The last television on our recent hands-on review of Samsung’s three top-shelf 2023 models, was the 4K UHD Neo QLED Mini-LED 65QN95C, and we found another brilliantly bright HDR performance with accurate wide P3 color gamut coverage.
As with the QN900C 8K series reviewed here yesterday, Samsung has increased the number of individual Mini-LED backlights and dimming control zones to create an even more immersive and realistic viewing experience than last year. This year’s model presented nice inky black in dark room viewing with some visible shadow detail and minimized blooming (for an LCD technology). We were impressed.
The 65QN95C presents brighter HDR specular highlights than even Samsung’s excellent 77S95C 4K Quantum OLED TV. The flagship 4K Mini-LED TV presents nice bright pictures well in ambient room light, but it doesn’t control blooming issues as well as a true self-emitting OLED display.
This should be a very good television for most room lighting conditions, especially live video like sports and video games. Movies will look best in controlled lighting conditions.
Despite having an anti-reflective screen, the TV does pick up some glare from overhead lighting. This tends to lift the overall black level slightly. The 65QN95C doesn’t get the same deep inky black as Samsung’s new S95C Quantum OLED, but it’s still very good.
Like all of Samsung’s 2023 smart TVs, the 65QN90C uses the Tizen v.7 OS, which is loaded with exciting and useful new apps, not the least of which are a large complement of new cloud-gaming services that will take advantage of new advanced game settings.
The Samsung QN95C series includes three screen sizes 85- ($5,799.99 suggested retail price), 75- ($4,199.99) and 65- inches ($3,299.99). All begin shipping shortly. You’ll have to consider if the improvements are worth an extra $1,000 (for the 65 inch) compared to getting a closeout 65-inch 65QN95B from last year, while supplies last. We also recommend checking out Samsung’s new 77-inch 4K Quantum OLED, which provides even greater color accuracy and black handling performance.
Design
The Samsung 65QN95C 4K Neo QLED TV has a similar thin-panel design, but lacks last year’s cool One-Connect box that provides more flexible cable management and somewhat thinner panel depth. The television has other means for tucking cables out of sight, but you will have to attach them the old fashioned way — to the back of the screen. This means the set will not fits quite as snugly as Samsung’s other flagship models in wall-mounted applications.
The table mount is similar to Samsung’s other series, using a central pedestal style mounting stand attached to the rear of the panel. This allows for a wide range of table width placement options and a relatively secure, stable platform with plenty of sound bar clearance.
Samsung 2022 QD OLED Now On Sale
Shop Wireless Speakers and Speaker Systems at SVSound.com
Save on eligible LG Appliance Packages during Abt’s Savings Event!
See What Your 4K UHD TV Can Really Do With The Spears & Munsil 4K UHD Blu-ray Disc, $39.95.
Portrait Displays Calman Display Calibration Software Available Here
Amazon’s Best Selling 4K Ultra HDTVs
Amazon’s Camera, Photo & Video Deals
Amazon Fire TV Cube Media Adapter with Alexa
Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max with Alexa Voice Remote
Amazon Echo Smart Speaker with Premium Sound, Alexa Voice Control
Amazon Echo Show 15 Alexa Voice Controlled Smart Screen
Amazon Echo Dot with Clock Voice Controlled Speaker
Amazon Echo Studio 3D Audio Alexia Smart Speaker
Best Selling Soundbars and 5.1 Surround Systems
The bezel trim framing around the screen is as thin as we’d expect and presents minimal intrusion into the immersive viewing experience.
Remote
Samsung once again includes its minimal Solar Remote with mic input for voice commands to control set operations and navigate set-up and viewing options. Like remotes in other Samsung TV lines, it also has a solar panel on the back to recharge the batteries using sun or ambient room lights.
HDR
As mentioned, one of the most impressive elements of this television is its HDR10 peak brightness performance. We measured a fantastic 2,095 nits from a 10% D65 white window pattern in Movie mode. We counted more than 1,000 dimming zones controlling the television’s good contrast performance.
Measurements were taken using a Spectracal C6-HDR colorimeter, Murideo Six-G test pattern generator and the latest version of Portrait Displays Calman software.
Black measured 0 nits, but our colorimeter lacks some luminance sensitivity.
However, we noticed some detail crushing viewing the deep space star field shot during the opening credits of the 4K UHD Blu-ray version of The Martian.
We also noticed that overhead lighting caused some screen glare that can wash out the black in the moving star field sequence from the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR test disc. This tends to somewhat hide slight blooming seen in star clusters.
As with all Samsung UHD TVs, high dynamic range (HDR) support addresses the HDR10, HDR10+ Adaptive/Gaming, and HLG profiles that extend picture contrast and brightness in enabled content. Samsung does not support any form of Dolby Vision dynamic meta-data-based HDR, opting to use the dynamic HDR10+ approach instead. We found the HDR10+ color handling to be very good on this set.
Color
The 65QN95C presents the P3 wide color gamut very well, covering 94.04% of the CIE 1976 uv space. This is well above the 90% threshold for a “premium UHD TV” established by the Ultra HD Alliance.
Samsung offers viewers the option of selecting static or dynamic tone mapping this year to control color presentation and shadow details in a range of content. Filmmaker mode automatically triggers static tone mapping to present truer color vibrancy to fit the filmmakers’ intentions. In dynamic tone mapping, hues take on a little more punch, for those who prefer it.
Colors in HDR10 content of reef fish from the Ultra HD Blu-ray of the BBC’s Blue Planet II were rich and well saturated, keeping their natural appearance against the continually varying splashes of sunlight penetrating the crystal clear water.
Inputs
The 65QN95C has a full complement of the latest inputs including: 2 USB ports and 4 HDMI 2.1 ports with support for up to 4K/144Hz VRR. One HDMI port supports ARC (Audio Return Channel)/eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel) passthrough. Other inputs include an RF input for antenna/cable signals; an optical digital audio output and an Ethernet port for an stable internet connection option.
Gaming
As with other Samsung models this year, the Samsung 65QN95C features a Gaming Hub that lets gamers stream popular game titles from Xbox Game Pass, NVIDIA GeoForce Now, Google Stadia, Utomik and Luna directly on the TV using a third party control that will pair wireless to the television.
Samsung’s Game Mode optimizes settings for smooth playing action over the HDMI 2.1 inputs that support up to a 4K/144Hz variable refresh rate (VRR). It also offers Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) that automatically switches off unnecessary processing systems to get the fastest response time. The set’s input lag measured a very good 2.3 ms.
The set also supports variable refresh rate via FreeSync Premium Pro and provides Super Ultrawide GameView for gaming aspect ratios of 21:9 to 32:9.
The Game Bar 3.0 on-screen menu offers a means for adjusting input lag (and other settings) on the fly to maximize competitive advantage.
Conclusion
The Samsung 65-inch 65QN95C 4K Neo QLED Mini-LED TV is one of the best 4K LCD TVs we’ve tested to date. It produces peak brightness levels that are surprisingly bright along with rich wide coverage of HDR P3 wide color gamut. It also provides a nice arsenal of weapons for advanced gamers. For a 4K Mini-LED TV today, the pricing isn’t cheap but if you can wait we expect this will come down as the year progresses. This will provide even bigger bang for the buck. Samsung has a lot of very good options to consider this year, and eveyone’s taste and viewing room conditions will be different. We strongly recommend taking a look at each of them up close for yourself.
We therefore award the Samsung 65QN95C 4.5 out of 5 hearts.
The Samsung 65QN95C used for this review was set up for us to test at a Samsung facility using our own test equipment and demo material.
Online purchases made using links provided on this site might generate a small commission for HD Guru.com. We thank you for your support!
By Greg Tarr
Have a question for the HD Guru? HD GURU|Email
Copyright ©2023 HD Guru Inc. All rights reserved. HD GURU is a registered trademark.
Stay connected