Samsung’s S95H OLED TV delivered impressive contrast, deep blacks, sharp detail, and vivid color across movie and gaming tests, although it was not flawless. Dark scenes could become too dim in AI Optimization mode, while some skin tones and bright effects were less convincing than on competing RGB and Micro RGB displays. Even so, the S95H generally demonstrated the strengths of OLED technology, particularly when rendering blacks, grays, and saturated colors.
Dark scenes near cliffs remained crisp and colorful, with more visible texture than expected. Cliffs that appeared dull on some OLED and RGB TVs retained depth and detail on the S95H. The display was able to combine strong contrast, clarity, and deep blacks, highlighting the advantages of OLED technology compared with Samsung Micro RGB in these scenes.
Strong color performance with occasional dark scenes
A short scene from End of Oak Street, featuring people in brightly colored shirts, showed clean and vivid color without visible blooming or smearing. The S95H also performed above average in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which served as a useful test for color blooming.
Filmmaker picture mode made some movies appear darker, but it also controlled color blooming particularly well. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the OLED panel rendered colorful imagery and dark uniforms with excellent shadow detail.
OLED displays can produce rich, clear blacks and grays because individual pixels can be adjusted independently or switched off completely. A widely discussed nighttime scene from Game of Thrones, showing troops in the dark, produced mixed results. In AI Optimization mode, the dragon was often too dark behind the protagonist. However, the display still revealed a faint tree emerging from near-total darkness—something the source suggests may only be easier to see on a high-end home cinema projector such as the AWOL Vision Aetherion.
The S95H’s skin-tone performance was acceptable but not outstanding. In a scene used to test every TV this year, the people on screen did not show enough variation in skin tones. The same scene displayed more nuanced skin-tone differences on the LG Micro RGB Evo.
The S95H also showed some minor weaknesses in a demo reel featuring natural landscapes. Compared with the S95H, the LG Micro RGB Evo produced brighter green grass near fence edges and sharper detail in snowy mountain scenes covered by white fog. However, the S95H preserved substantial shadow detail in the dark trees of a forest.
OLED excels at blacks, grays, and saturated color
The benchmark footage pointed to a clear advantage for OLED: it rendered blacks and grays better than RGB displays across the tested content. OLED was also competitive with RGB for color reproduction. A scene featuring yellow flowers and a red cactus appeared brighter on the S95H than on any RGB display tested.
In Blade Runner 2049, viewed in 4K Ultra, yellow and red elements in some scenes looked exceptionally realistic, almost as if the colors could be peeled directly from the screen. The colors appeared less defined on some RGB models from Sony, Hisense, and Samsung.
Gaming performance and sound
The testing then shifted to gaming, covering picture quality, refresh rate, and sound. The first playtest, Resident Evil Requiem, revealed a police-station library scene with less texture and detail than some previously tested RGB models and projectors.
Elsewhere, the S95H looked sharp and felt especially responsive at 165Hz during a lakeside horseback ride in Red Dead Redemption 2. OLED technology also delivered impressive detail in the protagonist’s face.
A playtest of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II on Xbox Series hardware produced another surprise: some colors showed a blooming issue. On a PC, Crimson Desert displayed a pet dragon’s screen-filling flames as an overly bright orange.
Although the S95H did not perform perfectly in every test, its overall picture quality remained impressive. Its strongest results came from OLED’s ability to produce deep blacks, detailed shadows, high contrast, and vivid colors.
Source: www.wired.com