While 2023 is already proving to be a fantastic year for TV technology, it’s arguably also proving a bit of a nightmare for TV buyers. With so many fantastic TVs to choose from, how do you actually make the right choice?
It’s a very pleasant dilemma to be faced with, of course, but it’s a dilemma nonetheless. Especially when buying one of today’s TV hotshots will costs you thousands of pounds.
Just how big a dilemma we’re talking about was really brought home to me during a recent phone call with a Sound Advice reader who’d requested a chat with me to try and help him figure out which of this year’s ‘big three’ TV technologies - WOLED, Quantum Dot OLED and Mini LED - was going to suit his needs the best. Preparing for this chat really brought home how it’s one thing for someone like myself who reviews TVs for a living to write down my experiences with individual models, but quite another to try and guide a real consumer you’re talking to in person who’s about to spend a considerable amount of their own hard-earned money.
Prior to 2023, deciding whether you’re in the OLED or LED TV camp was relatively straightforward. This year, though, radical improvements on both sides of the argument see them parking their tanks on each other’s lawns to an extent we’ve never seen before. In particular, on the OLED/QD OLED side we’ve seen the latest premium models achieving far more brightness than any OLED technology has ever provided before, while on the LED side the latest top-end Mini LED models are delivering black levels far beyond anything we once thought they’d ever be capable of.
Fortunately I’d had the chance to check out arguably the most important models representing the 2023 WOLED, QD OLED and Mini LED factions ahead of my reader chat: The WOLED with Micro Lens Array technology LG OLED65G3, the Samsung QE65S95C QD OLED, and the Samsung QE65QN95C Mini LED. In fact, I had two of the three models running side by side as I was actually talking to him! Even so, navigating through the increasingly narrow divides between these increasingly awesome TVs proved a far from easy job.
We got there in the end, though, and Sound Advice thought it might be useful if I shared the key parts of my WOLED vs QD OLED vs Mini LED thoughts in writing. So here goes!
Let’s start with marginally the easiest part of the equation: Samsung’s QE65QN95C Mini LED versus the two OLED contenders. Note that I’ll focus on differences here, and talk about some of the key similarities later.
Mini LED vs the OLEDs
In terms of price, the Samsung Mini LED model is at the time of writing the most expensive of the three rivals I was discussing with the Sound Advice reader. So that’s one disadvantage right off the bat.
Its design finds it also slightly deeper round the back than the two OLED models, perhaps making it slightly less well suited to wall mounting - though it’s still very stylish, and keeps its rear almost as flat as its front to create a pleasingly monolithic look.
When it comes to the key business of picture quality, the 65QN95C’s big advantage is full screen brightness. Measurements show it can produce a full-screen bright image with between three and four times as much brightness as even the massively improved LG G3 and Samsung S95C OLEDs. This is borne out with real world HDR content to some extent - though it has to be said that the 65QN95C now only consistently looks substantially brighter than the latest premium OLED technologies in its relatively inaccurate and sometimes overcooked Dynamic preset.
The substantial levels of new (for OLED) brightness you get from the LG G3 and Samsung S95C mean the 65QN95C’s more balanced/refined Standard and Movie presets now typically look darker, at times substantially so, than the equivalent modes on the new OLEDs. This is chiefly, I think, because the Mini LED set needs to dim pictures down whenever there are any dark elements in it, in order to prevent its backlight system from causing ‘blooms’ of backlight clouding.
The 65QN95C really does, though, do a phenomenal job of suppressing this backlight blooming, typically managing to produce black colours with almost as much purity and depth as the OLED TVs. Pretty astounding for a TV technology that uses external LED lighting rather than self-emissive pixels.
To reiterate this point, though, while the 65QN95C can now claim to challenge OLED for black level, its traditional brightness benefit over OLED - something that’s long made LED a great technology for bright rooms or people who just like bright pictures - is now significantly more limited in its scope.
The 65QN95C’s pictures are slightly sharper with both 4K and upscaled HD than those of the LG G3 - and unlike previously Samsung generations, this extreme sharpness, which is pretty much shared by the Samsung S95C QD OLED TV, doesn’t look forced or noisy. Rather it’s a testament to Samsung’s processing improvements this year.
The 65QN95C remains, of course, completely immune to the sort of permanent image retention woes that OLED technology remains, in theory at least, susceptible to. It’s important to stress in this respect, though, that LG now runs a 5 year panel warranty on its G series OLED TVs, and that reports of permanent image retention occurring on LG OLEDs appear to becoming very rare with recent TV generations. Samsung, for its part, has introduced new panel monitoring algorithms this year that claim to double the 65S95C’s QD OLED’s long-term ‘reliability’. Nonetheless, if you want to watch pictures looking blazingly bright at all times with no need to worry at all about screen burn, Mini LED is probably the safest option.
Both of the OLED TVs, on the other hand, actually now offer a more consistent viewing experience across all presets than the Mini LED, as they don’t need to keep adjusting the brightness of parts of their image to suppress backlight clouding. Bright objects that appear against dark backgrounds also look significantly brighter on both OLEDs, typically, than they do on the 65QN95C. The smaller the bright object appearing against a dark backdrop is, the more pronounced this OLED local brightness/contrast strength becomes.
Side by side comparisons reveal that the two OLED models, especially the LG G3, are more consistent when it comes to bringing out shadow detailing in very dark picture areas. The 65QN95C can sometimes lose some shadow detail in its push for its ground-breaking (for LCD) black colour reproduction.
The two OLED models enjoy slightly richer and more consistent (due to the Mini LED’s brightness variations) colour tones across most presets than the Mini LED set.
Sonically the 65QN95C is the best performing set of the three, with slightly more robustness to its powerful 70W, 4.2.2-channel sound than you get with the very similarly configured Samsung 65S95C QD OLED. The LG G3 is fairly comfortably the weakest audio performer, as while it has some extremely clever processing that creates a uniquely wide sound stage, it doesn’t have the raw speaker power to back that up.
As with the reader I was talking to about all this, though, there’s a good chance an AV fan willing to spend £3k and more on a TV may well be using it with some sort of external audio system.
WOLED vs QD OLED
Trying to pick out the key differences between the LG G3 OLED, with its new Micro Lens Array technology, and Samsung’s second generation S95C QD OLED range is much more difficult. But there are a few small points that might help you make up your mind.
Price wise, the LG 65G3 and Samsung 65S95C cost pretty much the same. However, the G3 doesn’t ship with a desktop stand, only a wall-mountable one. So if you want a desktop stand, as the vast majority of people will, you will have to pay extra for it. On the other hand, the S95C ships with a desktop stand but not a wall mount.
The S95C also ships with an external connections box that ships everything - including power - to the screen using just a single cable. This can be an attractive idea to people who hate the sight of cables spewing out of their TV screens.
When it comes to picture differences, the LG G3 is capable of getting actually slightly brighter in its brightest, daylight viewing conditions mode than the Samsung S95C with full-screen bright content - handy for sports fans, say. Though the Samsung S95C can sometimes look slightly punchier with bright highlights.
It’s worth reiterating that both OLED models look frankly spectacularly bright in light room conditions compared with any OLED we’ve seen before, taking the fight to LED in this key performance area like never before. The fact that the brightness is sustained so consistently between and within images is also a big attraction.
The S95C, which uses a pure RGB colour arrangement compared with the white/RGB arrangement of the LG G3, can produce slightly richer, more vibrant and more natural saturations in areas of bright and ‘pure’ colour than the G3 can. This remains QD OLED’s biggest advantage, in fact - though content that really/fully exploits this advantage is currently in limited supply.
This pure, bright colour advantage contributes to the QD OLED producing, for me, a more satisfyingly dynamic and vibrant gaming experience than the G3. The S95C also introduces some interesting new gaming features for 2023, including 144Hz support, that join its ultra-punchy (but not out of control) gaming pictures. Though it doesn’t join the LG G3 in officially supporting the NVidia G-Sync Variable Refresh Rate format alongside the standard HDMI and AMD FreeSync VRR formats.
The G3 is slightly more consistent with shadow detailing with video content, though, and offers more picture set up refinements and options than the S95C does. Though the S95C does, like the QN95C Mini LED model, carry Samsung’s new Smart Calibration feature, that lets you calibrate your TV with pretty remarkable accuracy (if that’s what you want from a TV) using just your mobile phone.
We can’t say anything definitive about whether the G3 or S95C QD OLED TVs are going to be more or less susceptible to long term image retention, though it may be worth saying that the Micro Lens technology the G3 uses to enhance brightness doesn’t put any new pressure on the organic elements in the panel that are responsible for potential image retention issues.
Also worth mentioning is that the LG G3 supports the Dolby Vision HDR format but not the HDR10+ format, while the two Samsung models support HDR10+ but not Dolby Vision. Both of these premium HDR formats supply extra scene by scene image data to help compatible TVs deliver more dynamic and accurate HDR pictures - but there is substantially more content available in Dolby Vision than HDR10+. That said, the dynamic tone mapping systems the G3 and the S95C use to map HDR content to their respective screens’ capabilities are both outstanding even without the ‘help’ of either Dolby Vision or HDR10+.
Looking finally at things that are broadly similar across all three TVs, connectivity finds all three models brilliantly supporting full HDMI 2.1 functionality (including 4K/120Hz, variable refresh rates and auto low latency mode switching) across all four of their HDMI ports.
Viewing angles are quite similar across all three models too, surprisingly, with the LG losing most of the mauve colour shift that could appear on 2022’s models when viewed from an angle, and the QN95C almost completely avoiding the colour and contrast reductions usually associated with LCD technology.
The last thing to stress is that the LG OLED65G3, Samsung 65S95C and Samsung 65QN95C are all absolutely outstanding TVs. So whichever one you end up with will give you a fantastic experience. To some extent, you really can’t go wrong. But if you have specific personal preferences or concerns, hopefully this article will help you home in on the very best option for you.
Summary of strengths
Samsung QE65QN95C
- Sharper than the LG G3.
- Substantially brighter in Dynamic mode with full screen bright footage than the G3 and S95C OLEDs.
- Immune to screen burn.
- Amazing at black level by LCD standards
- Better sound than the other two models.
- Smart calibration system (which also works well with the Samsung 65S95C) does a good job of achieving an accurate picture calibration using just your phone.
LG OLED65G3
- Much better than Mini LED with local contrast.
- Much more watchable than any OLED before in a bright room - and actually much more watchable in relatively bright rooms when it comes to dark scenes than the Samsung Mini LED.
- Dolby Vision support.
- Relatively good value versus the Mini LED, but you’ll have to add £100 or so for the desktop stand if you’re not wall hanging it.
- Better with shadow detail than its rivals.
- Outstanding picture fine tuning options.
- Brighter with full-screen sport content than the S95C.
- Five year OLED panel warranty.
Samsung QE65S95C
- More colour vibrancy and volume in bright, relatively pure colour areas.
- The best gaming images of any of the three TVs.
- Much better than Mini LED with local contrast.
- Much more watchable than any OLED before in a bright room - and much more watchable in relatively bright rooms when it comes to dark scenes than the Samsung Mini LED.
- Cheaper than the Samsung 65QN95C.
- Ships with a desktop stand while the G3 does not (but doesn’t ship with a wall mount!)
- Slightly better brightness uniformity across the screen than the G3.
- Smart calibration system (which also works well with the Samsung 65QN95C) does a good job of achieving an accurate picture calibration using just your phone.
