Haier M95E vs Samsung The Frame Pro 2026 (LS03HW)

If there is one category in which the Haier M95E undoubtedly shines, it is the HDR effect, driven by the raw power of the backlighting. This TV cannot be denied that it is a truly bright device. Both in most movie scenes and during our synthetic measurements, the panel easily achieved and often even exceeded the threshold of 1200-1500 nits. This directly translates to the viewing experience – the image has a striking impact and truly allows you to feel the magic of materials recorded in this format. However, one must be aware of a certain compromise. When particularly demanding scenes filled with small, yet intense bright spots appear on the screen, the M95E does not lose its punch nor dims, but it pays a different price for it. A very strong and noticeably distracting halo effect is generated around these bright elements. It is evident here that the algorithms controlling the dimming have been programmed to prioritize brightness and visibility of the smallest details, even if this comes at the cost of flawless black levels. We are not entirely convinced that this is the healthiest approach; however, it must be acknowledged that the overall capabilities of the M95E in this regard are quite substantial. A significant advantage is the fact that we are dealing with a Mini LED QLED construction. The use of a quantum dot layer brings tangible benefits in the form of wide color gamut coverage, which in our tests reached almost 96% of the DCI-P3 color space. This guarantees that the television has full predispositions to display vibrant and appropriately saturated colors.

You can't deny The Frame Pro one thing: brightness. We measured a maximum of around 850 to 900 nits, so the TV already has enough power to render many HDR scenes really impressively. Bright, full-screen shots and more colorful frames look best here. In those scenes The Frame Pro can make a good impression because the image is bright, strong, and delivers the effect we expect from HDR. In our measurements some scenes reached over 800 nits, and even in trickier sections the TV maintained a fairly decent brightness level.

The problem starts when HDR relies on small bright elements shown against a dark background. Individual lamps, stars, or highlights can be bright, but very often the black level across much of the image also lifts. As a result, the bright point itself may look good, but the whole frame loses a lot of quality. That is why The Frame Pro shows HDR best in scenes that are simply full-screen. If a movie or series contains many such shots, the effect can be really enjoyable. In darker material the limitations of local dimming become much more noticeable.

Colors

The Frame Pro deserves praise for its color gamut coverage. The TV uses quantum dots, a solution known as QLED, which allows it to produce very well-saturated colors. In our measurements coverage of the important film color space DCI-P3 was about 94.5%, while the more demanding BT.2020 was around 72%.

Those are very solid results that in most scenes deliver pleasant, saturated colors. Of course, these values are not as striking as those in the latest displays using RGB backlighting, but The Frame Pro makes up for that with something else: color stability. Regardless of the scene, color saturation remains fairly consistent, and there is no situation where the TV loses a lot of color in more demanding shots.

We evaluate every television primarily based on its default cinema mode – in this case "Film" – which theoretically should be the "best" and most accurate right out of the box. Unfortunately, with the Haier M95E, the word "best" is absolutely not synonymous with the word "good." Even during SDR viewing, the picture revealed obvious issues: white balance skewed too much towards red, and excessive, unnatural color saturation led to visible color deviations. Worse still, the M95E also has trouble managing brightness (gamma curve), excessively darkening the entire scene. Such behavior is hard to commend, as it directly causes details in the shadows to blend into a black blob, which are irretrievably lost.

However, the real disaster struck after switching to HDR material while still remaining in "Film" mode. It's hard to guess who came up with such a fantastic idea – or perhaps it was simply a complete oversight of this stage by Haier's engineers – but the image, instead of cinema fidelity, began to resemble the bright "Dynamic" mode. The white balance exposed huge issues with the blue color, which in turn resulted in unnatural sharpening and artificial oversaturation of the entire scene. As if that weren't enough, the EOTF curve characteristics ruthlessly revealed that the television also has fundamental problems with local dimming management in this setting. We haven't calibrated many Haiers in our career, but we know for sure now that the M95E definitely needs it.

In SDR material The Frame Pro in Filmmaker mode performs quite well, though it falls short of perfect. White balance is relatively even, but as brightness increases the blue component starts to drop, so brighter parts of the image can have a slightly warmer tint. A bigger difference is visible in the gamma, that is how screen brightness is managed. Across most of the range it runs below our reference point, which means the TV brightens midtones a bit. As a result the image can appear slightly brighter and less contrasty than it should. The color errors themselves are not huge, but they are visible enough that calibration can still make a substantial improvement. In HDR content the white balance looks similar: across much of the range it is fairly even, with larger deviations appearing only at higher brightness. The EOTF curve is more revealing. The Frame Pro follows reference values fairly well in the brighter parts of the image, but noticeably brightens the darkest portions. This stems mainly from the TV’s backlight design. That also affects colors. With less saturated colors the errors are still moderate, but they grow significantly as saturation increases. In ColorChecker measurements a large portion of samples already register high error values. The out-of-the-box HDR can therefore be considered decent, but it is definitely not an image we would call very faithful.

The calibration process left us with extremely mixed feelings. On one hand, we noted significant success in the area of colorimetry. Utilizing the options available in the menu, we managed to tame the white balance and bring it down to an acceptable level. As a result, SDR content was finally freed from the annoying red dominance, and the HDR image no longer resembled a vibrant, store demonstration mode. The entire color palette and its saturation were also clearly corrected – perhaps not perfectly, but to the extent that the software allowed, and the difference was visible to the naked eye.

Unfortunately, this is where our list of corrections basically ends, as M95E simply did not allow for more. As we indicated earlier, most settings related to image brightness do not respond to our commands at all. This means we were unable to control its fundamental characteristics in any way – neither the gamma curve nor the EOTF. In practice, the television in SDR content still tends to darken details, which was confirmed by the inflated gamma, merging details in the shadows. On the other hand, the EOTF curve in HDR mode still mercilessly exposed all the previously mentioned issues with chaotic local dimming zone management. And while the calibration process itself yielded quite a lot, removing most of the color issues, ultimately we had to capitulate.

After calibration the biggest improvement is visible primarily in SDR content. White balance was evened out, but the more important change was the gamma correction, which before calibration had the greatest impact on the picture's character. After adjustments the gamma response is now very close to the reference, so the image is not as bright in the midtones and simply looks more natural. Color errors have also been noticeably reduced, so the effect of calibration in SDR is clearly visible. In HDR the situation is a bit more complex. White balance was improved and over part of the range the TV tracks the reference much better, but deviations still appear at higher brightness levels. The same applies to color reproduction, as some errors can be corrected but not all result from the settings themselves. This reveals the limitations of the TV's design and the way the backlight and local dimming affect the HDR image. That's why, for The Frame Pro, calibration makes the biggest difference for everyday content. Regular broadcast TV, YouTube, and SDR movies and series (mainly those from cheaper streaming tiers) can look noticeably better after calibration.

Well, what happens with those color transitions when lower quality material full of compression artifacts comes on screen? Unfortunately, we have some bad news for you. Although we can find an option in the menu responsible for smoothing tonal transitions in older content, we definitely DO NOT RECOMMEND using it. Its activation causes a barrage of additional, ugly artifacts, noticeably blurring the entire image, and the funniest part – it often doesn’t even remove those unwanted “stairs” it was supposed to fight against. This feature might as well not exist at all.

We can write many more positive things about the overall upscaling, which is the process of raising lower resolutions to the native 4K matrix. The image after upscaling looks really good – it's neither overly jagged nor artificially smoothed. In this particular matter, the M95E simply delivers.

The Frame Pro uses the NQ4 AI Gen3 processor, so in terms of image processing it behaves very similarly to Samsung's other recent TVs. Upscaling works really well; lower-resolution material is sensibly sharpened and the image remains clear without overemphasizing edges. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality YouTube clips, this can provide a noticeable improvement, although viewers watching much older material, for example from VHS tapes, may notice a slight left-side cropping (overscan).

It's a bit different when it comes to improving more heavily compressed images through noise reduction and artifact suppression for issues like posterization. The "Noise Reduction" function can improve weaker material, but fairly quickly it starts to interfere with the image and remove fine detail or grain. So it's best used sparingly and mainly when the source truly needs it.

When it comes to motion fluidity and ghosting, our feelings are quite mixed because the M95E is a paradoxical television. Let’s start with the absolute delights: the heart of the device is a 144Hz panel, but what truly impresses is its performance with 120Hz content, which is crucial for sports and console gaming. We must state with full responsibility that Haier has equipped the television with one of the best VA panels currently available on the market when it comes to minimizing ghosting. It is rare to encounter an LCD panel that offers such clean, sharp, and ghost-free motion. In this respect, the M95E is simply phenomenal.

And this is exactly why the unpleasant surprise waiting for us on the software side is so painful. It turns out that this fantastic hardware potential is completely untapped, as the television practically offers no functioning options for improving fluidity. The smoothing systems, which should assist with lower frame rate content, can indeed be found in the Menu but essentially do not respond to our settings. The conclusion is brutally simple: if you intend to watch high fluidity material, you must be sure that the source is transmitting it natively at 120. In every other case, you must resign yourself to a rather raw, choppy image because the M95E will not help smooth it out in any way.

The Frame Pro is equipped with a 144 Hz panel and, when connected to a PC, also supports 240 Hz at Full HD resolution. That’s, of course, a feature aimed mainly at PC gamers, but the TV also performs very well at the standard 120 Hz refresh rate we use for watching sports or playing on consoles. A big plus is its minimal motion blur. For a VA panel The Frame Pro does really well in this regard. You don’t see strong, dark trails following moving objects that are fairly common on TVs with this type of panel. As a result, fast sports and dynamic games remain clear in motion. It also includes motion smoothing with adjustable smoothness, so for movies and sports broadcasts you can tune the motion character to your preferences. Our recommended settings can be found in the photo.

When it comes to features for gamers, the Haier M95E presents some really strong arguments. First of all, it is fully ready for the new generation of consoles and powerful PCs. It is equipped with two full-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports, which handle 4K signals at 120Hz effortlessly and even allow for gaming at 144Hz. This is a foundation that guarantees us full utilization of the potential of our equipment. Moreover, the key technologies work flawlessly here. The television accurately detects the console and automatically switches to low latency mode (ALLM), so we don’t have to dig into the settings. The frame synchronization (VRR) also works smoothly, eliminating the annoying tearing of the image when the game's fluidity slightly drops. Considering the remarkably low motion blur of the panel, which we have already mentioned, the M95E creates a truly comfortable and responsive gaming environment. Of course, this is not a perfect package. A dedicated "Game Bar," which would be a handy menu for gamers, would be a nice addition, but in essence, it is just a nice extra. A more serious shortcoming is the lack of support for the HGiG standard, which complicates the ideal HDR configuration on the console and can lead to overexposures. Despite these shortcomings, the basic "gaming package" offered by the M95E is really solid and fully functional.

Function-wise for gamers The Frame Pro has a lot to offer. The TV supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR, ALLM and correctly implemented HGiG. When you connect a PC you can also use 144 Hz at 4K, and even 240 Hz if you drop to Full HD. Samsung also adds its standard set of gaming extras: a robust Game Bar that lets you quickly view and adjust key settings, and Game Motion Plus, which can improve the smoothness of games running at 30 or 60 fps. There’s also the Gaming Hub and the ability to play in the cloud without needing to connect a console. The only real omission is Dolby Vision Gaming, which Samsung doesn’t support. Otherwise The Frame Pro offers practically everything you can expect today from a well-equipped gaming TV.