If there’s one thing that you can say about Samsung, it’s that they are doggedly dedicated — some might say stubborn — but however you want to spin it, it’s clear that Samsung has a vision and will see it through, come hell or high water. Not going to lie, I respect that. But what does all that have to do with Samsung’s best Neo QLED mini-LED TVs? It’s all about their 8K TV strategy. In 2025, Samsung will still be putting out a flagship 8K Neo QLED mini-LED TV, the QN990F, alongside the flagship 4K Neo QLED mini-LED, the QN90F (size availability and pricing for Samsung’s QLED TVs was announced last week).
Now, before I get into each specific model, let’s take a 10,000-foot view of what Samsung is doing with its TV lineup to really stand out among some tough competition. Not to mince words, but brands like TCL and Hisense have been eating up market share from every other brand, and that includes Samsung. So what has Samsung done to make its TVs especially appealing? Well, from where I sit, there is no more fully featured TV on the market than what Samsung makes right now. While there’s no way I can get through everything these TVs can do, I’ll go through some of the highlights here.
Samsung Vision AI
We have to start with Samsung’s brand-new Vision AI, which I feel got glazed over at CES, and I get why. As a journalist myself, I’m overwhelmed with all the info coming at me from all these companies. I have a limited amount of time to show off new products, and I’m going to pick out the most popular specs and information to share to try and show how each company is measuring up to its competition at the show. It’s a hype fest, right? And not everything is going to make the cut. Since then, I’ve had some time to look into Samsung Vision AI, and here’s just some of what it can do.
First off, it can do real-time subtitle translations. If you’re watching a piece of foreign content and can’t get, let’s say, English subtitles, Vision AI will take care of that for you. Now, I’ve not tested it for accuracy, but I cannot wait to check it out.
Vision AI also enables on-screen click-to-search. This feature allows you to instantly get information about on-screen content without stopping the show or the movie. I don’t know how detailed this can get, but you can find out stuff like who that actor is and what outfit they’re wearing, who made it, maybe even what stereo is in the background, or what kind of turntable that is. This is another one I can’t wait to try out because, while I know which speakers those are in Harvey Specter’s office on Suits, I’m unsure about the turntable, and I’ve seen furniture in some shows that I definitely would like to have — or at least know more about.
There’s also generative wallpapers, home insights, and pet and family care. Microsoft Co-Pilot integration is coming, and then there are some Art Store features being rolled out to its premium TVs outside of The Frame lineup. Now you can choose between a piece of art that’s also a TV or a TV that’s also capable of looking like a piece of art. Who else is offering similar functionality? Near as I can tell, nobody offers all of this in one TV aside from Samsung.
Now, do you want this stuff? Do you care? Well, that’s entirely up to you, but you can’t argue that it isn’t unique to Samsung.
Samsung also has Q-Symphony sound, which is not a totally unique take on integrating a TV’s speakers with the same-brand soundbar system audio, but Samsung makes some of the best soundbars that you can buy, so this is an especially desirable feature. I also don’t know anyone else making a Music Frame — a small piece of art that doubles as a speaker, which can also be folded in as a surround speaker with a soundbar system. That’s lifestyle audio to a tee.
Anti-glare technology gets an upgrade
Now we get down to the real nitty-gritty — Samsung’s new anti-glare/anti-reflection technology. This has been a somewhat controversial feature among TV enthusiasts, but there’s no denying that it is highly effective and that some folks prefer how it handles reflections to the treatment that other brands use. And while this was once reserved for Samsung’s best OLED TV — the S95 series — we now find it on both the QN990F here as well as the QN90F 4K set. That is a real standout difference for Samsung.
Adding to that, there’s the new Wireless One Connect Box, which is an enhancement on the already unique One Connect Box. It allows you to connect all of your stuff to a box away from the TV and either run one cable to the TV or, in the case of this new wireless One Connect that comes with the QN990F, there’s no cable going to the TV at all.
And you can control your Samsung TV with a rechargeable remote, which you can charge via USB-C or using the solar cells on the back of the remote. Again, uniquely Samsung.
Take all of that, and you realize, if you love bells and whistles, nobody has them like Samsung. If you want a different take on key technology, Samsung does that too. That’s how Samsung is differentiating itself — love it or leave it.
Samsung’s flagship 8K QN990F
Want to talk about steadfast or stubborn? Samsung is now the only major TV manufacturer left standing with an 8K TV. Everyone else got out—including, most recently, LG. But why? It stands to reason that everyone else got out of 8K because there was no money in it. Sales were probably pretty slow, and that’s because there’s very little 8K content to enjoy, apart from YouTube. You also have folks like me out here saying it’s better to have a 4K TV to play 4K content than to have to take 4K content and upscale it—no matter how good that upscaler might be.
Near as I can tell, the main reason Samsung is sticking with 8K is because it knows somebody has to. And it’s come this far—might as well just keep on going. There’s no reason for anyone to hop onto the 8K content production bandwagon unless there’s a TV to play it on. So in this chicken-or-the-egg scenario, Samsung has chosen to move first. And rather than abandon 8K like everyone else has, it’s going to try and stick it out.
So we get the QN900F and QN990F, which is an objectively gorgeous, high-performance TV. My colleague here at Digital Trends, John Higgins, took on measurement duties during our visit to Samsung, and we clocked peak white brightness from a 10% window at just shy of 2,000 nits, and full-field white came in around 500 nits, which is great. That’s going to look especially bright on a much larger screen.
If you’re thinking that a just under 2,000-nit 10% number seems a little low — considering other brands are out there putting out much brighter 4,000-nit TVs and the like — well, it’s actually not. Let me explain. What a lot of folks forget about 8K LCD TVs is that the aperture of the LCD cells on an 8K TV is super tiny — they’re very, very closed — so a lot less of that mini-LED backlight luminance makes it through that tiny aperture. You have to seriously juice up that backlight to get it even this bright, and going even brighter is kind of a nonstarter right now, especially with the European Union imposing energy regulations that preclude a TV like the QN990F from getting much brighter.
The QN990F is not necessarily going to win any head-to-head HDR highlight measurement battles going against some of the most aggressively bright 4K TVs. But if we get our heads out of the enthusiast clouds and step back down into the reality most folks live in, we can see that this TV’s full-screen brightness is more than enough to appear gorgeous in a well-lit room — especially at its larger screen sizes and especially with its anti-glare technology at work.
No doubt, it is absolutely suitable for bright room applications, and its HDR performance is very admirable. Color saturation looks solid, color accuracy was also impressive — it’s a top-tier TV in every sense. All told — and yes, by default — the Samsung QN990F is the best 8K mini-LED TV that you can buy, and it’s bound to be a ton of fun, what with that mountain of folded-in features.
Samsung Neo QLED 4K QN90F
Now, let’s talk about the new QN90F. This is the flagship 4K Neo QLED mini-LED TV that lots of folks are going to want to consider this year, going against the best from Hisense, TCL, Sony, and LG.
Peak brightness came in just under 3,000 nits from a 10% window, and it did a little over 700 nits full-field white in our field tests. I should also mention that both of these TVs track the EOTF really well in Filmmaker Mode — which we have come to expect. If you step out of Filmmaker Mode, Samsung does do its extra punchy brightness thing, which, while not accurate, is a look that we know lots of folks prefer. So, you can get a very bright picture outside of Filmmaker Mode while retaining color accuracy and such in, say, the Cinematic Mode. If you want the accuracy, though, Filmmaker Mode has got it.
Don’t forget that this model now has that anti-glare treatment — which, by the way, did not give off matte-finish vibes at all while I was there. That didn’t even cross my mind, which I think says a lot.
Color accuracy was again very good, with P3 coverage around 94% and BT.2020 coverage around 75% — what we’d expect from a mini-LED backlit LCD TV with quantum dots.
Perhaps the biggest news about the QN90F is literally huge. Samsung is going to offer the QN90F in sizes ranging all the way up to 115 inches. Now, what’s unique about this is that while others are producing 115-inch sets, they are not necessarily at the top of their 4K lineup unless they are a ridiculously expensive moonshot TV. So, I’m really interested to see this 115-inch QN90F from Samsung because it might balance performance with price at that ultra-large size in a way that nobody else is doing — with Samsung’s build quality and reputation, but mostly, its insanely rich feature set.
Samsung has successfully set itself apart from all the other brands. It’s offering plenty that you just can’t get elsewhere. The two Neo QLED mini-LED TVs are for sure going to be contenders among enthusiasts, but perhaps more importantly, I think Samsung stands a great chance at selling these TVs to folks who just want a high-performance TV from a name they can trust. Whether they can see a boost from Vision AI and all the other bells and whistles they offer, I think, is going to come down to how well these TVs get reviewed. And that, my friends, remains to be seen — but I can’t wait to see it myself.
