Samsung S90D/S90DD OLED TV Review

The Samsung QN65S90DAFXZA looks and feels like a premium TV. It's heavy and sturdy and held in place well by its small metallic stand. The TV is thin and feels modern and classy.

The stand is small but is solidly built from metal. It holds the TV very well and lifts the screen about 3.35 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 14.37" x 10.51"

The back of the Samsung S90D/S90DD is the same as the Samsung S90C OLED but with a matte finish. The central panel housing the inputs is made of smooth plastic, with included covers and clips that you can use to help with cable management. Like most TVs, the inputs are hard to reach if you have it wall-mounted with a fixed mount.

The Samsung S90D has good build quality overall. There's some wobble on the stand when the TV is pushed forward or backward, but it quickly settles and won't cause any problems. There is a bit of flexing on the plastic central housing on the back, but this is normal and isn't concerning.

What's more concerning is the misaligned HDMI ports on our unit that makes two of the HDMI ports unusable. Our panel is also slightly bent and bows outwards in the center, although it's hard to notice when watching the TV head-on. These issues are likely isolated to our unit, but it's a knock against the TV if these issues with build quality are more widespread.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD OLED has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV can display bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use local dimming and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no blooming when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD is an OLED and doesn't have a backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as a TV with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how it compares to a TV with local dimming.

Although Game Mode slightly over-brightens the image, there's no other difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and when the TV is set in Game Mode.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD has excellent HDR brightness. It gets bright enough for highlights to really stand out and delivers an impactful HDR experience. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller specular highlights due to the TV's aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL).

The TV's Automatic Static Brightness Limiter (ASBL) is surprisingly aggressive with the sustained 10% window, so small bright highlights are dimmed considerably when they're on screen for more than a few minutes. This behavior is not noticeable with real content.

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

• Picture Mode: Filmmaker
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Contrast Enhancer: Off
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

The Samsung S90D/S90DD has excellent HDR brightness in Game Mode. It slightly over-brightens the image, which makes it brighter and more vibrant overall, but it isn't as accurate.

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

• HDR Picture Mode: Game Mode
• Game HDR: Basic
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Contrast Enhancer: Off
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

The Samsung S90D has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking, so content is mostly displayed at the correct brightness level. Darker shadows and midtones are a bit brighter than intended by the content creator, but the TV follows the curve closely until it reaches the TV's maximum brightness. With content mastered in 600 or 1000 nits, there is a very slight roll-off to preserve some detail in highlights. With content mastered at 4000 nits, there is a more gradual roll-off to preserve detail in very bright highlights.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD has good SDR peak brightness, and it's bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. Unfortunately, the panel's brightness is dimmed considerably by its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), so large bright scenes are significantly dimmed. It's the most distracting when watching sports like hockey with bright playing surfaces.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 45
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color: 25
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space: Auto

The TV has an exceptionally wide color gamut. It displays the full range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space that's often used in HDR content, and colors are very accurate overall. Its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space that's increasing in popularity isn't as good, but it's still excellent, with only some highly saturated colors being off from what they should be.

New to Samsung TVs in 2024 is the 'Color Booster' feature. This setting oversaturates colors but does a surprisingly good job at maintaining accuracy within the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces. Colors are still more accurate with the setting turned off, but it works well if you want more saturated colors without losing too much accuracy.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD has fantastic color volume. The panel shows very bright colors well and gets very close to the same brightness as pure white. It also displays dark, saturated colors very well.

The Samsung S90D has excellent pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Gamma is very close to the 2.2 target, but everything is a bit brighter than it's supposed to be, and the white balance is excellent, with blues being only slightly overrepresented. The color temperature is excellent and is only a bit cooler than our target of 6500K. Colors are very accurate across the board, but cyans do lean towards blue.

After calibration, the Samsung S90D/S90DD has exceptional accuracy. White balance, color temperature, and color accuracy have no noticeable issues. Gamma is almost perfect, but very dark scenes are still displayed a bit brighter than intended.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD has amazing gray uniformity. If you look closely, there is some minor vignetting in the corners and very faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has incredible black uniformity with no blooming or halo effect around bright objects.

The Samsung S90D has an incredibly wide viewing angle that remains consistent from almost any angle, so it's an excellent choice for watching TV in a group setting.

The TV has exceptional reflection handling. Its glossy screen finish significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections and does an excellent job at reducing the intensity of indirect reflections. However, due to the lack of a polarizer, the TV has a pink tint to it when exposed to light.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD has exceptional HDR native gradient handling. There is no banding in any colors except dark greens, and even then, it's barely noticeable unless you specifically look for it.

The TV's low-quality content smoothing is decent. It does a very good job at preserving detail, but there is still noticeable macro blocking in dark scenes.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD does a very good job at upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower resolution streams. Details are clear enough, but small hard-coded text is hard to make out.

Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content, with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 5

The Samsung S90D uses a unique subpixel structure. Instead of having all three subpixels in a row, each pixel forms a triangle, with the larger green subpixel at the top. This leads to color fringing, which is noticeable when displaying any content with horizontal lines, and it's especially bad when you use the TV as a PC monitor. For example, on a bright window on a Windows PC, you might notice a green fringe at the top since that's where the green subpixel is.

Similarly, you can notice a purple fringe at the bottom of bright windows, as that's where the red and blue subpixels are. Furthermore, with this subpixel arrangement, text has just okay clarity on a PC, as Windows ClearType settings aren't designed for this subpixel structure and can't correct for it.

Note that the 42-inch, 48-inch, and 83-inch models only use a WOLED panel, which uses a different subpixel structure than the other QD-OLED models. It's also possible that you end up with a WOLED panel on the other sizes since Samsung decided that they're releasing the same-sized models with both WOLED and QD-OLED panels, and there isn't a simple way to determine what panel type you're getting.

The Samsung S90D has a nearly-instantaneous response time, which results in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some noticeable persistence blur when gaming at 60Hz, but it's hardly noticeable at higher refresh rates.

This TV isn't technically flicker-free, as a small decrease in brightness corresponds with the display's refresh cycle. This is very different from pulse width modulation flicker (PWM) on TVs with LED backlights, and it's not noticeable.

The TV has an optional black frame insertion feature (BFI) that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. It can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does a good job at smoothing out slower scenes, but there are some noticeable artifacts present. In faster moving scenes, it can't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts and haloing.

Unfortunately, due to the nearly instantaneous pixel response time of the TV, there's stutter with low frame rate content, which is most noticeable during 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.

Unfortunately, if you're using the BFI feature, you have to enable 'Judder Reduction', which introduces motion interpolation.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD 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 framerate drops very low.

Unfortunately, there is an issue when using NVIDIA graphics cards that effects frame rates above 120 fps. The TV essentially duplicates parts at the bottom of the screen.

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 Samsung S90D supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz. 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, even though it can display chroma 4:4:4 properly, text from a PC isn't clear due to the unusual subpixel structure (see the Pixels section of the review for more on this issue).

Unfortunately, the TV has inconsistent issues with displaying 1440p. 1440p @ 60Hz works without issue, but when trying to display 1440p @ 120Hz and 1440p @ 144Hz with scaling disabled on both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, the TV only displays a cropped window, so the TV isn't doing any upscaling. Strangely enough, this behavior is intermittent, and sometimes 1440p @ 120Hz and 1440p @ 144Hz work fine. There are also no issues with 1440p @ 120Hz when connected to a PS5 or Xbox Series X, which makes the issue even harder to identify.

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 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 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 S90D/S90DD supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1 on all four HDMI ports. This allows you to take full advantage of multiple high-bandwidth devices, like if you own both current-gen consoles and a high-end gaming PC. Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn't support Dolby Vision and supports HDR10+ instead, which is similar but not as widely supported. The TV also has variable analog audio out, so you can change the volume of any plugged-in analog devices, like headphones, using the TV's remote.

Two of the TV's HDMI 2.1 inputs face downwards and two face the sides. There's also a separate section for the headphone jack.

Our unit has a serious build quality issue around the inputs, so two of the HDMI ports were completely unusable.

This Samsung S90D supports many audio formats, including all Dolby Digital options. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The TV has a decent frequency response. It actually produces a bit of bass, the sound profile is very well balanced overall, and dialogue is clear. It still sounds pretty good at maximum volume, but the TV doesn't get very loud.

The TV has satisfactory distortion performance. It doesn't get very loud, but there isn't very much distortion near or at max volume.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD runs the 2024 version of the Tizen OS, and it's fast and easy to use. Unfortunately, there is a problem when switching the input label from 'PC' to anything else. 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. To fix this, you can hit the home button or turn the TV on/off.

Like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the interface of the TV, and although you can disable targeted ads, there's no option to disable them completely.

The Samsung S90D/S90DD 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 identical to the one included with the Samsung S90C OLED. It's slim, 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 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 on the bottom right of the TV.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• Plastic covers
• User guide