Samsung S95C OLED TV Review

The Samsung S95C has a very premium design and looks incredible in any room. The central stand looks great and takes up very little space, and Samsung's decision to switch to the external Slim One Connect box for the inputs results in a more uniform thickness, similar to the LG G3 OLED.

After ten months, the TV shows no signs of permanent image retention. Its brightness has dipped slightly but has remained mostly the same.

The center-mounted stand is solid and small, supporting the TV well. Due to the large size of the TV, it wobbles a bit, but it's not bad at all. The stand lifts the display 3.35 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 77-inch stand: 14.2" x 11.2".

The back of the TV is very different from the 2022 Samsung S95B OLED. Samsung has decided to move the inputs to an external Slim One Connect box, so you can place the input box away from the TV. It's a versatile feature, as you can leave the input box on your table or mount it to the back of the TV or the back of the stand. There are no other clips or anything for cable management, though.

The TV leans back about three degrees, but this isn't noticeable when you're sitting in front of it.

The Samsung S95C has fantastic build quality. Samsung has redesigned the shell of the TV, resulting in a more uniform thickness, and it feels more solid, so it's unlikely that it'll have the same issue with bent panels that affected the Samsung S95B OLED. The stand is very robust and stable, and even though it still wobbles a bit, it's not bad at all. There's some flex to the back casing, but it's very minor and won't cause any issues.

Since OLED displays use self-emissive pixels instead of a backlight, the Samsung S95C has a nearly infinite contrast ratio.

Since this TV uses self-emissive OLED technology, there's absolutely no blooming around bright highlights or subtitles in otherwise dark scenes.

The Samsung S95C doesn't have a backlight, but thanks to its nearly infinite contrast ratio, it's equivalent to a perfect local dimming feature with no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a TV that has local dimming.

Switching to the 'Game' picture mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in contrast or black crush. Contrast is perfect even in 'Game' mode.

The Samsung S95C has impressive peak brightness in HDR. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller specular highlights due to the TV's aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). The TV also can't maintain bright highlights; brightness peaks quickly, but then starts to decrease almost immediately. If you're in a bright room, a TV with an LED backlight, like the Samsung QN90C/QN90CD QLED, is a better choice, as it can better overcome glare.

You can set Peak Brightness to 'Off' in HDR if the brightness fluctuations bother you, but this just locks the peak brightness much lower, so highlights in HDR don't stand out at all anymore.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: FILMMAKER
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: Max
• Color Tone: Warm2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

The TV has impressive HDR brightness in Game Mode and is actually slightly brighter than it is outside of it.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: Max
• Color Tone: Warm2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• HDR10+ Gaming: Off
• Color Gamut: Auto
• Game HDR: Basic

The TV has superb PQ EOTF tracking, which ensures that most content displays at the correct brightness level. There's a sharp cutoff near the TV's peak brightness for content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits, so there's some clipping in really bright scenes in content mastered at those levels, which is most content. There's a smoother roll-off with content mastered at 4,000 nits, with less clipping, but very little content is mastered at that level.

The Samsung S95C has good peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. There's a noticeable variation in brightness with different scenes, though, as very bright, high-APL scenes are dimmed considerably by the TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). It's mainly distracting when watching sports like hockey with bright playing surfaces. Setting Peak Brightness to 'Off' effectively disables the ABL feature but also reduces the peak brightness to about 250 cd/m² in all scenes. If you want an OLED but want a brighter SDR experience, check out the LG G3 OLED.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: Max
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Tone: Warm2

The Samsung S95C has an incredibly wide color gamut. It can display the full range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space used by most HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space isn't as good, although it's still amazing. Still, highly saturated colors in Rec. 2020 are slightly off from what they should be.

This TV has exceptional color volume. Thanks to its QD-OLED panel, it displays dark, saturated colors perfectly, and colors are bright and vibrant. Colors are bright relative to pure white, and this is one of the main advantages of QD-OLED panels like this one over WOLED panels like the LG C3 OLED.

Even without calibration, the Samsung S95C has excellent accuracy in SDR. The white balance is great, with no noticeable issues, and gamma follows the 2.2 target for a moderately lit room well. Most colors are displayed well, except for reds, which are a bit off but not noticeably so. The color temperature is very close to the target.

After calibration, the Samsung S95C has fantastic accuracy, with no noticeable issues at all. It's relatively easy to calibrate.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Samsung S95C has excellent gray uniformity. There's very little variation in brightness across the screen, which is great for any content. There's also almost no distracting dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for sports fans.

Since OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the Samsung S95C has perfect black uniformity, with no distracting blooming or halo effect around bright areas of the screen in dark scenes.

The Samsung S95C has an exceptionally wide viewing angle. Although it's close to perfect, the image fades slightly at extremely wide angles. In practice, you can move around the TV and see a consistent image at almost any angle.

The Samsung S95C handles direct reflections incredibly well, but like the Samsung S95B OLED before it, there are some flaws. The glossy anti-reflective coating significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections, but due to the lack of a polarizer, the TV has a pink tint to it even when it's off.

The Samsung S95C has superb gradient handling in HDR. There's some minor banding in dark grays and bright blues and greens, but it still looks great. If you want even better HDR gradient handling, check out the Samsung S90D/S90DD OLED.

This TV has just okay processing capabilities with low-quality content. It can't smooth out macro blocking very well, so it's still very noticeable, especially in dark scenes. On the other hand, it preserves fine details well. The Sony A95L OLED does a much better job smoothing out low-quality content.

The Samsung S95C upscales DVDs and other 480p content well, with no noticeable issues, but it's not as good as the Sony A95L OLED.

Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 5
• Picture Clarity: Off

The Samsung S95C uses a unique subpixel structure. Instead of having all three subpixels in a row, each pixel forms a triangle, with the larger green subpixel at the top. This is especially noticeable when displaying any content with horizontal lines and especially bad when used as a PC monitor. Text has just okay clarity from a PC, as Windows ClearType settings aren't designed for this subpixel structure and can't correct for it. You can see a few examples below:

• Top edge of a white line - horizontal lines like this have a green fringe at the top, as the top-most line of subpixels are all green.
• Bottom edge of a white line - horizontal lines like this appear purple along the bottom, as the last line has only red and blue subpixels.
• ClearType 'On'.
• ClearType 'Off'.

The TV has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some noticeable persistence blur when gaming at 60Hz, but it's hardly noticeable at higher refresh rates.

This TV isn't technically flicker-free, as there's a small decrease in brightness that corresponds with the refresh cycle of the display. This is very different from pulse width modulation flicker (PWM) on TVs with LED backlights, and it's not noticeable.

The Samsung S95C has an optional black frame insertion feature (BFI) that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. It can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It works well with slower scenes, but in fast-paced action, it can't keep up, and there are noticeable artifacts and haloing.

Unfortunately, due to this TV's quick response time, slow-paced motion and panning shots stutter a lot.

The TV is always judder-free when watching 24p movies or TV shows, even from sources that can only send a 60Hz signal, like a cable box. It's even judder-free with the BFI feature enabled on a 60Hz signal.

The Samsung S95C supports variable refresh rate (VRR) technology to reduce screen tearing. It works well across a wide refresh rate range, even when your frame rate drops low, as it also supports Low Framerate Compensation or LFC. It's also compatible with all three types of VRR, ensuring it's fully compatible with all sources that support VRR.

This TV has incredibly low input lag, ensuring a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen. With BFI enabled at 60Hz ('Game' Mode, 'Game Motion Plus' enabled, and 'Clear Motion' enabled), the input lag is 29.4ms.

The Samsung S95C supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions, which is important for text clarity. Unfortunately, even though it can display chroma 4:4:4 properly, text from a PC isn't clear due to the unusual subpixel structure (see the Pixels section of the review for more on this issue). 4k @ 120Hz signals are displayed properly, with no resolution-halving or other issues.

This TV can take full advantage of the PlayStation 5 system. It supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to 'Game' mode to get the lowest input lag.

With the exception of Dolby Vision support, this TV can take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X systems. It supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to 'Game' mode to get the lowest input lag.

Although the TV supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports, all four ports are limited to 40Gbps. In practice, this doesn't cause any issues or limitations with any current source. Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn't support Dolby Vision. However, it supports HDR10+ instead, which is very similar overall but not as widely supported.

The TV itself only has two inputs: a USB-C port that appears to be for service only and an input for the OneConnect cable. All the audio/video and USB connections are housed on the external OneConnect box instead.

This TV supports eARC, which lets it pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source through to your soundbar or home theater system without sacrificing audio quality. Sadly, it doesn't support any DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

Unfortunately, the Samsung S95C has just decent sound quality. It has a well-balanced sound profile, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand, but it's not very loud, and it has horrible bass, with no thump or rumble at all. On the other hand, there's almost no compression at all.

This TV has decent distortion performance. There's very little audible distortion at normal listening levels, and since it can't get very loud anyway, even at max volume, it's not very noticeable.

The Samsung S95C runs the 2023 version of Tizen OS, which is fast and easy to use. The Smart Hub interface is smooth and has lots of advanced options, and it's easy to find your favorite content.

Unfortunately, like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the interface, and there's no option to disable them completely. There are a few privacy-related options, so you can limit things like ad-tracking, but this doesn't reduce the number of ads you see, as it just makes them less personalized.

The included apps cover most of the common streaming services, and there's a great selection of additional apps available in Samsung's app store.

The remote is very slim and compact and is easy to use. It has a built-in rechargeable battery with a solar panel on the back of the remote. You can also recharge it via USB-C if it dies unexpectedly.

The controls are on the bottom bezel of the TV near the right corner. There's a single button to power the TV on/off and change channels, volume, and inputs.

• One Connect box (not shown)
• Short One Connect cable (12")
• Long One Connect cable (94.5")
• Power cable
• Remote
• One Connect cable plug protective caps (x4)
• Cable management clips
• Plastic spacers/One Connect anchors (x3)
• Documentation