Hisense UR9S vs Samsung OLED S95H (S99H) (QD-OLED)

The Hisense UR9S is without a doubt a show of strength from the Chinese manufacturer when it comes to luminance. On a synthetic test pattern the panel reached as much as 2600 nits, which is an impressive result. But you have to clearly separate lab results from film realities. In real material the UR9S behaves much more restrained. Peak brightness in balanced scenes hovers around 1500 nits. In demanding, dark shots—where the algorithms must at the same time preserve deep blacks and precisely light small details—brightness can drop drastically, even down to around 400 nits. The gap between the chart and reality is therefore huge. This is a direct consequence of conservative local-dimming behavior. When a bright object occupies a large portion of the frame, the system can easily maintain a high luminance. But in night scenes the priority becomes protecting black levels and fighting the halo effect (unsightly glows around bright edges). To avoid degrading contrast, the TV drastically limits its light output. Even so, the UR9S can still produce a very powerful, engaging HDR effect that impresses in bright, spectacular sequences.

Color gamut coverage

On test patterns the Hisense UR9S performs excellently in terms of color. DCI-P3 coverage is nearly 100%, and BT.2020 coverage reaches 93%. Those are figures even the best QD-OLED TVs don't achieve. But again, synthetic measurements are one thing and movies and series are another. In real-world scenes the numbers fell to 93% for DCI-P3 and 81% for BT.2020. That's still great, but the advantage of RGB Mini LED is no longer as dramatic as manufacturers promise in marketing materials. You could even say their capability is now close to TVs equipped with quantum dots, the so-called QLEDs. Why does this happen? Largely, color reproduction depends on how the local dimming zones operate. When a highly saturated color appears next to white or another, more complex element, a single zone must handle both parts of the image at once. Under those conditions the backlight cannot maintain extreme saturation of a given color on the screen, because the emitted light takes on a character closer to white. Hisense refined this quite well in the UR9S, but still not enough for the TV to sustain such high color saturation in every situation.

When it comes to brightness alone, the S99H is an astronomically bright TV. Its peak brightness in movie scenes can exceed 2800 nits! Regardless of the scene, you can count on powerful HDR effects that practically blind you, and that's exactly what we expect from a top-tier screen. It's inherent to OLED panels that in very bright, full-screen shots they won't sustain as high a brightness as they do with small highlights, but the results are still excellent. In a bright scene from the film The Meg, the sun still exceeded 2200 nits. That means the S99H was able to maintain higher brightness than most Mini LED screens on the market. In terms of brightness, the S99H is currently the best OLED TV we've tested.

Color gamut coverage

The S99H also handles color exceptionally well, which is a direct result of the QD-OLED panel used here. Regardless of the test scenario, whether synthetic test patterns or measurements with film material in the background, the results stayed at a very high level. The S99H easily covers almost 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut, and for the most demanding color space it reaches nearly 90% of BT.2020. That's top-tier performance on the market. These results match what we saw in the new SQD-Mini-LED screens, and in real movie scenes they even outperform RGB Mini LED displays.

We tested the Hisense UR9S in Filmmaker Mode, which, by default, provides the most accurate image reproduction. In HDR content the TV performed quite well in that regard. White balance did not show large errors, and the luminance curve, though typical for Hisense, was at a reasonable level. So the image was neither overly bright nor noticeably color-shifted. The same mode fared much worse with SDR content, meaning the content we watch most often, such as broadcast TV or YouTube. White balance was strongly shifted toward red and blue, giving the image a slightly pink tint. This also affected the gamma curve. Instead of approaching the reference value of 2.4, it was closer to 2.0, which made the image look too bright, especially in midtones and darker areas. Filmmaker Mode therefore remains the best out-of-the-box choice, but it's not without flaws.

Samsung offers a whole host of picture modes and features, but as usual we recommend choosing Filmmaker Mode, especially if you want the most faithful rendering of the creators' intent. Out of the box the TV is tuned very well, though it has minor shortcomings. This mainly concerns a slight drift in white balance in SDR content and a slightly low gamma. As a result, in a darker room the image can be a bit too bright relative to the reference gamma of 2.4, which is the standard for watching films with the lights off. These are of course small issues, since overall color reproduction remains very good and the errors in ColorChecker measurements are small. However, we know that from a screen of the S99H's class you can and should expect even more, so we had it professionally calibrated.

After calibration we saw the biggest improvement in SDR mode, though we also refined the HDR picture. Hisense offers a lot of calibration settings in the TV's menu, so we could precisely correct the white balance and other image errors. The most important change was removing the pink cast that had previously been clearly visible in SDR content. After calibration the picture looks much more natural, especially in everyday content such as TV or YouTube.

Color reproduction errors on the ColorChecker chart are very small after calibration. The vast majority of colors fall below a Delta E of 2–3, meaning at a level very hard for the human eye to detect. The only thing we couldn't completely eliminate is the characteristic HDR tone mapping typical of Hisense TVs. It affects how brightness is distributed in movies and can subtly "beautify" the image, rather than strictly following the creators' intent. For a less experienced viewer this can produce a stronger "wow" effect, but it won't always fully match how the content should look.

After professional calibration, FILMMAKER mode looks virtually perfect. Because Samsung offers a rich set of advanced calibration features, we were able to tune the colors to an almost perfect level. Most importantly, we were able to even out the white balance and the gamma curve, which resulted in noticeably better contrast and a more natural image dimensionality. With a profile prepared like this, there's really nothing to nitpick or call a flaw. After calibration, the S99H is capable of delivering an essentially reference-quality image.

Digital image processing has been one of Hisense's strengths for two years, and the UR9S is no exception. The manufacturer uses the Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor, which is essentially based on the well-known MediaTek Pentonic 800 platform, previously used, among others, in the U8Q. The TV handles upscaling lower-resolution material to 4K and low-bitrate content very well, where various compression-related artifacts are common. Thanks to a feature called "Smooth and Gradient Picture", the image remains detailed without appearing overly sharpened or artificially smoothed. When watching regular TV or older, lower-quality material, the UR9S can pull a surprising amount out of them. In terms of digital image processing, this is one of the most refined LCD TVs we've had the chance to test.

The proprietary Samsung NQ4 Gen3 processor handles upscaling and digital image processing. It does a very good job scaling lower-resolution material to 4K. The picture is sharp but doesn't look artificial or overly sharpened. The only fairly specific drawback appears with very old footage shot at 480p or lower. In those cases the TV can slightly crop the edges of the image.

The processor also copes quite well with artifacts visible in low-bitrate material, for example heavily compressed YouTube videos. The noise reduction feature effectively smooths the image and reduces posterization, but it works rather aggressively. It can remove not only unwanted artifacts but also some fine details and even natural film grain. We, wanting to preserve maximum fidelity to the source material, chose not to use it. However, if someone values a clean, as-smooth-as-possible image over keeping every detail, it can be useful.

The Hisense UR9S is one of the first TVs on the market with a 4K panel and a 170 Hz refresh rate. In the larger sizes, 75 and 85 inches, that goes up to 180 Hz. Such a high refresh rate will mainly be useful to owners of very powerful PCs. We still watch movies and series mostly at 24 fps, and sports broadcasts at 50 fps, so in everyday use panel response time and the performance of motion smoothing are more important. In that respect the UR9S performs very well. Motion blur is minimal, as our UFO test also confirmed. Moving objects do not leave a pronounced trail, so the picture remains clear even in fast scenes.

Another major advantage of OLED panels is excellent motion reproduction. Thanks to the pixels' near instant response time, the Samsung S99H practically produces no smearing. Fast-moving objects don't show noticeable halos or trailing artifacts, so the TV performs very well for both watching sports and gaming. One quirk of OLED screens compared with LCDs is how they render low frame rate material. With very slow camera movement the image can appear noticeably more stuttery. This can be quite effectively mitigated using a frame interpolation system. Samsung lets you adjust judder reduction and blur reduction separately, making it easy to find a compromise between smoother motion and preserving the cinematic character of the content.

The Hisense UR9S is very well prepared for gaming. All three HDMI ports are HDMI 2.1 and offer the full 48 Gb/s bandwidth. The TV supports 4K at 170 Hz, and on larger screen sizes even 180 Hz. On top of that there are VRR, ALLM, NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, so in terms of core features there’s little to complain about. PC gamers can also enable DLG mode. After switching the resolution to Full HD the refresh rate can increase to as much as 330 Hz. That’s probably an option for a narrow group of users, but it shows how much headroom the panel has. Hisense also added a Game Bar that lets you quickly change key settings, check the refresh rate, or enable a reticle and minimap zoom. The biggest downside remains the lack of a properly working HGiG. The TV keeps using its own tone mapping, which makes setting HDR on a console a bit more difficult. In our case values between 1500 and 2000 nits worked best, but it’s worth checking which setting still preserves all the details in the brightest parts of the image.

Samsung S99H is also an excellent TV for gamers. It offers almost every useful feature... well, maybe except the obvious lack of Dolby Vision for Xbox consoles. It's equipped with four fully functional HDMI 2.1 ports with the full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Thanks to that we can easily use frame-rate synchronization VRR and automatic low-latency mode (ALLM). This year Samsung also has no issues with proper HGiG support, so HDR setup on a console is quick and without unnecessary complications. Samsung is also known for interesting extras in its TVs. In the Game Bar menu you'll find options to add an on-screen crosshair, enlarge the mini-map, or change the aspect ratio of the displayed image (PC).

Particularly noteworthy is Samsung's feature: Game Motion Plus. It's Samsung's proprietary motion-smoothing system that uses interpolation to increase smoothness in games. Input lag then rises to around 40 to 50 ms (depending on the strength of the setting), which is an excellent result compared to the competition. The system makes gameplay noticeably smoother. So if someone has their eye on a demanding game (e.g., GTA 6 😉) that runs at only 30 frames per second on console, the S99H can display it much more smoothly than competing models.