Samsung S90H (QD-OLED) vs TCL X11L

The Samsung S90H is a genuinely bright TV for the mid-range OLED segment. In synthetic tests its peak brightness reached around 1650 nits. That’s an impressive result in this class, roughly 50% higher than what we have seen from previous models in this price bracket. Most importantly, these tests translate directly to real video material. In four out of five film clips we tested, the S90H’s brightness ranged between 1300 and 1500 nits. That headroom allows it to reproduce most HDR films with very high dynamic range and without obvious compromises, especially in material mastered to 1000–1500 nits. In practice light effects, reflections and explosions have the appropriate punch, and the picture does not appear dimmed. Of course, on full-screen very bright scenes the result is naturally lower and drops to around 900 nits. This is a direct result of the OLED panel’s protection systems working to prevent overload. Even in this scenario there is little to complain about. Those 900 nits across the whole screen is still a very high level, ensuring excellent dynamic range in HDR content.

Colour has always been a major strength of QD-OLED TVs, and the S90H is no exception. The DCI-P3 colour space we measured reached a full 100% (actually 99.9%), while coverage of the much wider BT.2020 gamut hit about 89%. That’s an excellent result, enabling very saturated and vivid colours in HDR content. It’s worth emphasising that QD-OLED’s advantage over WOLED panels is not limited to palette coverage alone. In practice it’s mainly visible in the higher brightness of saturated colours, that is in a greater colour volume. As a result, intense reds, greens and blues in HDR look more vibrant and more striking.

Such a large number of zones did not only result in deep, inky blacks, but also in screen brightness. The X11L is an extremely bright television. Peak brightness can easily exceed 4,000 nits, and with the special "Boost" mode active it can, in specific conditions, even reach marketing figures around 9,000 to 10,000 nits. It is undoubtedly one of the brightest, if not the brightest, screens on the market. So how do these numbers relate to real film measurements? The results are very good, though of course far from the marketing claims. The brightness we measured in real film scenes was around 2,000 to 3,000 nits. That is an excellent result, given that the vast majority of content available is recorded and produced for those brightness levels, even the rare material mastered to 4,000 nits. But it also clearly shows that the figures the manufacturer touts do not always translate directly to the video material you have at home. The only "quirk" (if you can call it that) is that when very small, bright elements appear on screen, their brightness falls below 2,000 nits. The dimming algorithm does this deliberately to preserve deep blacks and minimise halo. This is entirely understandable, and the effect is still very impressive, but it also shows that even with such powerful hardware, Mini-LED technology has its limits and does not always work without compromise. In HDR itself, brightness is not the only thing that matters; colour saturation and the colours themselves do too. On the X11L these are very good thanks to the new Super QLED (SQD) quantum dots. The application of a new coating filter has delivered excellent results in covering the P3 colour gamut and the ultra-wide BT.2020. Although it does not reach the promised 100% of BT.2020, figures around 89 to 90% can be considered excellent. Colours are not far off those of RGB Mini-LED screens. We can even say they are more stable, due to a less demanding algorithm that RGB screens often struggle with.

The next stage of the test was to check how the S90H handles colour reproduction without any calibration. As always, we carried out the measurements in Filmmaker Mode, the best factory picture preset. And here Samsung really deserves praise. The factory tuning is at a very high level, and a few years ago this was not one of its strong points. The average colour error (Delta E) remained around 3, which is below the level at which most people can notice any inaccuracies. Only in the brightest shades of grey did the values slightly approach 4, but even then it's hard to regard this as a real problem while watching. For out-of-the-box settings, the result is simply excellent.

Turning on what should theoretically be the best Filmmaker Mode, you expect a one-to-one image of what the director saw. On the X11L it's fairly good, but this mode has obvious faults, which our measurements immediately exposed. Let's start with SDR. Both the white balance and the gamma are simply misaligned. The whites contain too much blue and red, giving the screen a slight pink tint. That also affected the gamma, which instead of holding the cinematic 2.4 drifts closer to 2.2. What did that result in? The whole image is therefore more pushed and looks artificially brighter. The worst comes at the end, namely the HDR measurements. Apart from this slight white-balance shift, the X11L fails on the brightness-management curve, the so-called EOTF. What we saw in the measurements immediately explains what we noticed earlier in films. The image is unnaturally brightened because the curve is massively overshot above the reference. The TV simply blatantly lifts the dark parts of the picture to create a "wow" effect, completely ignoring the director's intent.

All right, but you know we wouldn't be ourselves if we didn't also check how far we could push the S90H after professional calibration. And there was no big surprise. Since the factory settings were already very good, there wasn't much room for improvement. Even so, we managed to refine the picture to near perfection. After calibration the mean colour reproduction errors fell below the threshold of perception, with Delta E values under 2 for both SDR and HDR material. We also improved the brightness response, so the image more faithfully reflects the creators' intent and maintains appropriate tonality across the whole luminance range. After professional calibration the S90H therefore becomes a display very close to reference.

Will the difference be spectacular for everyone? Not necessarily. The factory settings already deliver a very high level, so in everyday viewing some people may not notice a dramatic jump. Much also depends on the individual unit. Our sample was very well tuned straight out of the box, but that doesn't mean every S90H will perform at the same level. Even identical models can differ from each other in terms of factory calibration. That's exactly why professional calibration makes sense: it allows a specific unit to be brought to the highest possible accuracy, rather than relying on a bit of luck when buying.

After professional calibration we primarily managed to fully tame the SDR signal. Here the X11L responded perfectly to our adjustments. We were able to completely correct the white balance, remove that pink tint and set gamma to a stable 2.4. After that the picture finally became consistent with the director's vision, natural and free of artificial boosts. We also made minimal tweaks to HDR, but the TV's biggest flaw remained unchanged. It's of course about how the X11L manages its brightness and how much it overshoots the EOTF curve. Unfortunately, TCL provides virtually no tools to adjust this parameter. Even during professional calibration the software offers no way to rein in this curve, so the TV will always tend to brighten the image in HDR on its own.

In this respect Samsung has changed practically nothing compared with last year’s model, which is actually quite good news. The feature responsible for smoothing tonal transitions still very effectively limits the posterisation effect. However, you should remember that it works rather aggressively, because besides the artefacts themselves it can also remove film grain and slightly soften fine image detail. As always, this is therefore a matter of compromise and personal preference. If you want the most faithful reproduction of the source material possible, we recommend leaving this function turned off.

There is also little to be said about upscaling in terms of revolution. The S90H uses the same proprietary NQ4 Gen3 image processor as its predecessor, so scaling quality has remained practically unchanged. The TV handles lower-resolution material well, effectively improving its sharpness. However, the overscan problem has still not been solved. With some older material, especially archival recordings, it may happen that a portion of the image at the edges is cropped. It’s a minor flaw, but a shame Samsung has left this issue unchanged for another year running.

Much like the C8L model we tested earlier, TCL has delivered a substantial upgrade in its flagship X series. It's all thanks to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in this model. Thanks to it, features for smoothing tonal transitions and even upscaling content to higher resolutions finally look as they should. The biggest Achilles' heel of previous TCL models has at last been addressed. The processor handles digital processing superbly and, in this respect, the TV no longer lags behind flagship models from Korea or even the most refined ones from Japan.

In terms of motion handling the S90H delivers a very high level. A new feature here is a panel with a refresh rate of up to 165 Hz, although in practice that will mainly benefit PC gamers. Films, series and sports broadcasts do not use such high refresh rates, so when watching them the difference compared with the standard 120 Hz will not be noticeable. That said, thanks to the OLED panel's lightning-fast response time motion is very clean and the picture does not suffer from the motion blur typical of many LCDs. Samsung has equipped the television with extensive motion-smoothness settings. You get two sliders: judder reduction and blur reduction, which let you easily tailor the picture's character to your own preferences. You can easily achieve a very smooth image when watching sport, but you can just as well preserve a more cinematic feel at the typical 24 frames per second. It all depends on which effect you prefer.

From a specification standpoint the X11L can impress, supporting refresh rates up to 144 Hz at 4K, and it can be pushed to as much as 288 Hz in Full HD. However, from a real-world usage perspective we were most interested in how the screen performs at 120 Hz. After all, that is the limit for today’s hardware, with current-generation consoles leading the way. How does that look in practice? Even though it uses a VA panel, the screen does not exhibit significant smearing. With very fast-moving objects you can notice a slight trailing, but it is subtle enough that it hardly stands out while gaming or watching sport. The motion smoothing feature called "Motion Clarity" is also very useful here, allowing you to adjust motion smoothness to your preference. Recommended settings can be found in the picture.

From the outset the Samsung S90H feels like a TV designed with gamers in mind, and it's easy to see why. The manufacturer has equipped it with almost everything you could expect from a modern gaming screen. You get as many as four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, support for ALLM and VRR, and very high refresh rates. There's also a clear Game Bar that lets you instantly check key picture parameters or change settings without leaving the game. Another very welcome improvement is the HGiG behaviour. Last year it could cause quite a few problems, but on the S90H it works exactly as it should.

Samsung's ace up its sleeve remains its proprietary Game Motion Plus mode. The feature works similarly to the motion smoothing used for films: it improves animation smoothness in games while keeping input lag at a very reasonable level. For titles running at 30 or 60 fps, with the right settings input lag did not exceed 40 ms in our tests. That's a very good result, especially since with many manufacturers enabling similar features results in delays several times higher. Game Motion Plus does not, of course, replace Dolby Vision Gaming, as it's a completely different type of feature, but overall it's a gaming addition that many players may find more noticeable. Smoother motion in 30/60 fps games often makes a bigger difference than HDR itself (which, incidentally, is often poorly implemented in games).

For gamers the X11L is simply a superb screen. TCL has already accustomed us to the fact that it packs virtually every available feature into its products, and the flagship from the X series is no different. Thanks to the new processor, the X11L has as many as four HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Naturally, HDMI 2.1 brings a set of very useful features, such as Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and VRR frame synchronisation, covering the full refresh range up to 288 Hz. All these features can be conveniently controlled from the dedicated Game Bar. Interestingly, its appearance can be customised to your taste; there are three preset themes to choose from, directly referencing the Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles. And speaking of Xbox, the X11L also supports Dolby Vision Gaming without any issues.

When gaming in the standard HDR10 format, however, you need to bear in mind the specific tuning of the brightness curve, which can prove troublesome during initial setup. Although the TV supports HGiG, configuring everything via the PlayStation or Xbox system menu can be difficult. The screen’s algorithms tend to artificially brighten the test checkerboard pattern, making it really hard to hit the correct white clipping point by eye. For HDR10 to look correct, we suggest manually setting the console brightness in the console menu to around 2,500–3,000 nits.