A stunning OLED model for 2024

For those of us who are passionate about top-tier viewing experiences , OLED remains undefeated in terms of contrast, color depth, and overall visual brilliance, and the S95D is Samsung’s top-shelf entry for OLED in 2024. Over the past few weeks, I’ve put the S95D through its paces on everything from streaming to 4K UHD Blu-rays, and casual daily watching. The S95D dazzled with its visual fidelity, while leaving me a little wanting in terms of brightness and software. This model represents the very best in OLED that Samsung has to offer, and I encourage you to check out my in-depth impressions below.

Recommended

Samsung OLED S95D

The Samsung S95D is a top of the line OLED television, and the 2024 flagship OLED from the Korean manufacturer. The razor thin S95D boasts outstanding contrast, rich color, and crisp sound from built-in speakers.

Pros

• Outstanding contrast
• Stellar performance across all uses
• Clear sound from built-in speakers

Cons

• OLED peak brightness suffers in brightly lit sunny rooms
• No Dolby Vision support

See our process

How we test and review products at Pocket-lint

We don’t do arm-chair research. We buy and test our own products, and we only publish buyer’s guides with products we’ve actually reviewed.

Price, availability, and specs

OLED remains the most expensive panel type readily available on the market today, so it’s no surprise the S95D is not a cheap TV. The 55″ version starts at $2,599 and goes up to $4,599 for the 77″ version, which is the one I tested for this review. The S95D is available at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Samsung.

These days, spec sheets for high-end flat screens boast as much about the software as they do the hardware. From software-assisted frame rates to voice control, TVs, like most tech toys, keep getting smarter. The hardware in the S95D, however, deserves recognition. Sporting a 77″ 4K OLED panel, the S95D comes ready to deliver stunning pictures right off the shelf. That very display comes layered with a matte finish intended to diffuse reflected light to lessen the strength of reflections, an industry first for an OLED unit.

The S95D is ultra-slim, with the screen measuring just under half an inch thick at its thinnest point. This, combined with the weight saved by using an external One Connect Box, which houses the brains and ports, makes the S95D quite light for its size. The 77″ version weighs just 62 lbs without the stand, which itself weighs 26 lbs. The display can run as high as 120 Hz natively, though software features like Motion Xcelerator claim this can be boosted to 144 Hz, though at the end of the day, it’s just another name for frame interpolation technology.

Fitted onto the back of the S95D is a whopping 8 speakers that make up the 70W 4.2.2CH audio setup built-in to TV. This Samsung model supports Dolby Atmos sound so the speakers are certainly put to good use.

Related

Best LG OLED TV: Top models for any budget

LG has a wide range of OLED TV models in a number of different sizes and price points, but which is the best?

Design

Elegant touches

The design of the S95D is as sleek as it is pricey. At less than half an inch thick, the display feels high-end and requires a gentle touch when lifting or moving it. The back of the display is a textured hard plastic, with the ridged design lending a touch of elegance as it frames the speakers and One Connect port. As was the case with the QN900D, this Samsung model leverages the One Connect Box to achieve its thin profile, as it houses most of the “brains” and all the TV’s HDMI, USB, Ethernet, and audio ports in an external box that is quite hefty on its own.

The S95D just disappears

A bezel-less design gives the image an edge-to-edge feel, willing the S95D to disappear behind whatever you’re watching. I loved the movie-theater style experience that the S95D delivered thanks to its unobtrusive profile. The One Connect Box, which I originally was not a fan of, has grown on me, as the ease of dealing with it when I needed to plug or unplug something was much easier than moving a large TV every time I wanted to swap out an HDMI cable.

Related

4 reasons OLED TVs are actually worth the hype

OLED TVs aren’t cheap, but their stunning contrast and stylish design are among the many reasons why they are worth every penny.

Software

Tizen OS is just fine

I didn’t find anything particularly impressive about Samsung’s native Tizen OS on the S95D. It’s a fairly simple and pared-back TV OS that was easy to navigate and simple to use. I found the OS to be incredibly insistent about logging in with my Samsung account. It badgered me more than any other TV OS about syncing and logging in, which got annoying quickly.

While Tizen OS offers a user-friendly interface and a decent selection of apps, I feel like it lacks the versatility of somecompeting smart TV operating systems . It truthfully didn’t feel like a major plus or minus in my experience. I would mostly just navigate to the inputs and boot up my Roku Ultra.

A petite remote

Selecting your preferred apps and streaming platforms is simple, and the small remote makes it easy to do so. The S95D supports Alexa as a built-in voice assistant, and the remote features a microphone button for use in voice searches and commands. To be honest, through many hours of using the S95D, I never found an actual use case for this, and I believe voice control remains a nice gimmick on almost all smart TVs this decade.

The remote has a few pre-programmed buttons that navigate you quickly to certain streaming platforms, which reminded me a lot of theRoku remote .These buttons will immediately open up Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, and Samsung TV Plus, which is Tizen’s integrated free ad-supported live television streaming service. The S95D remote is rechargeable via USB-C or via the small solar panel found on the back of the remote, so if you’re running low on battery, simply leave the remote upside down in a sunny spot in your home.

Related

The Texas summer sun is no match for my bright, new Samsung 8K TV

Samsung’s Neo QLED 8K QN900D TV has the eye-searing display I’ve been waiting 12 years to see.

Performance

Unbeatable contrast

The S95 is, in a word, stunning. The color richness and contrast of OLED is second to none and makes for a truly cinematic experience, particularly when watching HDR content. Watching Interstellar in 4K UHD Blu-ray helped showcase the power of this madel, as the empty black of space felt endlessly deep thanks to the OLED display.

These rich contrast scenes typically fall flat on traditional LED panels, but not so on the S95D. In brighter, more color-filled scenes, the OLED shone again, displaying incredibly rich colors even at modest color saturation settings. The color accuracy scene to scene, across both streaming and Blu-ray, was fantastic.

Not the brightest bulb

My singular complaint about OLED, and one that has stuck around since the early days of the display technology, is the lower peak brightness available on OLED compared to other LED technologies. While the S95D can reach a peak brightness of roughly 1,700 nits with a number of settings adjusted and some contrast sacrificed, that is a far cry from the brightness on non-OLED Samsung models from this same model year.

The QN900D that we previously reviewed, for instance, achieves roughly 30% greater peak brightness, so no small delta. While the S95D is one of the brightest OLEDs on the market, and brightness in OLED has come a long way in the last few years, it still, almost inevitably, suffers in a brightly lit room. This is mitigated somewhat by the matte finish over the screen, which helps cut down on reflections, but I still found it impossible to watch dark or dimly lit scenes without drawing all my shades and turning off the lights.

The fact that Samsung does not support Dolby Vision does not help this one bit, as HDR10+ supports a far lower peak brightness than Dolby Vision. This makes watching HDR content in brightly lit rooms even more of a struggle. My perspective on this stands firm: when watching a gorgeously shot film at night, you can’t beat OLED, but for catching up on your favorite TV show while folding laundry with the windows open on a sunny Texas day, LED is what I’d prefer.

Eight speakers deliver clear sound

Built-in television speakers are rarely anything to write home about, though the Samsung S95D performs admirably with its eight speakers serving its 4.2.2CH setup. The S95D supports Dolby Atmos sound, giving a surround sound feel to compatible films and TV shows from the major streaming platforms or Blu-rays.

While the eight round circular speakers on the back of the S95D are not nearly as powerful as a full surround system, they manage to deliver precise and clear sound with little to no distortion, even at higher volumes. Along with Dolby Atmos, the S95D leverages an AI-powered feature Samsung calls Object Tracking Sound+ to mimic spatial sound so that what you hear matches where in the scene a sound is coming from.

Verdict: Should you buy the Samsung S95D?

The Samsung S95D offers a breathtaking image when watching content from the right source. For any household with a cinephile, the S95D might just be worth the investment. You simply can’t beat the theater-quality contrast and color of a quality OLED display. It’s just about the closest you can get to the original theatrical image in terms of visual accuracy, especially when paired with HDR.

If you stream a lot of 4K UHD content or watch a lot of Blu-rays, then you’ll want a panel that can keep up with that image quality and help you get the most juice for the squeeze. Movie nights would undoubtedly be gorgeous on the S95D, but if you’re mostly streaming full HD content or are a more casual watcher, especially if most of your TV time is in a well-lit room in your home, then perhaps consider more affordable and brighter LED alternatives.

Recommended

Samsung OLED S95D