SAMSUNG Q900R 8K QLED

hough we know our loyal

T3 readers are ahead of the pack, 4K screens have only just elbowed regular HD out of the picture. So do we really need another resolution revolution? No, of course not. But when did that ever stop the march of technological progress? The TV industry will always embrace the next big thing, and Samsung is the first major brand to break cover with a screen that goes where no telly has ventured before: a whopping 8K resolution in all its 33-million-pixel glory.

So many pixels

Needless to say, the prospect of 8K for the home has had us salivating. Just as 4K UHD offered a four-fold jump in resolution over 1080p HD, now 8K introduces a screen resolution that’s four times as dense again.

The catch, of course, is that there is effectively no 8K content to be had right now. Not even a sniff. That means the real appeal of this pricey pixel pusher hangs on its ability to upscale 4K content, regular HD Blu-rays, and that pile of dusty DVDs you have in the spare room.

Smart connectivity is no different from other high-end Samsung screens. The Q900R employs the familiar Tizen Smart OS of other Samsung TVs, accessed via horizontal bars on-screen. One of these has curated content from various services, the other a list of apps and services themselves.

Available apps for streaming video include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. The set doesn’t support Freeview Play, but there is a full complement of UK catch-up TV available (BBC iPlayer, My5, All 4, ITV Hub) to make up for it. It’s a solid smart platform with much to like.

It also boasts Ambient Mode, which enables the TV to serve a purpose even when you’re not watching something specific: it can blend, chameleon-like, with your wall coverings (you use the SmartThings app to create an image of your wall that is displayed onscreen), function as a picture gallery, or display a news ticker. Ambient Mode is a very cool feature, but in a world of increasingly alarming climate change news, we don’t exactly find ourselves drawn to the idea of leaving the telly on just because we can.

Size and shine

Ultimately, the appeal of this TV hangs on its video performance. There’s a hefty price premium attached to the newly baked panel and associated image processing technologies. We tested the 65-inch model (QE65Q900) for this review, which is pretty reasonable at £4,999 – a premium over most 4K OLED or QLED models (this is the latter, as Samsung has yet to enter the OLED game), but nothing compared to super-luxury giant TVs.

There’s also a 75-inch version, which comes in at £6,999, and the 85-inch version, which more than doubles the price to £14,999. This isn’t out of whack with the cost of highend OLED TVs of a similar size from the likes of Panasonic, but the steep rise certainly trips you up.

The good news is that it looks absolutely amazing with native 8K footage. The detail and clarity it presents is second to none. Our 8K viewing selection, which was provided by Samsung for testing, comprised fancy footage of city spaces, pets and people, and all looked so real we swear we could have just reached out and touched them.

But for the foreseeable future, owners will actually be watching 4K or HD. This is where the set’s AIbased upscaling comes in.

Upscale funk

Ultra HD Blu-rays look extremely good. Guardians of the Galaxy:

Volume 2 is vibrant, detailed and a joy to watch. But was Samsung’s hyped Machine Learning Super Resolution (MLSR) technology adding much above a comparable high-end 4K set? Well, not really, at least nothing appreciable at the 65-inch screen size to our eyes. Certainly more pixels have a bigger impact at bigger sizes, but we want to see the benefit here, too, since this will be a common size.

At trade shows, Samsung has shown upscaling technology able

to do remarkable things with SD content, at least making them approach HD clarity. But for all its strenuous efforts, the Quantum 8K processor at work here wasn’t making much of a dent on regular DVD. A Superbit (hands up if you remember those?) DVD pressing of Shakespeare

in Love, which opens with a descent into the Globe theatre, looked just as ropey here as it does on any other modern large screen.

Clearly, the potential is there when it comes to harnessing machine learning to improve picture clarity, but at this early stage there’s still homework to be done and many more improvements to be made.

Drama screen

Like any modern TV, we expect dramatic contrast and colour in HDR as a part of its offering. Black level performance is solid, particularly in rooms with some ambient light. Letterbox bars look suitably cinematic. We have to say, we don’t think the Q900R looks quite as inky as Samsung’s 4K Q9FN TV.

HDR support covers HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, while Dolby Vision is technology absent. We measured HDR peak brightness at just under 1,200 nits. This is pretty much the best out there, and makes for highly effective HDR, but it’s not quite the sunlight cannon some may have expected from the way Samsung has been routinely talking up this TV’s HDR capabilities.

One trait which did become slightly irksome was a lag shifting between normal luminosity and a bright highlight. Often quite pronounced, it looked as if the backlight algorithm was having a problem keeping up with-fast moving dynamics in scenes.

In general use, the set offers the same image preset selection, regardless of whether it’s delivering SDR HD or HDR 4K. There’s a choice of Dynamic, Standard, Natural and Movie, plus some calibration modes.

Most users will gravitate to either the Standard or Natural modes. There’s actually quite a difference between them. The opening sequence of Thor: Ragnarok, in which the God of Thunder does battle with Surtur, sets the average picture level far too bright in Standard mode. Sure, the fire demon looks suitably fiery, but the background cave detail looks over-exposed and shadows become floodlit. Natural mode offers a more convincing balance.

Mood board

Motion handling in the set is good. With Auto Motion Plus left in Auto, there are motion artefacts (although we’ve seen worse), while horizontal pans are smooth and sharply detailed. In the Custom mode, with Blur Reduction on 10 and Judder on 3, any artefacts are all but eliminated, though pans suffer mild judder and lose detail. This is the better movie option, if you don’t want to turn off image interpolation entirely.

A screen of this calibre should be used with a separate sound solution, of course, but the on board audio system is perfectly fine. The Q900R doesn’t suffer from thinscreen syndrome, pushing tinny sound that actively spoils movies. You could probably get away without a soundbar if you really had to. (Don’t, though.)

Sound stage

That decent sound is partly thanks to it being a fairly chunky flatscreen, as they go (certainly compared to OLED), just like its 4K-only cousin the Q9FN. This is down to its use of a FALD (Full Array Local Dimming) backlight – lots of LEDs behind the screen, basically. Its great for control over brightness in specific areas, but it does add thickness.

As you might expect, the screen tethers to Samsung’s latest (large) One Connect box. This features four HDMI inputs, optical digital audio output, Ethernet, Freeview HD and satellite tuners, plus a trio of USBs. The pair are linked by a single Near Invisible cable, which carries both power and AV. It means you can hide the One Connect box away.

Note that the HDMI ports on this box are not the latest HDMI v2.1 specification, because they are not yet available to TV manufacturers. This means the One Connect Box can’t accept native 8K at 60fps from an external source (not that there is one). They do have some aspects of the HDMI 2.1 specification though, and apparently one HDMI input will accept 8K at 30fps.

Although 8K is clearly still a work in progress, the Q900R is an exciting way to jump into next-gen TV.