Samsung’s S95B: An OLED stunner!

Samsung has taken LCD and used all sorts of ingenious engineering to deliver super impressive displays. This time, however, they’ve launched the S95B, an honest-to-goodness OLED TV. The OLED panel also uses quantum dots, which combine the dazzling contrast of OLED with vivid yet super-accurate colours and increased brightness. So, does the S95B have what it takes to foot the bill in the highly competitive OLED TV space?

The S95B sports a 4K UHD, 3,840 x 2,160 resolution OLED display that supports HDR and Quantum Dot OLED (AKA QD-OLED) technology. The S95B comes in either 55 or 65 inches.

The QD-OLED tech in the S95B uses blue OLED to self-illuminate each pixel. Along with this, a quantum dot layer generates both red and green sub-pixels. This has the benefit of slowing blue OLED fade over time and, more crucially, allowing the S95B to deliver a brighter, more vivid on-screen image that is more colour accurate than with standalone OLED.

Behind the screen, Samsung uses its proprietary 4K Neural Quantum Video Processor, and the TV, like other Sammy TVs, uses the Tizen OS. Among its many video customisation options is a Filmmaker mode, and the S95B plays nice with HDR10, HLG, and HDR10+. I didn’t, however, see any Dolby Vision support.

Being an OLED TV, the S95B has an ultra-slim design, with its panel being just millimetres thin. Unlike many other TVs, Samsung has put a lot of effort into the relative ease of attaching the display to its stand, which uses several screws and clips to hold it in place, greatly simplifying the entire set-up process. Hopefully, other TV manufacturers are taking note of this most welcome design element.

The super slim design of the S95B is helped by the fact that it doesn’t use Samsung’s One Connect box. That Samsung crammed all the electronics into such a slim panel speaks volumes about the cleverness of its design and engineering. It might be super-slim, but you get four HDMI inputs. All four work with 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM. The HDMI 3 input also supports eARC.

Along with two USB inputs (which allow you to add a hard drive for recording TV and an external Samsung camera for video calling), you also get terrestrial and satellite tuners, an SPDIF output, and an Ethernet port. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Apple’s AirPlay 2 are also supported. In short, the only thing missing on the connectivity front is a kitchen sink.

Samsung’s standard black plastic remote was bundled with the review unit. It’s an ingeniously designed clicker in that it needs no batteries. Instead, it has a solar panel on its back and can harvest energy from your home’s Wi-Fi to stay charged. Its minimalist controls also include buttons for Netflix and Prime Video.

As you’d expect with a Samsung TV, the S95B is well-supported, with virtually all video streaming apps available. You get Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and Disney+, and local broadcasters are also available.

The S95B really shone in its ability to seamlessly integrate into my smart home. You can use the SmartThings app and Bixby, but Google Assistant or Alexa are also there and transform it into a hub for your smart home. If someone approaches the house, we get a notification and a video pop-up. The addition of these smart assistants lets us use voice commands to control the TV, lights and other smart home gear.

The only real annoyance with the S95B comes from its interface, which makes chores such as switching inputs more involved than they should be. My ancient Samsung LCD TV has an input select button on the remote, but with the S95B, I had to navigate to a menu option, choose select input and then change the input, which seems a tad clunky.

On the video front, the video processing and QD-OLED screen deliver impressive on-screen results. The 4K Neural Quantum processor provided excellent levels of detail – especially with HD images, upscaling them and ensuring that even 720p content looked crisp. Being OLED-based, video was also free of judder, motion artefacts and other LCD-centric issues.

The QD-OLED display was also bright, living up to Samsung’s claim it can display up to 1,000 nits of brightness. The addition of quantum dots also translates into a wider colour gamut. Add HDR support, plus OLED contrast levels, and even in dark scenes, there’s plenty of eye-popping detail. On-screen images looked natural and exhibited plenty of depth. The addition of quantum dots really allowed HDR to work its magic.

Despite its slim design, the S95B delivers capable audio. The lack of space for speaker drivers limits it to a basic version of Samsung’s Object Tracking Sound technology. Even still, the soundstage it cranked out was balanced. The dialogue was clear, and there was good stereo audio separation. I struggled to get any meaningful height from the soundstage, even though the S95B supports Dolby Atmos. That said, this could be due to the height of the ceilings and the placement of furnishings in my lounge.

If you’re an Xbox or PS5 owner, the S95B won’t disappoint. This is thanks to support for 4K and VRR (variable refresh rate). AMD’s Freesync and Nvidia’s G-Sync are also there. Unsurprisingly, on-screen gaming was silky-smooth and super responsive with no noticeable lags.

All told, the S95B delivers in spades. While it lacks Dolby Vision and its Atmos performance won’t lift the roof off your house, its video, seamless smart home integration and smart remote make it a standout TV choice.

www.samsung.com