Panasonic W85 vs Samsung OLED S95H (S99H) (QD-OLED)

Unfortunately, we don't have good news here. The Panasonic W85B is rather dim – its peak brightness does not exceed 300 nits, so it's hard to talk about any true HDR effect. In practice, this means that scenes which on other screens can "shine" and make an impression, here look simply like regular SDR with a slight boost in colors. Our measurements and film tests confirmed this – regardless of the content, the W85B won't extract anything more from HDR. So if someone is looking for a TV specifically for HDR, it's better to look towards other models. As a consolation, the fact remains that in terms of colors, the W85B performs quite well. It's a QLED TV, so its color gamut coverage is wide, and most films and series look natural, without a distinct "washed out" effect. The colors are saturated, so during regular viewing, there is no sense that something is quite wrong.

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.

While testing the Panasonic W85B, we of course started with the Filmmaker mode, as it is the gold standard today for watching content "as the director intended." The problem is that this TV is quite far from those intentions. The biggest issue turned out to be an excess of red – in both SDR and HDR. The picture often looked overly warm, and in some scenes, it appeared almost "blazing." Additionally, there’s the issue of brightness management. When we looked at the gamma and EOTF charts, it was clear as day that in most scenes, the TV brightens the image more than it should. The effect was easy to predict. Details can get lost, leading to flattening and clipping across the entire screen. Of course, we know how to improve this, but it must be said honestly that it requires quite a bit of work in calibration. Out of the box, the W85B does not provide a reference-level picture – it is rather a TV that will always interpret colors and brightness a bit "its own way" without professional adjustments. Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of the viewer.

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.

Fortunately, calibration made a significant difference for the Panasonic W85B, especially in SDR content. Here, the improvement was really noticeable – we managed to balance the white and reasonably tame the TV's tendency to excessively brighten the entire image. The picture became more coherent, and the colors gained a naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. Admittedly, the results from the Color Checker are not perfect, as the W85B has visible issues with green saturation, but overall, we assess the post-calibration effect in SDR very positively. The situation with HDR is a bit different. Here, we were also able to limit the tendency to warm up the entire scene, so the image turned out much better than in the factory settings. However, the same problem we mentioned earlier is still evident – the TV interprets the image too "in its own way" and brightens the entire frame. The lack of local dimming only exacerbates this effect. In summary, briefly in SDR content, the W85B performs really well after calibration and is perfectly suitable for everyday viewing. However, in HDR, even after adjustments, it is still hard to unequivocally recommend it for serious viewing sessions.

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.

With native SDR content, the Panasonic W85B performs very well – tonal transitions are smooth and natural, without artificial bands or clear contours. However, the situation looks worse with lower resolution materials. This is where the television has the biggest problem with "beautifying" the image. The lack of any option in the menu that would allow for improving gradation means that with older films or materials from YouTube, one can sometimes notice slight issues with color blending.

Fortunately, upscaling, or increasing the quality of lower resolution content, performs much better. This is definitely a strong point of this model – the image is scaled cleanly and in detail, and the television handles this better than one might expect from such an affordable device. This is thanks to the HCX processor, which Panasonic has been developing for years, and it shows that even in the lower series, it can do a good job.

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.

At first glance, everything looks good – the Panasonic W85B has a 120 Hz panel and even a 144 Hz mode, so it seems that it should handle smooth motion well. The problem begins when we look into the settings. The options for improving fluidity are supposedly present in the menu, but in practice… they change nothing. No matter what we choose, the image looks the same. On top of that, there's a lack of BFI, which is the black frame insertion mode that helps sharpen motion in many TVs. And suddenly, it turns out that despite having a strong panel, the W85B doesn't give us any real tools to adjust that motion to our needs. It only works well when the source itself operates at a higher frequency – for example, games at 120 Hz. But when it comes to movies or sports, we just have to take what the TV shows us, because there's nothing more we can do about it.

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.

On paper, the Panasonic W85B looks really solid. Here we have two full HDMI 2.1 ports, support for ALLM, variable refresh rate, Dolby Vision in games, and of course, a high refresh rate for the panel itself. Additionally, there’s the characteristic Panasonic game bar that allows you to check key parameters with one click and quickly change them if necessary. Sounds great, but the problem arises when we activate HDR. Here, the W85B significantly falters because it lacks proper HGiG implementation – the TV manages brightness poorly, and instead of faithful image rendering, we get scenes that are too bright, sometimes even blown out. The solution? The simplest – turn off HDR in the console settings and leave everything in SDR. And here it gets really interesting, because in this scenario, the W85B shows its better side. Low input lag, high smoothness thanks to 120 Hz – all of this makes gaming look phenomenal. Yes, HDR can be sacrificed, but if responsiveness and smooth gameplay are priorities, the W85B provides a lot of fun.

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.