Samsung QN990F Neo QLED review: the first wireless 8K TV for streaming and gaming
Great for 8K gaming – until it isn’t
🏆 Review score: 4 out of 5
✅ Pros
🛜 Wireless One Connect Box makes connecting four HDMI 2.1 devices seamless
🔌 One Micro HDMI 2.1 for lower-latency hard-wired gaming
📶 30-foot wireless signal that works through TV cabinets and walls
🪞 Glare-Free technology eliminates any reflections without making the screen matte
📺 8K AI Upscaller makes lower resolution streaming and gaming look tack sharp
🎮 Gaming over wireless looks smooth and feels responsive
❌ Cons
👾 Motion artifacts can ruin the look of some games
🤑 8K TV pricing is still expensive, 65-inch TVs start at $5,299
🔅 Maximum brightness peaks at about 1,400-nits
The Shortcut Review
Samsung 8K TVs have impressed me since their debut, featuring thin panels, impressive speakers, and, of course, gobsmacking resolution. The Samsung QN990F Neo QLED, however, is a whole other level of awesome now that it is the first wireless 8K TV. The TV comes with a new Wireless One Connect Box that’s smaller than the PlayStation 2 Slim or any Blu-Ray player. This type of setup simplifies wall-mounting the TV to only one power cable, while allowing you to connect all your consoles, Blu-ray players, and other devices to stream video inputs from 30 feet away in a discreet cabinet.
Samsung’s Wireless One Connect Box is truly impressive. It’s absolutely tiny but streams up to 4K 240Hz and 8K 120Hz video. What’s more, I played Borderlands 4 and Spider-Man 2 with more sharpness than I saw on a 4K TV, all with the same responsiveness and smoothness wired into a display despite how the game was actually streaming to the TV over Wi-Fi. Thanks to the PS5 Pro and powerful graphics cards like the Nvidia RTX 5090, the dream of 8K gaming has finally been realized.
Unfortunately, the Samsung QN990F Neo QLED isn’t the home run I was hoping for. It has a fatal flaw of displaying a ton of green/magenta motion noise with popular games like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Final Fantasy Rebirth. This TV’s max brightness is only mid, measuring about 1,400-nits, and the starting price of $5,300 for a 65-inch screen (or $6,200 75-inch as tested) is hard to justify for anything but the ultimate screen.
Full Review
🛜 Cord cutter. Easily, the biggest change in the Samsung QN990F Neo QLED is its Wireless One Connect Box – which it also shares with the Samsung Frame Pro – that streams any connected video signals over your Wi-Fi network. This allows you to plug in all your consoles and Blu-ray players into the wireless breakout box, which features four HDMI 2.1 ports. You don’t lose any resolution or speed, as the wireless box can transmit a video signal of up to 4K 240Hz or 8K 120Hz 30 feet away.
Samsung’s Wireless One Connect Box is easily the smallest I’ve seen. It’s far smaller than the LG M5 OLED Evo’s Zero Connect Box and looks absolutely tiny next to the PS5 Pro. It’s also easy to move the Wireless One Connect Box, as it only requires a 65W USB-C power brick, instead of a massive power supply.
🫰 Strong wireless signal. Wirelessly streaming 8K media and games looks virtually flawless on the QN990F (most of the time). The wireless signal works even at a distance. I was able to maintain a strong connection even with the Wireless One Connect Box situated at the opposite side of my living room. The connection strength only faded when I placed the Wireless One Connect Box in another room, out of direct line of sight with the TV.
I only saw a handful of disruptions with a weak signal and never saw a total loss of video streaming. In these cases, the TV prompted me to move my Wireless One Connect Box with a live measurement of the signal strength. If you’re concerned about additional input lag or connection dropouts from wireless streaming, you can also connect one device directly to the TV via a Micro HDMI cable.
📺 8K AI upscaling. This TV comes with a new NQ8 AI Gen3 Processor that adds a load of AI features, the most notable of which is the 8K AI Upscaling Pro. The dearth of actual 8K content is still small, but this new 8K AI upscaler promises to transform 4K, HD, and even standard-definition content into a 4,320p picture. I got a kick out of streaming older movies like Forest Gump and Pretty Woman on the QN990F Neo QLED’s huge screen size and resolution.
🎮 8K gaming has finally arrived. I’ve heard so many promises of 8K gaming in the past, but the Samsung QN990F is the first TV to deliver on it fully. This is largely thanks to new Nvidia GPUs finally being powerful enough to handle gaming at a 7,680 x 4,320 resolution, and the PS5 Pro supporting an 8K output. However, all of that doesn’t detract from the smoothness and relatively low input latency I experienced while chain-sliding and whipping around with the grapple in Borderlands 4 on the QN990F. Playing on a big 75-inch screen already feels magical; the higher resolution is the cherry on top that makes games look even sharper.
☠️ Fatal gaming flaw. While gaming on the Samsung QN990F can be great, some games look absolutely terrible on this TV. Helldivers 2, Gears of War: Reloaded, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Assassin’s Creed all present green/magenta motion artifacts at the slightest movement, even a flick of the in-game camera. Essentially, these artifacts are created because the screen can’t draw a complete frame before the next one is delivered.
It looks gross in action as the artifacts create a green/purple outline on every pixel. While reducing motion blur helps mitigate some of the motion artifacts, it’s not an option on consoles, nor does it completely eliminate them. Luckily, this issue appears to affect only a small selection of games, as I didn’t observe the same problem in any games outside of the ones I’ve listed above. Samsung has also informed me that it’s aware of the issue and is working on a solution, but it was unable to share a timeline for when it would be available.
🪞Glare-Free. Like the Samsung QN90F Neo QLED and Samsung S95F QD-OLED, this TV features Samsung’s new Glare-Free technology. As its name suggests, the latest finish virtually eliminates glare and reflections to the point that the screen almost has a matte finish. This isn’t Samsung’s first go at an anti-glare screen, but this year’s implementation doesn’t wash out contrast and colors as severely as the previous generation. The only downside of Samsung’s Glare-Free technology combined with an LCD screen is that it isn’t as bright as the Samsung S95F QD-OLED.
🎥 The last 8K TV. If you’re looking for a new cutting-edge 8K TV, the Samsung QN990F Neo QLED is it. LG dropped out of the 8K race this year, and Sony released its last 8K TV in 2022, so now Samsung is the only company producing new super-high-resolution screens.
Should you buy the Samsung QN990F Neo QLED?
✅ Yes, if…
📺 You want the only brand-new flagship 8K TV available this year
🪞 You want to kiss screen glare and bezels goodbye
🫣 You want to hide all of your consoles, Blu-Ray players, and other devices away from your TV
🛜 You want a fast, responsive gaming display that wirelessly streams over your Wi-Fi network
❌ No, if…
👾 You want to play Helldivers 2, Gears of War: Reloaded, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Assassin’s Creed on this screen
🤑 You want a TV that’s more affordable than $5,500
⚡️ You don’t want any noticeable input lag while gaming
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.