Samsung S95F QD-OLED hands-on review: stunning HDR gaming and movies
AI-powered upscaling and HDR remastering are my favorite features
Pros
✅ 🔆 Third-generation QD-OLED panel delivers brightness up to 4,000 nits
✅ 🌌 Contrast looks even more stunning with pure blacks against the increased brightness
✅ 🐎 Higher 165Hz refresh rate for smoother gaming
✅ 🪩 Reflection stomping Glare Free technology
✅ 📼 4K AI Upscaling Pro and Auto HDR Remapping modernizes older, lower-resolution content
Cons
❌ 🙏 Wished the One Connect Box would be smaller
❌ 🔈 Bass could be louder
The Samsung S95F QD-OLED is the total package TV for me in 2025. It features a new third-generation QD-OLED panel for a promised 4,000 nits of brightness that looks stunning next to completely pure blacks. This new level of contrast makes TV shows, movies, and games look absolutely fantastic. Gaming on the S95F feels even smoother with the elevated 165Hz refresh rate, too. My favorite thing of all is how good the Samsung S95F QD-OLED makes old-school TV look modern with its 4K AI Upscaling Pro and Auto HDR Remapping AI technologies.
📺 Third-Generation QD-OLED. The S95F features Samsung’s new third-generation QD-OLED panel, which promises up to 4,000 nits of brightness. The display also claims to deliver richer colors and greater contrast. From my time with the TV, I can definitely confirm most of Samsung’s claims. It’s noticeably brighter than last year’s S95D.
🌌 Starry sky contrast. Contrast looks even better now that the screen can hit higher peak brightnesses while displaying true blacks. Samsung had a spiffy new demo reel that showcased parts of NYC at night and day at the same time to help highlight this. But beyond the canned videos, the TV perfectly rendered the dreary, rain-soaked escape chapter of Last of Us Part I with blinding searchlights in the background.
🐎 Motion Xcelerator 165Hz. Games don’t just look visually stunning, they feel incredibly smooth thanks to the S95F’s enhanced 165Hz refresh rate. That’s more than enough to power the 4K 120Hz gaming you can squeeze out of the PS5 Pro and Nintendo Switch 2. 165Hz will lend itself better to high-end PC gaming especially if own a Nvidia RTX 5080 or Nvidia RTX 5090 that can handle 4K gaming that fast. Webswinging in Spider-Man 2 felt especially smooth on the new Samsung flagship.
🪩 Goodbye reflections. Last year, Samsung introduced a novel anti-glare finish on the Samsung S95D, and the new Glare-Free technology on the new S95F is even better. It lives up to its name and truly eliminates glare and reflections. Just look at the top corner as The Shortcut editor-in-chief repeatedly dips the lamp towards the screen. There’s hardly any light reflection until the lamp is basically touching the corner of the display.
↔️ Bigger screen, different tech. Samsung is offering the S95F in a larger 83-inch size for the first time. However, this largest model actually features a stacked WOLED panel from LG. This is the same screen we saw in our LG G5 OLED evo hands-on, which has shown a proven increase in brightness and color accuracy over the previous Samsung S95D QD-OLED.
⚙️ AI processor. Samsung has equipped the S95F with its latest NQ4 AI Gen3 processor. This new chip powers more Samsung AI features than ever, including Click to Search, generative background images, and Live Translate – the last of which I’m most excited to test. Samsung’s AI. Bixby can also better understand you with LLM training, so you can ask questions on top of getting it to change the channel or raise the volume. There’s also a new Click to Search button on the remote, which calls AI to analyze what you’re watching and give you actor/show information – however, Click to Search is limited to working in the Samsung TV Plus app for now.
🤖 AI Upscaling. If you love revisiting old TV shows and movies like me, the Samsung S95F is the TV to do it with. Samsung’s new 4K AI Upscaling Pro is fantastic for lower-resolution media. I rewatched some Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural on the S95F, and I was taken aback by how the shows looked just as I originally watched them, except they were subtly sharper. The Auto HDR Remapping was on point too, making it so none of the scenes looked too bright or dark.
🔊 Same design, better sound. The Samsung S95F is just as impressively thin as its previous iterations. That’s impressive, considering this TV packs a 70W 4.2.2 sound system situated on the back of the screen. This year’s TV seems to sound even better, with greater sound quality and body, especially for dialogue. The bass sounded adequate enough too for gaming, as I could clearly hear all the impact of Spider-Man’s punches while playing with the PS5 Pro. The only thing I wished Samsung would improve about the S95F is to give it a smaller One Connect Box like the new wireless one for the Samsung Frame Pro and Samsung QN990F Neo QLED.
💵 The best QD-OLED price. As it stands, the Samsung S95F is the most affordable flagship QD-OLED TV of 2025. Although $2,229 might not sound so affordable for a 55-inch TV, it’s a lot cheaper than $3,499 for the new Sony Bravia 8 II. LG, meanwhile, has seemingly steered away from QD-OLED, opting for WOLED for the LG C5 OLED evo and its priority four stack WOLED in the LG M5 OLED evo.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.