(Credit: Will Greenwald)
In the six years since I first tested an 8K TV, there has been no real news about streaming services offering 8K movies and shows, nor any physical media to support it. Even TV manufacturers have cooled to 8K, and currently, Samsung is the only major brand still bothering to release consumer TVs at that resolution. Samsung has announced two 8K models this year: the high-end QN900F ($3,299.99 for 65 inches) and the even higher-end, and much more expensive, QN990F ($5,499.99 for 65 inches). I visited Samsung’s test lab to try out a prerelease version of the latter.
Price, Design, and Specs: No Bezel or Wires
Samsung hasn't yet announced pricing, but the QN990F will undoubtedly be its most expensive TV. It offers all the pixels of the QN900F while adding a completely wireless connection box for your peripherals, so the TV itself requires just a single power cable.
With almost no bezel to speak of, the QN990F is nearly all screen, framed by a narrow metallic band. It sits on the same blocky, center-aligned stand as last year's QN900D ($4,999.99 for 65 inches). Of course, you can also mount the screen on the wall.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)With its Wireless One Connect Box, the QN990F offers plenty of flexibility for connecting your devices. Like the QN900D's One Connect Box, it’s a separate enclosure that holds all of the TV’s inputs and most of its electronics, keeping the panel itself slim and free of wires. You might have already gleaned the difference between the Wireless One Connect Box and the One Connect Box from their names, but the former doesn’t use wires. Instead of a single cable leading to the panel, the QN990F’s control box wirelessly transmits its audio-visual output. Of course, the screen itself has to be connected to power, but it still reduces clutter and lets you place your input source devices up to 30 feet away from the TV without running any cables.
The wireless connection didn’t falter at all when showing 8K demo footage from a USB drive connected to the box, nor with my standard signal generator and Ultra HD Blu-Ray-based picture tests.
Like Samsung's flagship 4K TV, the QN90F ($2,699.99 for 65 inches), the QN990F has a beefy 4.2.2-channel sound system. At 70W, it’s slightly more powerful than the QN90F's 60W speaker array, though both offer the same Dolby Atmos support with height channels. I typically don’t test TV audio systems, but it's notably more advanced than the stereo speakers most TVs use. If you pair the TV with a Samsung soundbar, you can also use the company’s Q-Symphony feature to take advantage of both devices' speaker drivers for more detailed spatial audio imaging.
The QN990F comes with the same Eco Remote as Samsung’s other high-end TVs. It features a rechargeable battery that you can keep topped up with the USB-C port on the bottom of the solar cell on the back. The remote is a simple rectangular wand dominated by a large, circular navigation pad. Menu buttons flank the pad, with volume and channel rockers and dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Samsung TV Plus, and YouTube below them. There is also a pinhole microphone near the top.
Tizen OS: Inching Away From Frustration
(Credit: Will Greenwald)Samsung’s Tizen OS smart TV platform drives the QN990F, and it remains a feature-filled but often overbearing interface. It works with all major streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube. It supports both Apple AirPlay and Miracast/WiDi for streaming from your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC. It also includes Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and can serve as a hub for Alexa, SmartThings, and Matter-compatible smart home devices.
Tizen’s habit of burying certain menus a layer or two deeper than most other platforms remains irritating, as is the lack of an input button on the remote. It’s slightly better this year, though, with quick picture settings available just by pressing the gear button on the remote instead of requiring you to press the gear button and then scroll to select the menu icon.
Picture Quality: Solid Contrast and Great Color
The QN990F is an 8K (7,680 by 4,320) mini-LED TV with a 120Hz native refresh rate. It supports high dynamic range (HDR) content in HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG), but Samsung still omits Dolby Vision support. It features an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p and 4K over-the-air broadcasts, and Wi-Fi 6E for network connectivity.
I put the QN900F through our standard battery of 4K TV benchmarks using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. In HDR Movie mode with an HDR10 signal, the QN900F shows a peak brightness of 468 nits with a full-screen white field and 1,608 nits with an 18% white field. This is satisfyingly bright, but it doesn’t come close to Samsung’s 4K flagship QN90F (694 full, 2,259 18%). Thanks to its mini-LED backlight system, the TV shows perfectly dark blacks and infinite contrast. Like all models with local dimming backlights, the QN990F is susceptible to light bloom, or a slight haze of light along very high-contrast edges. OLEDs completely avoid this with their ability to individually brighten, dim, and turn off pixels. OLEDs are usually dimmer than mini-LED TVs, though LG's newest G5 OLED, which we're currently testing for an upcoming review, actually matches the QN990F's peak brightness of 1,608 nits at 18%.
(Credit: PCMag)The above charts show the QN990F’s color levels in Movie mode with an SDR signal compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards and with an HDR signal compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards. The TV performs excellently, showing perfect whites and accurate colors across the board. The QN990F can’t quite cover the full DCI-P3 color space and falls a bit short in the greens and yellows, but it’s still wide by most QLED TV standards and doesn’t show any skewing. Note that this was only in Movie mode, and in Filmmaker mode, cyans skewed heavily green, to the point that they looked more like mint. This was a prerelease unit, though, and it might not be the case with the final version.
8K vs. 4K: A Difference With Little Distinction
There’s still no consumer 8K content available, but Samsung had a few minutes of native 8K demo footage to show off on the QN990F. It looks sharp, but I honestly can’t say it looks appreciably better than 4K footage when viewed from a couch about eight feet away. Some very fine textures in specific parts of certain frames look more detailed than they would on a typical 4K TV, but not enough to actually notice it unless you go through looping footage with a fine-tooth comb.
For 4K content, I watched some scenes from The Great Gatsby and demonstration footage from the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc. In the party scenes in Gatsby, the QN900F’s strong contrast and deep blacks preserve the cuts and textures of dark suits and hair while keeping the whites of shirts, balloons, and lights bright and clear. Skin tones appear accurate, and splashes of blues and oranges pop out nicely.
On the Spears & Munsil disc, nature shots look very good. The time-lapse transition of a landscape from before dawn to midday shifts smoothly from dark to bright without any odd flaring. Snowy shots are very bright while keeping highlight details intact, so falling snow and clouds can be discerned against white skies. Dark trees against sunrise and sunset also show strong shadow detail and no muddiness.
The light bloom test on the disc displays bright, colorful objects against completely black backgrounds. When viewing this footage on the QN990F, I noticed some slight haze along the edges, but the effect was minimal. The QN90F showed less light bloom when I tested it, though again, neither TV nor any mini-LED model can match an OLED panel in this specific situation.
Since the QN990F is an 8K TV, it must upscale 4K and lower-resolution signals to its native resolution. Its upscaling engine worked quite well when I played the aforementioned media, and both Gatsby and the Spears & Munsil footage looked crisp with no telltale fuzz. Of course, starting with a 4K picture and viewing a screen at a comfortable distance means there isn’t really much improvement or degradation to observe. Between the 4K demonstration footage I use and the 8K footage Samsung showed, the only way I could really notice a significant increase in detail was if I basically mashed my face against the screen in certain shots.
Gaming: Wireless Equals Lag
The QN990F's Wireless One Connect Box makes cable management a breeze, but it’s a problem for gaming. Using a Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Lag Tester, I measured an input lag of 24.1 milliseconds with a 1080p120 signal and 37.1ms with a 4K60 signal with Game Mode features turned on. That’s nearly three frames of action at both lower-resolution 120Hz and higher-resolution 60Hz. We use one frame (8.3ms at 1080p120, 16.6ms at 4K60) as the threshold to consider a TV to be good for gaming, and the QN990F doesn’t hit that.
For comparison, the QN90F shows an 8.6ms latency at 1080p120 and 10ms latency at 4K60. The QN990F's higher resolution could potentially account for some of the lag, but it’s much more likely that the wireless connection between the box and the screen just isn’t nearly as fast as a hardwired one. Keep in mind that input lag only really affects video games, though; it isn’t an issue for any movies or shows you watch.
The Takeaway? Stick With 4K for Now
Technology marches forward, and 8K will probably be relevant sometime in the future. Regardless of resolution, the Samsung QN990F is a striking TV with a sleek design, wide and accurate colors, and a bright picture. However, in the face of a complete absence of anything to watch in 8K and its higher price than Samsung’s already expensive (and much brighter) QN90F, it’s unnecessary for almost all consumers. Spending time with it at Samsung’s test lab hasn’t convinced me otherwise because I had to literally squint to see any significant difference in sharpness between 4K and 8K demo footage.
The hop from 8K to 4K just isn’t nearly as compelling as the jump from 1080p to 4K. That might change once streaming services announce movies and shows in 8K (or an 8K physical media standard), which could show more of a difference than tech demo footage, but for now, 8K remains a nonstarter.