Samsung S95D OLED TV Review

The Samsung S95D has a very premium design and looks incredible. The central stand holds the TV well and takes up very little space, and Samsung's external Slim One Connect Box for the inputs results in a more uniform thickness. The biggest difference with this year's model is the change from a glossy to a matte screen finish, which was done so the TV can better handle reflections.

The center-mounted stand is solid and small, supporting the TV well. The TV wobbles a bit, but it recovers quickly and doesn't cause any issues. 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 65-inch stand: 14.2" x 10.5".

The back of the TV is the same as the Samsung S95C OLED, and uses Samsung's external Slim One Connect Box (OCB) to house the inputs. It's a versatile and convenient feature since you can mount it to the stand, mount it to the back of the TV, or place it on your table for easy access. There are no clips included or channels in the back of the TV for cable management, but since you can place the OCB anywhere you want, it's not a big deal.

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

The TV has outstanding build quality. Its stand is made of metal and holds the TV well. There's barely any wobble side-to-side, and although the TV wobbles a bit back and forth when pushed, it recovers quickly and doesn't cause any issues. There's some noticeable flex on the rear plastic panel that increases as you get closer to the VESA mounting points, but this is common and doesn't cause any problems. The brushed aluminum borders give it a premium look, and the lack of a central input housing on the back makes the TV's thickness incredibly uniform.

The Samsung S95D has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV can display very bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room. Due to the TV's matte coating and the way it handles reflections, the TV's contrast ratio greatly decreases and blacks become gray in a bright room, which makes the image look washed out and reduces the impact an OLED typically has.

Since OLEDs don't use local dimming and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no blooming when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

The Samsung S95D is an OLED without a backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as a TV with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how it compares to a TV with local dimming.

Although Game Mode slightly over-brightens the image, there's no other difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and when the TV is set in Game Mode.

The Samsung S95D has excellent HDR brightness. It gets bright enough for highlights to really stand out and delivers an impactful HDR experience. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller specular highlights due to the TV's aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL).

After a minute or so with a sustained 10% window on screen, the TV gets very hot and starts thermal throttling, so it becomes drastically dimmer. Strangely enough, this doesn't happen with any other sustained windows. When displaying a 10% checkerboard pattern (the orange line in the graph), the TV only gets dimmer due to the TV's ASBL, but no thermal throttling occurs, which suggests that the TV detects a 10% window and displays it as bright as possible before overheating occurs. This behavior isn't noticeable with most real-world content since very bright highlights typically don't stay on screen for that long.

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

• Picture Mode: Filmmaker
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Color: 25
• Gamma: ST.2084 (0)
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space Settings: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

With HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active', the overall image is brighter but less accurate. The results below are in 'Filmmaker' mode with 'Active' on.

• Hallway Lights: 1299 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 1133 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 528 cd/m²

The Samsung S95D has excellent HDR brightness in Game Mode. It slightly over-brightens the image, which makes it brighter and more vibrant overall, but it isn't as accurate.

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

• HDR Picture Mode: Game Mode
• Game HDR: Basic
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 50 (Max)
• Gamma: ST. 2084 (0)
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space: Auto
• Peak Brightness: High

Unfortunately, the TV has an issue with thermal throttling, which you can read about here.

With HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active', the overall image is brighter, but less accurate. The results below are in Game Mode with 'Active' on.

• Hallway Lights: 1215 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 964 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 367 cd/m²

The Samsung S95D has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking, so content is mostly displayed at the correct brightness level. Darker shadows and midtones are a bit brighter than intended by the content creator, but the TV follows the curve closely until it reaches the TV's maximum brightness. With content mastered in 600 or 1000 nits, there's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, but since the TV is bright enough to display content mastered at those levels, a roll-off isn't necessary. With content mastered at 4000 nits, there's a more gradual roll-off to preserve detail in very bright highlights.

The Samsung S95D has great SDR peak brightness, and it's bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. Unfortunately, the panel's brightness is dimmed considerably by its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), so large bright scenes are significantly dimmed. It's the most distracting when watching sports like hockey with bright playing surfaces.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50 (Max)
• Contrast: 45
• Color: 25
• Gamma: 2.2
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Tone: Warm2
• Color Space: Auto

The TV has an exceptionally wide color gamut. It displays the full range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space that is often used in HDR content and colors are very accurate overall. Its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space that is increasing in popularity isn't as good, but it's still excellent, with only some highly saturated colors being off from what they should be.

New to Samsung TVs in 2024 is the 'Color Booster' feature. This setting oversaturates colors but does a surprisingly good job at maintaining accuracy within the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces. Colors are still more accurate with the setting turned off, but it works well if you want more saturated colors without losing too much accuracy.

The Samsung S95D has remarkable color volume. The panel shows very bright colors well and gets very close to the same brightness as pure white. It also displays dark, saturated colors very well.

The Samsung S95D has very good pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Gamma is very close to the 2.2 target, but everything is a bit brighter than it's supposed to be. The white balance is good, but blues are overrepresented in almost all shades of gray, and the color temperature is cooler than our target of 6500K. Color mapping is great overall, but whites and cyans lean toward blue.

After calibration, the Samsung S95D has incredible accuracy. Calibration is easy to do, and white balance, color temperature, and color accuracy have no noticeable issues. Gamma is almost perfect, but very dark scenes are still displayed a bit brighter than intended.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Samsung S95D has superb gray uniformity. If you look closely, there are some very faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has incredible black uniformity with no blooming or halo effect around bright objects.

The Samsung S95D has an incredibly wide viewing angle that remains consistent from almost any angle, so it's an excellent choice for watching TV in a group setting.

The Samsung S95D has amazing reflection handling. Its matte screen finish essentially eliminates both direct and indirect reflections in a bright room, but there's a trade-off made with image quality. When light hits the screen, the TV's contrast ratio greatly decreases, and blacks become gray, which makes the image look washed out and reduces the impact an OLED typically has.

The photos below show how the matte finish compares to other similar TVs. They are lined up from left to right in this order: LG C4 OLED, Samsung S95D OLED, Samsung The Frame 2022 QLED (also uses a matte coating), and the Samsung S90D/S90DD OLED.

• TVs off with the blinds open
• Bright scene with the blinds open
• Dark scene with the blinds open
• Bright scene with the blinds closed
• Dark scene with the blinds closed

The Samsung S95D has fantastic HDR native gradient handling. There's no banding in any colors except dark grays, dark greens, and bright blues, but even with those, the banding is barely noticeable unless you specifically look for it.

The TV's low-quality content smoothing is decent. It does a very good job at preserving detail, but there's still noticeable macro blocking in dark scenes.

The Samsung S95D does a very good job at upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are clear enough, but small hard-coded text is hard to make out.

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

• Sharpness: 5
• Picture Clarity Settings: Off

The Samsung S95D 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 leads to color fringing, which is noticeable when displaying any content with horizontal lines, and it's especially bad when you use the TV as a PC monitor. For example, on a bright window on a Windows PC, you might notice a green fringe at the top since that is where the green subpixel is.

Similarly, you can notice a purple fringe at the bottom of bright windows, as that is where the red and blue subpixels are. Furthermore, with this subpixel arrangement, text has just okay clarity on a PC, as Windows ClearType settings aren't designed for this subpixel structure and can't correct for it.

The hazy pixels you see in the photo are caused by the TV's matte coating, but the haziness isn't noticeable when using the TV.

The Samsung S95D has a nearly instantaneous response time, which results 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.

The Samsung S95D isn't technically flicker-free, as a small decrease in brightness corresponds with the display's refresh cycle. This is very different from pulse width modulation flicker (PWM) on TVs with LED backlights, and it's not noticeable.

The TV 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 does a good job smoothing out slower scenes, but there are some noticeable artifacts present. In faster-moving scenes, it can't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts and haloing.

Unfortunately, due to the TV's nearly instantaneous pixel response time, there's stutter with low frame rate content, which is most noticeable during slow panning shots. You can smooth out stutter using motion interpolation, but if you set it too high, you'll introduce noticeable artifacts.

The TV automatically removes judder from all sources when watching movies or shows that are in 24p, even if they're in a 60Hz signal, like from a cable box.

The TV supports all three types of variable refresh rate (VRR) technology to reduce screen tearing. It works well across a wide refresh rate range and supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your framerate drops very low.

Unfortunately, there's an issue when using NVIDIA graphics cards that affects frame rates above 120 fps, which leads to a screen tearing type effect on the bottom of the screen. This issue also affects other TVs, so it's likely an NVIDIA driver-related issue.

This TV has incredibly low input lag when set into Game Mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen. Unfortunately, 1440p @ 60Hz doesn't work while in Game Mode, so the 1440p @ 60Hz results are with the TV set to 'Movie,' which leads to a lot more input lag.

The Samsung S95D supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions when the TV's input label is set to 'PC,' 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).

Unfortunately, the TV has inconsistent issues with displaying 1440p. 1440p @ 60Hz works outside of Game Mode, but when trying to display 1440p @ 120Hz and 1440p @ 144Hz with scaling disabled on both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs in and outside of Game Mode, the TV only displays a cropped window, so the TV isn't doing any upscaling. Strangely enough, this behavior is intermittent, and sometimes 1440p @ 120Hz works fine. There are also no issues with 1440p @ 120Hz when connected to a PS5 or Xbox Series X, which makes the issue even harder to identify.

The TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4K @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

The Samsung S95D is fully compatible with almost everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Unfortunately, Dolby Vision isn't supported on the TV, so gaming in Dolby Vision isn't possible.

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 similar overall but not as widely supported.

Unlike the Samsung S95C OLED, the S95D doesn't support ATSC 3.0 for 4k over-the-air, as Samsung has dropped that feature on their 2024 4k models.

The TV itself only has two inputs: a USB-C port for service only and an input for the One Connect cable. All the audio/video and USB connections are housed on the external Slim One Connect Box instead.

The Samsung S95D supports many audio formats, including all Dolby Digital options. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The Samsung S95D has an alright frequency response. Like most TVs, it doesn't produce much bass, but the sound profile is well-balanced overall, and dialogue is clear. It still sounds pretty good at maximum volume, but the TV doesn't get very loud.

The TV has satisfactory distortion performance. It doesn't get very loud, but there isn't very much distortion near or at max volume.

The Samsung S95D runs the 2024 version of the Tizen OS, and it's fast and easy to use. Unfortunately, there's a problem when switching the input label from 'PC' to anything else. The label will change but the TV is still stuck in 'PC', so you're limited to the features that are available in 'PC' mode. You can hit the home button or turn the TV on/off to fix this.

Like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the TV interface, and although you can turn off targeted ads, there's no option to disable them entirely.

The Samsung S95D has a great selection of apps, so it's easy to find your favorite content. You can also cast content from your phone onto the TV or play videos from a USB stick.

The remote is identical to the one included with the Samsung S95C OLED. It's slim, compact, has quick access buttons for the most popular streaming apps, and is easy to use. The remote 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 TV is compatible with the Bixby and Alexa voice assistants, and its remote has an integrated microphone for voice commands. You can use your voice to launch apps, switch inputs, ask for the weather and time, and adjust certain settings like the TV's brightness.

A single button is located at the bottom right of the TV. You can use it to power the TV on/off, change channels, adjust the volume, and switch inputs. You can control the TV hands-free with your voice using the TV's built-in microphone, but you can also turn the microphone off using a small switch on the bottom right of the TV.

• Power cable
• Remote control
• Accessory clips
• User guide
• Short One Connect cable (16.4")
• Long One Connect cable (97")
• Mounting Screws for Slim One Connect Box