Samsung QN65Q9FN Review: LCD Bounces Back - With A Vengeance
Cue the 2018 Q9FN: as sure a sign as we could have hoped for that Samsung hasn’t taken 2017’s problems lightly.
Here we have a TV range that combines direct backlighting with arguably the most comprehensive and impressively controlled local dimming engine the TV world has seen - and which is being sold at prices way cheaper than those of last year’s equivalent models.
In fact, crucially, the Q9FN prices are on a par with LG’s new C8 OLED TVs in the US (both the 65Q9FN and OLED65C8 will cost $3,800), and actually undercut the C8 OLED in the UK by a good few hundred pounds.
These price and backlight improvements are delivered, moreover, without compromising the class-leading, HDR-friendly brightness Samsung has been pushing so hard for over the last few TV generations. The Q9FN claims to deliver a wider effective viewing angle than last year’s QLED models too, as well as introducing a variety of new smart features and delivering an improved version of the remarkable reflection-removing screen filter that was such a key feature of 2017’s Samsung QLED models.
Not that the QN65Q9FN looks particularly like a cutting edge TV. While the frame around the screen is on-trend slim, the set is markedly deeper than most of today’s TVs. A result, no doubt, of its use of direct rather than edge LED lighting. The back panel curves out slightly too, denying the set the striking ‘monolith’ appeal of 2017’s Q9F range.
While the back might curve a little, though, the screen itself is resolutely flat. Samsung is still delivering some curved models lower down its 2018 range, but as with last year’s models, the flagship sets are flat.
The QN65Q9FN manages to hold its (heavy) screen on a surprisingly narrow metal bar support. Since this support is centrally mounted, you no longer need to set the TV on a particularly wide piece of furniture like you did with the 2017 Q9F ‘separate foot’ design.
As with last year’s QLED models, the QN65Q9FN uses an external connections box to reduce cable spaghetti around the screen. This connections box is huge compared with its predecessors - a result of Samsung building the TV’s power supply into it and introducing a cooling system to eliminate fan noise.
Its extra size makes it harder to tuck away out of sight, while delivering power as well as picture and sound through the single cable that connects the connection box to the screen has resulted in this cable being substantially thicker than the almost invisible one supplied with 2017’s QLED TVs. The pay off, though, is that you now only have a single cable going into the screen, rather than separate AV connection and power cables.
The QN65Q9FN’s most striking design feature, though, only comes into play when you switch it on. A new Ambient Mode lets you fill the screen with either a pre-loaded artwork or one of your own photographs, so that you can see this rather than a black screen when you’re not actively watching the TV. The Ambient Mode setting uses a bare minimum of power, and it seems that Samsung will open up access to more paid-for art works - much as it does for its 2017 ‘Frame TVs’.
Samsung's new Ambient mode means you no longer have to put up with a black screen when you're not watching the TV.
One idea worth noting is that you could potentially photograph your wallpaper or paintwork and have this appear as the Ambient Mode image, so that it blends almost completely into your decor.
Setting the QN65Q9FN up for the first time is pretty straightforward considering how sophisticated it is. You’re guided step by step through all the important stuff, with the set even auto tuning TV channels in the background and automatically detecting the make and model of any kit you might have connected to its four HDMI ports.
Once that’s done, you can control the connected equipment via the QN65Q9FN’s cute silver ‘smart’ remote control. I continue to find, though, that while the minimal button count on this smart remote works great with the TV, it can prove a bit of a headache when it comes to figuring out how to use it to control secondary equipment.
One other big set up improvement for 2018 is that now, thankfully, the QN65Q9FN can automatically switch its HDMI ports into their necessary UHD Color mode when an HDR source is detected. You no longer have to remember to do this manually for each input with an HDR source attached.
At first glance, the QN65Q9FN’s smart menus seem pretty much the same as they did last year. Which would be no bad thing given the how much information they provide in a relatively small area of the screen, and how easy they are to use and customize. Look a little closer, though, and it turns out there are some significant new features.
Samsung's 2018 QLED smart remote (left) versus the 2017 one. Note the Ambient Mode button to top right.
For starters, a new Smart Things app enables you to monitor and communicate with other compatible products on your home network, such as, potentially, fridges, washing machines and even robot vacuum cleaners.
I couldn’t test this feature much as a) the platform is still being fine tuned and b) all my household appliances are resolutely dumb. But it’s a great future-proofing touch given the connected direction our household tech is taking.
Also good to see in Samsung’s latest smart TV system is much more focus on live TV. There’s now recommended live TV content, and live TV has now being properly integrated into the TV’s content browsing features. You can even use voice search to find programming in the broadcast TV listings.
Finally, Samsung sees to have enhanced its TV Plus feature, which enables you to add favorite content from different content sources (streamed or broadcast) to a single list that functions as a sort of all-content electronic program guide.
At the time of writing this feature is still pretty limited in terms of the online services it can work with - at least in the UK. But it’s a helpful concept in principle, and more services will likely come onboard as time goes by.
Fascinating though all this new smart stuff might be, the one thing the QN65Q9FN absolutely, definitely, unquestionably HAS to get right is its picture quality. And I’m very happy indeed to report that it does. With knobs on.
So numerous and impressive are the UN65Q9FN’s picture strengths, in fact, that the only way to tackle them manageably is to look at different aspects of the image individually rather than trying to somehow summarize everything ‘as a whole’. So here goes…
Contrast/black level response
The UN65Q9FN’s move to direct LED lighting with seemingly hundreds of zones of local dimming delivers a transformational improvement over last year’s Q9F where contrast and black levels are concerned.
For starters, dark areas of the picture now look spectacularly and convincingly black rather than washed out and grey. Even better, these beautifully deep blacks are no longer spoiled by large areas of backlight clouding. In fact, there’s practically no clouding at all. Seriously. It even proves almost bullet proof with my favorite backlight torture test, Chapter 7 from the Exodus: Gods And Kings 4K Blu-ray.
In fact, the QN65Q9FN’s pictures are less troubled by the backlight banding associated with edge LED lighting or the ‘blooming’ around bright objects associated with direct LED lighting than any previous LCD TV I’ve seen - including Sony’s Z9D (ZD9 in Europe) sets.
This seems a little surprising given that I don’t think the QN65Q9FN has quite as many separately controlled dimming zones as the Sony. Samsung (strangely) won’t officially confirm the number of zones, and I’m increasingly skeptical of getting remotely accurate results from trying to count them myself. But I’d say there are somewhere between 400 and 500, versus what many consider to be in excess of 500 on the Sony Z9D.
Samsung claims, however, to have implemented a new processing technique that enables it to reduce the intensity of the light produced by a particular dimming zone as it spreads away from that zone’s brightest point, thus reducing the obviousness of any blooming effect. The experience of watching contrast-rich HDR images on the QN65Q9FN suggests that this feature is much more than just marketing hype.
Also key to the phenomenal absence of backlight clouding in the QN65Q9FN’s portrayal of dark HDR scenes is its flawless portrayal of the black bars above and below wide aspect ratio films. Moving bars and blobs of backlight clouding in these black bars are among the most distracting things LCD TVs can show when handling HDR content. But the black bars remain essentially OLED like in their continual blackness on the QN65Q9FN.
The net result of all this stellar backlight control is a picture that’s fantastically immersive, with minimal opportunity for the TV’s lighting technology to distract you from what you’re watching. Which is, for me, pretty much the holy grail of LCD black level performance.
Making this stellar black level performance all the more remarkable is the fact that Samsung’s latest TV can serve up brightness peaks measured (on a 10% white HDR window) of 2413 nits in dynamic mode, or around 1940 nits in Standard mode. These are huge numbers for today’s TV world, and set alongside the outstanding backlight management they result in the most emphatic, gorgeous and immersive HDR experience the TV world has seen to date.
In fact, the Q9FN frequently offers OLED-like black levels alongside the sort of brightness peaks OLED can never manage. Which is, of course, the object of the Q9FN exercise.
Those brightness peaks can only, it must be said, be held for a very short time on a 10% window. But they’re at least illustrative of the brightness the TV can deliver in small or fleeting HDR image highlights.
The Sony Z9D gets decently close to the Q9FN’s HDR performance, and remains an incredible TV two years after its launch. But as well as suffering with slightly more noticeable blooming, it suffers with more clipping in extremely bright image areas such as the lighting around Bruce Wayne when The Flash pops up behind him in Batman Vs Superman on 4K Blu-ray. I struggled to find any native HDR content - even Warners movies mastered to 4,000 nit peaks - that caused any clipping on the Q9FN.
The Q9FN’s remarkable screen filtering technology, meanwhile, ensures that it retains remarkably deep and effective black levels (and all the associated shadow detail and color punch) when you’re watching TV in a bright living room. Even the opening sequence of Blade Runner 2049 in Sapper Morton’s extremely dark kitchen remains enjoyable in a bright room thanks to the almost uncanny way the QN65Q9FN’s screen soaks up reflections and ambient light.
As with last year’s QLED sets, this filter should be considered a huge attraction for many typical TV users/households, where blacking out a viewing room is rarely practical.
I have two minor complaints about the Q9FN’s contrast performance. First, the local dimming can cause some flickering backlight instability with the occasional bit of very awkward content. For instance, the dark picture area to Peter’s right side as a candle flickers behind his shoulder at around 1:15:20 in Pan.
Fortunately, the sort of image elements that cause this localized flickering are extremely few and far between.
The other issue is that dark areas sometimes lack a little shadow detail using the default Standard HDR settings. As a result dark areas can sometimes look too dominant and hollow. Fortunately, increasing the brightness setting of the Standard preset by one, or, better, nudging up the ST.2084 gamma setting pretty much solves the problem without upsetting the rest of the image.
It will be interesting to see if this slight out-of-the-box black crush issue persists with HDR10+ 4K Blu-rays when they appear. But even if it does, you should still be able to take the same countermeasures I suggested a moment ago.
Note that the QN65Q9FN’s HDR Movie mode suffers less with slight black crushing than the other presets in its out of the box state, as well as offering a much better compromise between processing enhancements and ‘native’ source accuracy than previous Samsung Movie modes.
While on the subject of picture presets, though, I’d recommend avoiding the Natural and Dynamic HDR modes. The former looks anything but natural with its overblown blacks and colors, while the Dynamic mode looks too stark.
The Samsung QN65Q9FN.
Color
Now that the Q9FN’s FALD approach has fixed the backlight clouding problems of the previous Q9F series, we can finally experience the full color capabilities of Samsung’s QLED technology. And it’s a truly stunning sight to behold.
Samsung encases its Quantum Dots in metal so that they can be driven harder (for more brightness and color). They’ve also had their color purity improved for 2018 by decreasing their wavelength widths. As a result, they can now cover 100% of the so-called DCI-P3 digital cinema color spectrum - a key target for HDR playback.
Samsung is keen to point out in its press materials, too, that since the Q9FN TVs don’t rely on white sub-pixels, they can maintain saturations better at high brightness levels than screens that do use white sub-pixels. Including consumer OLED TVs.
Colors are fantastically vibrant with HDR and wide color gamut content, as the screen’s awesome brightness and ground-breaking QLED capabilities unlock both more tonal finesse and, especially, more color volume than I’ve ever seen on any television before.
What’s more, the superbly localized control of the backlight means that there’s a bare minimum of backlight-induced ‘bleaching’ or fading of colors in areas of extreme contrast, correcting one of the biggest issues with last year’s Q9F range.
As well as adding to the raw impact of HDR content, the stellar color performance makes pictures of all sorts look more natural and more detailed. In fact, with so much pixel-level color accuracy at its disposal to back up the sheer number of pixels in the screen, this is arguably the most emphatically 4K picture I’ve seen to date.
Colors look beautifully balanced at all times too, with no tones dominating the rest. Flesh tones are consistently realistic and cleanly defined as well, with no blocking, patching or ‘plastickiness'.
There’s one last bit of good news to report on the QN65Q9FN’s HDR colors too: no more banding. HDR sequences that have shown clear and distracting signs of color striping on previous Samsung TV generations now look pretty much stripe-free.
The only color issue I found was a marginal hint of magenta across the screen when watching near-full white field shots, such as the exteriors of Sapper Morton’s cabin in Blade Runner 2049. I have a suspicion, though, that these are particular to my review sample.
Motion
Using the QN65Q9FN’s out-of-the-box Standard motion control preset, I was a little disappointed by how many shimmering artefacts around moving objects it caused. It also makes motion look slightly too fluid and processed for comfort with movies.
For me, after much tinkering around, the best results from the motion processing are achieved using the Custom setting with Motion blur set to 8 and Judder set to three. Nothing I could do, though, managed to produce motion that looked quite as clean and natural as that delivered by the new X-Motion Clarity system on Sony’s recently tested X900F.
One other little point regarding motion is the appearance of some flickering over highly detailed images during camera pans, such as the shot across the mountain side at around 2:06:48 in Exodus: Gods And Kings. Again, though, this issue only crops up very rarely, and can have its impact reduced by nudging down the TV’s default sharpness settings.
Detail and sharpness
The Q9FN’s pictures are mostly a masterclass in unlocking the full potential of the screen’s 4K resolution.
As noted in the color section, the sheer scope of the QLED color technology helps to unlock 4K’s sharpness and detailing potential stunningly well. So much so that some 4K Blu-ray transfers I’d previously considered slightly soft looking suddenly look truly 4K on the QN65Q9FN.
Also impressive is how well the Q9FN resolves detail in the brightest HDR areas. There’s practically no clipping at all, even with the brightest parts of 4,000-nit content. No other set I’ve seen has combined so much brightness with so little clipping.
The sharpness is slightly over-egged out of the box in all but the Movie preset. Though in the Standard Preset, at least, you only have to nudge the sharpness setting down two or three steps to get rid of the initial slight grittiness and stressy edges.
">To say Samsung has a lot riding on its 2018 Q9FN range would be an understatement of near-biblical proportions.
Last year, after all, saw the Korean giant lose a painful chunk of its high-end TV business to OLED rivals - despite Samsung debuting its so-called QLED technology.
A perfect Samsung storm found OLED TVs getting better (especially for HDR) and far more numerous, while Samsung priced its QLED debutantes too high and failed to offer a single premium LCD model that used direct LED lighting (where the lights sit behind the screen).
This latter point, in particular, resulted in a QLED picture performance that arguably pursued brightness too hard at the expense of the contrast and backlight uniformity picture elements that are so important to an immersive TV viewing experience.
Cue the 2018 Q9FN: as sure a sign as we could have hoped for that Samsung hasn’t taken 2017’s problems lightly.
Here we have a TV range that combines direct backlighting with arguably the most comprehensive and impressively controlled local dimming engine the TV world has seen - and which is being sold at prices way cheaper than those of last year’s equivalent models.
In fact, crucially, the Q9FN prices are on a par with LG’s new C8 OLED TVs in the US (both the 65Q9FN and OLED65C8 will cost $3,800), and actually undercut the C8 OLED in the UK by a good few hundred pounds.
These price and backlight improvements are delivered, moreover, without compromising the class-leading, HDR-friendly brightness Samsung has been pushing so hard for over the last few TV generations. The Q9FN claims to deliver a wider effective viewing angle than last year’s QLED models too, as well as introducing a variety of new smart features and delivering an improved version of the remarkable reflection-removing screen filter that was such a key feature of 2017’s Samsung QLED models.
Not that the QN65Q9FN looks particularly like a cutting edge TV. While the frame around the screen is on-trend slim, the set is markedly deeper than most of today’s TVs. A result, no doubt, of its use of direct rather than edge LED lighting. The back panel curves out slightly too, denying the set the striking ‘monolith’ appeal of 2017’s Q9F range.
While the back might curve a little, though, the screen itself is resolutely flat. Samsung is still delivering some curved models lower down its 2018 range, but as with last year’s models, the flagship sets are flat.
The QN65Q9FN manages to hold its (heavy) screen on a surprisingly narrow metal bar support. Since this support is centrally mounted, you no longer need to set the TV on a particularly wide piece of furniture like you did with the 2017 Q9F ‘separate foot’ design.
As with last year’s QLED models, the QN65Q9FN uses an external connections box to reduce cable spaghetti around the screen. This connections box is huge compared with its predecessors - a result of Samsung building the TV’s power supply into it and introducing a cooling system to eliminate fan noise.
Its extra size makes it harder to tuck away out of sight, while delivering power as well as picture and sound through the single cable that connects the connection box to the screen has resulted in this cable being substantially thicker than the almost invisible one supplied with 2017’s QLED TVs. The pay off, though, is that you now only have a single cable going into the screen, rather than separate AV connection and power cables.
The QN65Q9FN’s most striking design feature, though, only comes into play when you switch it on. A new Ambient Mode lets you fill the screen with either a pre-loaded artwork or one of your own photographs, so that you can see this rather than a black screen when you’re not actively watching the TV. The Ambient Mode setting uses a bare minimum of power, and it seems that Samsung will open up access to more paid-for art works - much as it does for its 2017 ‘Frame TVs’.
Samsung's new Ambient mode means you no longer have to put up with a black screen when you're not watching the TV.
One idea worth noting is that you could potentially photograph your wallpaper or paintwork and have this appear as the Ambient Mode image, so that it blends almost completely into your decor.
Setting the QN65Q9FN up for the first time is pretty straightforward considering how sophisticated it is. You’re guided step by step through all the important stuff, with the set even auto tuning TV channels in the background and automatically detecting the make and model of any kit you might have connected to its four HDMI ports.
Once that’s done, you can control the connected equipment via the QN65Q9FN’s cute silver ‘smart’ remote control. I continue to find, though, that while the minimal button count on this smart remote works great with the TV, it can prove a bit of a headache when it comes to figuring out how to use it to control secondary equipment.
One other big set up improvement for 2018 is that now, thankfully, the QN65Q9FN can automatically switch its HDMI ports into their necessary UHD Color mode when an HDR source is detected. You no longer have to remember to do this manually for each input with an HDR source attached.
At first glance, the QN65Q9FN’s smart menus seem pretty much the same as they did last year. Which would be no bad thing given the how much information they provide in a relatively small area of the screen, and how easy they are to use and customize. Look a little closer, though, and it turns out there are some significant new features.
Samsung's 2018 QLED smart remote (left) versus the 2017 one. Note the Ambient Mode button to top right.
For starters, a new Smart Things app enables you to monitor and communicate with other compatible products on your home network, such as, potentially, fridges, washing machines and even robot vacuum cleaners.
I couldn’t test this feature much as a) the platform is still being fine tuned and b) all my household appliances are resolutely dumb. But it’s a great future-proofing touch given the connected direction our household tech is taking.
Also good to see in Samsung’s latest smart TV system is much more focus on live TV. There’s now recommended live TV content, and live TV has now being properly integrated into the TV’s content browsing features. You can even use voice search to find programming in the broadcast TV listings.
Finally, Samsung sees to have enhanced its TV Plus feature, which enables you to add favorite content from different content sources (streamed or broadcast) to a single list that functions as a sort of all-content electronic program guide.
At the time of writing this feature is still pretty limited in terms of the online services it can work with - at least in the UK. But it’s a helpful concept in principle, and more services will likely come onboard as time goes by.
Fascinating though all this new smart stuff might be, the one thing the QN65Q9FN absolutely, definitely, unquestionably HAS to get right is its picture quality. And I’m very happy indeed to report that it does. With knobs on.
So numerous and impressive are the UN65Q9FN’s picture strengths, in fact, that the only way to tackle them manageably is to look at different aspects of the image individually rather than trying to somehow summarize everything ‘as a whole’. So here goes…
Contrast/black level response
The UN65Q9FN’s move to direct LED lighting with seemingly hundreds of zones of local dimming delivers a transformational improvement over last year’s Q9F where contrast and black levels are concerned.
For starters, dark areas of the picture now look spectacularly and convincingly black rather than washed out and grey. Even better, these beautifully deep blacks are no longer spoiled by large areas of backlight clouding. In fact, there’s practically no clouding at all. Seriously. It even proves almost bullet proof with my favorite backlight torture test, Chapter 7 from the Exodus: Gods And Kings 4K Blu-ray.
In fact, the QN65Q9FN’s pictures are less troubled by the backlight banding associated with edge LED lighting or the ‘blooming’ around bright objects associated with direct LED lighting than any previous LCD TV I’ve seen - including Sony’s Z9D (ZD9 in Europe) sets.
This seems a little surprising given that I don’t think the QN65Q9FN has quite as many separately controlled dimming zones as the Sony. Samsung (strangely) won’t officially confirm the number of zones, and I’m increasingly skeptical of getting remotely accurate results from trying to count them myself. But I’d say there are somewhere between 400 and 500, versus what many consider to be in excess of 500 on the Sony Z9D.
Samsung claims, however, to have implemented a new processing technique that enables it to reduce the intensity of the light produced by a particular dimming zone as it spreads away from that zone’s brightest point, thus reducing the obviousness of any blooming effect. The experience of watching contrast-rich HDR images on the QN65Q9FN suggests that this feature is much more than just marketing hype.
Also key to the phenomenal absence of backlight clouding in the QN65Q9FN’s portrayal of dark HDR scenes is its flawless portrayal of the black bars above and below wide aspect ratio films. Moving bars and blobs of backlight clouding in these black bars are among the most distracting things LCD TVs can show when handling HDR content. But the black bars remain essentially OLED like in their continual blackness on the QN65Q9FN.
The net result of all this stellar backlight control is a picture that’s fantastically immersive, with minimal opportunity for the TV’s lighting technology to distract you from what you’re watching. Which is, for me, pretty much the holy grail of LCD black level performance.
Making this stellar black level performance all the more remarkable is the fact that Samsung’s latest TV can serve up brightness peaks measured (on a 10% white HDR window) of 2413 nits in dynamic mode, or around 1940 nits in Standard mode. These are huge numbers for today’s TV world, and set alongside the outstanding backlight management they result in the most emphatic, gorgeous and immersive HDR experience the TV world has seen to date.
In fact, the Q9FN frequently offers OLED-like black levels alongside the sort of brightness peaks OLED can never manage. Which is, of course, the object of the Q9FN exercise.
Those brightness peaks can only, it must be said, be held for a very short time on a 10% window. But they’re at least illustrative of the brightness the TV can deliver in small or fleeting HDR image highlights.
The Sony Z9D gets decently close to the Q9FN’s HDR performance, and remains an incredible TV two years after its launch. But as well as suffering with slightly more noticeable blooming, it suffers with more clipping in extremely bright image areas such as the lighting around Bruce Wayne when The Flash pops up behind him in Batman Vs Superman on 4K Blu-ray. I struggled to find any native HDR content - even Warners movies mastered to 4,000 nit peaks - that caused any clipping on the Q9FN.
The Q9FN’s remarkable screen filtering technology, meanwhile, ensures that it retains remarkably deep and effective black levels (and all the associated shadow detail and color punch) when you’re watching TV in a bright living room. Even the opening sequence of Blade Runner 2049 in Sapper Morton’s extremely dark kitchen remains enjoyable in a bright room thanks to the almost uncanny way the QN65Q9FN’s screen soaks up reflections and ambient light.
As with last year’s QLED sets, this filter should be considered a huge attraction for many typical TV users/households, where blacking out a viewing room is rarely practical.
I have two minor complaints about the Q9FN’s contrast performance. First, the local dimming can cause some flickering backlight instability with the occasional bit of very awkward content. For instance, the dark picture area to Peter’s right side as a candle flickers behind his shoulder at around 1:15:20 in Pan.
Fortunately, the sort of image elements that cause this localized flickering are extremely few and far between.
The other issue is that dark areas sometimes lack a little shadow detail using the default Standard HDR settings. As a result dark areas can sometimes look too dominant and hollow. Fortunately, increasing the brightness setting of the Standard preset by one, or, better, nudging up the ST.2084 gamma setting pretty much solves the problem without upsetting the rest of the image.
It will be interesting to see if this slight out-of-the-box black crush issue persists with HDR10+ 4K Blu-rays when they appear. But even if it does, you should still be able to take the same countermeasures I suggested a moment ago.
Note that the QN65Q9FN’s HDR Movie mode suffers less with slight black crushing than the other presets in its out of the box state, as well as offering a much better compromise between processing enhancements and ‘native’ source accuracy than previous Samsung Movie modes.
While on the subject of picture presets, though, I’d recommend avoiding the Natural and Dynamic HDR modes. The former looks anything but natural with its overblown blacks and colors, while the Dynamic mode looks too stark.
The Samsung QN65Q9FN.
Color
Now that the Q9FN’s FALD approach has fixed the backlight clouding problems of the previous Q9F series, we can finally experience the full color capabilities of Samsung’s QLED technology. And it’s a truly stunning sight to behold.
Samsung encases its Quantum Dots in metal so that they can be driven harder (for more brightness and color). They’ve also had their color purity improved for 2018 by decreasing their wavelength widths. As a result, they can now cover 100% of the so-called DCI-P3 digital cinema color spectrum - a key target for HDR playback.
Samsung is keen to point out in its press materials, too, that since the Q9FN TVs don’t rely on white sub-pixels, they can maintain saturations better at high brightness levels than screens that do use white sub-pixels. Including consumer OLED TVs.
Colors are fantastically vibrant with HDR and wide color gamut content, as the screen’s awesome brightness and ground-breaking QLED capabilities unlock both more tonal finesse and, especially, more color volume than I’ve ever seen on any television before.
What’s more, the superbly localized control of the backlight means that there’s a bare minimum of backlight-induced ‘bleaching’ or fading of colors in areas of extreme contrast, correcting one of the biggest issues with last year’s Q9F range.
As well as adding to the raw impact of HDR content, the stellar color performance makes pictures of all sorts look more natural and more detailed. In fact, with so much pixel-level color accuracy at its disposal to back up the sheer number of pixels in the screen, this is arguably the most emphatically 4K picture I’ve seen to date.
Colors look beautifully balanced at all times too, with no tones dominating the rest. Flesh tones are consistently realistic and cleanly defined as well, with no blocking, patching or ‘plastickiness'.
There’s one last bit of good news to report on the QN65Q9FN’s HDR colors too: no more banding. HDR sequences that have shown clear and distracting signs of color striping on previous Samsung TV generations now look pretty much stripe-free.
The only color issue I found was a marginal hint of magenta across the screen when watching near-full white field shots, such as the exteriors of Sapper Morton’s cabin in Blade Runner 2049. I have a suspicion, though, that these are particular to my review sample.
Motion
Using the QN65Q9FN’s out-of-the-box Standard motion control preset, I was a little disappointed by how many shimmering artefacts around moving objects it caused. It also makes motion look slightly too fluid and processed for comfort with movies.
For me, after much tinkering around, the best results from the motion processing are achieved using the Custom setting with Motion blur set to 8 and Judder set to three. Nothing I could do, though, managed to produce motion that looked quite as clean and natural as that delivered by the new X-Motion Clarity system on Sony’s recently tested X900F.
One other little point regarding motion is the appearance of some flickering over highly detailed images during camera pans, such as the shot across the mountain side at around 2:06:48 in Exodus: Gods And Kings. Again, though, this issue only crops up very rarely, and can have its impact reduced by nudging down the TV’s default sharpness settings.
Detail and sharpness
The Q9FN’s pictures are mostly a masterclass in unlocking the full potential of the screen’s 4K resolution.
As noted in the color section, the sheer scope of the QLED color technology helps to unlock 4K’s sharpness and detailing potential stunningly well. So much so that some 4K Blu-ray transfers I’d previously considered slightly soft looking suddenly look truly 4K on the QN65Q9FN.
Also impressive is how well the Q9FN resolves detail in the brightest HDR areas. There’s practically no clipping at all, even with the brightest parts of 4,000-nit content. No other set I’ve seen has combined so much brightness with so little clipping.
The sharpness is slightly over-egged out of the box in all but the Movie preset. Though in the Standard Preset, at least, you only have to nudge the sharpness setting down two or three steps to get rid of the initial slight grittiness and stressy edges.
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