Samsung GQ55Q9FN TV test: almost perfect VA panel against OLED kings

Test results

The 55-inch device deliv­ers stun­ning images from all sources, rich sound, and lux­u­ri­ous fea­tures includ­ing the lat­est Ambi­ent Mode. If it weren’t for the rel­a­tive­ly high pow­er con­sump­tion and small view­ing angles (but this is entire­ly the fault of the pan­el tech­nol­o­gy), this mod­el from Sam­sung would have topped our cor­re­spond­ing rat­ing. But for the time being, she has to set­tle for “only” third place.

Samsung GQ55Q9FN test results

What makes the difference is the stability of the viewing angles.

A tighter race for the lead in our TV rank­ing could not be: LG OLED 55E8 holds the first place with a final score of 96.1 per­cent­age points, while Sam­sung GQ55Q9FN with its excel­lent 95.7 points is placed in place at num­ber 3 ( in our rat­ing table as of mid-June 2018).

The main rea­son why the South Kore­an mod­el won the vic­to­ry was the pan­el man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy. While LG uses an OLED dis­play, which, of course, hard­ly depends on the view­ing angle, Sam­sung uses a clas­sic VA pan­el. The max­i­mum hor­i­zon­tal view­ing angle, at which the TV retains at least half of its max­i­mum con­trast ratio, is only 20 degrees here, and the ver­ti­cal one is 17 degrees.

The fact that things can be bet­ter with this is indi­cat­ed by the Sony KD-55XE9305, which, despite using the same tech­nolo­gies, boasts 34 and 29 degrees, respec­tive­ly.

The weak per­for­mance in this area is par­tic­u­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate, as oth­er­wise the image qual­i­ty of this Sam­sung TV is excep­tion­al­ly con­vinc­ing, sur­pass­ing that of its OLED rivals the Sony KD-55A1 and Philips 55POS901F. In par­tic­u­lar, the GQ55Q9FN offers an excel­lent checker­board con­trast ratio of 253:1, a high max­i­mum con­trast ratio of 5054:1, and a remark­able bright­ness of up to 1431 cd/m2.

Image qual­i­ty turns out to be very good from all sources — whether it’s HDR10 or reg­u­lar con­tent. Who­ev­er watch­es TV exclu­sive­ly “frontal­ly” and does not like pub­lic view­ing, with this device will receive one of the best pic­tures at the moment in the field of top TVs.

Comprehensive equipment

In terms of equip­ment, the Sam­sung GQ55Q9FN also plays in the big leagues. In par­tic­u­lar, this 55-inch TV offers an HD Twin Triple tuner, (2xD­VB-T2/C/S2 each), a CI+ slot, four HDMI inputs, and a dig­i­tal audio out­put. There is no ana­log head­phone jack. But con­tent can be trans­ferred to exter­nal media data car­ri­ers via three USB ports. USB record­ing is also pos­si­ble.

A spe­cial and inno­v­a­tive fea­ture that is includ­ed in all Sam­sung GQ mod­els is the so-called Ambi­ent Mode. At the same time, the TV intel­li­gent­ly adapts to the appear­ance of the wall behind it, mak­ing it vir­tu­al­ly invis­i­ble in stand­by mode, depend­ing on the com­plex­i­ty of the back­ground. In addi­tion, it can dis­play var­i­ous use­ful infor­ma­tion in this state, for exam­ple, about the weath­er.

As an oper­at­ing sys­tem, as before, OS Tizen of Sam­sung’s own devel­op­ment is used. The Android com­peti­tor is visu­al, easy to use and very pro­duc­tive.

In the Smart TV hub you will find all the impor­tant video-on-demand ser­vices such as Net­flix, Ama­zon Video and oth­ers, as well as numer­ous oth­er appli­ca­tions and games. The Inter­net con­nec­tion required for this can be con­fig­ured selec­tive­ly via LAN or WLAN.

somewhat gluttonous

While the sound qual­i­ty of two speak­ers with a pow­er of 20 W can­not be fault­ed either, the Sam­sung GQ55Q9FN makes a small mis­take in the area of ​​pow­er con­sump­tion. In nor­mal oper­a­tion, this 55-inch TV draws an aver­age of 135 watts, which in itself is still a bit much for a UHD device of this size. Of course, this indi­ca­tor can be slight­ly reduced using the ECO mode, but still, the TV’s char­ac­ter­is­tics are only enough to receive the EU “B” ener­gy effi­cien­cy label.

Samsung GQ55Q9FN test results

Alternative options:

Philips 55POS901F

Those who spend a lot of time in front of the TV with their fam­i­ly or reg­u­lar­ly look at the screen from a high angle should con­sid­er pur­chas­ing a device with more sta­ble view­ing angles, that is, OLED tech­nol­o­gy, such as the Philips 55POS901F.

Dur­ing test­ing, this UHD TV demon­strat­ed not only con­vinc­ing pic­ture qual­i­ty, but also lux­u­ri­ous equip­ment. Although the sound and pow­er con­sump­tion were slight­ly worse than the Sam­sung, you can still sur­vive at a cost of only about 128,000 rubles.

LG OLED 55E8

And LG OLED 55E8 thanks to OLED tech­nol­o­gy dis­plays a won­der­ful pic­ture regard­less of the posi­tion of the view­er. In addi­tion, it offers a com­pre­hen­sive Smart OS, a large num­ber of inter­faces, and great sound.

The pow­er con­sump­tion lev­el, although a lit­tle high, is still nor­mal for an OLED TV. The only point wor­thy of crit­i­cism is the lack of sup­port for HDR10. At a cost, LG OLED 55E8 is at the lev­el of about 180,000 rubles.

Samsung GQ55Q9FN specifications and test results

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