Hands-on review with the Samsung S95D OLED 4K TV

I got to spend a night with Samsung’s brand-new S95D OLED 4K TV and it’s a viewing experience that comes second only to the cinema. 

Not only has the electronics brand managed to cram all of the powerful features into one seriously sleek and thin design (just 11.2mm in depth) but it may have found a way forward to a glare-free viewing experience. OLED TVs have had one fatal flaw, the infamous glare. Some have even called them “mirror-like” well. Samsung has said “It’s time to put a stop to that” with a truly impressive technology.

It’s an exciting development for one of the cons facing last year's S95C model. 

• Glare-Free OLED. The S95D has a special anti-glare coating in front of the pixels. Rather than light bouncing off the TV and straight back at the viewers the anti-glare coating scatters it across the room resulting in undisturbed picture quality. In the controlled lighting of the hotel room I was set up to review this unit in, it was like staring into the abyss when the TV was off. When it was on it was like I had a very thin window into the world I was watching.  Even when natural morning was streaming in the anti-glare stood up to the test. The only time I could vaguely see myself reflected within the screen was when I was within 30 centimetres of it or at angles inopportune for television viewing and even then I was only a vague blob of blue. Even shining a torch right at it the picture held up largely undisturbed. 
• Bright and vibrant display. The addition of anti-glare technology would be one thing alone but Samsung has managed to increase the brightness by 20% compared to last year’s model the S95C. It manages to bring vibrancy to even scenes in Oppenheimer that could be described as subdued and when the bomb finally goes off? Well, it’s every bit as cinematic as it is on the big screen. Animated series like Invincible that are already vibrant are enhanced even that little bit more. 
• Customisation. In this hands-on review, I only had a relatively short time to put the S95D through its paces but I found the user interface intuitive and the settings easy to navigate. One neat feature I appreciated was that re-ordering the apps in the main carousel changed the order in which the suggested programs were shown below. I.e. if I wanted to order my apps Prime Video, Disney Plus, Stan and so on then the content below would update and change to match that. 

• Price. First, I’m happy to report that the addition of anti-glare technology hasn’t massively jacked up the price of Samsung’s latest OLED. In fact, the starting price of the S95D is $9 cheaper than last year. Even without the anti-glare or other features the S95D is still thousands of dollars more expensive than other similar-sized OLED 4K TVs. One can only hope to see a world where so many more people can experience this sense of wonder. 
• Sound. It’s a known fact that the thinner our TVs get the more necessary it is to pare back down on the sound aspect. This necessitates things like soundbars. I was fortunate to get to review the S95D alongside the HW-Q990D Soundbar. The experience is vastly improved with QSymphony and Dolby Atmos features creating an immersive soundscape you can’t achieve with the TV alone. Working in concert it adds a richness to your experience as sound travels with objects moving across the screen. That’s an additional $2,099 cost, however. Perfecting sound would be an interesting area to move into now that the issue of glare has been solved.
• Frustrating albeit forgivable power saving. I’m unsure whether this falls into the column of feature or bug. But in my short experience despite power saving mode, pixel shift and the like being turned off the S95D promptly activated a screensaver within about two minutes. This could get annoying in the long term as I can think of (and experienced) a myriad of situations in which two minutes is not long enough to warrant the interruption For example, answering the door, responding to an email etc. On the other side of the coin is a useful preventative measure against burn-in. 

It was British Sci-Fi writer Arthur C. Clarke who gave us the wonderful adage “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. In this instance think it would be entirely appropriate to describe Samsung’s anti-glare technology as magic. At present, it’s a premium feature out of reach of most people however, it will hopefully filter down through Samsung’s product line until it’s a staple. 

The S95D isn’t perfect by any means but it's an impressive piece of technology that comes pretty close.

Samsung’s new OLED 4K TV range is available now from retailers like JB Hi-Fi, Bing Lee and Samsung itself. 

See the table below for a comparison of local pricing for each available screen size.