Stuff - UK (2020-05)

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TESTED SAMSUNG 75Q950TS

GOOD

MEH

EVIL

Brilliantly

minimal

design

Superb

upscaling

of 4K

Sound

is big and

open...

There’s

no Dolby

Vision

Price

point is

dizzying

[^ W

or

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im

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It’ll empty your wallet and fill up

your wall, but prepare to fall hard

for Samsung’s ultra-sharp telly

As reasons to splurge on a new

TV go, the UK launch of Disney+

coinciding with the Prime Minister

telling us to stay indoors is a pretty

compelling one. But coming up

with an excuse to spend eight

thousand pounds on said TV is

a little trickier... unless, of course,

the set in question turns out to

be somewhat future-proofed and

sounds incredible.

Samsung has been one of the

major pushers of 8K for a couple

of years now, yet its 2020 range

seems – at first glance – no more

compelling than last year’s. They’re

still expensive, there’s almost no

native content around (Japanese

broadcaster NHK had planned to

broadcast the Tokyo Olympics in

8K), and it’s not like every home

has even taken up 4K yet.

But taken on its own terms, and

with all the obvious excuses made,

the 75Q950TS is one of the finest

tellies we’ve seen. If you have to

stay at home watching TV for the

next who knows how long, you

couldn’t do it in any more style.

£7999 / stuff.tv/Q950TS

8K breaky heart

48

Only the zonally

With over 33 million pixels,

compared to 2m for Full HD,

this thing has an awful lot of

upscaling to do. So there are

480 separate lighting/dimming

zones, all individually controllable

to keep blacks deep and detailed

even when sharing the screen

with brightly lit areas.

Bloody well bright

Playing the 4K HDR Blu-ray

of Le Mans ’66, this thing is

fundamentally making up 75%

of the information on the screen...

yet it looks dazzling. The colour

palette is wide-ranging (2), it’s

capable of enough brightness

to attract moths, and it tackles

movement with aplomb.

Ain’t nothing like the real thin

With a massive screen and

minimal bezel (1), this is close

to TV design nirvana. And while

Samsung’s QLED tech requires

backlighting, at 15mm deep it’s

hardly porky. Connectivity is also

removed from the screen and put

in a separate box, so only a single

lead cascades down.

...but also

hard and

thin