Samsung S90F QD-OLED vs Samsung The Frame 2026 (LS03H)

The biggest difference between the 65-inch S90F and the other versions is brightness. The QD-OLED panel can reach up to 1700 nits in laboratory tests, which is over 500 nits more than the variant with a WOLED matrix. This translates to a decidedly stronger and more engaging HDR effect. In most scenes, bright parts of the image look fantastic, and we must admit that we were positively surprised, as we expected results more similar to the WOLED version, but we got an effect that makes a great impression even in films. Just like with every OLED, there are moments when the panel needs to limit its brightness a bit. This mainly refers to full-screen, very demanding scenes – for example, in the last test frame from the film "The Meg," the brightness drops to around 800 nits. However, it is hard to consider this a disadvantage, as it is still an excellent result, unprecedented in OLED televisions in this price range. Everything suggests that the 65-inch S90F could be one of the best choices this year for those looking for a strong OLED at a reasonable price. Another advantage of the QD-OLED matrix in HDR content is its colour gamut coverage. Thanks to quantum dots, the television achieves almost a full 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space and nearly 90% of the BT.2020 colour space. These values place it alongside much more expensive models and make it exceptional in its class.

The Frame 2026 is a genuinely bright TV. Its peak brightness reaches around 650 nits and, importantly, it maintains similar levels regardless of the type of scene being displayed. It doesn’t really matter whether we’re watching a very bright full-screen image or just a small highlight occupying part of the screen. The backlight remains powerful, allowing bright parts of the image to stand out clearly.

This gives The Frame a solid foundation for HDR. Bright highlights can look impactful, and the picture doesn’t appear flat or overly dim. Unfortunately, there is a compromise. Without local dimming, the TV cannot darken the black areas surrounding very bright objects.

This is clearly visible in scenes 2 and 4 of our test procedure. Bright elements look impressive, but at the same time, the blacks around them become noticeably raised. As a result, the image loses some of its depth, especially when watching in a dark room. This is why The Frame performs best with HDR in bright and moderately bright scenes, where its high brightness works to its advantage. In darker scenes, the situation is quite the opposite.

Colours

The Frame also performs well when it comes to colour reproduction. As a QLED TV, it can display a wide colour gamut and produce rich, saturated colours. DCI-P3 coverage reaches around 94%, while BT.2020 comes in at around 72%. These are good results, and you can see the difference in actual content.

Colours look vivid without appearing washed out, particularly in bright and colourful scenes. Animations and other content with plenty of saturated colours can look really good on The Frame. With this type of material, the TV shows one of its stronger sides.

Samsung S90F, like most modern televisions, offers several picture modes, but in line with our tradition, we tested it in the most important one, which is Filmmaker. This setting makes the image look much more natural than in the default, often overly saturated modes. It is neither excessively vivid nor artificially subdued – just closer to what one should actually see. However, this does not mean it is perfect. The S90F had noticeable shortcomings in white balance, mainly in the blue range, which gave a slightly yellowish filter effect on most scenes. One might argue that it looks more "filmic" because it is warmer, but let’s not kid ourselves – George Lucas didn't shoot Star Wars in sepia 😉 (a comparison with the scene can be found, as always, below). In HDR materials, there was also an issue with brightness management. The EOTF curve clearly showed that the television brightens the picture more than it should, leading to some effects appearing too intense and deviating from the reference. Fortunately, a large part of these shortcomings can be eliminated through professional calibration – we will discuss the effects of this procedure further on in the test.

For assessing the factory colour output we chose the Filmmaker Mode. If you’re encountering it for the first time, it’s a mode designed to reproduce a film or series as faithfully as possible. The TV then switches off most of the extra picture enhancement features, and the colours and luminance characteristics are intended to be as close as possible to what the creators of the material intended. And it must be admitted that The Frame 2026 performs really well in this respect straight out of the box. The biggest deviation is visible in the white balance. As brightness increases the blue starts to drop out and green increases slightly. As a result the picture shifts toward warmer tones. White is therefore not perfectly neutral, and in some scenes you can notice a slightly warmer cast.

The luminance response for both the gamma and EOTF curves looks good. Across most of the range they stay fairly close to the target, although in the darkest parts of the picture there is a larger deviation. In practice some details emerging from black may therefore be rendered a little more strongly. However, this is not an error that stands out during normal viewing. Overall Filmmaker Mode is a good starting point here. However the picture is a little too warm by default and not all hues land exactly where they should.

Calibration quickly revealed that the S90F has a significant margin of capability. The image in SDR immediately gained a natural quality – classic films no longer looked as if someone had applied a yellowish filter to them, and the colours regained their proper character. It is a return to the atmosphere of the original, without the impression that someone tried to "age" it forcefully. In HDR content, the difference was even more pronounced. The EOTF curve was managed almost to a reference level, and any deviations are so subtle that most viewers won't even notice them. In practice, the S90F shows an image very close to perfection after calibration. Compared to the WOLED version, it performs even better – mainly due to the wider colour gamut coverage, which makes the colours appear fuller and more intense.

After calibration we mainly managed to remove that warmer tint and better even out the white balance. We also smoothed the brightness response a little, which made the picture more neutral and predictable. There are, however, things calibration won't fix here. It's mainly the black behaviour, which stems from the backlight design and the lack of local dimming. In some scenes blacks will therefore still be slightly lifted and you simply have to accept that. It's more a characteristic of this model than something that can be fixed with the settings. HDR is also a limitation. Samsung doesn't allow full freedom when working with the widest colour gamut, so not all colours can be reproduced perfectly. In normal viewing it's probably hard to notice, but it's worth being aware of.

The S90F performs really well here, although there are some comments that recur with most Samsung televisions. The noise reduction feature can effectively smooth out unwanted colour transitions in poorer materials, such as television or YouTube, making them simply look better. However, it should be noted that it operates quite aggressively and can also soften elements we wouldn't want to touch, like facial details. Therefore, if we want to use it, it’s best to set it to 'medium' and be aware of the compromise it entails. The upscaling itself is at a high level – low-quality materials are upscaled towards a 4K-like image. The only caveat is that the S90F can still struggle with so-called overscan, meaning it slightly trims edges with very poor materials like 576p and lower.

As with many of Samsung’s newer TVs, this one also uses the NQ4 AI processor, only the older, second-generation version. And you have to admit it handles digital image processing quite well. Lower-resolution material is sharpened effectively, and after upscaling to 4K it still looks natural. The TV can also somewhat "tidy up" weaker sources, like older recordings or lower-quality broadcasts. That doesn't, of course, mean it will suddenly turn poor footage into 4K, but at closer viewing distances the difference compared with simpler models with weaker processors is easy to spot. Edges are clearer, and fine details don't get lost as much to signal compression.

Samsung also offers a few additional image-enhancing features, but as usual it's best to use them sparingly. At stronger settings, noise reduction can very effectively reduce posterization, but it also noticeably interferes with the image. The picture then simply starts to look very artificial, for example by heavily smoothing characters' faces. So it makes the most sense with really poor sources when various types of noise are seriously distracting.

S90F is an OLED with a refresh rate of 144 Hz, but in practice, it primarily indicates how it performs at 120 Hz, as this frequency is most significant when watching sports. The QD-OLED panel is no different in this regard from WOLED panels – the response of the pixels is nearly instantaneous, so motion is rendered with surgical precision. The result is predictable. The image is virtually devoid of motion blur, making gaming on consoles, matches, or other sports broadcasts incredibly enjoyable on the S90F.

Fans of films and series have not been overlooked either. Like every Samsung television with a refresh rate of 120 Hz and above, the S90F features a proprietary motion smoothing technology called "Image Clarity." Here, we find two sliders – blur reduction and judder reduction – which allow for improved fluidity of materials recorded at 24 frames and tailoring the effect to personal preferences.

Samsung again used a panel with a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. Refresh rates up to 120 Hz primarily offer greater possibilities with material that contains a lot of motion. The TV can use additional motion-smoothing systems that can improve fluidity in sports and other fast-moving content. However, a high refresh rate alone does not solve everything. The Frame still uses a VA panel, which has a fairly slow response time, and consequently fairly pronounced motion blur. With rapidly moving objects, especially on a dark background, trails are easy to notice. There is also a slight doubling of edges, which can be visible even when additional motion-enhancement systems are switched off. We saw similar behaviour in last year's The Frame 2025, and it's a shame Samsung hasn't addressed this issue. The 144 Hz itself provides a good foundation, but the panel's response time still limits this TV.

The S90F is a television that truly brings a lot of joy when gaming. To start, we have four full-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports, which means you can connect all consoles and PCs without worrying about which device has priority. This is a convenient and practical solution that is by no means a given with other manufacturers. Additionally, there are key features such as automatic game mode (ALLM), which automatically switches the screen to low-latency settings, and VRR frame synchronization that operates in a wide range from 48 to 144 Hz. As a result, the picture remains smooth regardless of whether we're playing fast-paced online shooters or more leisurely narrative titles. The Game Bar also deserves a mention – a panel that allows quick access to several useful additions. For example, you can enable an additional crosshair in the centre of the screen, enlarge the minimap, or, in the case of PC, change the aspect ratio. Lastly, there is also the unique Game Motion Plus mode from Samsung. Its purpose is to smooth out older or poorly optimized titles, and it actually works pretty well. Thanks to this mode, even less polished games can look better and provide a more enjoyable gaming experience than on other televisions that theoretically offer the same technical specifications.

In terms of gaming features, The Frame is practically on a par with Samsung’s top televisions. When a console is connected the TV automatically switches to Game Mode thanks to ALLM, so we do not have to change settings manually each time. There is also VRR, which matches the screen refresh rate to the number of frames produced by the console or PC. This helps avoid the characteristic screen tearing when frame rates drop. The Frame of course supports 4K at 120 Hz, so you can take advantage of the capabilities of the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X in games that offer higher frame rates. HGiG also works correctly. With HDR properly configured on the console, the TV does not try to brighten the picture further on its own, so bright effects in games are displayed as they should be. Samsung also includes a Game Bar. It is a handy menu you can bring up without leaving the game. There you can check VRR operation and the current frame rate, and quickly change the most important gaming-related settings. With a PC the possibilities are even greater, because the aforementioned Full HD mode lets you increase the refresh rate up to 240 Hz. There is essentially one feature missing that Samsung has already got us used to, namely Dolby Vision Gaming. Xbox owners will notice this most, as that console can use Dolby Vision in games. There is one more thing worth mentioning specific to this model. Its One Connect module has only one HDMI 2.1 port, so you must plug the console or PC into that port if you want to use 4K at 120 Hz. Fortunately Samsung did not combine this port with eARC. The soundbar can therefore be connected separately (3) and you still have a full HDMI 2.1 available for the console.