The Samsung S95F is the brand’s flagship OLED TV for 2025, and it’s a stunner. During a recent visit to Samsung’s New Jersey facility, I spent a day with the S95F and a few of the company’s other new TVs. The S95F left the strongest impression by far.
I review all of the latest and greatest displays every year, and this model’s image quality is nearly unrivaled. It also has a glare-free matte screen that does an excellent job of fighting pesky reflections. However, the matte coating has a negative effect on the panel’s black levels. And though Samsung is touting several of the TV’s new Vision AI features, none of these functions are as revelatory as the company’s marketing materials would have you believe.
But while there are some drawbacks here and there, the S95F’s many strengths outweigh its flaws. Based on my initial hands-on testing with the TV, the S95F is easily a contender for the best premium display of 2025.
Samsung 65-inch S95F OLED 4K TV
The S95F is Samsung’s latest flagship 4K TV. It’s one of the top high-end displays of 2025 and uses an advanced QD-OLED panel with an anti-glare matte screen.
A thin profile and convenient connection box elevate the TV’s design
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The Samsung S95F is available in 55-, 65-, and 77-inch screen sizes. All three sizes use Samsung’s latest-generation QD-OLED panel. The “QD” stands for quantum dots, a color technology that enables a wider and brighter range of colors than a traditional OLED screen.
Samsung will also launch a larger 83-inch S95F in the coming months. This is notable since last year’s S95D was unavailable in such a big size. However, it’s not yet clear if the 83-inch S95F will match the color performance of its smaller counterparts. Historically, Samsung hasn’t manufactured QD-OLED panels that large, so it’s unlikely that the 83-inch S95F will use quantum dots.
At less than half an inch thick, the S95F’s profile is notably thinner than most competing QLED displays, which require thicker panels to accommodate their backlighting systems. All sizes also feature the brand’s “One Connect Box.” This separate component houses the TV’s inputs rather than having them built into the panel. This approach gives users more flexibility with cable management, as you can either mount the box on the back of the TV or hide it out of view in a media console.
The S95F’s bright, high-contrast picture is nearly flawless
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To evaluate the S95F’s picture performance, I put the TV through my typical testing process. This involves measuring brightness with a colorimeter and sampling various scenes I’ve curated from movies and TV shows that highlight different image quality attributes. For most of my testing, I used the TV’s “Filmmaker Mode” since this preset offers the most accurate out-of-box picture, but I also sampled other modes to get a sense of how they look.
Initially, something seemed off about the S95F’s picture. The colors were oddly dull in certain sequences, and the display’s contrast looked flatter than expected. Another reviewer who attended the same session noticed similar issues. Samsung gave the TV a factory reset, and voila, those problems disappeared, and the S95F looked appropriately stunning. I’m not sure what the issue was, but the TV I tested was technically a pre-production unit, so it’s not unusual for there to be some lingering software kinks.
The important thing is that the S95F ultimately blew me away with its image quality. This is one of the brightest OLED TVs I’ve tested, and it’s second only to LG’s brand-new G5, which gets a bit brighter. On a 10% test pattern (a white box that takes up 10% of the screen), the TV put out an impressive 2,170 nits, which is nearly 500 nits more than I measured on last year’s S95D. The S95F was also able to sustain that brightness for a longer period of time.
Since the brightest elements of most movies and TV shows tend to be small highlights, a 10% test pattern is the most important for evaluating a display’s high-dynamic-range (HDR) impact. A lot of HDR content is mastered for 1,000 nits, but titles produced for 2,000 and 4,000 nits are becoming more common. An OLED that can hit over 2,000 nits is a major accomplishment, as it can offer a more accurate representation of how HDR movies and TV shows are supposed to look.
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Scenes from “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Aquaman” on 4K Blu-ray were perfect showcases of the S95F’s capabilities. Both are mastered for high brightness beyond 1,000 nits, and the S95F was able to produce specular highlights, like lightning blasts, fiery explosions, and shimmering armor, with greater intensity than previous-generation OLEDs. And the TV’s colors were also vibrant, bringing the vivid underwater world of Atlantis to life with rich saturation.
Since this is an OLED, the S95F’s contrast performance is as good as it gets. The OLED panel’s pixel-level dimming enables an infinite contrast ratio with deep black levels that completely disappear into a dark room. Scenes from “The Matrix” and “1917” were perfect examples of this: shadows appeared inky while bright elements of the image, like a flashlight or exploding flare, popped against black backgrounds without any troublesome blooming.
Even top QLED TVs with high-end Mini LED panels are prone to some backlight fluctuations and halos during tricky sequences, like the burning church scene in “1917,” but the S95F handled this type of content without any issues. You can learn more about the pros and cons of OLED tech in our QLED vs. OLED comparison.
Beyond high-quality 4K content, I also sampled lower-resolution HD sources from YouTube and Samsung TV Plus (the brand’s free ad-supported streaming app). Though Sony often gets heralded for its industry-leading upscaling and picture processing, Samsung and LG have made big strides in this regard, and the S95F is further proof of that. Sure, lower-quality material still looks noticeably softer and compressed than native 4K content, but the S95F’s processing is a clear step above that of TVs from cheaper brands like TCL, Hisense, and Roku.
The S95F’s gaming capabilities are on par with what shoppers should expect from a flagship set in this class. You get variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low latency mode (ALLM) support to enable smooth gameplay and low input lag. But the S95F offers an even higher refresh rate than last year’s S95D, jumping from 144Hz to 165Hz. This feature only benefits PC gamers with a high-end graphics card, but it’s still an impressive feat.
As for the competition, only LG’s new G5 OLED can go toe-to-toe with the S95F’s picture capabilities. However, the G5 can get even brighter, which gives highlights in certain HDR content a bit more intensity. That said, the S95F has an edge in color volume, giving especially bright colors more saturation.
The TV’s glare-free tech is great for reducing reflections, but gives dark scenes a faded look
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Like last year’s S95D, the S95F uses Samsung’s glare-free technology, which relies on a matte screen rather than a glossy one. Glossy screens are used on most competing TVs, like LG’s G5, and though they’re great for preserving high contrast, they can lead to mirror-like reflections when watching TV in a bright room.
The S95F’s matte screen can scatter and diffuse glare in a way that nearly eliminates direct reflections. Samsung says this second-generation glare-free screen offers even better performance than last year’s version. I couldn’t compare the S95D and S95F side-by-side, but the S95F certainly does an incredible job of reducing glare. With the lights on, I didn’t notice any bothersome reflections on the screen. Sure, if you shine light directly on the panel, you will see some hazy glare, but this effect is nothing like the mirror quality of a glossy-style OLED.
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Unfortunately, the S95F’s matte screen is still prone to the same key drawback I encountered with last year’s S95D: it elevates black levels in a bright room. The way the anti-glare filter scatters light causes black levels to lose their inkiness and take on a slightly faded look. This is most evident when watching content with many dim scenes. In a dark room, however, the S95F’s black levels are as deep as on competing OLED TVs with glossy screens.
Though this effect was still evident on the S95F, it bothered me slightly less than it did on last year’s S95D. I’m not sure if the new screen handles contrast a bit better or if I’ve just become more accustomed to the look of matte panels, but I appreciated the overall benefits of the S95F’s glare-free tech more than I did on the S95D. Ultimately, I still much prefer the deeper black levels you get with a glossy panel, but if your room is plagued by reflections that you can’t (or don’t want to) fix with curtains, the S95F is a great solution.
Samsung’s smart TV system is solid, but the new AI features are underwhelming
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The S95F uses the latest version of Samsung’s Tizen smart TV operating system. This platform is decent overall, with solid navigation and all the major functions you could need. In general design and usability, I put it on par with LG’s similar webOS system and a step above Amazon’s Fire TV OS, which I find too cluttered and filled with sponsored content. However, I still prefer the Google TV and Roku OS systems thanks to their more streamlined interfaces.
The S95F’s sidebar panel offers access to dedicated pages for search, ambient mode, Samsung Daily+ (health, work, and smart device control apps), and a gaming hub. The gaming hub is where you’ll find cloud services like Nvidia GeForce Now, Amazon Luna, and Xbox Game Pass. Samsung and LG (via a future update) are the only brands that support the Xbox app, which lets subscribers play Xbox games without a console. Performance heavily depends on your internet connection, but it’s a cool feature.
For voice control, you can choose between Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant or Amazon Alexa. Spoken commands can be given hands-free with a wake word or via a button press on the included SolarCell remote. The remote is similar to past models with a compact design and the ability to charge via sunlight or indoor lights, so you never need to replace batteries (it can also be recharged much quicker via USB-C). However, it’s disappointing that it isn’t backlit, which has become a common feature on remotes from brands like Hisense and TCL.
In the brand’s marketing materials, Samsung has been emphasizing its Vision AI suite of smart features across its 2025 TVs. However, most of these AI-powered functions are just upgraded versions of features that the company’s older TV models already supported. Various AI upscaling and image/audio enhancement modes have been improved, but are nothing new. These features can be useful for users unhappy with the TV’s image or audio quality, but they often introduce unnecessary adjustments. Generally, I recommend avoiding these settings and just using Filmmaker or Standard mode. Meanwhile, the few AI features that are genuinely new for 2025 are underwhelming.
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First, there’s a Live Translate function that uses AI to offer real-time subtitles in one of seven languages. That sounds cool, but this feature only works with live broadcasts from an over-the-air (OTA) antenna. Many people watch TV via cable or streaming, so that’s a notable limitation. Since I didn’t have an antenna handy during my review session, I could not test this feature, but I’ll try it when I review Samsung’s other TV models in the coming months. That said, given this restriction to OTA broadcasts, I can’t imagine this being a big selling point in its current form.
Samsung has also been touting a new Click to Search feature that lets you click a button on the remote to pull up info about the content you’re viewing, including details about the cast on screen. This sounds similar to the X-Ray feature that Amazon supports on Prime Video, but it only works with live OTA broadcasts, cable TV, and Samsung TV Plus. So, it won’t work when streaming popular apps like Netflix or Disney Plus.
Even with compatible sources, Click to Search is kind of lame. I tested this function while channel surfing through Samsung TV Plus and pulled it up while “La La Land” was playing. A side panel displayed the name of the movie, its IMDB score, and a list of other titles coming up on the same channel. Another tab listed the main actors in the film and showed some other movies they’re in. That’s all fine, but pretty limited compared to what Prime Video’s X-Ray can do. X-Ray will pull up all of the actors in the specific scene you’re watching, not just the top-billed people in the movie as a whole. With its limited compatibility and info, I can’t see many people using this function too often.
I still want to dive more deeply into Vision AI features when I review other Samsung TVs this year, but based on my initial time with these functions, I don’t see a major evolution in the brand’s smart TV capabilities compared to last year’s models. But honestly, that’s OK. Samsung’s smart TVs have already been plenty smart, so the S95F’s advancements are fine. But the idea that Samsung’s 2025 models are ushering in a new phase of “AI TVs” seems overblown.
Should you buy the Samsung S95F?
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The Samsung S95F is the most impressive consumer TV the brand has ever made. It offers a solid bump in brightness over last year’s already stellar S95D, some refinements to its glare-free screen, and a couple of new AI-powered features.
However, those AI functions aren’t as innovative or useful as the brand’s marketing materials make them sound. And the TV’s matte panel remains a divisive feature that most people will love or hate. With that in mind, I recommend the LG G5 as a great top-of-the-line OLED alternative for buyers who prefer a glossy panel.
Meanwhile, shoppers who want a less expensive matte-screen OLED should consider last year’s S95D. The S95D can’t get as bright as the S95F, but it offers similar performance in other respects and is being heavily discounted. At the time of writing, the 65-inch S95D is about $1,000 less than the S95F.
The S95F’s jump in HDR brightness is nothing to scoff at, but is it worth an extra $1,000 over last year’s model? Well, that depends on what kind of buyer you are. If you’re an AV enthusiast with deep pockets, I’d argue the answer is yes. After all, the S95 series is Samsung’s flagship offering geared toward those willing to pay top dollar for top picture quality. In that context, the S95F is undoubtedly the better TV.
Even then, it’s important to remember that sets like this tend to get great deals as the year goes on. Tariffs could impact the potential for a big price drop, but I still expect this model to get discounted during sales like Prime Day and Black Friday. At full price, I can only recommend the S95F to big TV enthusiasts. But its appeal will broaden if its price comes down later in the year.
