LG QNED80A6A (VA) vs Samsung OLED S95H (S99H) (QD-OLED)

Let's talk now about how this TV shines. If you’re expecting dazzling light effects, we need to cool your enthusiasm. The LG QNED80A is a moderately bright television. Our measurements in most film scenes indicated values around 350-400 nits. That’s not enough to speak of a full, cinematic HDR experience and the feeling of that famous “high dynamic range” that flagship products offer. However, brightness is not everything. Although the QNED80A is not a “light monster,” it makes up for it in another key category: colours. This is where PFS technology comes into play, which LG marketers hide under the name QNED/NanoCell. With this trick, the TV offers a significantly wider colour palette than classic LCD constructions. In our tests, the coverage of the cinematic DCI-P3 palette reached a solid 93-94%. What does that mean for you? That even at lower brightness, when watching films in HDR, the colours will be vibrant, deep, and properly saturated. The image is not washed out but juicy, which is a significant advantage in this price range.

When it comes to pure brightness, the S99H is an astronomically bright TV. Its peak brightness in film scenes can exceed 2,800 nits. Whatever the scene, you can expect powerful HDR effects that are almost blinding, which is exactly what we want from a top‑tier display. By nature, an OLED panel can't maintain that extreme brightness in very bright, full‑screen frames the way it can with small bright highlights, but the results are still excellent. In a bright scene from The Meg the sun still exceeded 2,200 nits. That means the S99H was able to hold a higher brightness than most Mini LED screens on the market. In terms of brightness the S99H is currently the best OLED TV we've tested.

Colour gamut coverage

The S99H also handles colours exceptionally well, thanks directly to the QD‑OLED panel used here. Whether the test used synthetic test patterns or measurements with film material in the background, the results remained very high. The S99H easily covers almost 100% of the DCI‑P3 gamut, and in the most demanding space, BT.2020 it reaches nearly 90%. That's absolute top‑tier performance. These results match what we saw in the new SQD‑Mini‑LED displays, and in real film scenes they even surpass RGB Mini LED displays.

It might seem that since the QNED80A is one model, it should offer the same picture regardless of the version. However, practice shows something completely different. Analyzing the variant with the VA panel in the best factory setting – that is, in Filmmaker Mode – we noticed a specific characteristic. This TV "out of the box" delivers a picture with a clear dominance of red and a deficiency of blue. Overall, it is very warm, almost hot. Many users might describe it as an "overly cinematic" picture, leaning towards sepia. Additionally, there is the issue of gamma curve – the TV has a tendency to slightly and artificially brighten scenes (gamma is too low), which causes the picture to lose some of its plasticity. The good news is that these are not panel errors, but merely software issues. As always in our tests, we performed professional calibration, which completely eliminated these drawbacks, restoring natural white balance and correct saturation.

Samsung offers a whole host of picture modes and features, but we traditionally recommend choosing FILMMAKER mode, especially if you want the most faithful rendering of the creators' intent. Out of the box the TV is tuned very well, though it has minor flaws. These are mainly a slight deviation in white balance in SDR content and a slightly low gamma. As a result, the picture in a dark room can be a little too bright compared with the reference value of 2.4, which is the standard for watching films with the lights off. These are, of course, small issues, because overall colour reproduction remains very good and the errors in ColorChecker measurements are not large. However, we know that for a screen of the S99H's calibre you can and should expect even more, so we subjected it to professional calibration.

Was it worth spending time on calibration? Definitely yes. We managed to tame the initial, overly warm white balance and, most importantly, correct the gamma curve. The television stopped artificially brightening scenes, resulting in a deeper image. The biggest gains are visible in SDR content, such as when watching regular television, YouTube, or playing games without HDR. Here, the QNED80A shows its class – colour reproduction errors (DeltaE) fell below a value of 2. In technical terms, this means the errors are essentially invisible to the human eye. The image in everyday use has simply become very attractive, natural, and correct. The difficulties start with HDR content. Although we managed to improve the white balance, the EOTF curve (responsible for brightness at various levels) shows that the television still "interprets" the image in its own way. This results from the nature of the edge-lit backlighting with local dimming and the fact that LG gives the calibrator very little control over this parameter. In short: the television struggles to hide its hardware shortcomings, sometimes ignoring our commands. Nevertheless, the final image is significantly more accurate and pleasant to view than the factory settings, even if it still lacks a bit compared to studio perfection.

After professional calibration, FILMMAKER mode looks practically perfect. Because Samsung offers a rich set of advanced calibration controls, we were able to tune the colours to an almost perfect level. Above all, we managed to even out the white balance and the gamma curve, which resulted in noticeably improved contrast and correct image modelling. In a profile prepared like this there really isn't a single thing to pick apart or call a fault. After calibration, the S99H can deliver an essentially reference-quality picture.

In this category, the QNED80A turns out to be a true "dark horse". It's a fantastic, affordable television for those who often watch lower quality content – for example, from traditional cable TV. The processor used here handles upscaling incredibly well, enhancing low resolutions to native 4K. The image after processing is natural, smooth, and most importantly – it is not overly jagged or artificially sharpened. In the menu, we also find a dedicated option for smoothing tonal transitions in low-quality content. This feature works really effectively, eliminating the annoying "banding" of colours during heavy video compression. However, we must remain vigilant. Remember, we are not dealing with the top-tier processor known from flagship OLED models. In more challenging scenes, the system might struggle and introduce minor artefacts or distortions. Nevertheless, it's definitely worth giving this feature a chance, because in the majority of cases, the quality improvement is visible to the naked eye.

Upscaling and digital image processing are handled by Samsung's proprietary NQ4 Gen3 processor. It copes very well with scaling lower-resolution content to 4K. The picture is clear without looking artificial or overly sharp. The only fairly specific drawback appears with very old material recorded at 480p or lower. In such cases the TV can slightly crop the edges of the image.

The processor also does a decent job with artefacts visible in low-bitrate material, for example in heavily compressed YouTube videos. The noise reduction function effectively smooths the picture and reduces posterisation, but it works quite aggressively. It can remove not only unwanted artefacts but also some fine detail, and even natural film grain. We, wanting to preserve maximum fidelity to the source material, chose not to use it. However, if someone values a clean, as-smooth-as-possible image more than keeping every detail, it may prove useful.

We move on to a topic that may be crucial for many. Unfortunately, here we must point out the biggest "Achilles' heel" of the QNED80A model. This television is equipped with a panel that has a native refresh rate of 60Hz. There’s no denying it – at this price, we were hoping for more as we know that Chinese manufacturers can offer 120Hz screens for similar money. Due to this parameter, dynamic scenes in sports or fast-paced games are not the strongest point of this screen. Fortunately, LG has equipped the television with a proven smoothing system called TruMotion. It works quite well with film material (24 frames). We suggest playing around with the De-Judder slider – from our experience, setting it in the range of 2-4 provides the best compromise: motion becomes smoother, yet still looks natural, without the artificial "television theatre" effect.

Another major advantage of organic panels is very good motion handling. Thanks to the pixels' near-instant response time, the Samsung S99H shows virtually no smearing. Fast-moving objects don't produce visible halos or trailing artefacts, so the TV performs very well for both sport and gaming. One quirk of OLED screens compared with LCD is the way they render low-frame-rate material. With very slow camera movement the picture can appear noticeably more juddery. This can be quite effectively mitigated using frame interpolation. Samsung lets you adjust judder reduction and motion blur reduction separately, so it's easy to find a compromise between a smoother picture and preserving the cinematic feel of the content.

Since we've already established that the QNED80A is a 60Hz TV, we must say it straight: we won't be gaming here at 120 frames per second at any resolution. Does this disqualify the device in the eyes of gamers? Not necessarily, especially for those "casual" players. LG decided to sweeten this technical limitation by packing in quite a few useful features. We have support for VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) in the range of 48-60Hz and an automatic game mode ALLM, which instantly reduces input lag upon detecting a console. We manage all of this via a very convenient, purple Game Optimizer menu (Player Panel), which has become LG's hallmark. The manufacturer deserves big points for consistency regarding HDR. Although the TV does not support Dolby Vision in games on Xbox consoles, LG adds a well-implemented HGiG standard. Thanks to this, even on a screen with moderate brightness, playing in HDR is clear, and the details in shadows and highlights are accurately rendered, rather than being "clipped".

Samsung S99H is also a top TV for gamers. It offers almost every possible and useful feature... well, perhaps except the obvious lack of Dolby Vision for the Xbox console. It’s equipped with four full-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports with the full 48 Gbps bandwidth. That makes it easy to use frame-rate synchronization VRR or automatic low-latency mode (ALLM). This year Samsung also has no issues with proper HGiG support, so HDR setup on a console is quick and free of unnecessary complications. Samsung is also known for interesting extras in its TVs. In the Game Bar menu you’ll find options to add an on-screen crosshair, enlarge the minimap, or change the aspect ratio of the displayed image (PC).

Particularly noteworthy is Samsung’s feature: Game Motion Plus. It’s Samsung’s proprietary motion-smoothing system that uses interpolation to boost smoothness in games. Input lag then rises to around 40 to 50 ms (depending on the strength of the setting), which, compared with the competition, is an excellent result. The system makes gameplay noticeably smoother. So if someone has their eye on a demanding game (e.g. GTA 6 😉) that runs on a console at only 30 fps, the S99H can display it much more smoothly than competing models.