Samsung GQ65Q8CN Test and Review: Non-OLED UHD TV

With the GQ65Q8CN, Sam­sung has man­aged to make a real rev­o­lu­tion: after many months of our rat­ing of TVs with a diag­o­nal of more than 60 inch­es led by 4 OLED mod­els, the Kore­ans with their VA pan­el man­aged to squeeze into fifth place.

Test results

Despite the fact that the curved Sam­sung GQ65Q8CN uses a high­ly depen­dent on the view­ing angle VA pan­el, accord­ing to the test results, this 65-inch TV is very close to the OLED mod­els. The UHD TV owes this not only to very good pic­ture qual­i­ty, but also to excel­lent sound, lux­u­ri­ous equip­ment and low pow­er con­sump­tion. Good val­ue for mon­ey also con­tributes to the excel­lent over­all result.

Samsung GQ65Q8CN test results

What’s more, with a final score of 93% at the time of this report, the Sam­sung GQ65Q8CN even climbs to sec­ond place. A major con­trib­u­tor to this suc­cess of the 4K TV is its remark­able pic­ture qual­i­ty. Both the TV pic­ture and the con­tent dis­played from the exter­nal Blu-ray play­er were very good dur­ing the test. Thanks to sup­port for HDR 10+ and a max­i­mum con­trast ratio of 3362:1, the col­ors are very nat­ur­al and sat­u­rat­ed.

With a high max­i­mum bright­ness of 1628 cd/m2, the TV copes with any light­ing con­di­tions. Well, in the end, a chess con­trast ratio of 220: 1 is a very good result.

How­ev­er, the ven­dor did not man­age to get rid of the typ­i­cal dis­ad­van­tage of VA-LCD tech­nol­o­gy. There­fore, even with a slight devi­a­tion of the view­ing angle from a straight line, the GQ65Q8CN los­es a lot in image con­trast. If you’re sit­ting direct­ly in front of a 65-inch pan­el, it won’t be notice­able. On the con­trary, due to its cur­va­ture, the TV lit­er­al­ly immers­es the view­er in what is hap­pen­ing on the screen.

The final piece of the puz­zle that adds up to a great home the­ater expe­ri­ence is two 20W sine speak­ers paired with a sub­woofer. As a result, the sound, even at high vol­umes, is clear and pow­er­ful, with­out a hint of rat­tling. It’s hard­ly bet­ter.

All inside, all outside

In terms of equip­ment, Sam­sung focused on cur­rent stan­dards and, per­haps, does not give rea­son to wish for some­thing more. In par­tic­u­lar, the TV pic­ture can be “sup­plied” from a Triple-Twin tuner, which has dual inputs for sig­nals from cable, satel­lite and DVB-T2. Exter­nal devices can be con­nect­ed via four HDMI inputs and three USB ports. At the same time, the lat­ter can serve not only to play video from exter­nal hard dri­ves, but also to record the cur­rent TV pro­gram (USB record­ing).

Par­tic­u­lar­ly prac­ti­cal is that all inter­faces are not locat­ed direct­ly on the body of the device, but in a sep­a­rate Con­nect-Box. The box can eas­i­ly be placed some­where in a hid­den place so that only a very thin and incon­spic­u­ous fiber optic cable goes to the TV.

As an oper­at­ing sys­tem, Sam­sung con­tin­ues to use OS Tizen of its own design, which has an acces­si­ble inter­face and high per­for­mance. The range of appli­ca­tions also deserves atten­tion: in addi­tion to the stan­dard set of video-on-demand ser­vices, YouTube and Face­book, Sam­sung offers numer­ous oth­er games and pro­grams in its own appli­ca­tion store. The con­trol is option­al­ly car­ried out using the includ­ed remote con­trol, voice com­mands or a smart­phone appli­ca­tion. All three options look well thought out and func­tioned flaw­less­ly dur­ing test runs.

Surprisingly Energy Efficient

More than 1600 cd / m2 will require a lot of elec­tric­i­ty — most like­ly, that’s what you thought. But in fact, the Sam­sung GQ65Q8CN con­sumes as lit­tle pow­er in nor­mal oper­a­tion as almost no oth­er 65-inch TV. On aver­age, we mea­sured only 145 watts, which can be fur­ther reduced with the help of the ECO mode. In Stand­by mode, pow­er con­sump­tion drops to a low 0.2W. Thanks to these indi­ca­tors, the Sam­sung mod­el we test­ed deserves the EU “A” ener­gy effi­cien­cy label. Oper­at­ing costs thus remain with­in rea­son. The same applies to the cost of acquir­ing the device, since 190 thou­sand rubles for a top-end TV of this size is a nor­mal price.

Alternative: LG OLED 65B7D

Unlike the Sam­sung TV we test­ed, the LG OLED 65B7D, thanks to the lat­est OLED tech­nol­o­gy, shows an excel­lent pic­ture at any view­ing angle. In terms of sound qual­i­ty and com­plete­ness of equip­ment, it can­not com­pete with com­peti­tors, but as a result, it scores quite good marks in the cor­re­spond­ing test cat­e­gories. The pow­er con­sump­tion lev­el in nor­mal oper­a­tion is a pleas­ant­ly low 156 watts. Cost: approx­i­mate­ly 150 thou­sand rubles.

Read also:

• Major Chi­nese smart­phone mak­ers to launch smart TVs
• New Pres­ti­gio Smart TV range comes with key­board and mouse

Samsung GQ65Q8CN specifications and test results

Samsung GQ65Q8CN test results

Pho­to: man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies