Samsung Neo QLED
Samsung’s quantum-dot TV tech has impressed us more every year, and now it’s thrown Mini LED – aka Neo QLED – into the backlit mix
Can the QE65QN95A make even the hairs in Piers Morgan’s nostrils look appetising?
Not every television technology lives up to the hype. Remember curved screens? Or 3D TV? No, us neither, and if you happen to have a curved 3D TV we can only sympathise.
Mini LED, on the other hand, might just be deserving of the ‘new!’ and ‘improved!’ tags. The first of Samsung’s ‘Neo QLED’ TVS, which is how it’s decided to describe its implementation of Mini LED tech, is here… and it’s a belter. It’s also expensive, but has the specs, looks and performance to make the £3k price feel almost fair.
The principle is the same as any Mini LED display: hundreds of regular-sized LEDS are replaced by many thousands of much smaller ones. The theoretical advantages to more and smaller LEDS in more and smaller dimming zones is a greater control of backlighting and deeper blacks than LCD panels have been capable of before. The QE65QN95A has thousands of Mini LEDS, each a 40th of the size of a conventional one, and nearly 800 discrete dimming zones.
There’s also an extra slice of engineering that dispenses with the bulky lens that regular LEDS require: a vanishingly brief layer over each Mini LED guides its light through the quantum-dot pixels. Basically, Mini LED brings LCD performance closer than ever to OLED.
1 How deep is yours, love?
The QE65QN95A is a consistent 26mm deep all over – none of your Oled-style ‘incredibly slim marred by a muffin-top bulge’ stuff here. With the teeny bezel and cable-tidying One Connect box, this is a TV for wall-mounting if ever there was one.
2 Fight fever
As a 4K Neo QLED TV with a variable-refresh-rate 120Hz panel, it’s primed for gaming.
All four HDMI inputs have Auto Low Latency Mode and are new-console-ready 2.1 40Gbps types, with HGIG tone-mapping and Freesync Premium Pro.
4 Stayin’ aligned
For our verdict on picture quality verdict see the panel opposite, but audio-wise it’s a 70W system with mid/bass drivers along the bottom and tweeters up the sides. It uses Ai-aided motion-tracking to analyse on-screen action and give the sound some movement.
3 You should be glancing
There’s still no Dolby Vision HDR, but HDR10+ compensates for that. Picture quality is run by the latest Neo Quantum Processor 4K and ‘Ultra Precision Light Driving’ to exploit the dimming zones. Samsung’s latest AI upscaling is also included.
5 More than a hummin’
Samsung has done well to fit any audio system in such a thin set, and up to a point it’s successful. There’s appreciable width, a hint of height and a mild-but-definite suggestion of the sound tracking the action. But pictures like this deserve a separate system.
This is Samsung’s single most expensive 4K TV for 2021 (unless you buy a bigger version), but the pictures justify the outlay.
The Korean giant’s implementation of Mini LED is, on this evidence, something to be reckoned with. It’s difficult to imagine how any of the other sets that are incoming this year could be better. @Onlysimonlucas
STUFF SAYS ★★★★★
This Mini LED TV is a fearsomely accomplished set and – for now at least – the one to beat