Samsung QN80F vs Samsung M80H

QN80F is quite a bright screen – in synthetic tests, it achieved nearly 1000 nits, which allows for justified expectations regarding HDR content. And indeed, in many scenes, the television can truly shine. Sequences with a lot of light – like shots from the film Life of Pi or wide, bright surfaces in The Meg – look impressive. Brightness remains around 700 nits, which provides a solid effect, sufficient to feel the true "HDR magic." Unfortunately, not every scene looks that good. In materials with small, bright details on a dark background, such as in Sicario 2, the television has issues – it can significantly dim certain elements, sometimes to the point where they disappear from the image. This is the result of a limited number of dimming zones, which forces the device to make compromises: either maintain inky blacks or sacrifice some detail. QN80F usually chooses the former. As a consolation, there is quite decent coverage of a wide colour gamut – DCI-P3 at 93%. This is not the highest score on the market, but it is more than adequate for most content on streaming platforms.

The M80H is not among the brightest TVs. Its peak brightness is around 350 nits and we saw similar results in most of our test scenes. That is not enough to achieve truly striking HDR; bright highlights lack the necessary punch and the overall image is a bit too dark. In practice HDR on the M80H resembles a well-presented SDR image more than noticeably more dynamic material with a wide brightness range. The image can still look acceptable, but it is hard to speak of strong specular highlights, clearly glowing light sources or an effect that immediately distinguishes HDR from ordinary content.

Colours

One of the M80H's stronger points is its colours. The TV uses a filter based on PFS backlighting, which allows it to display a much wider colour gamut than a standard LCD screen without filters. Our measurements confirm this – the M80H covers around 96% of the DCI-P3 gamut and 72% of BT.2020. Those are really good figures, which allow colours to be deeply saturated. Samsung's approach here is interesting. The M80H is not part of the QLED family, even though in terms of colour it is practically indistinguishable from models carrying that badge. From an image-quality point of view it doesn't really matter though — the colours are simply good.

We test televisions always in the best available factory mode – in the case of the Samsung QN80F, this is the Filmmaker mode, and indeed, it is this mode that offers settings closest to the creators' intentions. However, this does not mean that everything looks perfect. In SDR content, the biggest problem turned out to be an unbalanced white balance – slight deficiencies in green and a noticeable excess of red led to discernible colour errors, one could even say a pinkish tint on the screen. This was well demonstrated in the colour checker test, where the colours 'escaped' beyond their target fields – to the extent that even a sensitive viewer's eye could catch this without the aid of a meter.

In HDR content, the white balance was much better, but another issue arose – brightness management. The EOTF curve resulted in an overly bright image for most of the time, which could affect the perception of contrast and caused the screen to subtly 'flicker' during dynamic light changes. We have already written more about this in the paragraphs on black levels and HDR. Fortunately, Samsung leaves the user with plenty of options. The QN80F offers a rich set of calibration options, including a 20-point white balance – therefore, we decided to check what this television is really capable of after proper calibration.

Filmmaker Mode is set fairly well out of the box, although it falls short of perfection. In SDR material the most noticeable issue is an excess of red in the white balance, which makes the image appear a little warmer than it should. HDR content has a similar character. As for the brightness response, in SDR the gamma stays close to the target value for most of the range. Small deviations are mainly visible in darker areas, which in places are a bit too crushed. In HDR the darkest details are slightly lifted, while from around 65% brightness the image begins to be slightly darkened. This is largely due to the way the TV controls its brightness. Overall, Filmmaker Mode looks pretty good straight out of the box, but the picture can still be improved.

After conducting a thorough calibration, it was possible to bring most of the image parameters to a really good level. The white balance in both SDR and HDR is nearly perfect – the picture is natural, neutral and devoid of the previously noticeable redness. The colours have gained depth, and the overall visual reception has become more pleasant and cohesive. It was also possible to partially master the brightness management, which in the factory version could be problematic. The EOTF chart shows that the television performs significantly 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, light details – however, this is the effect of the device's design and the limited number of dimming zones. In short: not everything can be overcome, but what could be has been improved. After calibration, the QN80F makes a really good impression; it simply looks more mature and professional.

After calibration, the M80H fares very well, especially with the most ordinary SDR content. Regular broadcast TV, YouTube and films watched without HDR can look very good on it. After correcting the white balance the errors are small, although sometimes we can still see that the TV tends to overdo the most saturated reds. In HDR it is also possible to improve the picture and correct its main faults, but it is not at the level of pricier models. Samsung quite heavily restricts colour adjustment in HDR, so in many areas we have to accept what the TV offers out of the box. Calibration lets us improve some parameters, but we are no longer able to change the overall character of the M80H's image.

If, while watching lower quality materials – for example from YouTube – we notice strange colour transitions or unwanted artefacts, it's worth checking the settings and turning on the noise reduction feature. In our opinion, the best setting is at “medium” – it effectively smooths out problematic colour transitions while not blurring the entire image too much. However, one must know this: this option tends to remove film grain. If someone cares about preserving this effect (e.g. in older films), it’s better to simply turn it off – regardless of the level, the grain always disappears.

When it comes to resolution scaling (or so-called upscaling), Samsung – as usual – performs very well in this area. The QN80F may not compete with top models costing tens of thousands, but for its price class, it really does impress. Materials of very low quality (e.g. from SD television or older video files) are noticeably improved and look surprisingly decent. The only noticeable drawback is the typical Samsung issue with overscan – that is, slight cropping of the image edges in very low resolutions, e.g. 576p.

Although the M80H is positioned fairly low in Samsung's range, the manufacturer equipped it with one of its stronger processors, the NQ4 AI Gen2. The same chip can be found, for example, in Neo QLED TVs and the lower-tier S85H OLED. That is good news, because when it comes to improving weaker sources the processor performs really well. Upscaling is the strongest point. Low-resolution content is displayed correctly and edges do not look overly jagged. Of course the TV will not create details that are not present in the source, but regular broadcast TV and older recordings look decent on it. One drawback is the overscan effect, that is edge cropping, which cannot be completely turned off. The tonal transition smoothing function, the so-called noise reduction, also works well. The processor can effectively reduce visible traces of heavy compression, but it does not do this without side effects. At higher settings it may over-smooth the image, remove some fine detail and even eliminate film grain. For that reason we recommend using this function mainly for content that really suffers from strong compression and posterisation.

QN80F is truly a "fast" television. The applied panel 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 film, playing games, or browsing dynamic content online. The image doesn’t stutter, isn’t excessively smeared, and overall looks simply smooth and pleasing to the eye. Of course, the manufacturer hasn’t forgotten about cinema fans – in the settings, we’ll find an option to adjust motion smoothness, allowing us to tailor the effect to our personal preferences. We can maintain a more "framey" appearance (for those who enjoy the classic cinematic vibe) or ramp up the smoothness to a higher level for a theatrical smoothing effect. Importantly, the choice is ours. Watching films and playing on the QN80F is simply a delight.

The M80H performs very well for watching sport and for gaming. The TV is fitted with a panel offering a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz at 4K, and when the resolution is lowered to Full HD it can even support 240 Hz. PC gamers will benefit most from the latter.

The panel also handles content displayed at 120 Hz well, which is particularly important for console gaming. The high refresh rate is also useful when watching sport, and motion blur is relatively limited. That matters because VA panels are not known for top results in this area. With the M80H, fast-moving objects do not show pronounced smearing.

Samsung QN80F is a television that delivers on almost every front when it comes to gaming. We have a 144 Hz panel, four fully-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports, support for gamers in the form of Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), and even one of the best-designed game bars on the market. The cherry on top is the motion smoother, which – uniquely in the world – works in games without significantly increasing input lag. Sounds like an almost perfect television for gamers? And indeed, it is almost that.

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

As usual, Samsung does not support Dolby Vision in games, but that no longer surprises anyone. However, it is much more surprising that... the HGIG function has disappeared – the system that allows the console (e.g. PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X) to precisely adapt 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 mistake than a deliberate move, but it must be honestly noted that at the time of writing the review, the HGIG function is simply not available.

And it is precisely because of this one absence that the QN80F shifts from being nearly perfect for gamers to being 'almost' perfect. It's a shame – because everything else suggested that Samsung could raise the bar very high again in this generation.

The M80H could be a very good choice for gamers on a slightly smaller budget. In terms of features it offers essentially the same as far more expensive Samsung TVs. All three HDMI ports support the 2.1 standard, so even if one is taken by a soundbar connected via eARC there is still room for a PC and consoles. There is also VRR that runs up to 144 Hz at 4K and up to 240 Hz at Full HD. Samsung has also correctly implemented HGiG, so after performing HDR calibration on a console games are properly matched to the screen’s capabilities. This won't make the M80H any brighter, but at least it won't unnecessarily crush the brightest parts of the image. There's also 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 offers Game Motion Plus, which creates additional frames and improves the smoothness of games running at 30 or 60 fps. Input lag then rises to around 59 ms, but is still roughly three times lower than with ordinary motion smoothing on TVs from other manufacturers. We wouldn't really recommend it for online gaming, but in more relaxed titles it can perform very well.