Samsung's flagship S95H OLED TV combines a distinctive design with a built-in spatial audio system and a significantly brighter panel than its predecessor, the S95F. Its picture quality ranks among the best I've tested on an OLED screen, and its brightness exceeds any competitor so far, even outperforming the Editors' Choice-winning Panasonic Z95B ($3,399.99 for 65 inches). Its 4.2.2-channel speaker system produces a wide, detailed sound field. And for gamers, it delivers the most responsive performance I've measured, earning it a PCMag Lab Award for the lowest input lag. That level of performance comes at a premium: The 65-inch model I tested costs a considerable $3,399.99. Even at that high price, the S95H stands out as the best OLED TV I've tested to date, making it an Editors' Choice.

Design: Bold, Art-Inspired, and Purposefully Unsubtle

The S95H's OLED panel sits in front of a metallic silver frame, making it appear to almost float. This gives the TV's speaker drivers room to point in various directions between the panel and the bezel. It looks gorgeous, but it's far from minimalist.

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The S95H sort of looks like a framed picture and can be hung on the wall, but it isn’t designed exclusively for mounting like The Frame series. It comes with legs for placing it on a flat surface, not wall-mounting hardware as those TVs do. The two thin, flat legs attach to the bottom of the TV near the edges.

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Nearly all the physical connections for the S95H are on the back, facing directly to the right. They include three HDMI ports (all 4K165, one eARC), three USB ports, 3.5mm headphone and EX-Link service jacks, an optical audio output, an Ethernet port, and an RF antenna/cable connector. The power cable plugs into a downward-facing port on the left side.

Remote: Familiar Layout, Modern Convenience

While the S95H’s design has been completely overhauled from the much less flashy S95F, the remote hasn’t. It’s still a simple-looking, narrow black plastic rectangle with a circular navigation pad near the top, flanked by menu and playback controls and a pinhole microphone. Volume and channel rockers sit in the center, with four app buttons below, for Netflix, Prime Video, Samsung TV Plus, and YouTube. The layout is basic and works, even though it doesn’t have an input button, which is frustrating.

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It does, however, have a built-in rechargeable battery, a solar panel on the back side, and a USB-C port on the bottom edge, so you don't need to worry about changing its batteries. These power features have been common on Samsung's flagship TVs for the last few years, and they're always nice to see.

Audio: Built-In Spatial Sound That Fills the Room

The S95H packs a 70-watt, 4.2.2-channel sound system with side- and up-firing drivers. It supports Dolby Atmos spatial audio and features Samsung’s Object Tracking Sound+ audio processing. It also supports Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature, which lets you connect compatible Samsung Q-Series soundbars, such as the HW-Q990F, and use drivers from both the TV and the soundbar for bigger, more precise sound.

The audio setup is similar to the S95F, with the same 70 watts and 4.2.2 channels, but the new bezel design seems to improve the drivers’ ability to project sound toward the viewer, as it provides a consistent surface for sound to reflect off of. I watched parts of 1917 on the S95H, and it produced a very immersive sound field that made weapon fire and flying debris seem like it was overhead, though without a subwoofer, the explosions didn't have much deep bass. It doesn't sound quite as big as the 4.1.2-channel 80W speaker system in the Hisense UR9 ($1,999.99 for 65 inches), but its spatial imaging is more precise, and it is significantly more powerful and detailed than most other TV speakers.

Smart TV Features: Fully Loaded, But Still Overcomplicated

Samsung’s Tizen OS smart TV platform is largely unchanged. While it’s gotten a few tweaks and refinements over time, it’s still basically the same clunky interface I’ve tested countless times on other Samsung TVs. Common settings seem to be buried a few menu layers deeper than on other TVs, and some are really hard to find. Even switching inputs seems to take an extra button press or two more than it should.

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It’s packed full of features, at least. All the big streaming services are available, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube, plus Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and Miracast/WiDi for local device streaming from phones, tablets, and computers. It also has hands-free Alexa support alongside Samsung’s own Bixby voice assistant.

Picture Quality: A New High-Water Mark for OLED

The S95H’s 4K OLED panel has a 165Hz refresh rate and supports high dynamic range (HDR) in HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). Samsung continues to be one of the very few holdouts among TV manufacturers to eschew Dolby Vision. HDR content is almost always available in HDR10, but that format uses static metadata, whereas Dolby Vision and Samsung’s HDR10+ both use dynamic metadata that can adjust the signal to best fit the TV’s capabilities and the scene. It’s true that HDR10+ technically offers the same benefits as Dolby Vision, and some studios and streaming services support it, but it isn’t nearly as widely embraced. The S95H also has Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and an ATSC 1.0 tuner, but not ATSC 3.0.

Brightness: OLED's New Benchmark Breakthrough

OLED TVs have been steadily getting brighter, but the S95H outshines all others I’ve tested. Using a Klein K-10 colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software, I measured the S95H’s picture in a variety of modes and test patterns. I found HDR Filmmaker to show the best color and brightness performance. HDR Movie came very close in both regards, and some viewers might prefer it for how it more aggressively brightens shadow details in darker scenes without making them appear washed out. In HDR Filmmaker with an HDR10 signal, the S95H showed a peak brightness of 459 nits with a full-screen white field, 1,634 nits with the 18% white field I use to compare TVs across all types, and a blazing 2,460 nits with the 10% white field that can squeeze much more light out of some OLED and mini-LED TVs.

At 18%, the S95H actually falls a little short of the Panasonic Z95B’s peak brightness (1,775 nits), but at at 10% it blows every other OLED I’ve reviewed out of the water, shooting past both the Z95B (2,015 nits) and the LG G6 (2,339 nits). And it almost goes without saying that the S95H puts out more light than its predecessor, the S95F (1,451 nits 18%, 2,138 nits 10%). Brightness has historically been one of OLED's biggest weaknesses, but now flagship models like the S95H rival all but the brightest mini-LED TVs like the TCL X11L (3,421 nits 18%, 3,776 nits 10%) and are more than bright enough to comfortably watch in any ambient lighting.

Color: Wide Gamut With Impressive Accuracy

(Credit: PCMag)

Color performance is unsurprisingly fantastic on the S95H. The above charts show the TV’s color measurements in Movie mode with an SDR signal compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards and with an HDR10 signal compared against DCI-P3 color levels. In both cases, whites are very close to perfect. Most SDR colors are spot-on, though whites are just a touch cool. HDR colors exceed the DCI-P3 color space, and are generally very well-balanced, even if magentas and yellows run slightly warm.

(Credit: PCMag)

It’s the widest color range I’ve seen on an OLED, though it doesn't come close to the BT.2020 color space like certain very expensive high-end LED models have been reaching for. BT.2020 is the theoretical full range of color an HDR signal can contain, extending far past the DCI-P3 color space.

RGB LED TVs like the Hisense UR9 and Samsung's R95H, as well as TCL's Super Quantum Dot (SQD) mini-LED X11L, all claim to cover the entire BT.2020 gamut, though none have done so in my tests. The above chart shows how much of BT.2020 the S95H can reach based on the CIE1931 and CIE1976 charts, respectively 82.04% and 88.49%. CIE1931 shows the visual light spectrum in absolute values, while CIE1976 shows the range of visual light as the human eye perceives color differences.

This is respectable, beating out the LG G6 OLED's 78.75%/85.16% but falling short of the UR9's 89.15%/92.04%. Seeing those numbers on RGB LED TVs doesn't necessarily mean they will always show especially vibrant colors for movies and shows, though, as I noted in my review of the UR9.

Viewing Experience: Lifelike, Punchy, and Consistently Impressive

With incredible brightness and color, plus OLEDs' pixel-perfect black levels, the S95H’s picture looks great. I watched scenes from BBC’s Planet Earth II, The Great Gatsby, and Spears & Munsil’s Ultra HD benchmark disc.

Nature footage from Planet Earth II looks downright lifelike thanks to the bright highlights and balanced colors. The many greens of plants and blues of water and sky appear natural, and fine details are sharp in both sun and shade.

The party scenes in The Great Gatsby are my go-tos for observing TV contrast performance, and the S95H indeed handles both highlights and shadows admirably. The whites of lights and balloons pop, and black suits look extremely dark while clearly retaining their cuts and contours. Skin tones look accurate, and flourishes of oranges and blues jump out.

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Spears & Munsil demonstration footage also looks gorgeous. Snowy shots are satisfyingly bright, even when clearly putting out less than 1,000 nits due to the white field. Landscapes under clear skies are vibrant and almost blazing, and the sun peeking through clouds really stands out. Torture test shots of colorful objects against black backgrounds show no light bloom at all, though that’s to be expected; OLED panels adjust light output individually for each pixel, and don’t suffer from light bloom like LED TVs with local dimming arrays do.

Gaming Features: Industry-Leading Responsiveness and Low Lag

Input lag is the amount of time it takes a display to update its picture after receiving a signal, and it's very important for video games. When you need to see what's happening the same instant it occurs, and have every button you press respond accordingly, you want to shave off as much latency as possible. Ideally, it will be lower than a single frame of action, which for a 60Hz signal is 16.6 milliseconds and for a 120Hz signal is 8.3 milliseconds. I measure input lag using the Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Input Lag Tester, a device that connects to a TV and uses a built-in light sensor to time the duration between the transmission of a signal and the resulting on-screen flash.

The S95H is incredibly responsive, with the lowest input lag I've seen on a TV. I measured a latency of 4.8 milliseconds with a 4K60 signal and 9.2ms with a 1080p120 signal. That's the lowest 4K60 lag I've measured on any TV so far, and its 1080p120 lag is also excellent. Those numbers together earn the S95H our Lab Award for lowest TV input lag. That performance, combined with a strong feature set including a 165Hz native refresh rate with both AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync, qualifies the S95H as one of the best TVs for gaming.