I still have a few complaints, starting with the relentless pursuit of Samsung’s ad-based TV service, Samsung TV Plus. The service launches by default at startup, requiring me to go through advanced settings and disable it under Startup Options. Even then he continued to light The Quite strange parents when starting, eventually seeming to stop on its own.
Tizen also apparently automatically searches OTA antenna channels, leaving me perplexed as to how to rescan, while the lack of ATSC3.0 support means you won’t get Nextgen channels with features like HDR. One final quirk is that the TV’s HDMI CEC Anynet system, designed to interface with connected devices, has a mind of its own, sometimes triggering my Panasonic DP-UB9000 Blu-ray player or PS5 uninvited, while other times ignoring them.
Samsung’s Game Hub remains a favorite, offering plenty of cloud gaming services, as well as an accessible Game Bar for on-the-fly adjustments. I really enjoyed playing this set, from the windswept islands of The ghosts of Tsushima has The Astrobots Hyper-vibrant multi-level madness.
Although the Settings tabs are still oddly separated, Samsung makes it easy to configure the images. Those looking for the sharpest image have two choices: Film or Filmmaker mode, the latter offering such precise adjustments that I barely made any changes for SDR or HDR (high dynamic range) video. As always, Samsung omits support for Dolby Vision HDR, focusing on the HDR10 standard and the Dolby alternative, HDR10+.
The little things that kill
Photography: Ryan Waniata
I installed the S90F halfway through paternity leave, which allowed me to get a lot of quality TV time. As I mentioned above, the TV didn’t immediately blow me away in the same way as the LG G5, Panasonic Z95B, or high-end Sony Bravia 8 II that I tested, or the Samsung S95F that wowed my editor. The first thing that really caught my attention was Disney. Skeleton crewwhich provided the kind of twinkling stars and glowing planets in the depths of space that make OLED TVs shine, but was put on hold because it inexplicably woke our sleeping baby every time we played.
