Testing the Samsung S95H across films, benchmark footage, and games found that its OLED panel delivered especially deep blacks, rich gray tones, strong shadow detail, and vivid colors. It was not perfect: some scenes and skin tones lacked variation, and a few games showed weaker texture or overly bright colors. However, the results suggested that OLED remained stronger than RGB displays for blacks and grays while matching or exceeding them in several color-heavy scenes.
Picture quality in films
AI Optimization mode helped the S95H render dark movie scenes with impressive clarity. Even scenes set near cliffs looked crisp and colorful, revealing more texture than expected. Cliffs appeared very dull on some OLED and RGB televisions, but the S95H was able to show contrast, depth, clarity, and deep blacks at the same time. The fact that Samsung Micro RGB displays made some of these scenes look too dark highlighted the strengths of the S95H’s OLED technology.
Color performance was also impressive in several scenes. A short sequence from End of Oak Street showing people in brightly colored shirts appeared crisp, clear, and bright, without visible blooming or smearing. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, a frequent choice for testing color blooming, produced above-average results on the S95H. The Filmmaker picture mode made some movies look dark, but it also corrected color blooming particularly well.
OLED technology was especially effective in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, where the display handled bright colors and dark uniforms while retaining excellent shadow detail. Because individual OLED pixels can be adjusted independently or turned off completely, the S95H produced blacks and grays with substantial richness and clarity.
A widely discussed nighttime scene from Game of Thrones produced mixed results. In AI Optimization mode, the dragon was often too dark behind the protagonist. Even so, only a high-end home cinema projector such as the AWOL Vision Aetherion was able to reveal a faint tree behind another character as the figure emerged from near-total darkness.
Skin tones and natural scenes
The skin-tone benchmark looked acceptable, but it was not outstanding. In a scene tested on all the televisions this year, there was not enough color variation between the people on screen. The same sequence showed greater differences in skin tones on the LG Micro RGB Evo.
The demo reel of natural scenes also exposed a few limitations. Compared with the S95H, the LG Micro RGB Evo rendered grass a brighter green in scenes with fence edges and produced sharper images in scenes featuring white fog over snowy mountains. Nevertheless, the S95H retained considerable shadow detail in the dark trees of the forest.
The benchmark demo pointed to a broader conclusion: OLED outperformed RGB at rendering blacks and grays, regardless of the content. For color, OLED was also competitive with RGB. A scene featuring yellow flowers and a red cactus appeared brighter on the S95H than on any RGB display tested.
That result was reinforced by Blade Runner 2049 viewed in 4K Ultra. In some scenes, the yellow and red tones looked so realistic that they seemed almost tangible, as though the colors could be peeled from the screen. On some RGB models from Sony, Hisense, and Samsung, the colors were not as sharply defined.
Gaming and sound
Testing then moved to gaming, covering picture quality, refresh rate, and sound. The first playtest, Resident Evil Requiem, included a police-station library scene that lacked some of the texture and detail seen on certain RGB models and projectors.
The S95H looked sharp and felt particularly responsive at 165Hz during an in-game lakeside horseback ride in Red Dead Redemption 2. OLED technology also rendered the protagonist’s face with an impressive level of detail.
During a playtest of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II on Xbox Series, the display produced similarly mixed results. A test of Crimson Desert on PC revealed an unexpected issue with some colors: the pet dragon’s flames filled the screen with an orange that looked too bright.
Although the S95H was not flawless, its overall performance remained impressive across movies, benchmark footage, and games.
Source: www.wired.com
