- [Linus] Fundamentally,
a mini-LED is just an LED, but smaller. So I can understand why some people wouldn't be that excited about it. But hold on because mini-LED, that's the same technology
that enabled Apple to create their upcoming iPad Pro that everyone is so excited about. Except, that on Samsung's new
generation of Neo QLED TVs, you can have it in a display that's up to 85 inches diagonally. On paper, they've got all
the benefits of Quantum Dot. Like crazy brightness,
accurate and wide gamut color, and resistance to burn-in, and they could even deliver black levels that are competitive with OLED. That is a lot to live up to. (mysterious electronic music) Just like your expectations
for my sponsor segues. - [Linus] Honey is the
free to use shopping tool that helps search some
of the best promo codes on lots of your favorite sites. Get it today and join Honey.com/LTT. (upbeat music) In high-end TV space
today you essentially have two competing technologies: QLED, which is short for
Quantum Dot LED backlit LCD and OLED, which is short for Organic LED. You've probably heard me call OLED the best TV technology on the
market, and justifiably so. It's main advantage is
that each individual pixel acts as its own backlight and can be turned off individually; allowing the color black
to be just actually black, as in a complete lack of light. However, it's not for everyone. At least as of the 2020 models, OLED displays just aren't bright enough that I would call them a perfect option for a well-lit environment like this one. Although LG did just launch
their second-gen OLED panels which are supposedly much brighter. Get subscribed so you don't
miss our upcoming review, a Sony TV of all things,
that has one of those. Getting back to more traditional
display designs though. When you've got a
backlight shining through one or multiple filter layers, the only way to achieve black is to remove or block as much
of that light as you can. Now, with a single full screen backlight, the best that you can really
do was a washed out sort of bluish purpley black, that makes it virtually
impossible for older TVs to display HDR or high
dynamic range content. To combat this, manufacturers
came up with the idea of splitting the backlight into zones that could be individually dimmed to reduce the amount of light
in dark areas of the scene, making them more black. Or, well, rather less lit. Really cool. But when you only have
50 zones, for example, on a 75 inch display, they can be pretty large and very obvious, resulting in something
called the halo effect. Which is just a fancy way of saying, "Wow, I can really see where
the backlight zones are and they're super distracting." It's especially noticeable
when a user interface element comes up over top of a dark background, like a loading circle or media controls. That's not to say though that there aren't any TVs
with lots of backlight zones. Like Vizio's P Series
Quantum X, for example, which has 480 on the 75-inch model. But even that is not really
competitive with the nearly 8.3 million zones on an equivalent 4K OLED. So either OLEDs need to get brighter, QLEDs need to get enough
back lighting zones to effectively eliminate the halo effect, or we just need something
else all together before we end up with
something that I would call the ideal viewing experience,
regardless of the environment. Now, Samsung themselves are
working on micro-LED displays which would, similarly to OLED displays, have pixel level control. But they're not (coughs) how you say? Price feasible for the
average end user just yet. That long history lesson
is where Neo QLED comes in. This is Samsung's first foray
into mini-LED technology. Mini-LEDs were developed to
help shrink the backlight LEDs down as much as possible in an effort to add more dimming zones. And this is the same
approach that Apple takes with their new iPad Pro, except that it has nearly 10,000 mini-LEDs contributing to 2,500 zones on just a 12.9 inch display. That is very impressive
density to say the least. This TV by contrast, pun intended, isn't anywhere near the level
that Apple is able to achieve. More on that later. But I still wanna give it a shot. So let's... (laughs) Oh God! Well, just finished
the set up process here and it's got a nice phone
wizard to make the setup easier, like most modern TVs and consoles. But one thing that did
stand out that was positive was that Samsung allows you to choose your own voice assistant rather than forcing you to use Bixby. That truly is a pretty nice touch. Now, price-wise the QN85A a we have here is that nearly the same price
level as LG's 2020 model OLEDs like the C10 at each size. So we grabbed a 48-inch C10 for our image quality comparison. Don't mind the fact that they're a little bit different in terms of size. Now, both of them are in
their default filmmaker modes for the most accurate representation of the original footage. But it is worth noting that these modes are not typically the
brightest that they can do. In a bright room, and this
is a very bright room. We've got direct sunlight coming in, bouncing off the floor over
at the other end there. - [Linus] We've got all the lights on. - [Jake] They look kind of similar. - [Linus] If you lied to me and said, "That's an OLED and that's an
OLED," I'd be like, "Okay." - [Jake] It looks totally fine. I don't notice any bloom. - [Linus] Nope. - [Jake] It's hard to tell
in these scenes though. But, no, it looks good. If it's hard to tell that
means they're doing a good job. - [Linus] Yeah. - So what I've read is
that Samsung's algorithm for doing this sort of
stuff is very passive. Like they really try to not have bloom. - As opposed to seeking the
blackest possible black levels. - [Jake] So, if you,
notice in certain scenes, if you have very dark and
just a small amount of light, that light will not look very bright. - [Linus] Is LG in like a warm preset for its filmmaker mode? Because, honestly, the Samsung looks way more true to life to me. There's your problem, "Warm2." - [Jake] Try "Warm1." - [Linus] Thanks for that. - [Jake] That looks pretty
much the same. Warm1. - [Linus] That's pretty close, try cool. Or medium, medium. I think that's it. - [Jake] Okay. - [Linus] You know what? There is a little bit of green
in the Samsung, just a touch. Now I kind of want to play
around with this one too. There we go. That is damn close. Holy crap. (laughs) - So off axis over here, it
still looks pretty green to me. - Oh, Okay. Well here, let
me, let me move for a sec. - Okay. Holy crap. Okay. So sitting straight on. Wow. They are very similar. Now this one looks too green,
at least in this scene. - I think we're at the point
now where we're splitting hairs finely enough, that
it's pretty clear that either of these TVs with 15 seconds in the menu you could get to whatever look you want. - [Jake] But it's Like, what I'm trying to
look at is the contrast. And like in this scene, you can see that that sort of metal structure in the back, and you can see more in
the darks in this TV. And I think that's just
the additional brightness that this TV has. But in terms of like blacks,
like even the bottom bar. - [Linus] Yep. - [Jake] Looks totally black
because I have an older QLED that doesn't have very many dimming zones and when I'm watching a movie like this, you will see the
black bars at the bottom. - It's awful. It's awful. Honestly, it's one of the
reasons that regardless of everything else I made the switch to OLED as soon as I could,
because sitting, especially in a dark room and seeing
that bloom around the image on ultra wide content
it's very distracting. - Okay, so this room is very bright like more bright than
your living room would be. But I think this TV is acceptable and this one is just like maybe 10% darker than I want it to be. So maybe the next
generation would be enough. - I might actually, it might be enough. - [Jake] Wow. Look at this. Look at that, that's insane. - [Linus] Yeah. And, but you don't lose any of the detail in the darks too like I've seen in the past. - [Jake] Like look at his face, you see more of his face for sure. - [Linus] Yep. - What does it feel like off-axis though - It's fine. - It's fine? - Yeah. I mean, one
thing I noticed when it, when it was on the test bench before when we just had it on the floor. Was that standing above it is not as good, but if Samsungs smart they would have tuned this thing to watch from either level or below. And the reason for that is a lot of people mount
these on their fireplaces. - [Jake] Oh, for sure. - They're monsters, but they do it. So Samsung's gotta be ready for it. - [Jake] I'm like actually shocked. - [Linus] I'm, I'm pretty surprised too, because I was not expecting them to perform this similarly side by side. - I was like beatin' on it before, when we had it set up that it was below us because the bloom bad off
axis but now it looks. - [Jake] It looks great. - [Linus] Yeah.-
- [Jake] Wow. - [Linus] For PC use I would still go OLED regardless because when you've got a mouse cursor
moving around or whatever there's no amount of dimming
zones that you can have that's going to deliver a
perfect experience there. - Okay. But should we
try them in a dark room? - We definitely should. Now it's time for the real test. Ittstore.com by the way. We're in a dark room now. All we've got is the bare minimum amount of light we need for filming. And - [Jake] This is where
you would see more bloom. - [Linus] Yeah. - [Jake] There's no
ambient light to hide it. - [Linus] Yeah. I am really impressed. I was kind of expecting
this to just be kind of a blowout; pun intended. - [Jake] Yeah. - [Linus] Not only can I
still see a ton of detail and extremely dark parts
of the scene on the QLED which means that they haven't
just turned the backlight off basically in those areas. Like we're, we're still
getting light through but I can see the difference
between the black bar and almost black. - [Jake] Like bottom left - [Linus] Like the
black a camera captured, you know what I mean? Which is not quite black. - [Jake] Look at the bottom left. - [Linus] Yeah. I can totally see it. I can see the line - [Jake] And I'm off axis,
- [Linus] All the way across. like I'm very far off angle
and it looks pretty damn good. This is good for an IPS display, like there's not much backlight bleed. - I was kind of expecting a
different conclusion today. You were, you were a bigger downer. I told them, I was like,
I want to try this TV. And he's like, ah. - I was so sure this was going to end up as the (beep) manufacturers say, and we were so wrong.
(Linus laughs) - It's almost like Samsung
went and bought some LG TVs. And when they were working
on the pricing for this they were like, "we know what
this is competitive with." - Should I buy one of these? (laughs) If we did a blind taste
test of this, pick the OLED. I don't think people could
figure it out accurately. Do you think you could? I don't think I could - Not without getting really close - Yeah - If I, okay, you know what?-
(indistinct) Let's try it. Yeah. If I get in here really
close I can see the bloom but that's only if I use my hand to block the brighter parts of the image, cause what you got to understand is the way your eye works. You've got a fixed amount of dynamic range that is the brightest or darkest things you
can perceive at a time. But just like a camera, you
can actually close the iris so that, that range moves
up to perceive differences in brighter objects or open
it up, your pupil, remember? And you can see a greater range
of things that are dimmer. So bottom line, as long
as there's enough contrast almost black will look black. We just hadn't gotten there yet. So long answer. Yes. I could tell. Short answer. No, not from an actual
reasonable viewing distance. Well, we had a scripted kind of outro where we summarized everything but I'm probably going to have to kind of wing it at this point. (Linus and Jake laughing) Before we conclude I want to come back to question
of dimming zones though. Samsung hasn't officially
released information on how many zones the 75 inch QN85A has. Samsung; supreme is not a number. Just release proper spec sheets. But other reviewers have
painstakingly counted 1,320 on the 85 inch variant and just under 800 on the 65 inch. That puts us at around
a thousand for the 75 which sounds a lot less
impressive when you compare it to the iPad, especially
when you consider the size. But it's about double
what Vizio was able to do with normal LEDs last year. And so while it might not be
an earth shattering increase in zones, you have to consider that this is their first
mass market display making use of this technology. And that, see this is
where I got to ad-lib, the result is actually really really good. Enough about video though. I want to talk about audio for a bit. As a soundbar pleb, another feature I wanted to check out is Samsung's, "Q symphony," and it's basically a way for your TV and your soundbar to work
together using the speakers from both to enhance the audio experience. It actually launched with
Samsung's last year QLEDs, but I haven't gotten
a chance to try it yet so I figured what the hey,
we're all set up anyway. Actually they didn't send a
soundbar so I had to go buy one, but other than that it
was very little effort. (TV audio plays in background) Hmm. Well. That's really unfortunate. I was really hoping to compare just the TV to just the soundbar, to the
two of them working together. And I just don't think I'm
going to be able to do it. Our teams did say that
the soundbar has trouble in environments with a lot of interference like (coughs) our office. And there's like constant hiccups. It's kind of unusable actually Soundbar aside my expectations
were subverted today and having seen the 85 I'm now pretty curious about the 90, which uses a VA rather than an IPS panel and is rated for even higher brightness, though it does have the
same number of zones. With that said, there's a lot
of competition on the market. LG has their, basically
monopoly on OLED panels. At least high-end ones. Samsung is pushing towards
micro LED themselves and there's other players like Hisense with those sweet,
like dual cell displays. They have a second 10
ADP monochrome LCD layer that does almost pixel
level lighting control. So again, subscribe so you don't miss our
review of that as well. And if you're looking for
something else to watch why not check out the
Intel extreme rig upgrade that we did for our camera guy, David. He actually used this same C10 48 inch as a gaming monitor because
he's a mad lad like that. Just like I'm a mad lad. I'm going to tell you
all about micro center. Get the best prices and best
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learn more about micro center and find details on getting a free pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones. Valid in store only,
no purchase necessary. Okay. If you're still here, go watch Davidson telestream
Tech Upgrade; it was fun. - [David] Yeah. Best one. (camera slams into monitor) (groaning)
I typically enjoy most of their content but this video might as well have been called “two dudes switch spots on a couch and say “wow.””
There were zero tests done to properly show light bloom, no idea how good/bad the input delay is, no clue how accurate the picture is out of the box... they just said “couch looks comfy let’s make a vid I guess.”
The reality is much less exciting: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/qn85a-qled
Read that and judge it for yourself. My take after giving this a look over? I wouldn't touch this TV personally. And I wouldn't be excited for this tech in a monitor.
This kinda stuff is even worse for monitors anyway (harder to pack in even as many zones as this has into a monitor sized package and keep costs down), especially gaming monitors. About the only good takeaway from this video was Linus talking about how he would still go OLED for gaming, since the issues with blooming, response times, game mode and the like making local dimming responsiveness and overall picture quality much worse on LCD vs OLED are very real.
As an owner of QN90A, I will say I like this TV, but this comparison video is paid garbage.
They should have used a different movie to test the TVs. Blade Runner 2049 only has a peak brightness of 200 nits. Mad Max Fury Road would have been a better choice.
The reason there wasn't obvious blooming is because the movie bladerunner 2049 doesn't have HDR brightness. It is basically SDR movie in HDR container. Check vincents review to find out more.
In any case no TV with FALD has blooming on that movie. My XF90 doesn't bloom on that movie because it's not bright movie.
I'm certain we would see blooming and othee samsung shenanigans with real HDR movie.
Linus, man.....this kind of content is NOT what built the foundations of your channel. As a long time follower back to the NCIX tech tips days, it really irritates me.
The actual in depth reviews of the Samsung miniLEDs are pretty lackluster
Processing Lag would have been interesting with so much (great) FALD regulation going on...
Title was rushed, sorry. Their Neo QLED TVs, not their other QLED variants, are what looks amazing.
Also, by "new monitors" I meant 'monitors released in the future.'
The direct comparison starts at 5:05 - https://youtu.be/jM-ED97_vKo?t=305