Samsung QN90B Neo QLED 4K TV Review

The best TVs I’ve looked at have OLED screens, but OLED isn’t the best picture technology out there. High-end TVs with LCD screens can get brighter than any OLED TV and are pretty close in other important ways, like brightness. Samsung’s QN90B is a great example. Thanks to QLED, mini-LED, and local dimming technology, it has blazing brightness and doesn’t have to give up much else. It sounds like something from the future, but it works.

As usual, the design and functions of a Samsung phone are top-notch. The QN90B has a cool stand, a cool remote, and a tonne of gaming extras, like a new cloud gaming hub that works with Xbox Game Pass. It’s just stacked. The QN90B is worth a look if you’re in the market for a high-end TV and want an alternative to OLED or just have a bright room.

Samsung QN90B Neo QLED 4K TV Specs

PROS:

• The highest-quality non-OLED display
• Superb luminosity with hardly any flowering
• Sleek appearance, many functionalities

CONS:

• Expensive
• Slightly less impressive than OLED

Price

Even though it didn’t come out that long ago, the QE50QN90B has already had a pretty big price cut that has brought it down to £999 in the UK and $1999 in Australia, where it’s called the QA50QN90B. This turns out to be a pretty important cut, too, because it brings the price of Samsung’s flagship 50-inch TV for 2022 closer to what you’ll pay for LG’s slightly smaller (48-inch) OLED48C2 in the UK and makes it a lot cheaper in Australia.

There are many 50-inch LCD TVs out there that cost a lot less than the QE50QN90B. Some of them even have quantum dots, like the QE50QN90B. The cheaper models, on the other hand, do not have Mini LED technology or Samsung’s picture processing system that is boosted by AI.

Plans and features

Even though the QN90B series TVs don’t have the “Infinity Screen” design of the next-level QN95 models, the black border around the screen is so thin that it almost doesn’t show up when you watch. Samsung calls the style of the QN90B “NeoSlim,” and the set’s thin, slightly curved back panel backs up that name. A bending plate table stand, like the one that comes with an iMac, provides strong support and leaves enough space under the screen to fit an average slim-format soundbar.

The QN90B series is also different from Samsung’s QN95 models because it has built-in video connections instead of a separate One Connect box for audio and video links. All four HDMI ports can handle high frame rate video up to 4K/144Hz, and they also support other advanced features like ALLM (Automatic Low Latency Mode), HDMI eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), quick swapping, and Freesync Premium Pro. The TV has an ATSC 3.0 digital TV tuner built in for people who want to watch free over-the-air programmes.

Audio quality

Most of the time I spent with the QN90B was spent watching videos, so I didn’t have much time to play with its music features. Even so, I had the volume pretty high, but I didn’t hear any cut-off conversation or strain from the loud movie sound effects. Object Tracking Sound, Q-Symphony (which lets the built-in 2-channel, 40-watt audio system work with one of Samsung’s soundbars), and an Active Voice Amplifier are some of the audio features that are unique to this TV. In addition to the HDMI eARC connection, it also has a Bluetooth audio output that lets you connect a speaker or headphones wirelessly.

Performance

When I first looked at test patterns using a 4K signal generator and the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark disc, a full-screen 100% white pattern and a lower-level grey pattern both had a little bit of colour tinting and uneven brightness, but I didn’t notice the same problem when watching regular shows.

The better news is that the QN90B kept its brightness and colour vibrancy even when viewed from 45 degrees off-centre. This shows that the Ultra Viewing Angle mode works. I was also surprised by how good the pictures looked when the overhead lights were on. This is where the anti-glare screen came in handy, though I did most of my testing with the room lights off.

We took measurements with the TV in Filmmaker (and Dynamic) mode, but it turned out that Movie mode was a better place to start making changes. Most of the colours in Filmmaker mode were correct, but there was a lot of black “crush” that made it hard to see details in the darkness. This was less of a problem in Movie mode, where the colours were also correct, but I still had to change the default BT.1886 Gamma setting and the Shadow Detail setting to get any details out of the dark shadows.

The QN90B’s brightest picture, measured on a 10% white window in dynamic mode, was around 2,000 nits, which is more than enough for most HDR material. Other tests showed that the input lag with a 4K test signal generator was a great 9.8 ms, and with a 1080p source, it was 12 ms. Both of these tests were done in game mode.

Conclusion

At $2,599 (or £2,799, or AU$ 3,595), Samsung’s 65-inch QN90B is not something you buy on a whim. It also has a lot of competition from OLED and mini-LED-backlit LCD sets. But at $800 less than the company’s QN95B model of the same size, the QN90B seems like a pretty good deal in the high-end Samsung TV world.

It has a bright picture with bright colors, and the local lowering of its Mini-LED backlight is about what you’d expect from a high-end TV. The QN90B did have some trouble with darker movies, which is something we’ll look into in a full review of Samsung’s next-to-best Neo QLED 4K TV in the future.