A stunning OLED model for 2024

For those of us with passion The ultimate viewing experience , Organic EL The S95D holds its own in terms of contrast, color depth, and overall visual brilliance. Samsung The top entry-level OLED model for 2024. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing the S95D’s performance in everything from streaming to 4K UHD Blu-ray to everyday viewing. The S95D wowed me with its visual fidelity, but left me feeling a bit underwhelmed on the brightness and software fronts. This model is Samsung’s best OLED offering, and I recommend checking out my detailed impressions below.

Recommendation

Samsung OLED S95D

The Samsung S95D is the premium OLED TV, the Korean manufacturer’s flagship OLED for 2024. The incredibly thin S95D boasts excellent contrast, rich colors, and crisp sound from its built-in speakers.

Strong Points

• Excellent contrast
• Excellent performance in all applications
• Clear sound from the built-in speaker

Cons

• OLED peak brightness drops in bright, sunny rooms
• Dolby Vision not supported

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Pricing, Availability and Specifications

OLED is the most expensive panel type available on the market today, so it’s not surprising that the S95D isn’t a cheap TV. Prices start at $2,599 for the 55-inch version and go up to $4,599 for the 77-inch version tested for this review. The S95D is available to buy from Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Samsung.

These days, spec sheets for premium flatscreens boast as much software as hardware. From software-driven frame rates to voice control, TVs, like most other tech toys, are getting smarter and smarter. But it’s the S95D’s hardware that’s noteworthy. With a 77-inch 4K OLED panel, the S95D delivers beautiful images right out of the box. The display has a matte finish that diffuses reflected light to reduce the intensity of reflections, an industry first for an OLED unit.

The S95D is super thin, with the screen measuring just under half an inch thick at its thinnest point. This, combined with the weight savings achieved by using an external One Connect Box that houses the brains and ports, makes the S95D quite light for its size; the 77-inch version weighs just 62 pounds without the stand (the stand itself weighs 26 pounds). The display runs at a maximum of 120Hz natively, although software features such as Motion Xcelerator claim to be able to boost this all the way to 144Hz, though ultimately this is just another name for frame interpolation technology.

Mounted at the rear of the S95D are eight speakers that make up the TV’s built-in 70W 4.2.2CH audio setup, and as this Samsung model supports Dolby Atmos sound, the speakers are certainly put to good use.

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design

An elegant touch

The S95D’s design is as sleek as it is pricey. At less than half an inch thick, the display feels premium and requires a gentle touch when lifting or moving it. The back of the display is textured hard plastic, with a raised design that surrounds the speakers and One Connect port for an elegant feel. As with the QN900D, this Samsung model achieves its thin profile by utilizing the One Connect Box, which houses most of the “brains” as well as the TV’s HDMI, USB, Ethernet, and audio ports, all in an external box that’s quite heavy in itself.

The S95D is gone

The bezel-less design gives you crisp, edge-to-edge images and makes the S95D feel like it’s hiding behind whatever you’re watching. I loved the cinema-like experience the S95D delivered thanks to its low-profile profile. I wasn’t a big fan of the One Connect Box at first, but I grew to like it more as it’s easier to handle when plugging and unplugging things than having to move a big TV every time you need to change an HDMI cable.

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software

Tizen OS is fine

I wasn’t particularly impressed with Samsung’s native Tizen OS on the S95D. It’s a fairly simple, streamlined TV OS that’s easy to navigate and use. It was very pushy about wanting to log in with my Samsung account. It was more pushy about syncing and logging in than any other TV OS, and it quickly became frustrating.

While Tizen OS offers a user-friendly interface and a decent selection of apps, it doesn’t feel as versatile as other operating systems.Competing smart TV operating systems To be honest, my experience hasn’t shown me any major positives or negatives. I mostly just navigate to Input and fire up the Roku Ultra.

Small remote control

Selecting your preferred apps and streaming platforms is easy and made easy with the small remote control. The S95D supports Alexa as a built-in voice assistant, and the remote has a microphone button that can be used for voice search and voice commands. To be honest, in my many hours with the S95D, I never found myself using this feature. I think voice control continues to be a useful feature that has been around for almost every smart TV of the last decade.

The remote has several pre-programmed buttons for quickly navigating to specific streaming platforms.Roku Remote Pressing these buttons instantly opens Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, and Samsung TV Plus (Tizen’s integrated free ad-supported live TV streaming service). The S95D remote can be charged via USB-C or the small solar panel on the back of the remote, so if the battery is running low, just place the remote upside down in a sunny spot in your home.

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performance

Unmatched contrast

The S95 is, in a word, stunning. The color richness and contrast of OLED is unmatched, providing a truly cinematic experience, especially when watching HDR content. Watching Interstellar on 4K UHD Blu-ray revealed the power of this model, where the pitch black of space seemed infinitely deeper thanks to the OLED display.

These contrast-rich scenes often look mediocre on traditional LED panels, but not on the S95D. In brighter, more colorful scenes, the OLED shines again, displaying incredibly rich colors even at modest color saturation settings. Scene-to-scene color accuracy was excellent across both streaming and Blu-ray.

Not a very bright bulb

My only complaint about OLED, and one that’s been around since the early days of display technology, is its lower peak brightness compared to other LED technologies. By tweaking a few settings and sacrificing some contrast, the S95D can reach a peak brightness of around 1,700 nits, which is a far cry from the brightness of non-OLED Samsung models of the same model year.

For example, the previously reviewed QN900D has about 30% higher peak brightness, which is not a small difference. The S95D is one of the brightest OLEDs on the market, and while OLED brightness has come a long way in the last few years, it still falls off in a bright room. This issue is mitigated somewhat by the screen’s matte finish, which helps reduce reflections, but I still found it impossible to watch dark or dim scenes without putting on sunglasses and turning off all the lights.

The fact that Samsung doesn’t support Dolby Vision doesn’t help matters at all in this regard, as HDR10+ supports a much lower peak brightness than Dolby Vision, which makes watching HDR content in a bright room even more difficult. My take on this remains: if you want to watch a beautifully shot movie at night, nothing beats OLED, but if you want to watch your favorite TV show with the windows open on a sunny Texas day folding laundry, LED is preferable.

Eight speakers deliver clear sound

While the TV’s built-in speakers are hardly anything to write home about, the Samsung S95D delivers a 4.2.2CH setup with eight speakers that perform well. The S95D supports Dolby Atmos sound, giving a sense of surround sound to compatible movies and TV shows from major streaming platforms and Blu-ray.

The eight circular speakers on the back of the S95D aren’t as powerful as a full surround system, but they still deliver accurate, clear sound with little distortion, even at high volumes. In addition to Dolby Atmos, the S95D also takes advantage of an AI-powered feature Samsung calls Object Tracking Sound+ to mimic spatial sound, helping to match what you hear with where it’s coming from in a scene.

Conclusion: Should you buy the Samsung S95D?

The Samsung S95D delivers a breathtaking picture when watching content from the right source. If you have a movie buff in your household, the S95D may be worth the investment. It’s hard to beat the theater-quality contrast and color of a high-quality OLED display. In terms of visual accuracy, it’s the closest thing you’ll get to an original theater image, especially when combined with HDR.

If you frequently stream 4K UHD content or watch Blu-rays, you need a panel that can keep up with the picture quality and extract the most power from it. Movie nights will undoubtedly be great with the S95D, but if you primarily stream Full HD content or do more casual viewing, you might be better off looking at more affordable, brighter LED alternatives, especially if you spend most of your TV watching time in brightly lit rooms in your home.

Recommendation

Samsung OLED S95D