Although the QD-OLED technology is raising a lot of expectations, especially the the Samsung S95B, all that glitters is not gold and many expert users and calibrators are starting to report bugs. All of these are not due to the QD-OLED technology itself, but due to the electronics and adjustments implemented by Samsung.
At Crast.net we have decided to bring you all the pros and cons of both models. On the one hand from the aforementioned Samsung S95B and on the other from the LG OLED. Both with OLED technology but completely different (the LG is a WRGB panel and the Samsung is a QD-OLED panel). We are going to touch both positive and negative aspects, collecting from here and there to be able to have a global vision of both televisions.
Samsung S95B QD-OLED vs LG OLED
The first thing is to comment that this comparison is only about the model Samsung QD-OLED and not all models that use this technology (such as the Sony A95K, for example) since it is the only model that has come out and has been able to be measured and tested.
Advantages
- First and foremost is colour: while the Samsung S95B is able to maintain pure colorimetry up to 100% brightness in HDR, the LG OLED can only go to around 350 nits, after which it only emits white light, thus washing out the color.
- Another important point is that the Samsung S95B reaches higher brightness levels, hovering around 1100 nits (or 1500 at 3%), while the LG OLEDs, except for the G2 model, rarely exceed 750.
- The Samsung S95B does not present banding of any kind, no dyes or similar problems.
- The Samsung S95B QD-OLED has fixed the light up macroblock problem.
- The Samsung S95B is clearly more resistant to burns and retention.
drawbacks
- The Samsung S95B’s black level suffers when natural light hits the TV, making it a TV made for viewing in the dark or with controlled light environments.
- In SDR, in this model of QD-OLED, the Movie mode has a lower brightness than the Filmmaker mode, in HDR it is the other way around.
- Shadow detail is crushed in HDR on both the Samsung and LG.
- Filmmaker and Game modes are locked to 20 balance points on the Samsung S95B.
- On the S95B, the auto color gamut, as with other Samsung TVs, doesn’t change automatically based on content. Instead, it simply switches to the previously configured color space in the custom section. For SDR no problem, but for HDR you have to switch between DCI P3 and BT.2020 depending on the movie.
- According to various sourcesSamsung does not follow the EOTF curve precisely, not even in Filmmaker mode, brightening areas that it should.
- The HDR game mode on the Samsung is too bright and neither the color space nor the excess brightness itself can be corrected.
- The S95B still applies tone-mapping to the image even if HGiG mode is activated, which makes no sense.
- The S95B’s motion interpolator is inferior to that of 2022 LG OLEDs.
- The scaling, it seems, is also not superior to that incorporated in the 2022 LG models.
- The new version of the operating system, Tizen, is very slow and very clunky, a clear step backwards from the 2021 models and from the 2022 models of LG OLED.
- The S95B television presents too abrupt color gradations (color banding), not finding this problem in the LG OLED.
As you can see, the vast majority of these problems focus on software and/or electronics failures of the Samsung model, something that will most likely be solved in Sony’s QD-OLED, the A95K. Perhaps Samsung will take note of these first problems and end up updating them via firmware.
Even so, the vast majority of owners or calibrators who have been able to test both models (LG OLED and Samsung QD-OLED S95B), continue to think that the Samsung model is the most impressive high-end television to date, especially in HDR sources and that most of the problems are mostly solvable or people can live with. If not, we will always have to wait for the Sony model.
