Samsung S95D hands-on review: the gaming OLED TV of your dreams
The best of the best
The Samsung S95D is the pinnacle of what a gaming TV should be. Earlier this month I spent several hours playing Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok on 65-inch version of Samsung’s newest QD-OLED TV and it’s absolutely fantastic for the heady price of $3,399.
It delivers pure, inky blacks and it also has Quantum Dots to help elevate its peak brightness beyond a traditional OLED TV. It also has all the gaming features you could want including HDMI 2.1 ports that support 144Hz gaming with VRR and FreeSync Premium Pro. As an OLED you also get a fantastic low-latency response and smooth motion – the latter of which feels even better thanks to the new AI processor beating inside this TV. Let's dive into what makes the Samsung S95D so good.
Pros:
✨ OLED Glare-Free technology removes one of OLED’s most glaring flaws
🔈 Dolby Atmos surround sound comes built into this TV
💻 PC Gaming support for 144Hz and FreeSync Premium Pro
Cons:
😶🌫️ OLED Glare-Free technology also seems to have reduced brightness and contrast
📺 The best of OLED without the glare. OLED displays are well known for their deep blacks and vibrant colors, but they’re also infamous for their terrible glare from their glossy screens. To fix this issue Samsung has added OLED Glare-Free technology to the S95D. To the eye, Samsung's new OLED TV has a semi-glossy finish that helps reduce glare and reflections even from a light placed directly next to the display. This new anti-glare finish makes watching media and playing games on Samsung’s QD-OLED TV in a sunny or well-lit room a lot more pleasant, but they’re are some early issues with the matted veneer on this screen.
⚔️ Double-edged sword. The thing about refraction is it works both ways. While the anti-glare coating is great at reducing glare from external light, it also seems to have dulled the brightness and contrast you can see emanating from the display too. While watching the TV with some ambient lights, the blacks on the S95D don’t look as pure and inky dark as I’m used to seeing on the previous S95C. Still, just like any OLED, it looks amazing while watching TV in a completely unlit room. I’m hoping Samsung will further improve its OLED Glare-Free technology, so it can block out glare effectively without reducing the full brightness and contrast the S95D can present.
🔊 Hi-Fi audio. Like Samsung’s top-shelf 8K Neo QLED TV, the QN900D, this TV has an array of high-powered speakers built into the back of the display. Using its multichannel speakers with Object Tracking Sound+, the Samsung S95D can project true Dolby Atmos surround sound without having to add a soundbar or any additional speakers. The bass response from the screen was also strong enough to give me goosebumps every time the USS Enterprise fired its phasers in Star Trek.
🗣️ Clear dialogue. Samsung has added an Active Voice Amplifier Pro feature to help you hear the dialogue and key sound effects in shows and movies. This feature takes advantage of the S95D’s AI processor, which separates the dialogue from the ambient sound in each scene and boosts it in real-time so you get clear vocals. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test if the TV could recover the dialogue from Tenet’s most poorly sound-mixed scenes, but turning on and off Active Voice Amplifier Pro made dialogue noticeably louder and clearer dialogue in anything I threw at it including the new Godzilla x King Kong trailer.
🤖 New AI chip on the block. This and all of the S95D’s new AI features come courtesy of the Samsung S95D’s new NQ4 AI Gen2 processor. This new AI chip utilizes its 20 neural networks to drive better 4K upscaling, HDR remastering, and compute Dolby Atmos sound in real time.
👾 Auto genre mode comes to games. AI is so prevalent in the new Samsung S95D that it has also added two new automatic features in the new Game Bar 4.0 including Game Genre Auto and Mini-Map Auto Detection. Firstly, Game Genre Auto detects what type of game you’re playing (including FPS, MMO, etc.) and applies a picture preset to give you what Samsung thinks is the best color temperature, brightness, and other settings for that particular game genre. Samsung previously introduced these Game Genre presets and this new Auto mode just takes away the annoyance of having to manually switch between them when you load up a different game.
🎮 Changing the game picture. Beyond changing the general picture settings while you game, AI Auto Mode promises to also enhance your gaming experience. It was honestly hard to notice during my short time testing the S95D, but Samsung explained that it can brighten certain areas so you can see what’s in the shadows or make approaching footsteps louder while playing a first-person shooter. AI Auto Mode is a feature I’m most excited to further test if it works as promised in my forthcoming full review.
🗺️ Biggie size your mini-map. The Samsung S95D’s second AI gaming feature is Mini-Map Auto Detection. As its name suggests, this feature can automatically detect where the mini-map is on your screen and blows it up into a split-screen so you can easily see it at a glance. This new feature makes using Samsung’s mini-map zoom feature less of a chore, but I still wish there was a way to just display the blown-up mini-map over a game playing in full-screen instead of splitting the picture.
👷♂️ Seamless wall setup. All of the Samsung S95D’s amazing features come packed into an astonishingly svelte package that’s 11mm thin throughout. It’s a TV that’s screaming to be wall-mounted and thanks to its One Connect Box, you can easily route its HDMI 2.1 ports and power connection inside your entertainment cabinet while you only have to feed a single silver cable through the wall to the TV.PC
🎮 The best PC gaming TV deadass. The Samsung S95D not only makes gaming with the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 easy with its four HDMI 2.1 ports. Those same ports also support an up to 144Hz refresh rate and support for FreeSync Premium Pro support, which makes this TV one of the best screens for a gaming PC.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.