SAMSUNG S95F (TANDEM OLED 83") vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

The Samsung S95F in the 83-inch variant with a Tandem OLED panel also manages to enchant with HDR effects. In test film scenes, such as "Life of Pi" or "Sicario 2", where smaller light points dominate – stars in the night sky, the glow of the moon or headlights – the television effortlessly achieves brightness values exceeding 2000 nits. This is a result that not long ago seemed unattainable for OLEDs and positions this model alongside the best Mini-LED constructions.

The limitations of organic panels only reveal themselves in full-screen scenes filled entirely with white. In the case of this model, for instance in the final scene from the film The Meg, brightness drops to around 1000 nits – a bit lower than in the smaller QD-OLED variants, where the result hovered around 1400 nits. Nevertheless, we are still talking about a remarkable result, unprecedented in OLED televisions of this size. The colour reproduction is equally impressive. The new Tandem OLED panel virtually catches up with QD-OLED televisions, offering excellent coverage of a wide colour gamut. The results are slightly weaker than with QD-OLED, but in practice, they still provide an image whose intensity and naturalness of colours are hard to compare with any other television.

Bravia 3 II is certainly not a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached about 450 nits, so it falls well short of the brightest models on the market. That does not mean HDR is just a paper feature. Compared with ordinary SDR material, the brightest elements of the image can already come through noticeably, and reflections, highlights and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. This is most obvious in simpler shots where the screen displays many bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a hint of a higher dynamic-range picture. The problem only begins with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is required. There the TV quickly shows its limitations and instead of powerful, striking HDR we get only a competently rendered picture.

Colours

Bravia 3 II uses a QLED-type panel, although technically it does not use a classic quantum dot layer. Instead Sony has used a solution based on PFS phosphor, which performs a very similar role: it allows more saturated reds and greens and thus enables a much wider colour gamut. In measurements DCI-P3 coverage was around 94%, and the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. These are good results for this class of hardware, which mean the Bravia 3 II has no problem reproducing sufficiently saturated colours in HDR content. Colours do not look washed out, and more intense hues can look genuinely attractive.

The best picture mode straight out of the box is undoubtedly Filmmaker Mode. This is a mode that has been available in Samsung televisions for several years and is intended to reproduce the image as faithfully as possible to the creators' vision. In SDR material, it performs reasonably well, although not without faults. The image is slightly subdued, and the white balance tends to shift towards red and blue, resulting in a slight pinkish tint on the screen. The average colour errors hover around a value of ΔE 3–4, which is at the limit of what most people can discern with the naked eye.

Much more pronounced are the limitations when it comes to HDR content. Here, a slight excess of blue in the white balance is not such a big problem – the real obstacle is the way the television manages brightness. In many scenes, the image appeared as if it had been overexposed, and details in the blacks could completely disappear. The final effect did not reflect what the hardware of this class is capable of and led to significant colour errors. It's hard to understand why such a factory characteristic was chosen, as the HDR reception in this version was definitely not what it should have been.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II already delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. White balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases the blue and red components become slightly lacking, so whites can at times take on a marginally warmer, faintly greenish tint. These are not faults that immediately catch the eye when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setting can be regarded as quite good. The situation is similar in HDR. Here too there is a slight lack of the blue component, so the image is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference is not large enough to significantly interfere with normal viewing.

After calibration, the S95F shows what it is truly capable of. The white balance has been corrected and minor inaccuracies adjusted, resulting in an almost exemplary image for SDR content. The colour differences have dropped below the level that the human eye can perceive – looking at the screen gives a sense of complete naturalness and colour coherence.

In HDR, the improvement is equally noticeable. The TV performs much better with brightness, eliminating the issue of "blowing out" the entire frame. Bright scenes are more controlled, and blacks retain more detail, although there can still be a slight brightening of the image as a whole. However, this does not change the fact that after calibration, the S95F delivers an image that can comfortably be called one of the best on the market – regardless of whether we are watching movies in SDR or spectacular productions in HDR.

After calibration, there is particularly a lot to be gained from SDR content. The white balance was set almost perfectly, the gamma practically matches the reference value, and the average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That is already a level at which differences from the reference image are, in practice, very difficult to detect. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that, despite its position in Sony’s lineup, it has quite a lot of potential for precise picture calibration. Improvements are also visible in HDR, although here it is no longer possible to avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. After evening out the colours, it is easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film content runs slightly below the reference value in places, so the Bravia 3 II gently darkens part of the image. This is not an ideal solution from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has its benefits. With no local dimming and average black levels, this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps maintain a stronger impression of contrast. So you could say Sony partly masks the limitations of the panel this way, instead of trying at all costs to stick to the reference luminance.

In the Samsung S95F model, there is a noise reduction feature aimed at improving the smoothness of tonal transitions. Its operation can hardly be called ineffective – on the contrary, it can overly interfere with the image. Older films or materials of poorer quality, such as those from YouTube, acquire a soft, smoothed character thanks to it, reminiscent of a painting effect. The problem is that along with the noise, the natural film grain disappears, stripping the image of its cinematic character. Fortunately, the feature does not blur significant details, so its use is more a matter of taste. If someone prefers a slightly polished and smooth image, it is worth enabling, but in our opinion, the most sensible setting is “Standard”.

A better impression is left by the upscaling. The S95F efficiently enhances the quality of lower resolution content – even 576p video looks quite good, although minor artifacts in the form of blockiness can be noticed. Overall, the effect is very solid, although when compared to competitors – such as the Sony Bravia 8 (II) or LG G5 – it is noticeable that those models can extract a bit more from the image. However, it is worth remembering one inconvenience: with older films and photos, there is an overscan issue that causes a slight cutting off of the left edge of the image.

The Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, and there are a few changes in image processing. Starting with the basics. The upscaling itself is adequate. The TV can sensibly pull up lower-resolution material and does not have a strong tendency to over-emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or weaker streaming material the picture therefore remains quite pleasing. We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its role is essentially very similar: it is supposed to smooth unpleasant tonal transitions and artefacts resulting from heavy signal compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "High" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many elements of the image at once, causing film grain to disappear and the texture of objects or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When a scene contains more motion, the function's effect clearly weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the picture altogether. For everyday viewing we therefore would not recommend using it at a high level. It can help on a static shot, but the price is often an excessive loss of detail.

In the case of the 83-inch S95F with a Tandem OLED panel, the fluidity of motion also makes a huge impression. The panel, with a native resolution of 4K, offers a refresh rate of 165 Hz, and this combined with organic technology makes games and sports look superb. Additionally, the manufacturer has added a film smoother and a motion blur reduction system, allowing each viewer to adjust the image to their own preferences – whether it's a more "frame-rate" cinematic effect or a smooth, almost theatrical spectacle.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120Hz VA panel, a solution that, by nature, despite the high refresh rate, does not always cope well with motion blur. Here, however, Sony has managed to keep that problem very well under control. Fast-moving objects remain crisp, and the characteristic trails and blurring are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It is one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we have tested. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive True RGB flagship series, the Bravia 9 II.

Low smearing and phenomenal motion fluidity, which are the hallmarks of OLED displays, are just the warm-up. The Samsung S95F has been designed with gamers in mind – and this is evident at every turn. Four HDMI 2.1 ports with a bandwidth of 40 Gb/s may sound like a compromise on paper, but in practice, neither consoles nor PCs will experience the slightest limitation here. On board, there is a full set of gaming features: Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), as well as a flawlessly implemented HGiG standard that allows you to enjoy HDR exactly as the creators intended. All of this is complemented by Game Bar – an intuitive command centre where you can check and adjust the most important settings in seconds.

Particular attention should also be paid to Game Motion Plus, Samsung's proprietary motion smoothing technology. It can add extra fluidity to animations, which can be a lifesaver in games running at 60 frames per second, where stability doesn't always hold up. Indeed, support for Dolby Vision in games is lacking, but it’s hard to consider this a serious flaw – the manufacturer compensates for this gap with other solutions. The S95F is one of the absolute favourites for the title of the best gaming television on today's market.

Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been implemented exactly as we would like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get as many as four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the issues that has plagued this manufacturer’s TVs for years. We can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, for example VRR or ALLM. There is also a simple Game Bar that lets you view key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game. However, there are two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That will not be a problem for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC, for example to get higher frame rates in certain games, will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony does not allow you to disable the TV’s tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the screen is always processing HDR content even when you would prefer to leave that task to the console. This is most obvious during HDR setup — the checkerboard pattern does not disappear at the point that corresponds to the TV’s actual capabilities. That does not mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to approach the setup a little differently and, instead of relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to around 450 nits. The issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start setting up the console.