SAMSUNG QN80F vs Samsung M80H

QN80F is quite a bright screen – in synthetic tests, it reached nearly 1000 nits, which allows for reasonable expectations of HDR content. And indeed, in many scenes, the TV can truly shine. Sequences with a lot of light – like shots from the movie Life of Pi or wide, bright surfaces in The Meg – look impressive. Brightness stays around 700 nits, which provides a solid effect, enough to feel the true "HDR magic." Unfortunately, not every scene looks this good. In content with small, bright details on a dark background, like in Sicario 2, the TV can struggle – it can significantly dim individual elements, sometimes to the point where they disappear from the image. This is a result of the limited number of dimming zones, forcing the device into compromises: either stick to inky blacks or sacrifice some detail. QN80F usually chooses the former. As a consolation, it offers quite decent coverage of a wide color palette – DCI-P3 at 93%. It's not the highest score on the market, but it's more than enough for most content on streaming platforms.

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.

We always test TVs in the best available factory mode – for the Samsung QN80F, this is the Filmmaker mode, and indeed, it provides the settings closest to the creators' intentions. However, this doesn’t mean everything looks perfect. In SDR content, the biggest issue was an unbalanced white balance – slight deficiencies in green and a noticeable excess of red led to noticeable colour errors, and one could say the screen had a pinkish hue. This was clearly visible in the colour checker test, where colours “escaped” outside their target fields – to such an extent that a sensitive viewer's eye could catch it even without the help of a meter.

In HDR content, the white balance was much better, but another issue arose – brightness management. The EOTF curve caused an overly bright image most of the time, which affected the perception of contrast and made the screen slightly “flicker” during dynamic changes in light. We’ve already discussed this in the paragraphs about black levels and HDR. Fortunately, Samsung offers users plenty of options. The QN80F features a rich set of calibration options, including a 20-point white balance – which is why we decided to check what this TV is really capable of after a proper calibration.

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.

After conducting a thorough calibration, it was possible to bring most image parameters to a really good level. The white balance in both SDR and HDR presents itself almost perfectly – the image is natural, neutral, and free from the previously noticeable redness. Colours have gained depth, and the overall visual experience has become more pleasant and cohesive. It was also possible to partially manage brightness, which in the factory version could cause issues. The EOTF chart shows that the television performs much better with brightness after calibration – there is no longer excessive dimming of certain elements. In films, it can still be noticed that the QN80F has a tendency to slightly brighten the smallest bright details – this is already a consequence of the device's construction and the limited number of dimming zones. In short: not everything can be overcome, but what was possible has been improved. After calibration, the QN80F makes a really good impression, looking simply more mature and professional.

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.

If you notice strange colour transitions or unwanted artefacts while watching lower quality materials – for example from YouTube – it's worth checking the settings and enabling the noise reduction feature. In our opinion, the best setting is at the 'medium' level – it effectively smooths out problematic colour transitions without overly blurring the entire image. However, it's important to know one thing: this option tends to remove film grain. If someone values preserving that effect (e.g., in older films), it's better to simply turn it off – regardless of the level, the grain always disappears.

Regarding resolution scaling (also known as upscaling), Samsung – as usual – performs very well in this area. The QN80F doesn't quite match the top models costing tens of thousands, but for its price class, it performs impressively. Materials of very poor quality (e.g., from SD television or older video files) are noticeably improved and look surprisingly decent. The only noticeable downside is the typical Samsung issue with overscan – which is a slight cropping of the image edges at very low resolutions, such as 576p.

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.

QN80F is truly a “fast” TV. The panel used offers a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz, which in practice means that the screen keeps up with the action – whether we’re watching a movie, playing games, or browsing dynamic content online. The image doesn’t stutter, isn’t overly blurred, and everything simply looks smooth and pleasing to the eye. Of course, the manufacturer hasn’t forgotten about cinema fans – in the settings, we find an option to adjust motion smoothness, allowing us to tailor the effect to our own preferences. You can leave a more “frame-y” look (for those who enjoy the classic film vibe) or crank up the smoothness to a higher level to achieve a theatrical smoothing effect. Importantly, the choice is ours. Watching movies and playing on the QN80F is just plain fun.

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.

Samsung QN80F is a television that delivers on almost every front when it comes to gaming. It features a 144 Hz panel, four fully-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports, support for gamers with variable refresh rate (VRR), automatic game mode (ALLM), and even one of the best-designed gamebars on the market. The icing on the cake is the motion smoother which – uniquely in the world – works in games without significantly increasing input lag. Sounds like an almost perfect gaming TV? And indeed, it is almost that.

[UPDATE] We have updated our Samsung TV tests from the 2025 model year due to the release of firmware version 1131, which restored the crucial gaming feature HGiG.

As usual, Samsung doesn’t support Dolby Vision in games, but that’s no longer surprising. However, what is much more surprising is that... the HGIG feature has disappeared – meaning the system that allows the console (e.g., PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X) to accurately match HDR tone mapping to the capabilities of the television. In the latest firmware update for the 2025 models, this option simply vanished. It looks more like a bug than a deliberate move, but it must be honestly noted that at the time of writing the review, the HGIG feature is simply absent.

And it’s precisely because of this one absence that the QN80F goes from being an almost perfect gaming television to a “nearly” perfect device. What a shame – because everything else indicated that Samsung could once again set the bar very high in this generation.

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.