Unglaringly apparent: Samsung's OLED S95D 4K Tizen OS Smart TV.
Unglaringly apparent: Samsung's OLED S95D 4K Tizen OS Smart TV.
Can I let the sunshine in?
Reviewers have consistently seen OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels as the best TV technology you can buy. It gives you extremely high constant, with blacker blacks and whiter whites, rich colours, smooth motion and better viewing angles than LCD displays.
But there’s always been a downside: screen reflection.
For the full effect, you had to black out windows and rearrange lighting.
With its OLED S95D, Samsung introduces a new matte display with a new anti-glare coating
Our living room made a good spot to test this claim.
I set up a review unit on our TV cabinet, which sits next to a floor-to-ceiling, north-facing glass ranch slider that makes for glorious sun-drenched winter afternoons - and infuriating reflections when you try to watch a game with 3pm kick off on the telly.
My S95D had already been unboxed by someone else, denying me the AV geek elation of a “peel”, but the clip below by a US reviewer shows the matte screen and its anti-glare coating to good effect.
Simply put, it’s the best anti-glare technology I’ve ever seen on a TV.
You can happily watch in full sunlight, with barely a hint of reflection.
It’s like Vanta Black or a black hole. Light goes in. It doesn’t come out.
And at night, you don’t have to worry about living room lights. Its diffusion technology is such that you have to stand almost right in front of the display and shine your smartphone’s torch right into it to see reflected light - and even then most of it seems to be magically absorbed.
Brighter
The S95D’s second signature feature is “Quantum HDR OLED Pro”, which is billed as making it up to 70% brighter than its predecessor, the S95C.
Quantum dots are microscopic nanocrystals that glow a specific wavelength, which makes for more vivid colours, and happens to be energy efficient, too. QD features on the top-rating models from a variety of TV makers, and it’s neutralised the advantage that brighter LED TVs have traditionally enjoyed in strong light.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a product launch in 2024 without an artificial intelligence element. With the S95D, the silicon star of the show is the NQ4 AI Gen2 processor, which optimises the picture without the need for you endlessly tinkering with image settings. Samsung says it “applies 20 individual neural networks and deep-learning algorithms” to optimise the picture for a movie, live sport or gaming.
Samsung's 55-inch S95D OLED TV is just 1.65cm deep - in part because some of tis hardware sites in the One Connect box that can rest on the back of the stand (as it does above) or sit on your TV cabinet.
The defining moment for OLED TVs is often said to be April 28, 2019, when episode 3 of Game of Thrones season 8, “The Long Night” first screened (and streamed), takes place entirely at Winterfell, depicting the final battle between the Army of the Dead and the combined armies of the living. As an extended nighttime setpiece, it confused and enraged most fans, who couldn’t tell what was going on amid a much of greys. OLED owners could easily follow the action. I re-watched part of the episode, and the S95D duly passed the litmus test with flying colours - or at least dynamically constanted backs and whites.
S95D OLED has minimal bezels and is a very thin TV, barely 1.65cm deep, with a single cord connecting it to a “OneConnect” box, which houses HDMI jacks and other ports and can attach to the back of the stand or sit on your TV cabinet.
My main negative is that the sound doesn’t have a lot of oomph. For most buyers in this price bracket, this will be by-the-by, since they’ll be using it with a sound bar or other home theatre audio setup.
While a lot of smart TVs now run on Google’s Android TV software, the S95D runs on Samsung’s own Tizen OS. It does the job. If you’ve already got a Samsung account or an compatible phone, it can setup all of your apps, otherwise the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Disney+ can be signed into using a QR code (locals like Neon and TVNZ+ make you plough though the process manually).
Tizen OS’s Smart Hub home screen shows Sky TV (if you’re a sub), your selection of streaming apps and provides access to any gadgets you’ve got attached. You can add customise it by moving icons around if you wish. Some critics have groussed that Tizen has a smaller selection of apps than Android TV, but all the streamers are there in its app marketplace, plus the likes of YouTube and TikTok. There was never anything I couldn’t download.
The SolarCell remote which, at a pinch, can also recharge via USB-C.
Smart Hub quite aggressively promotes the Samsung TV Plus streaming app. On the plus side, so to speak, this service provides a motherlode of free content. But much of it is relatively low production value or, like Baywatch or Fear Factor, dates from a broadcast era predates HD, let alone 4K Ultra High Definition, so serves as a poor showcase for the S95D. Yes, there’s some upscaling technology in play, but if the source content is relatively low resolution, the larger the display the worse it looks.
A shift in the Google-Samsung relationship means the Korean firm’s 2024 TVs no longer support Google Assistant for voice commands (although you can setup Amazon’s Alex or the inhouse “Bixby”; personally I’m not sure how many bother with saying a voice wake-up command, or hitting the mic button the remote, then saying “open Netflix”, when it’s faster and easier to hit the Netflix button).
Solar remote
My review unit came with a stand-in remote, but the one with the S95D features dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and Samsung TV Plus. It’s also one of Samsung’s SolarCell remotes, so (if you remember to flip it over so the panels on its rear are exposed, you can charge it via natural sunlight (so lucky I don’t have to pull those curtains against glare).
There’s also a USB-C jack for a quick charge at the wall.
Neither is there support for Google Chromecast (Apple’s AirPlay is supported).
Dolby Atmos is supported on the audio side, but not Dolby Vision HDR on the video side - although it does support the rival HDR 10+. The absence of Dolby Vision HDR has annoyed some AV nerds, but the standard is only supported by a limited amount of content from the major streamers in the format, and the likes of Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video support both standards.
I did say there’s always always been one downside to OLED TVs: glare. But if you’re short on lettuce, there’s a second: price.
I tested the entry-level model, the 55-inch version of the S95D, which sells for $4099.
There’s also a 65-inch model, which costs $5099 and a 77-inch model, which will set you back $8699.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
