Now that I’ve seen Samsung’s 8K UHD Q900—the corporate’s finest TV up to now—I’m really remorse that the trade didn’t simply skip over the 4K technology (2160p) and bounce straight from HD (1080p) to 8K (4320p). It’s not that the most effective 4K TVs look dangerous, it’s simply that 8K will get darn near the life-like element that’s been the aim of high-definition TV from the beginning.
I’m additionally only a tad melancholy as a result of we’re as soon as once more going through a well-recognized conundrum: Buy out of date know-how that’s simply enough, however is reasonably priced? Or look forward to the subsequent technology that’s simply coming to market, however is much from reasonably priced for many of us? And with the 75-inch model of Q900 costing round $6,500 from Amazon, and the 65-inch mannequin going for $4,000 from the same retailer, early 8K UHD TVs aren’t precisely commodity objects. Prices will drop as extra 8K TVs hit the streets, however that gained’t occur for some time.
Design and specs
But let’s put apart emotion and transfer on to the info: The Q900 is a LED-array-backlit, quantum dot LCD TV that includes 8K UHD decision (that’s (7860 x 4320 pixels). Samsung is mum on the precise variety of zones within the backlight grid, however my eyes inform me there are fairly just a few. The mannequin I examined was the 75-inch class (74.5 inches measured diagonally), which is 66 inches vast, 40 inches excessive, and 1.4 inches thick.
It’s vast sufficient and heavy sufficient (about 94 kilos with its toes) that you just’ll want two sturdy people to wrangle it. The illustrations within the setup sheet truly present 4 people, however we managed with two. There additionally 82-, 85-, and 98-inch fashions accessible. Hire a gang for those who carry a type of residence.
The leg stands are housed on the again of the Q900. They don’t swing out, you merely take away a pad and so they’ll fall out. We’re guessing they’re positioned there so that you don’t lose them for those who wall mount the TV.
The 13.3-inch-deep legs come housed in small indentations behind the set, however they’ll fall free whenever you take away two small pads. Samsung says it’s to retailer them, but preserve them useful, when the TV is wall-mounted. There are two pairs of mounting holes for stated toes, so you’ll be able to relaxation it on narrower furnishings. That’s a thoughtful function we first encountered on the Hisense H8F.
The Q900 makes use of Samsung’s One Connect know-how, which implies that almost all of the electronics and all of the ports, together with the AC jack, are housed in a breakout field. In this case, a considerably bigger and heavier breakout field than shipped with earlier Samsung TVs—it weighs 10.9 kilos and measures 15.5 inches vast, 3.1 inches excessive, and 7 inches deep. The field connects to the TV by way of one skinny wire. Samsung calls the wire invisible. It’s not.
SamsungSamsung’s One Connect field isn’t a lot to have a look at from the entrance, which is an effective factor for those who don’t like wires. Most of the connections are on the again, however there are three USB ports on the right-hand facet.
Ports on the again of the field embrace 4 HDMI 2.1 (required for 8K); coax for cable, satellite tv for pc, or an over-the-air TV antenna; digital audio out (optical); EX Link (RS-232C); energy; and the One Connect that plugs into the TV. There are three USB ports on the right-hand facet. These are marked in accordance with their power-delivery capacities: One is rated at 5.0 amps, one at 1.0 amp, and the third at 0.5 amps. There aren’t any legacy A/V ports, corresponding to composite, RCA audio, or element. Marrying old-school and new college isn’t one thing Samsung envisions, I suppose.
A extra highly effective CPU was positively to be able to deal with 8K video, which options an astounding 33,177,600 pixels, in contrast with the “mere” 8,251,200 pixels that 4K UHD presents. Samsung has labeled its new processor, not illogically or unexpectedly, the Quantum Q8. Then once more, I might say “confusingly,” because it’s a quad-core CPU. Whatever the title, it does an excellent job.
A big CPU and lighting 4 instances the pixels means you’re going to make use of much more energy. With 4K UHD TVs, the Energy Guide stickers typically declare $20 to $30. The Q900’s sticker says your annual tab shall be greater than $60. Bear in thoughts that these are best-case numbers garnered utilizing ECO mode or the like. In actual life, anticipate to pay extra. The heavier energy consumption can be the explanation for the bigger One Connect field: It offers higher cooling.
Other options embrace Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant for voice management; USB and Bluetooth mouse/keyboard/sport controller help; playback of all kinds of audio, video, and picture codecs from USB media and over your private home community; a common media information; calibration tweaks up the wazoo; and FreeSync help to scale back latency whereas gaming.
Vendor smoke
TV producers’ advertising and marketing folks have been working time beyond regulation creating reasonably indicative (increased numbers are typically higher), however in any other case meaningless terminology to explain the know-how of their merchandise. Samsung has upped the ante by introducing three new ones, so I assumed I’d create a glossary (in alphabetical order):
100% shade quantity This declare from Samsung’s reviewers’ information sounds spectacular, however seeing because it might be filling any of a dozen shade areas, it’s meaningless. Samsung would have performed themselves a favor by reporting that this TV delivers 100 p.c of the DCI-P3 shade house, which is spectacular.
Direct Full Array 16X The Q900 has direct array backlighting; i.e., a number of lights organized in a grid behind the filters and LCDs that may be managed individually. Apparently 16 instances greater than an unspecified baseline.
Motion Rate 240 The Q900 has a 120Hz hardware refresh fee, however as a result of Samsung does stuff like strobing the backlights to course of movement, it feels entitled to make up a time period and a quantity. To be honest, most distributors do the identical factor. The query you’ll need to ask whenever you buy groceries is that this: “What is the hardware refresh rate?”
Quantum HDR 32X This means the TV presents excessive dynamic vary (a higher distinction between the darkest and brightest factors within the displayed image). But 32 instances what, I can’t inform you. The common HDR set peaks at round 600 to 700 nits, and the Q900 measured 1,100 nits on our Minolta 120 meter, so it’s not that. While we’re discussing HDR, Samsung helps HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma), nevertheless it continues to withstand supporting Dolby Vision (which is analogous to HDR10+, however helps 12-bit shade depth).
Real 8K Of course it’s actual—until you’re speaking in regards to the TV trade’s proclivity for rounding up specs in its definitions of video decision: 2K is 1920 x 1080 pixels, 4K is 3840 x 2160 pixels (switching the emphasis from horizontal decision to vertical decision), and 8K is 7680 x 4320 pixels (ditto).
Remote management and person interface
Samsung’s common distant is arguably the most effective mixture of minimalism and performance within the trade. The break up between the buttons and the way they work together with the person interface is almost excellent. I’d choose devoted transport controls for movies performed from USB media, over the community, and even from a disc participant, however that’s a tiny deal. To my eye, Samsung’s high-end remotes are the classiest within the biz.
SamsungThe intelligent and minimalist One Remote common distant management marries nicely with the on-screen interface. My solely want: Dedicated transport controls for enjoying materials from USB and for controlling a Ultra HD Blu-ray disc participant.
The on-screen interface can be simple on the attention, logically laid out, and behind the scenes does cool stuff like mechanically title connected gear. But it could be good if the menu returned you to the place you left off every time you accessed it. Regardless, it’s simple and has all the standard apps, so it’s considered one of my favourite TV working techniques (Roku and LG being the others).
Picture and sound
Happily, I had considered one of Samsung’s 2018 Q8-series TVs available that I might evaluate to the 75-inch Q900. The know-how is analogous and it’s the identical model—I couldn’t have hoped for higher A/B comparisons between 4K UHD and 8K UHD.
Long story brief, the Q900 is superior—even with most 4K UHD content material. There’s extra element in 8K (with the right materials) and 4K UHD appears higher. Pack 4 instances the pixels in the identical house as a 4K UHD TV can and also you get that “retina” impact Apple is so happy with. It’s the identical degree of element, however smoother and clearer element, if you’ll. Quite plenty of the impact is probably going as a result of Samsung’s glorious processing and upscaling, however the pixel density certain doesn’t harm.
Samsung has additionally performed an important job enhancing its array backlighting—there’s some very delicate blooming (an unintended halo round shiny objects on darkish backgrounds) right here and there, nevertheless it’s solely actually noticeable underneath excessive situations, corresponding to neon indicators towards a moonless sky. The Q900 isn’t OLED-like with the black, nevertheless it’s getting darn shut.
The Q900 additionally dealt with pattern- and chroma-upscaling stress assessments nicely, with solely the barest quantity of moiré throughout essentially the most strenuous assessments—considerably lower than the Q8 exhibited. On the extraordinarily uncommon event the place a momentary contact of moiré was seen throughout panning pictures, it was finer because of the increased pixel density. Given Samsung’s obsession with sharp element, which is notoriously exhausting to attain with out artifacts, I used to be impressed.
SamsungThe Q900’s picture is the most effective Samsung has produced up to now. The 8K is fantastic, and the 4K UHD renderings are higher to our eyes than on a local 4K show.
8K video completely exhibits extra element than 4K. I’d say it will get mighty near what you’d see with common eyes utilizing decent-quality optics. And that was the unique level of HD. 4K UHD simply doesn’t fairly get there, therefore my commentary up high. All that stated, it’s not mild years higher, at the least with video.
Where the uptick intimately was actually noticeable is with pictures, which aren’t as compressed as 8K UHD video is. When I switched from 8K pictures to 4K, the latter regarded “soft and puffy” as a buddy of mine would possibly say. Put on an 8K slideshow or stream among the 8K accessible on YouTube (offered your ISP can ship the bandwidth), and I assure your company shall be impressed.
Color is totally top-notch: wealthy, saturated, and correct. Motion was very easy, and with auto movement on, actually didn’t require any tweaking of settings as some earlier fashions did. The automated movement compensation additionally appears to interact extra shortly than it does on final 12 months’s fashions. You can nonetheless see a tiny lag the place the video stutters earlier than it kicks in on a very fast pan, nevertheless it’s not bothersome.
Alas, the Q900 isn’t excellent. The first situation is a few refined, unusual flickering over giant areas of medium to mild brightness with 4K materials. I discovered it exhausting to inform if this was an upscaling artifact, or one thing odd occurring with the backlight, nevertheless it was a bit annoying given how nicely the TV handles most materials. Toggling Digital Clean View or any of the opposite settings didn’t eradicate the phenomena.
The different caveat considerations total display screen uniformity. I detected simply the slightest touches of cloudiness right here and there. Perhaps no matter coating or display screen know-how that facilitates the elevated viewing angle for this 12 months, which is certainly vast, is the wrongdoer. Uniformity remains to be higher than what you’ll discover on most TVs; however given the value, I used to be anticipating close to perfection.
Audio efficiency is—respectable. There’s not plenty of bass, however that’s par for the course until you’re an OLED. This is only a guess, however utilizing the show because the speaker—as Sony OLEDs do—might be not a good suggestion with LCD know-how, which has extra layers of fabric. The Q900’s sound total is evident and doable for regular viewing, however I’d go for one thing extra substantial in brief order. TechHive has a great collection of soundbar reviews here.
Is 4K already lifeless?
It’s tough to swallow, after so few years, however I’m already considering of 4K UHD as a know-how of the previous. As an financial actuality, after all, it stays the dominant tech and can stay so for at the least a pair extra years. But as a know-how, it’s a goner. I nonetheless primarily watch 1080p content material, however I watch it on a 4K UHD show, which makes it look higher. I’ll be fairly completely happy to look at that very same materials on an 8K TV, because the pixel density actually does improve the expertise.
The finest information is that the underlying LCD applied sciences—shade, backlighting, HDR, video processing, and extra—on the introduction of the 8K period are far superior to what was accessible when 4K TVs first got here to market. TVs will enhance, after all, however the tempo of change gained’t be almost as dramatic because it has been over the previous couple of years. (With the exception, maybe, of microLED.) So for those who take the 8K plunge right this moment, it’s unlikely that you just’ll encounter purchaser’s regret in brief order.
Samsung’s finest TV
There are a few causes to purchase Samsung’s Q900: It future-proofs you when it comes to decision, and it’s the most effective LED-backlit LCD TV I’ve examined up to now, regardless of the minor points I mentioned above. When it involves rendering highlights and particulars, nobody outdoes Samsung. This is a superb TV.