SAMSUNG S95F (TANDEM OLED 83") vs TCL X11L

Samsung S95F in the 83-inch variant with Tandem OLED panel also enchants with HDR effects. In test movie 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 easily achieves brightness values exceeding 2000 nits. This is a result that not long ago seemed unattainable for OLEDs and places this model in the same category as the best Mini-LED designs.

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

Such a large number of zones translated not only into deep, inky blacks but also into the panel’s brightness. The X11L is an extremely bright TV. Peak brightness can easily exceed 4000 nits, and with the special "Boost" mode enabled, under specific conditions that brightness can even hover around the marketing figures of 9000–10,000 nits. This is undoubtedly one of the brightest, if not the brightest, screens on the market. But how do those numbers translate to real-world movie measurements? The results are very good, though of course far from the marketing promises. Our measured brightness in actual movie scenes hovered around 2000–3000 nits. That’s an outstanding result, considering that the vast majority of content is produced to those brightness levels, including the rarer material mastered to 4000 nits. But it also shows that the numbers the manufacturer brags about don’t always translate directly to the video content available at home. The only "quirk" (if you can call it that) is that when very small, bright elements appear on the screen, their brightness drops below 2000 nits. The dimming algorithm does this deliberately to preserve deep blacks and minimize halo. This is entirely understandable and the effect remains very strong, but it also demonstrates that even with such powerful hardware, Mini-LED technology has its limits and does not always work without compromise. In HDR, brightness isn’t the only thing that matters; color saturation and color accuracy do as well. On the X11L these are very good thanks to the new Super QLED quantum dots (SQD). The addition of a newly applied filter delivered excellent coverage of the P3 color gamut and the ultra-wide BT.2020. Although it doesn’t reach the advertised 100% of BT.2020, values around 89–90% can be called excellent. Colors are not far off those of RGB Mini-LED panels. We can even say they’re more stable because they use a less demanding algorithm than the one RGB screens often have to deal with.

The best picture mode straight out of the box is undoubtedly Filmmaker Mode. This mode has been present in Samsung TVs for several years, and its intention is to reproduce the image as faithfully as possible to the creators' vision. In SDR content, it works reasonably well, although not without flaws. The picture is slightly dimmed, and the white balance tends to shift towards red and blue, resulting in a slight pinkish hue on the screen. Average color errors hover around ΔE values of 3–4, which is on the edge of what most people can perceive with the naked eye.

The limitations are much more apparent with HDR content. Here, a slight excess of blue in the white balance is not as big of a problem – the real issue becomes how the TV manages brightness. In many scenes, the picture looked as if it had been overexposed, and details in the dark could completely disappear. The final effect did not represent what the equipment of this class is capable of and led to significant color errors. It’s hard to understand why such a factory characteristic was chosen, as the HDR reception in this version definitely was not what it should be.

When you enable the supposedly best Filmmaker Mode, you expect a one-to-one image of what the director saw. On the X11L it's pretty good, but the mode has obvious flaws that our measurements immediately exposed. Let's start with SDR. Both the white balance and the gamma are simply misaligned here. The whites have too much blue and red, giving a faint pink tint. That also hurt the gamma, which instead of holding the cinematic 2.4 runs closer to 2.2. What did that result in? The whole image ends up pushed and artificially brightened. The worst is saved for last: the HDR measurements. Apart from that slight white balance drift, the X11L fails on the brightness management curve called the EOTF. What we saw in the measurements instantly explains what we noticed earlier in the films. The image is unnaturally bright because the curve is massively overshot above the reference. The TV simply and ruthlessly lifts the dark parts of the image to create a "wow" effect, completely ignoring the director's intent.

After calibration, the S95F shows what it is truly capable of. The white balance was corrected, and minor inaccuracies were adjusted, making the image in SDR content look almost exemplary. Color differences have dropped below the level that the human eye can detect – looking at the screen, one simply feels a full sense of naturalness and color coherence.

In HDR, the improvement is equally noticeable. The television handles brightness much better, eliminating the "blowing out" effect of the entire frame. Bright scenes are more controlled, and blacks retain more detail, although sometimes there may still be slight brightening of the image as a whole. Nevertheless, after calibration, the S95F delivers an image that can confidently be called one of the best on the market – regardless of whether we are watching films in SDR or spectacular productions in HDR.

After a professional calibration we were above all able to fully tame the SDR signal. The X11L responded perfectly to our adjustments. We were able to completely straighten the white balance, eliminate that pink tint, and set gamma to a stable 2.4. After that treatment the picture finally became consistent with the director’s intent, natural and free of artificial boosts. For HDR we also managed to make minor corrections, but the TV’s biggest flaw remained unchanged. I’m talking, of course, about how the X11L manages its brightness and how badly it overshoots the EOTF curve. Unfortunately, TCL provides virtually no tools to manipulate this parameter. Even during professional calibration the software offers no way to tame that curve, so the TV will always tend to brighten the image in HDR.

The Samsung S95F model features a noise reduction function aimed at improving the fluidity of tonal transitions. Its performance is hard to call ineffective – on the contrary, it can excessively interfere with the image. Older films or materials of lower quality, such as those from YouTube, take on a soft, smoothed character because of it, reminiscent of a painted effect. The problem is that along with the noise, the natural film grain, which gives the image a cinematic quality, also disappears. Fortunately, the function does not blur essential details, so its use is more a matter of taste. If someone prefers a slightly polished and smooth image, it’s worth turning it on, but in our opinion, the most sensible setting is “Standard”.

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

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

In the case of the 83-inch S95F with a Tandem OLED panel, the motion smoothness also makes a huge impression. The panel in native 4K resolution offers a refresh rate of 165 Hz, and this combined with organic technology makes games and sports look remarkable. Additionally, the manufacturer 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.

In terms of specs, the X11L can impress: it supports refresh rates up to 144 Hz at 4K, and at Full HD it can be pushed to 288 Hz. But from a real-world perspective, we were most interested in how the screen handles 120 Hz. After all, modern hardware is limited to that rate, led by current-generation consoles. How does it perform in practice? Although it uses a VA panel, the screen doesn't exhibit heavy ghosting. With very fast-moving objects you can notice a slight smear, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't stand out when gaming or watching sports. The motion smoothing feature called "Motion Clarity" is also very helpful; it lets you adjust motion smoothness to your liking. Recommended settings are shown in the photo.

The low trailing and phenomenal motion fluidity, which are the hallmarks of OLED technology, 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 limitations. On board is a complete set of gaming features: variable refresh rate (VRR), automatic low latency mode (ALLM), and a flawlessly implemented HGiG standard, which allows you to enjoy HDR exactly as the creators intended. All of this is complemented by Game Bar – an intuitive control center where you can check and adjust the most important settings in seconds.

Particular attention should also be paid to Game Motion Plus, Samsung's own smoothing technology. It can add extra fluidity to animations, which can be a lifesaver in games running at 60 frames, where stability doesn't always hold up. Indeed, support for Dolby Vision in games is missing, 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 favorites for the title of the best gaming TV on today's market.

For gamers the X11L is simply a superb screen. TCL has already gotten us used to the fact that its products deliver practically every feature available on the market, and it's exactly the same with the flagship from the X series. Thanks to the new processor, the X11L offers four HDMI 2.1 ports with the full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Naturally, the 2.1 standard brings a set of extremely useful options, such as Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and VRR frame synchronization, working across the full refresh range up to 288 Hz. All of these features can be conveniently controlled from a dedicated Game Bar. Interestingly, its appearance can be customized to your taste, with three ready-made themes referencing Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles. And speaking of Xbox: Dolby Vision Gaming also works on the X11L without any problems.

When gaming in the standard HDR10 format, however, you should be aware of the specific tuning of the brightness curve, which can cause problems during initial setup. Although the TV supports HGiG, configuring everything through the PlayStation or Xbox system menus can be tricky. 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 content to look right, we recommend manually setting the brightness in the console menu to around 2500–3000 nits.