even if they're in a 60Hz signal, like from a cable box.
The Samsung QN900D supports all three types of variable refresh rate (VRR) technology to reduce screen tearing. It works well across a wide refresh rate range and supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low. It caps out at 240Hz at 4k and 1080p, but VRR isn't properly supported above 120Hz in 1440p. For those of you with powerful PC rigs wanting to game at 8k, the TV has a VRR range of 48-60Hz at that resolution.
This TV has incredibly low input lag when set into Game Mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen. The TV doesn't support 144Hz, but it does support 240Hz at 4k through Display Stream Compression (DSC) technology, as well as 1080p @ 240Hz. The input lag at 240Hz is 5.1ms.
The Samsung QN900D supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 240Hz or 8k @ 60Hz, both achieved with the help of Display Stream Compression (DSC). Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions when the TV's input label is set to 'PC,' which is important for text clarity. Unfortunately, the TV can't display 1440p @ 240Hz natively with both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards and instead displays a scaled 4k image. 1440p @ 120Hz works without issue. 144Hz doesn't work at any resolution, but the TV supports 240Hz at 4k, with DSC and 1080p.
The 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 manually switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.
The TV is fully compatible with almost everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about manually switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Unfortunately, Dolby Vision isn't supported on the TV, so gaming in Dolby Vision isn't possible.
The Samsung QN900D has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four of its ports, which is great for connecting several devices that support 4k @ 120Hz or 240Hz. Due to the TV's One Connect box, the HDMI ports are limited to 40Gbps instead of the normal 48Gbps found on other HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports, but this won't cause any issues with any current source.
The TV itself only has two inputs: a USB-C port for service only and an input for the One Connect cable. All the audio/video and USB connections are housed on the external One Connect Box instead.
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 Samsung QN900D has an alright frequency response. It barely produces any bass, but the sound profile is well-balanced overall, and dialogue is clear. It still sounds pretty good at maximum volume, which is nice as the TV does get decently loud.
The TV's distortion performance is satisfactory. There's more distortion at max volume than at moderate volume levels, but it performs well overall.
The Samsung QN900D runs the 2024 version of the Tizen OS, and it's fast and easy to use. Unfortunately, there's a problem when switching the input label from 'PC' to anything else, which we've also seen on other Samsung models. The label will change but the TV is still stuck in 'PC', so you're limited to the features that are available in 'PC' mode. You can hit the home button or turn the TV on/off to fix this.
Like most TVs on the market, it has ads throughout its interface, and although you can disable targeted ads, there's no option to disable them completely.
The Samsung QN900D has a great selection of apps, so it's easy to find your favorite content. You can also cast content from your phone onto the TV or play videos from a USB stick.
The remote is slim and compact, has quick access buttons for the most popular streaming apps, and is easy to use. The remote has a built-in rechargeable battery with a solar panel on the back of the remote. You can also recharge it via USB-C if it dies unexpectedly.
The TV is compatible with the Bixby and Alexa voice assistants, and its remote has an integrated microphone for voice commands. You can use your voice to launch apps, switch inputs, ask for the weather and time, and adjust certain settings like the TV's brightness.
A single button is located at the bottom right of the TV. You can use it to power the TV on/off, change channels, adjust the volume, and switch inputs. You can control the TV hands-free with your voice using the TV's built-in microphone, but you can also turn the microphone off using a small switch located next to the power button.
