Samsung QN90B review: our top pick

You think these are the TVs that Samsung would like people to buy. How do they compare to OLED? In some ways, yes, but the high brightness approach does make things a little more difficult. The Samsung QN90B is sold in Canada, Australia, the US, the UK, and Europe, which is a bit surprising since the flagship model is usually the one that is more widely available.

The Samsung QN90B is the next model down from the QN95B, which is its best 4K model for 2022. Like that model, the QN90B’s main purpose is to make HDR pictures that are very bright and take advantage of the South Korean brand’s Neo QLED Mini LED backlight, making pictures that OLED has a hard time matching.

Samsung QN90B review: Design

The QN90B is a nice-looking TV, whether you look at it from the front or the side. If you don’t want to mount it to the wall, the stand that comes with it is heavy and sturdy, and it looks nice next to what is basically a giant screen. Most TVs look pretty much the same these days because they want to put as much emphasis on what is shown as possible.

Samsung’s stand design lets it do that, and it also raises the screen just enough above your console so that most slim form-factor soundbars can fit comfortably underneath. This is something you can’t do with the Sony A95K, even though its stand is a real show stopper.

So, the QN90B won’t blow your mind as much, but it’s much more useful for more people. If the fact that some TVs (especially OLEDs) are big, thin, and heavy scares you, don’t worry: the QN90B is much lighter and more durable. Even though it’s still pretty thin for a non-OLED, it doesn’t feel as fragile when you’re setting it up. You can buy this TVs from its official website.

Samsung QN90B review: Picture Quality

The QN90B is a second-generation Neo QLED Mini LED TV that is very bright and has a wide range of colors. We do think, though, that there are times when too much light is not a good thing. From what we can tell, the QE55QN90B has about 420 dimming zones, which is less than the 65-inch QN95B, which has about 720. We got a peak brightness of 2036 nits on a 5% window, which is twice what most OLEDs can do.

There’s no doubt that this image is very bright, but this Mini LED still has the same old problems as LCD TVs. Sat head-on, nighttime scenes like the beginning of the She-Hulk episode Ribbit and Rip It have a slight blooming. We can see a slight haze around the lights in the parking lot where Leapfrog is trying and failing to fight off two thieves.

When you move off-axis, the blooming is more obvious. Even though the black levels here are generally good, as noted in Disney’s Soul when Joe first enters The Great Beyond, OLEDs are better at handling small HDR highlights and keeping the black levels steady.

Samsung QN90B review: Gaming Performance

The QN90B, like all other Samsung TVs, has Samsung’s new gaming hub, which connects to cloud gaming services like Xbox Game Pass, Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Amazon Luna. We tried it with a fast wired Ethernet connection, which is what Samsung suggests, and playing Halo: Infinite was a pretty good experience.

My Xbox controller was easy to connect to the TV, and when we fought grunts and rode the Mongoose across the map, it responded quickly. As expected, the graphics were not as sharp as they were on an Xbox Series X, but the game play was the same. Like all cloud services, your experience may be different.

We tried a Wi-Fi connection that was much slower, and the game wouldn’t work. But if you have a good connection (Samsung suggests 50Mbps or more), it’s really cool that you can play games on your TV without a console at all.

Samsung QN90B review: Connectivity

The Samsung QN90B is a top-of-the-line TV, so it’s no surprise that it’s ready to go in a high-end home theater. Unlike last year’s QN90A, which only had one HDMI port that could play back at 4K/120Hz, the QN90B has four HDMI inputs that all support high-bandwidth, 2.1.

Samsung QN90B review: Features

The main feature of the QE50QN90B is its Mini LED lighting system, which packs more and smaller LEDs into the 50-inch screen than regular LEDs can. This gives it more control over light in specific areas and could give it more contrast and brightness than other LED TVs. Especially when it’s paired with a local dimming system.

This means that the TV can put out different amounts of light in each of the 448 zones. Samsung’s 2022 range doesn’t have any more dimming zones than its Mini LED range last year, which may surprise some. It has, however, added a new feature called Shape Adaptive Light Control that lets you change how the light from each dimming zone hits its part of the image.

So, for example, more light can be pushed to where a bright highlight needs to be in a dimming zone, while the brightness at the zone’s edges can be lowered if the bright highlight is against a dark background.

In other words, the Shape Adaptive Light Control could increase contrast and reduce the problem of backlight blooming around bright image areas that stand out, which is often caused by local dimming.

Price and availability

The Samsung QE55QN90B comes with high-quality features that you would typically have to pay a large lot of money for, considering the price of roughly £1300 at the time of review.

Its vibrant and colorful HDR performance is ideal for bright spaces, yet such a performance has certain disadvantages. With black levels not nearly as deep as on OLED Televisions, there is some apparent blooming as a problem. The tone mapping also doesn’t seem to be fully right.

Samsung QN90B review: Conclusion

The Samsung QN90B QLED is a high-end TV that came out after the QN90A QLED. It’s one of Samsung’s Neo QLED TVs for 2022. These TVs combine quantum dot color technology with a Mini LED backlight, which lets the brightness go up and the local dimming zones be controlled more precisely.

It fits between the Samsung QN85B QLED, which has the same performance and an ADS panel, and the Samsung QN95B QLED, which has an external One Connect box. Like other Samsung TVs, it has Samsung’s own smart interface, Tizen OS, which lets you choose from a wide range of apps and games.

FAQs

Is QN90B worth buying?

The Samsung QN90B has a very attractive design. It performs at a high level regardless of whether you are watching in standard dynamic range (SDR), high dynamic range (HDR), during the night, or during the day. It has a contrast that looks amazing in a dimly lit room but is bright enough to watch in a living room with natural light.

There are only a few televisions that offer the same level of versatility when it comes to gaming. Colour inaccuracies, or its light bloom, the absence of Dolby Vision on Samsung’s televisions is the thing that has left me feeling the most let down. But if you’re in the market for a Samsung.

Is the QN90B too bright?

Because it is one of the brightest TVs you’ll find, the Samsung QN90B is an excellent choice for rooms that get a lot of natural light. Along with the mini LED and local dimming technology, the brightness also contributes to the device’s ability to produce excellent contrast in low-light situations. Additionally, it features the most recent advancements in gaming technology, such as cloud gaming.

Is Samsung QN90B worth buying?

The capability of the QN90B to focus that light output with very little blooming or stray illumination produces excellent punch, contrast, and overall fidelity, exceeding the performance of the excellent QN90A from the previous year. And as one would expect from Samsung, both the design and the features are of the highest calibre.