Samsung Q8F vs Panasonic W85

In terms of brightness, the Samsung Q8F performs surprisingly well for a TV without local dimming. It measures up to 500 nits, which in practice means that most movie and series scenes look pleasant, and it cannot be faulted for lacking the "HDR effect." In films like Life of Pi or The Meg, the screen can burst with bright light, delivering a level of lighting effect that is satisfying. It struggles more in challenging moments—such as dark scenes with single bright points. The global dimming used causes the TV to darken the image to maintain deep blacks, but at the expense of detail brightness. This is clearly visible in the scene from Sicario 2, where the brightness of the helicopter lights dropped to around 200 nits. This is a deliberate design choice that gives the impression of deeper blacks but takes some shine away from individual elements, and one should simply keep that in mind. Regarding colour reproduction, the Q8F uses quantum dot technology, which expands the colour gamut. A coverage of the DCI-P3 palette at 91% can be considered a decent result, although it is not a record-breaking figure compared to other QLEDs.

Unfortunately, we don't have good news here. The Panasonic W85B is quite a dark television – its peak brightness doesn't exceed 300 nits, making it hard to talk about any real HDR effect. In practice, this means that scenes which can 'shine' and impress on other screens simply look like regular SDR with a slight colour boost here. Our measurements and film tests confirmed this – regardless of the content, the W85B won't draw anything more from HDR. So if someone is looking for a television specifically for HDR, it's better to look at other models. On a positive note, the W85B does quite well in terms of colours. It's a QLED television, so its colour gamut coverage is wide, and most films and series look natural, without a noticeable 'faded' effect. The colours are saturated, so in everyday viewing, there's no feeling that something is seriously off.

We decided to check out the Filmmaker mode because right out of the box it gave us the best picture. However, that doesn't mean it was perfect. The white balance had too much of a blue and red tint, causing the whites to lean towards a slight purple-pink hue. Such imbalance affected the visibility of virtually all colours, which is clearly seen in the comparison photo below. The brightness characteristics in SDR content were quite well calibrated, although in HDR materials we noticed that the TV didn't always handle its global dimming well — at times the screen was too dim, while at other times it could suddenly brighten up. Fortunately, issues related to colours can be effectively corrected with calibration tools, so we decided to get to work.

Testing the Panasonic W85B, we obviously started with the Filmmaker mode, as it's the gold standard for watching content "the way the director intended." The problem is that this TV is quite far from those intentions. The biggest issue turned out to be an excess of red – both in SDR and HDR. The image often looked too warm because of this, and in some scenes, it was almost "on fire." Added to this is the issue of brightness management. When we looked at the gamma and EOTF charts, it was clear as day that in most scenes, the TV brightens the image more than it should. The effect was easy to predict. Details can get lost, leading to flattening and clipping across the entire screen. We obviously know how to fix this, but to be fair, it does require a lot of calibration work. Out of the box, the W85B doesn't produce an image close to reference quality – it's more of a TV that, without professional adjustments, will always interpret colours and brightness a bit "in its own way." Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of the viewer.

After calibration, we managed to correct the white balance to almost perfection. Older SDR content looks fantastic — most errors are within a value of 2, which is definitely below the threshold of human perceptibility. In HDR, we also brought the white balance to an acceptable level, but a different problem arises here. So why are there still relatively large errors in colour reproduction? This is mainly due to the limited colour palette and the way the television manages brightness. The global dimming technique used does not give the user control in the settings, so analysing the EOTF curve in HDR films, it's clear that the Q8F can modify luminance on its own. This can be seen as a limitation, but still, the image after calibration is much more enjoyable to watch than in the factory version.

Fortunately, calibration made a significant difference for the Panasonic W85B, especially for SDR content. Here, the improvement was quite evident – we managed to even out the white balance and reasonably tame the TV's tendency to overly brighten the entire image. The picture became more coherent and the colours gained the naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. Admittedly, the results from the Color Checker are not perfect, as the W85B has noticeable issues with green saturation, but overall, we rate the post-calibration effect in SDR quite positively. The situation with HDR is a bit different. Here too, we managed to reduce the tendency to warm up the entire scene, so the image performed definitely better than in the factory settings. However, there is still the same problem we mentioned earlier – the TV interprets the image too strongly "in its own way" and brightens the whole screen. And the lack of local dimming only exacerbates this effect. In summary, briefly, in SDR content, the W85B performs really well after calibration and is perfectly suitable for everyday viewing. However, in HDR, even after adjustments, it is still difficult to unambiguously recommend it for more serious viewing.

Let's see how the Q8F handles older content, which often has poor quality. Starting with the positives: the upscaling works really well. The TV performs nicely with both classic television and materials from YouTube, not giving the impression that we're dealing with something completely unattractive. It struggles more with content in very low resolutions, such as 576p — the image can be cropped, and unfortunately, the overscan phenomenon cannot be disabled. Moreover, the digital processing does not look great either. The noise reduction feature, instead of removing unwanted artefacts, smooths out almost everything: film grain (which many viewers desire) disappears along with the texture of the image, and actors' faces start to resemble characters from cheap Turkish soap operas. It's hard to consider this option useful — it's best left completely off. Perhaps Samsung will refine the function’s performance in updates, but for now, it’s difficult to view it as anything other than an unnecessary addition.

With native SDR content, the Panasonic W85B performs very well – tonal transitions are smooth and natural, without artificial bands or clear outlines. However, the situation is worse with lower resolution materials. This is where the TV has the biggest problem with "beautifying" the image. The lack of any menu option to improve gradation means that with older films or materials from YouTube, one can sometimes notice slight issues with colour blending.

Fortunately, upscaling, or enhancing the quality of lower resolution content, performs much better. This is definitely a strong point of this model – the image is scaled cleanly and in detail, and the TV handles this better than one might expect from such an inexpensive setup. This is thanks to the HCX processor, which Panasonic has been developing for years, and it shows that even in the lower series, it can do a good job.

Due to the applied 60 Hz panel, it's hard to call the Q8F a television made for gaming or watching sports. The panel isn't particularly fast, making motion blur clearly visible. If you were expecting a spectacular, almost 'stadium-like' experience during broadcasts, you might feel a bit disappointed. Fortunately, for movies and series, Samsung hasn't given up on the motion smoothing function. It's nothing more than a smoother that allows for improved fluidity of productions recorded at 24 or 30 frames per second. This way, you can decide for yourself whether you prefer a more fluid, 'television-like' image or to retain the cinematic character. It all depends on the viewer's preferences, and the ability to adjust this parameter is undoubtedly a plus.

At first glance, everything looks good – the Panasonic W85B has a 120 Hz panel and even a 144 Hz mode, so it seems like it should handle smooth motion really well. The problem starts when we delve into the settings. The options for improving fluidity are supposedly present in the menu, but in practice… they don't change anything. No matter what we choose, the image looks the same. On top of that, there’s a lack of BFI, or black frame insertion, which in many TVs helps sharpen motion. And suddenly, it turns out that despite the strong panel, the W85B doesn’t give us any real tools to adjust that motion to our needs. It’s only good when the source itself operates at a higher frequency – for example, games at 120 Hz. But when it comes to movies or sports, we just have to accept what the TV shows us because there’s nothing more that can be done about it.

It's not entirely clear what Samsung has messed up this year with its TVs, but the Q8F isn't free from all the confusion with updates and shortcomings. While its older cousin, the Q67D, could still be recommended with a clear conscience to casual gamers, it's hard to find a reason to do so here. Aside from the automatic game mode and the attractively designed Game Bar, we get practically nothing that could appeal to gamers. The lack of proper HGiG implementation is a major issue, especially since the feature simply disappeared after the 1126 update. The situation with VRR is even worse. Even though it appears in the manufacturer's brochures and shows up in the Game Bar, we couldn't get it to work. The Xbox Series X console wouldn't allow it to be activated at all, and the option remained greyed out and inactive. It's difficult to praise such a TV even to casual gamers, which is a shame because Samsung has had a strong selling point in the gaming segment for years.

[UPDATE] We have updated our 2025 Samsung TV reviews following the release of firmware version 1131, which officially restores the essential HGiG (HDR Gaming Interest Group) support.

On paper, the Panasonic W85B looks really solid. It has two full HDMI 2.1 ports, support for ALLM, variable refresh rates, Dolby Vision in games, and of course, a high refresh rate for the panel itself. Additionally, there's the characteristic Panasonic game bar, which allows you to view key parameters with a single click and quickly change them if needed. It sounds great, but the problem arises when we enable HDR. Here, the W85B really struggles because the implementation of HGiG is practically nonexistent – the TV poorly manages brightness, and instead of faithful images, we get scenes that are too bright, sometimes even blown out. The solution? The simplest one – turn off HDR in the console settings and keep everything in SDR. And here it gets really interesting, because in this scenario, the W85B shows its better side. Low input lag, high smoothness thanks to 120 Hz – all of this makes gaming look phenomenal. Yes, HDR can be skipped, but if responsiveness and smooth gameplay are the priorities, the W85B provides plenty of fun.