SAMSUNG OLED S95F (QD-OLED) vs Hisense UR9S

The new generation of QD-OLED panels in Samsung's S95F showcases its full potential, and the brightness results are simply astounding. In test film scenes, such as “Life of Pi” or “Sicario 2”, where smaller light elements appear – stars, the moon, or spotlights – the television managed to achieve over 2000 nits of brightness. This is a result that surpasses even most top Mini-LED models.

The secret lies in the technology itself – instead of a limited number of dimming zones like in Mini-LED televisions, here we have millions of glowing pixels, allowing the television to fully demonstrate its power without technological compromises. Of course, since it is still an organic panel, in scenes that are full-screen and flooded with white – like in the final sequence from The Meg – brightness drops to around 1400 nits. Nevertheless, the result remains excellent and definitely exceeds what any OLEDs, both QD-OLED and WOLED, have offered so far. The colour reproduction is also particularly noteworthy. Thanks to QD-OLED technology, the television achieves almost 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour space and around 80% in BT.2020. These values make HDR images not only dazzling in brightness but also stunning in their range of colours.

Hisense UR9S is without doubt a show of force from the Chinese manufacturer when it comes to luminance. On a synthetic test pattern the panel hit as much as 2600 nits, which is an impressive result. But it’s important to clearly separate laboratory results from filmic realities. In real-world content the UR9S behaves much more restrained. Peak brightness in balanced scenes hovers around 1500 nits. In demanding, dark shots, where algorithms must both preserve deep blacks and precisely light small details, brightness can fall drastically, even to around 400 nits. The discrepancy between the chart and reality is therefore huge. This is a direct consequence of conservative local dimming behaviour. When a bright object occupies a large part of the frame, the system can easily maintain a high brightness level. However, in night scenes the priority becomes protecting blacks and fighting halo artefacts (unsightly glows around bright edges). To avoid contrast degradation the TV drastically limits light output. Even so, the UR9S can still produce a very powerful, engaging HDR effect that impresses in bright, spectacular sequences.

Colour gamut coverage

On test patterns the Hisense UR9S performs excellently in terms of colour. DCI-P3 coverage is almost 100%, and the wide BT.2020 as much as 93%. Those are figures even the best QD-OLED TVs don't reach. But again, synthetic measurements are one thing, films and series are another. In real-world scenes the figures dropped to 93% for DCI-P3 and 81% for BT.2020. That’s still a great result, but the advantage of RGB Mini LED is no longer as dramatic as manufacturers promise in marketing materials. One could even say their capability is now close to that of quantum-dot-equipped TVs, the so-called QLEDs. So why is that? To a large extent, colour reproduction here depends on the way the backlight zones operate. When a strongly saturated colour appears next to white or another, more complex element, a single zone must handle both parts of the image at once. Under such conditions the backlight can't maintain extreme saturation of a given colour on the screen, because the emitted light takes on a character closer to white. In the UR9S this has been refined quite well, but still not enough for the TV to maintain such high colour saturation in every situation.

The best picture mode straight out of the box is undoubtedly Filmmaker Mode – a mode that Samsung has been using for several years and which is intended to faithfully convey the creators' vision. In SDR content, its implementation is not bad, although some imperfections can be noticed. The image is slightly dimmed, and the screen has a subtle pinkish hue resulting from an excess of red and blue in the white balance. Colour errors remained at a level of 3–4 ΔE units – and for the uninitiated: a value above 3 is the threshold where the average human eye starts to notice differences.

Much bigger problems arise in HDR content, however. Here, the white balance was not as much of an issue – a slight excess of blue did not significantly hinder things. The problem became brightness management. In practice, the TV "blows out" the image too much, causing details in the blacks to completely disappear. The final effect was far from what was expected, and the colour errors in this mode became quite significant. It’s hard to say why such a design decision was made, but it was clear that the factory HDR settings do not allow this TV to showcase its full potential.

We tested the Hisense UR9S in Filmmaker Mode, which out of the box provides the best image reproduction. In HDR content the TV performed quite well in that regard. The white balance didn't show major errors, and the brightness response, while following Hisense's typical curve, was kept at a reasonable level. The picture therefore wasn't overly brightened or noticeably colour-distorted. The same mode fared much worse with SDR content, the kind we watch most often, like broadcast TV or YouTube. The white balance was strongly shifted toward red and blue, giving the image a slightly pink tint. This also affected the gamma curve. Instead of approaching the reference value of 2.4, it was closer to 2.0, which made the image look too bright, especially in midtones and darker areas. Filmmaker Mode therefore remains the best out-of-the-box choice, but it's not without flaws.

After calibration, it was possible to make subtle adjustments to the white balance and significantly improve the image characteristics. In SDR content, the quality has become practically reference-level – most colour errors have dropped below a ΔE value of 1, which is the level at which the human eye can no longer perceive differences. This is a result that places the S95F among the absolute top TV models available on the market.

In HDR material, calibration also brought a significant improvement. The tendency of the TV to blow out the image was managed, as confirmed by the analysis of the EOTF curve. There is still a slight tendency to brighten the entire scene or occasional loss of detail in the blacks, but this does not significantly affect the overall perception. After calibration, the S95F shows its full potential and can be regarded as one of the best TVs on the market!

After calibration, the biggest improvement was in SDR, although we also refined the HDR picture. Hisense offers plenty of calibration controls in the menu, so we were able to precisely correct the white balance and other picture errors. The most important change was removing the pink cast that had been clearly visible in SDR material. After calibration the image looks much more natural, especially in everyday content like TV and YouTube. Colour reproduction errors on the ColorChecker chart are very small after calibration. The vast majority of colours fall below values of 2–3, which is at a level very hard for the human eye to detect. The only thing we couldn't completely eliminate is the way Hisense TVs map tones in HDR. It affects how brightness is distributed in films and can subtly 'beautify' the image, rather than strictly following the creators' intent. For less experienced viewers this can create a stronger 'wow' effect, but it won't always fully match how the material should look.

Samsung S95F offers a noise reduction feature that smooths tonal transitions. It works very effectively, but in practice, it can be too aggressive. Materials of lower quality – e.g. older recordings or videos from YouTube – become soft and plastic when it is enabled, resembling an image digitally smoothed in graphic software. Unfortunately, the natural film grain, which often adds authenticity to the image, disappears in the process. Fortunately, the television does not lose too much fine detail, e.g. in skin textures or environmental elements. Therefore, this feature is best used judiciously – depending on preferences, one can achieve a smooth but less natural image or one that is truer to the original. In our opinion, the most universal choice is the “Standard” setting.

Image scaling performs significantly better. The television handles lower resolution materials well – even 576p content looks quite decent, though slight blockiness can be observed. Overall, the effect is very good, although it slightly trails behind what Sony Bravia 8 (II) or LG G5 can achieve. It’s also worth mentioning a small imperfection of the S95F – in older materials, overscan may occur, causing a slight trimming of the left edge of the image.

Digital image processing has been one of Hisense's strengths for the past two years, and the UR9S is no different. The manufacturer uses the Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor, which in practice is based on the well-known MediaTek Pentonic 800 platform, previously used in models such as the U8Q. The TV handles upscaling lower-resolution material to 4K very well, and copes with low-bitrate content, where various compression artefacts can easily appear. Thanks to a function called "Smooth and gradient image", the picture stays detailed without looking overly sharpened or artificially smoothed. When watching regular broadcast TV or older, lower-quality material, the UR9S can get a surprising amount out of it. In terms of digital image processing, this is one of the most finely tuned LCD TVs we've had the chance to test.

The Samsung S95F excels in motion fluidity, presenting phenomenal performance. The panel operates at a native resolution of 4K with a refresh rate of up to 165 Hz, and when combined with QD-OLED organic technology, it delivers incredible results. Sports and games look sensational – the picture is fast, dynamic, and very natural. Additionally, the built-in motion smoother and blur reduction system allow you to customise the character of the image to your own preferences. You can opt for a more 'framey' effect with visible film texture or a smooth, cinematic spectacle. Every viewer will find a setting that suits them.

The Hisense UR9S is one of the first TVs on the market with a 4K panel and a 170 Hz refresh rate. In the larger sizes, 75 and 85 inches, that goes up to 180 Hz. Such a high refresh rate will mainly benefit owners of very powerful computers. Films and TV series are still most often watched at 24 fps, and sports broadcasts at 50 fps, so in everyday use the panel's response time and the behaviour of the motion smoothing are more important. In that respect the UR9S performs very well. Panel motion blur is low, as our UFO test also confirmed. Moving objects do not leave a pronounced smear, so the picture remains clear even in fast scenes.

The same advantages of low motion blur and excellent motion fluidity characteristic of OLED panels are just the beginning, as the Samsung S95F has been designed with gamers in mind. The manufacturer has equipped it with four HDMI 2.1 ports – though limited to a bandwidth of 40 Gb/s, in practice, this has no impact on compatibility with consoles or PCs. We get a full package of gaming features: variable refresh rate (VRR), automatic game mode (ALLM), as well as a very well-implemented HGiG standard, ensuring that HDR titles look as the creators intended. This is complemented by Game Bar – a clear settings hub, where with one motion, we can preview and change all key image parameters. The proprietary motion smoother Game Motion Plus also deserves praise, as it can smooth out animation, which is especially useful in productions running at 60 frames, where stability is not always exemplary. While there is no support for Dolby Vision in games, it’s hard to consider this a serious drawback – Samsung compensates with other solutions. This is one of the best, if not the best, gaming TVs available on the market today.

The Hisense UR9S is very well set up for gaming. All three HDMI ports are HDMI 2.1 and offer the full 48 Gb/s bandwidth. The TV supports 4K at 170 Hz, and on larger screen sizes even 180 Hz. You also get VRR, ALLM, NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, so it's hard to fault the basics. PC gamers can additionally enable DLG mode. After switching the resolution to Full HD the refresh rate can rise up to 330 Hz. That's more of an option for a narrow group of users, but it shows how much headroom the panel has. Hisense also added a Game Bar, where you can quickly change the main settings, check the refresh rate, or enable a crosshair and minimap zoom.

The biggest drawback remains the lack of a properly working HGiG implementation. The TV still uses its own tone mapping, which makes setting up HDR on consoles a bit awkward. In our case values around 1500–2000 nits worked best, but it's worth checking which setting keeps all the detail in the brightest parts of the image.