Samsung M80H vs Philips OLED811

The M80H is not one of the brightest TVs. Its peak brightness is around 350 nits, and we saw similar results across most of our test scenes. That's not enough to achieve truly striking HDR, as bright highlights lack punch and the overall image is a little too dim. In practice, HDR on the M80H feels more like well-presented SDR than noticeably more dynamic material with a wide brightness range. The picture can still look fine, but it's hard to point to strong highlights, clearly bright light sources, or an effect that immediately sets HDR apart from ordinary content.

Colours

One of the M80H's stronger points is its colours. The TV uses a PFS filter in the backlight, which lets it display a much wider colour gamut than a standard LCD without filters. Our measurements confirm this – the M80H covers about 96% of the DCI-P3 gamut and 72% of BT.2020. Those are very good results, which allow colours to be richly saturated. Samsung's positioning here is interesting. The M80H isn't part of the QLED family, even though in terms of colour it is practically on par with models carrying that badge. From an image quality point of view that doesn't make much difference – the colours are simply good.

Philips OLED811 uses the new generation WOLED EX panels, also found in models like the LG C6 and Samsung S90H. After calibration we measured about 1500 nits, which is a very good result for an OLED TV. You can see that clearly in films and series. Flashes of light have the right punch, especially when they appear on a dark background. In those scenes the OLED811 can deliver really impressive HDR. Of course this doesn't mean you'll see that level of brightness in every shot. When the screen is filled with a large area of white or a wide explosion, brightness falls to around 600 nits. That's still a good result, but such scenes don't have the same impact as small bright elements on a dark background. That's a known limitation of OLEDs and the OLED811 is no exception.

Colours

Aside from HDR brightness, colours also matter and here Philips also performs very well. It covers almost the entire DCI-P3 gamut, which contains most of the colours used in HDR films and series. So you get rich reds and lush greens, and while watching it's hard to fault it in that regard. It looks a bit worse with the much wider BT.2020 gamut — its most saturated shades are already beyond the reach of this panel. There's also the issue of the white subpixel that the WOLED panel uses to help boost brightness. With very bright colours you can see a certain "washout": the colour is bright but loses some of its intensity. It's in exactly these situations that Samsung Display's QD-OLED panels have the advantage. In most films and series, though, this won't be something that immediately jumps out at you.

Filmmaker Mode is pretty well set up out of the box, though it’s not perfect. In SDR material the most noticeable issue is an excess of red in the white balance, which makes the picture look a little warmer than it should. HDR content has a similar character. As for brightness response, in SDR the gamma stays close to the target value across most of the range. Small deviations are mainly visible in darker areas, which are in places slightly too dim. In HDR the very darkest details are slightly lifted, while from around 65% brightness the image starts to be gently darkened. This largely results from the way the TV controls its brightness. Overall, Filmmaker Mode looks good straight out of the box, but the picture can still be improved.

The film mode on the Philips OLED811 is sensibly set up straight out of the box. Most colour errors remain minor in both SDR and HDR, so you can comfortably sit down to watch without adjusting the settings first. There are no large inaccuracies that would immediately distract from the film.

It’s not quite perfect, though. The white balance shows a slight lack of red relative to green, so whites and greys can have a faint greenish tint. It’s not a strong colour cast, but measurements clearly show it. There are also small luminance deviations in SDR: some parts of the image are slightly brightened, and the deepest tones aren’t always reproduced evenly. In HDR the TV stays much closer to the reference, although it occasionally lifts detail from the shadows. These are generally things that can be refined. The factory film mode provides a good starting point, and calibration will reveal how much more you can get out of it.

After calibration the M80H performs very well, especially with everyday SDR content. Regular TV, YouTube and movies watched without HDR can look very good on it. After adjusting the white balance the errors are small, though you can sometimes still see the TV tends to push the most saturated reds too far. You can also improve the picture in HDR and correct its main faults, but it doesn't reach the level of more expensive models. Samsung quite heavily restricts colour adjustment options in HDR, so in many areas we have to accept what the TV offers out of the box. Calibration can improve some parameters, but we can't change the M80H's overall picture character.

After calibration the Philips OLED811 delivers an image very close to the reference. We managed to even out the white balance and remove the slight colour cast visible in the factory settings. ColorChecker errors for SDR and HDR fell to around 1 to 2, with many samples even below 1. That's a level at which differences from the reference are hard to spot with the naked eye. We also improved the gamma, with only a slight lift remaining in the brightest whites. In HDR the EOTF curve also stays close to the reference, although the TV still tends to slightly boost the brightness of small details, such as stars or subtitles. That gives the picture a bit of extra brightness that shouldn't be there, but otherwise it's hard to find fault. It was already good out of the box, and calibration allowed us to iron out most of the remaining issues.

Although the M80H is positioned fairly low in Samsung’s line-up, the maker equipped it with one of its stronger processors, the NQ4 AI Gen2. The same chipset is used in Neo QLED TVs and the higher‑ranked S85H OLED. That’s good news, because the processor handles improving weaker sources really well. Upscaling is its strongest suit. Low‑resolution material is displayed properly and edges don’t look overly jagged. The TV won’t of course create details that aren’t in the source, but regular broadcast TV and older recordings look decent on it. One drawback is overscan, i.e. edge cropping, which can’t be completely turned off. The feature that smooths tonal transitions, the so‑called noise reduction, also works well. The processor can effectively reduce visible signs of heavy compression, but it doesn’t do so without side effects. At higher settings it can smooth the picture too much, remove some fine detail and even eliminate film grain. For that reason we recommend using this feature mainly for material that genuinely suffers from heavy compression and posterisation.

The OLED811 handles processing lower-quality material reasonably well, though it's far from perfect. The "Banding reduction" function helps smooth tonal transitions and on the low setting gives a pretty good effect. It doesn't remove banding between shades as effectively as similar solutions from some competitors, but at least it doesn't introduce new artefacts. It's a sensible setting for everyday viewing. Still, there's a bit of a letdown, because the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset used here can, in other manufacturers' hands, deal with the effects of heavy compression more effectively even at similarly low settings. A lot therefore depends on how a given manufacturer uses its capabilities.

We have a few more comments about the upscaling to 4K. There's plenty of detail, but overall the image looks rather soft. Edges are heavily smoothed, so the picture lacks some sharpness and clarity. You can partially correct this with the sharpness slider in the menu, though that will be extra edge enhancement rather than recovering detail. On the plus side, there's no overscan, and even with an SD signal the TV doesn't crop the edges of the picture.

The M80H performs very well for watching sport and for gaming. The TV is equipped with a panel offering a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz at 4K, and when the resolution is reduced to Full HD it can handle up to 240 Hz. That second option will be used mainly by PC gamers.

The panel also handles 120 Hz content well, which matters especially for console gaming. A high refresh rate is also useful when watching sport, and motion blur is relatively low. That's important because VA panels are not known for the best performance in this area. On the M80H, fast-moving objects do not produce a very noticeable blur.

In terms of motion handling the OLED811 performs superbly. At 120 Hz, which is useful for console gaming and watching sport, the image remains clear and moving objects don't leave noticeable trails. The OLED's fast pixel response helps here. You can see it clearly in the UFO test, even on a dark background. There are also controls for motion smoothing. In movies you can adjust the strength of smoothing to your taste, from preserving a cinematic feel to much smoother motion. A separate blur-reduction control is useful for fast-paced content like live sports broadcasts.

The M80H could be a very good choice for gamers on a slightly smaller budget. In terms of features it offers pretty much the same as Samsung’s much more expensive TVs. All three HDMI inputs support HDMI 2.1, so even if one is taken by a soundbar connected via eARC there’s still room for a PC and consoles. There’s also VRR up to 144 Hz in 4K and up to 240 Hz in Full HD. Samsung has correctly implemented HGiG as well, so after performing HDR calibration on the console games are properly matched to the screen’s capabilities. That won’t make the M80H any brighter, but at least it won’t unnecessarily wash out the brightest parts of the image. On top of that there’s a Game Bar for quick access to key settings and a Gaming Hub that lets you play in the cloud without a console. The M80H also includes Game Motion Plus, which generates extra frames and improves the smoothness of games running at 30 or 60 fps. Input lag then increases to around 59 ms, but is still about one third of what you’d see with typical motion smoothing on other manufacturers’ TVs. We wouldn’t really recommend it for online multiplayer, but it can work very well in slower‑paced titles.

The OLED811 has almost everything you’d expect from a TV for gaming. It supports 120 Hz at Full HD, 1440p and 4K, and when connected to a PC it can reach up to 165 Hz. It also offers VRR to help avoid screen tearing when frame rates fluctuate, and ALLM, which automatically switches to game mode. So you don’t have to go into the settings every time you start your console.

Another plus is the properly working HGiG, which ensures that once HDR is set on the console the TV doesn’t apply its own changes to image brightness. The Game Bar is also available, letting you check signal parameters and quickly change settings useful while gaming. The list even includes Dolby Vision for games, but there’s a significant catch here, which you’ll read about below.