Samsung Neo QLED QN95D vs TCL A400 PRO

Samsung QN95D handles HDR exceptionally well, achieving peak brightness around 2000 nits. In tested movie scenes where the screen is fully illuminated, the TV delivers intense and realistic HDR content reproduction, significantly enhancing the quality of visual experiences. However, similar to the contrast, the dimming algorithm can sometimes exhibit limitations. Despite a significant number of Mini LED zones, the TV won’t amaze users with incredible lighting. For example, in scenes from "Life of Pi," where a bright moon appears against a dark background, and in segments of "Sicario 2," featuring intense lighting effects on a dark backdrop, the TV shows very poor performance. During such moments, the TV attempts to reduce the halo effect by dimming the image to a level reminiscent of SDR quality. This results in deep and uniform blacks, but at the cost of losing some details in bright areas. It’s a compromise aimed at maintaining the best possible black quality, although it does make the image lose some of its dynamism. Despite some flaws in the local dimming algorithm's performance, this TV deserves praise for its wide coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. This is made possible by the use of a quantum dot coating, also known as QLED technology, which allows for vibrant and rich colours.

The TCL A400 Pro is a moderately bright TV. Its peak brightness reaches around 600 nits. That level already allows for a real HDR effect and in many films it does deliver a noticeably more appealing picture than in SDR. However, it’s not a level that dazzles by brightness alone. The A400 Pro is not one of those TVs that bombard the viewer with a powerful flash in every dramatic scene. The biggest limitation is visible with small bright elements on a dark background. Because of fairly aggressive zone control, the TV can significantly reduce their brightness, in extreme cases down to around 100 nits. That means small lights, sparks, stars or single highlights can be much less visible than they should be. It should be added, though, that this isn’t done without reason. The A400 Pro does this to keep black levels as deep as possible and to limit the halo effect around bright objects. It’s a deliberate compromise: the TV more often opts for deeper blacks rather than maximising point highlights. On the one hand this is understandable, especially given a limited number of dimming zones, but on the other you should be aware that the HDR effect won’t always be as strong as the peak brightness alone might suggest.

On the plus side, the colours are a strength. The PFS LED filter used here, marketed by the manufacturer as QLED, delivers suitably saturated colours. Our measurements showed about 94% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and around 74% of BT.2020, which is a solid result for this class.

In the category of factory colour reproduction, the Samsung QN95D television has been tested in Filmmaker mode, which offers the best settings from the manufacturer. However, it is not entirely free of flaws. For HD content, there is a significant colour discrepancy, particularly in the white balance, where the red colour clearly dominates the graph. The situation improves with 4K HDR content, but there are still significant drops in blue colour reproduction. These effects can be observed in a scene from the film "Star Wars," where the main character is rendered in overly warm tones.

In terms of contrast, the gamma graph shows a large initial spike, indicating that the television effectively highlights the brighter parts of the image. However, at the end of the graph, we notice a significant drop, which may mean that details may be lost in darker tones. This shape of the gamma curve can affect how users perceive dark scenes, where some details may become too blurred or too dark, causing the image to lose clarity. It's also worth noting the curve corresponding to brightness (EOTF), which is quite correct, except for the initial drop.

Although the Samsung QN95D boasts impressive specifications and advanced technologies to earn the title of one of the best televisions on the market, it requires some improvements in colour reproduction and contrast to fully realise its potential.

As usual, we carried out colour measurements in the best‑tuned picture mode, Filmmaker Mode, the one intended to be closest to the creators’ intentions. The A400 Pro, of course, also offers other picture modes, but in practice they show much larger colour errors and interfere more with the image character. So we won’t cover them in detail in this part of the review. How does the factory colour reproduction fare? In short: really very well. In fact, looking at our measurements, it’s excellent. Both the white balance and the luminance response were set surprisingly precisely. The errors were so small that during the measurements we genuinely rubbed our eyes in surprise. Such good factory settings don’t happen often, even in televisions running Filmmaker Mode. All the more reason to praise TCL, because the A400 Pro straight out of the box can produce an image very close to how the source material should look. The results were so good you could easily think someone had already given this unit extra attention and tried to calibrate it. Our one bit of nitpicking comes down to a single issue. In SDR material the image was slightly brighter than the reference for a dark room, because the factory gamma was set closer to 2.3 than 2.4. It’s not a large error and most viewers probably won’t even notice it. We should note, however, that we are talking about our specific test unit. There can always be some variation in factory colour between individual units, production batches or screen sizes. We do not assume every A400 Pro will look identical straight out of the box.

After calibration, the picture on the Samsung QN95D television achieves truly impressive results. The white balance is perfectly balanced, and error readings rarely exceed a value of 2, which means that colours are displayed very accurately. Most samples from the Color Checker test fall within an acceptable error range, confirming that the television reproduces colours excellently. The contrast has also improved significantly, and the gamma curve is more stable, leading to better visibility of details in dark and bright scenes. However, it is worth noting the EOTF (Electro-Optical Transfer Function) curve, which shows some discrepancies in film tests. Although the television performs well in most scenes, in more extreme cases, details in black can still be lost - this is due to an aggressive dimming algorithm.

Nevertheless, these minor imperfections do not diminish the overall picture quality. After calibration, the Samsung QN95D delights with its visual quality, offering an exceptional experience that will certainly please anyone looking for a top-of-the-line television.

Despite the outstanding factory tuning, we couldn't resist checking how the TCL A400 Pro would respond to professional calibration. With such a strong starting point, we were especially curious whether we could squeeze even more from this TV. And here we have to boast: we managed to bring our sample to absurdly low colour errors. Results below 1 are something you don't see every day, even on very good TVs. Such outcomes are more often associated with professional reference monitors than with a lifestyle TV for the living room. In terms of white balance and colour reproduction, the A400 Pro after calibration simply excelled. The only thing we can pick on after closer analysis concerns the brightness response. The TV can vary the luminance level depending on the content being displayed, and quite often the picture is a little darker than it should be according to the reference. This most likely stems from the way the Mini-LED backlight and the local dimming algorithms work in this model. That said, it doesn't ruin the overall impression, because in terms of colour precision the A400 Pro after calibration reached a level that was genuinely hard to expect.

The Samsung QN95D television handles tonal transitions well, even in lower-quality materials, thanks to the noise reduction feature, which acts like a gentle gradient. This feature is incredibly effective, smoothly rendering the image and eliminating unwanted noise while significantly improving the quality of the displayed content. However, as is often the case, excessive effectiveness can lead to unintended side effects. In some materials, this feature can also blur elements that should remain sharp, such as film grain.

Despite this, the television performs well in terms of image scaling, eliminating larger jaggedness in the picture. In a scene where branches are visible, they are not overly artificially sharpened, which allows for a natural appearance, and the model does not have an artificial outline. Overall, this means that even in more challenging conditions, the film material presents itself satisfactorily on the Samsung QN95D. The only downside when watching HD/SD content (like regular terrestrial television) is that we have a slightly cropped image - this is caused by the so-called overscan, which cannot be turned off.

Digital image processing is unfortunately one of the weaker points of the TCL A400 Pro. That does not mean the TV performs badly, but it’s hard to call it anything clearly above standard. The upscaling itself is acceptable: edges are fairly well smoothed, the picture does not look overly sharp or “pixelated”, and lower-quality material can be watched without major discomfort. At the same time the overall image has a slightly soft character and you don’t see the kind of precision that the best image processors in more expensive TVs can offer.

Handling of tonal transitions caused by heavy compression is much worse. TCL equipped the A400 Pro with a “Gradual Smoothing” feature that in theory should reduce visible colour banding and artefacts in lower-quality material. In practice, however, its effectiveness is very limited. It does not improve tonal transitions in any noticeable way, and at higher settings it can further smooth image detail, giving it an artificial, slightly blurred character. For that reason we think it’s best to leave this feature off. The A400 Pro copes decently with basic image scaling, but if you often watch heavily compressed material with visible posterisation, this model will not be one of the best choices.

The panel in Samsung QN95 performs very well in terms of motion blur and fluidity. With a refresh rate of 120 Hz and features that reduce blur and jitter, users can adjust the picture settings to their personal preferences, whether for watching films or dynamic sports broadcasts. Users have the ability to customise the motion smoothness on a 10-point scale – from a more frame-like appearance, reminiscent of traditional film, to a smooth, almost theatrical effect that works especially well in sports broadcasts.

The TCL A400 Pro is equipped with a 144 Hz panel, but in practice we're most interested in how it performs at 120 Hz. That's the refresh rate most consoles, as well as many sports broadcasts and high-motion sources, are limited to today. In that range the TV performs quite well. Motion clarity is really good, especially after properly configuring the motion smoothing. The 'Motion Clarity' function improves smoothness. Its settings include two sliders that let you tailor the motion smoothing to your preferences, separately for low-frame-rate and high-frame-rate content. This allows you to achieve either a more cinematic look or a noticeably smoother image. If you don't want to fiddle with manual configuration, you can use built-in presets such as Low, Medium, High, Cinema or Nature.

Samsung QN95D offers a fair bit of features that gamers will appreciate. First and foremost, the television supports Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), which allows for smoother gameplay by eliminating screen tearing issues, especially during dynamic scenes. There's also the Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), which automatically switches the TV to low latency mode when it detects a connected console or computer, providing more responsive control.

Additionally, the QN95D Samsung has a gaming mode that reduces input lag to a very low level, which is crucial in games where reflexes play an important role. With a high refresh rate of 120 Hz, the image is exceptionally smooth, significantly impacting the experience of dynamic action games and sports productions. The television also supports G-Sync and FreeSync technologies, which further enhance gameplay smoothness and improve user comfort. An interesting addition is the 'Game Bar' – a special menu that provides quick access to all game-related settings, allowing easy adjustment of the image and parameters to the user's preferences without the need to pause the gameplay.

Although the Samsung QN95D does not support Dolby Vision – which is quite obvious for Samsung TVs – it does offer the HGiG feature, which ensures appropriate image quality in HDR games, in line with the creators' vision.

In terms of gaming features the TCL A400 Pro performs brilliantly. The TV has practically everything you’d expect from a gaming TV today: support for 4K at high refresh rates, VRR, ALLM, correct implementation of HDR formats in games, including Dolby Vision, and HGiG. That means it works well with both next‑gen consoles and PCs. Another plus is the inclusion of a Game Bar, a dedicated panel with the most important settings for gamers. From it you can quickly check basic information about the signal, refresh rate or active features, and customise the appearance and behaviour of some settings to your preferences. It’s a solution that may not change picture quality by itself, but it greatly improves the convenience of using the TV while gaming. The only thing to criticise is the number of full HDMI 2.1 ports. The A400 Pro has only two such ports out of four, and one of them also serves as eARC. In practice this means that if you want to connect two next‑gen consoles and a soundbar you may run into some limitations. In that scenario you’ll need to either swap devices or use extra equipment, such as an AV receiver or a soundbar with HDMI inputs. Even so, it’s hard not to rate the A400 Pro very highly as a gaming TV. The gaming feature set here is genuinely powerful.