TCL A300W NXTVision vs Samsung S85H

When it comes to brightness, the TCL A300W is definitely the darkest TV among all frame-style models, such as Samsung The Frame or Hisense CanvasTV – and unfortunately, this is immediately noticeable. In our measurements, the peak luminance reached only about 400 nits, and on test film screens, this value dropped to 350 nits. This is definitely too little to feel the true "magic" of bright HDR effects. As a consolation – the TV is equipped with a PFS LED coating (which is something like QLED), which provides very good coverage of a wide color palette, both DCI-P3 and BT.2020. Additionally, there is full support for all popular HDR formats – HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision – which somewhat compensates for the shortcomings in brightness and helps improve the overall perception of materials in this quality.

Interestingly, the new WOLED SE panel has brought a slight improvement in brightness to the S85 series. In the same movie scenes the previous year's model stayed closer to about 700 nits, while the S85H can reach around 800 nits. Of course this isn't a change that completely transforms the HDR experience, but that extra headroom is noticeable especially with small highlights, reflections, and stronger special effects. Around 800 nits is already a very good result for an entry-level OLED and in most films it's enough for HDR to have the right impact. Bright elements can clearly stand out from perfect black, and that contrast still does most of the heavy lifting here. You should remember the typical limitation of organic technology, though. When a very bright scene covers a large part of the screen, brightness can drop by almost half. This is the result of the panel's protection mechanisms, which limit its power with large bright areas.

Colors

The S85H can produce very pleasant, saturated colors and in most HDR films it looks really good in that respect. We measured roughly 95% DCI-P3 coverage, so the palette most often used in movies is reproduced to a very large degree. Skin tones, greens, and stronger reds still have appropriate intensity, and during normal viewing it's hard to fault them. Only when you look more broadly at BT.2020 do the limitations of the new WOLED SE panel become apparent. Coverage was around 70%, a bit less than in previous-generation WOLEDs and noticeably less than in QD-OLED panels. In films this isn't a major loss, because most productions rarely use such highly saturated colors. You notice it more often in games, where developers are much more likely to employ more intense colors.

TCL A300 offers several picture modes, but without a doubt, the movie mode performs the best. Unfortunately, although it is the best choice among the available options, it is not free from errors. Both in HD and HDR content, the image has a noticeably too warm tint – leaning slightly towards pink, which is particularly noticeable in snowy scenes. Instead of pure white, we get a pinkish hue that spoils the natural perception of colors.

The brightness management doesn't perform well either. For older HD materials, the image often seems too dark – as confirmed by the inflated gamma value. Conversely, with HDR content, the effect is reversed – the image is overly brightened, which we observed in scenes from the movie Pan. This lack of consistency also affects color reproduction accuracy – a test with the ColorChecker showed that many samples deviate significantly from the reference values.

Fortunately, TCL allows manual adjustment of the settings, so we decided to check how the television would perform after our professional calibration. The effects of this correction are described below.

To evaluate color we, of course, selected Filmmaker mode, and in SDR our S85H unit was very well calibrated out of the box. The biggest deviation appears in the white balance, where a bit of blue drops out as brightness increases. In practice this means whites and grays have a slightly warmer tint than they should. It's not a major error and during normal viewing it generally isn't very noticeable. Gamma also stays close to the reference value, so the image is neither overly bright nor unnecessarily dim. The S85H's SDR picture quality is therefore very good straight out of the box. A few more imperfections show up in HDR. Here the white balance shifts more as brightness increases, with blue becoming dominant and the red component noticeably lacking. That also leads to larger errors in some colors. These aren't yet distortions that completely change the character of the image, but compared directly with the reference the difference is easier to spot. Overall, Filmmaker mode is a very good starting point before professional calibration.

After our professional calibration, the TCL A300 literally got a new lease on life. The image is no longer too warm, and the colors finally look the way they should – which was confirmed by the ColorChecker test, where the color samples finally started hitting their marks, at least to some reasonable degree. It was also possible to partially correct the brightness management – the image is now more balanced and less "wobbly" between different types of content. Of course, certain limitations cannot be overcome – a slightly noticeable blooming effect still occurs, but that's a characteristic of the technology, not something that can be eliminated even after professional settings.

Generally: after calibration, the A300 looks significantly better and gains a completely new quality.

Calibration yields very good results on the S85H. First, the white balance can be set almost perfectly, which removes the slightly too-warm image cast that was visible earlier in SDR. Color reproduction itself also improves significantly; most errors drop to a very low level, and in everyday viewing it's hard to notice any visible inaccuracies. You can also improve a lot in HDR, although some issues remain due to the TV's inherent characteristics. The S85H doesn't always perfectly follow the brightness curve. The darkest areas are slightly boosted, and as you approach the panel's limits you can see small deviations in the brightest highlights. On top of that there's limited coverage of the wider BT.2020 gamut, which no calibration can of course overcome. Despite this, the end result is very good, and after calibration the S85H can deliver a well-tuned, natural image.

TCL A300 handles tonal transitions in high-quality films very well, but the question arises – how does it perform with weaker materials? The television is equipped with a tonal transition smoothing feature, but its effectiveness can be described in one word: "random." In one scene it may work and improve the gradation, and when turned off… the effect remains the same. There is a lack of consistency and predictability.

Image scaling is also not one of the A300's strong suits. In the test pattern, the main character actually looked better than on the raw signal, but with thin lines – like fonts or background details – there was noticeable jaggedness and aliasing. On the plus side, the television does not cut off the image and has no issues with overscan, but the overall quality of scaling is rather average.

For the S85H, Samsung used the same proprietary NQ4 Gen2 AI processor as in last year’s S85F, and in terms of digital image processing it performs quite well. Upscaling is one of this model’s strengths. Lower-resolution content is well sharpened, edges look natural, and the image doesn’t feel overly artificial. Just bear in mind a common Samsung quirk: at very low resolutions you can’t completely disable overscan, so the TV may slightly crop the left edge of the image. The "noise reduction" function, which smooths weaker tonal transitions, also works very well. The processor can effectively remove posterization and other imperfections visible in lower-quality material. However, you need to be careful with the strength of this feature, because Samsung can be fairly aggressive here. When it’s enabled, along with unwanted artifacts, fine image details such as the texture of skin or clothing can start to disappear.

The TCL A300 is equipped with a 144 Hz panel, which should immediately satisfy practically everyone – both gamers and sports fans. The motion is smooth, and the picture is clear even in fast scenes. Additionally, the television offers a motion enhancement feature called "Motion," where we can find two sliders on a 10-point scale. These allow for adjusting the effect to personal preferences – from a classic, cinematic look with visible frames to a very smooth (though already unnatural) image reminiscent of a soap opera effect. Thanks to this, everyone can find a setting that suits them.

The S85H uses an OLED panel, so it performs excellently when it comes to motion blur. Pixels respond virtually instantly, so moving objects don’t leave the characteristic ghosting seen on some LCD TVs. This is especially noticeable with sports or fast-paced games, where the image stays very clean even during rapid motion. The panel runs at 120 Hz. That’s more than enough for movies, TV series, sports, or console gaming. It’s a bit of a shame Samsung didn’t include a higher refresh rate aimed at PC gamers, since more and more TVs now offer 144 or even 165 Hz at 4K. However, that doesn’t affect motion perception in films or sports. There’s also the classic motion smoothing feature with two settings, blur reduction and judder reduction. So you can choose whether films should keep their cinematic 24 frames per second or if you prefer to smooth them a bit. The S85H gives you plenty of flexibility here, and the interpolation works well and, with reasonable settings, doesn’t produce too many artifacts.

TCL A300 is a television designed not only to transport us to a digital art museum but also to a full-fledged gaming world. It offers practically everything you would expect from gear for gamers: two HDMI 2.1 ports with full bandwidth, 144 Hz refresh rate, VRR support, and ALLM.

The correct implementation of the HGIG mode is also a plus – something that competing Hisense sometimes struggles with. The television easily handles lower resolutions (e.g., Full HD) while maintaining high refresh rates, which will be appreciated by owners of older consoles or PCs.

In addition, there’s an attractive and clear GameBar that facilitates quick access to settings for gamers. The A300 is truly well-prepared for gaming at the highest level – it's just a shame that issues with motion blur slightly tarnish its overall image as a gaming device.

The Samsung S85H is very well set up for gaming, whether you connect a console or a PC. The manufacturer didn’t skimp on ports and all four HDMI inputs support full HDMI 2.1. That means you can use 4K at 120 Hz, VRR, and ALLM without worrying which input to plug your console into. With several devices that matters, because you don’t have to choose between a console, a PC, or a soundbar connected via eARC. The feature set itself is very comprehensive. The S85H supports VRR, FreeSync, and automatic switching to game mode, and Samsung offers its comprehensive Game Bar, which lets you quickly view key signal parameters and change settings without leaving the game. The only real omission is Dolby Vision, which will matter mainly to Xbox owners. That’s a typical trait of Samsung TVs. Game Motion Plus performs very well and is one of the features that have set Samsung TVs apart for years. It smooths motion in games running at 30 or 60 fps, but does so without as large an increase in input lag as traditional motion smoothing. In practice, with more relaxed games, racing titles, or action games this can really improve perceived motion, especially if you’re sensitive to low framerates.