If you've been looking for a TV in the last few years, you've probably heard this before: don't buy an 8K TV because the picture quality won't be noticeably better than 4K! But is this true, or is it finally worth it to get all those sweet, sweet pixels thanks to more 8K content, lower prices, and better upscaling? Today, let's take a look at Samsung's brand new 2025 75" QN900F 8K mini LED TV to find out.
Samsung's new 2025 QN900F mini LED TV delivers exceptional clarity with over 33 million pixels, dwarfing 4K alternatives. Improvements to the operating system, processing, upscaling, and contrast making the QN900F one of the best 8K TVs of 2025. However, the bizarre choice of a matte panel slightly reduces clarity and contrast, especially in bright rooms. Combined with trailing behind competitors in micro-contrast, the QN900F is best purchased in larger sizes where the higher resolution is more noticeable, and ideally placed in a light-controlled room for optimal contrast.
Disclaimer: This TV was lent to me by Samsung for review, but no scores or talking points were dictated, and all opinions are my own.
For this review I used an X-Rite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, Color Checker Display Plus colorimeter, Calman Ultimate, Portrait Displays Video Forge Pro 8K pattern generator, a Sony RX100 VII 1000fps camera, an SM208 Screen Luminance Meter, and a Sony Cinema Line FX3 mirrorless video camera. That's at least $12,000 worth of testing equipment, plus years of display testing experience.
The price for the QN900F is quite high compared to 4K alternatives.
The TV offers excellent connectivity with four HDMI 2.1 ports (one with eARC).
First impressions mean everything, and Samsung has absolutely nailed it with the QN900F. Unboxing was painless, the feet snapped right into place without screws, and software setup was a breeze. Aside from the annoying sign-in requirement for apps, I'd give this process a 10/10. No trips to the ER required. The nearly edgeless, metal bezel is premium and the One-connect box is out.
"But what about the picture quality?" I hear you scream directly into my eardrums. Well, I've got you covered with more information than you'd ever want to know.
Let's start with color. These days, almost all TVs have great color, and the QN900F is no exception. If you're looking for a TV that will dazzle you with bright, saturated HDR colors, the QN900F definitely delivers. For you home theater enthusiasts, I've included all my Calman measurements below, where I used professional tools to measure the TV's accuracy.
Out of the Box in Film Maker Mode, the Samsung QN900F follows the Rec.709 BT.1886 EOTF curve fairly well, but it slightly oversaturated colors, and the white balance was off on my unit.
Thankfully adjusting a few settings creates a much more accurate image.
SDR Color Accuracy Test
Color Accuracy in Film Maker Mode for SDR content is below expectations. Ideally an Avg deltaE of less than 2 should be achieved for more accurate subtle representation of fine details like skin.
HDR Testing
The default HDR FMM mode is solid, but white balance was a bit off. This can be fixed in the settings.
HDR Color Gamut
The QN900F has great HDR color coverage out of the box delivering up to 72% BT.2020 UV.
HDR Color Accuracy
The short version: the QN900F looks great, delivers deep saturated HDR imagery, and has fairly good gamma tracking. However, especially in HDR, it has minor color inaccuracies and falls behind some competitors, meaning challenging images like skin tones may not appear quite as dialed in as on other premium TVs.
The absolute most important metric these days, especially for sunlit rooms, is brightness. This is particularly true if you want to be wowed by incredible HDR highlights in movies, games, and TV shows. This is where the QN900F, being a mini LED, has an incredibly strong showing. Mini LEDs are well known for being brighter than OLED, so if you're looking for a TV for a room with lots of windows, the QN900F should be high on your list—it gets incredibly bright in testing.
The Samsung QN900F is the fourth brightest TV I have tested in window measurements.
Impressively the QN900F is the brightest TV I have ever measured in real world HDR content.
The Samsung QN900F is the fourth brightest TV I've tested in window measurements, and impressively, it's the brightest TV I have ever measured in real-world HDR content. Trust me, if you want a TV that will wow you even in a challenging bright room, the QN900F is one of the few that can pull it off.
Having a bright TV with good color is incredibly important, but without proper contrast, none of that will be appreciable. This is where many LEDs have historically struggled compared to OLED.
Compared to previous years' 8K models, Samsung has clearly made improvements to both contrast and blooming handling. This means in challenging scenes, you'll likely see much better contrast than what you may have been used to in the past—a sorely needed upgrade. However, there are still some challenges.
The Samsung QN900F has excellent contrast with bright HDR content.
Samsung QN900F issues with blooming.
One thing I noticed is that while the QN900F looks incredible with bright HDR content, it struggles with scenes containing very dark elements against a black background. It won't look quite as good as the best OLED TVs that can turn off individual pixels. Mini LED relies on hundreds or thousands of small LED backlights controlling groups of pixels, which can struggle with very fine details in certain content.
Overall, the QN900F does a pretty great job with contrast in a dark room. However, in a bright room, much of the contrast gets lost, largely due to the coating Samsung chose for this year's 8K TV.
Speaking of the coating, let's talk about clarity. This is where we address the elephant in the room: Samsung has chosen to use a matte anti-glare coating on this year's 8K TV. On one hand, this greatly reduces direct reflections, which some buyers may prefer for environments where reflections are distracting. On the other hand, it causes small lights to diffuse over a larger area, leading to much lower contrast. Since a matte coating (unlike a glossy one) isn't a clear optical finish, there's also a slight reduction in clarity. The end result forces a choice and in some ways boils down to a personal preference - even with room lighting considered.
Despite having a more regular sub-pixel layout than OLED and an incredibly high 8K resolution—giving far higher clarity than any 4K OLED—a small amount of that clarity is lost due to the matte coating. If you want to get the most out of this TV, it's especially important to view it in a dark, light-controlled room where diffused light won't wash out the image. This is frustrating because the TV is otherwise an excellent bright-room performer. I wish Samsung had chosen a glossy coating with an anti-reflective treatment instead.
That said, some buyers will prefer this coating, especially considering that artwork displayed from the Samsung Art Store will look more true to life, and with the ultra high 8K resolution it will look more detailed than ever before making this possibly a great lifestyle TV.
The coating is just one part of what gives a display good clarity, and I don't want you to think the QN900F lacks good clarity. It absolutely has it—far better than any 4K display on the market. With four times the resolution of 4K on a large display, you get a level of picture quality unmatched by any other type of display. This is especially apparent in video games, where elements at lower resolutions can look somewhat aliased with stair-stepping effects on the edges of objects.
Samsung QN900F BGR subpixel arrangement & matte coating blur.
At 8K, these issues completely disappear, leaving you with an image so crystal clear and convincingly realistic that it's nearly perfect. After using the QN900F for a week, it was hard to go back to a 4K display. Even though 4K looks great, compared to 8K it lacks that same level of refinement, leaving me wanting to return to 8K.
There aren't many 8K TVs left on the market, let alone of this quality. The QN900F isn't perfect, but it's likely one of the best 8K TVs money can buy today, with picture quality—especially in terms of clarity—that makes that apparent.
For motion performance, let's start with motion interpolation or de-judder. This is a hot topic among movie enthusiasts, as some prefer zero motion interpolation to see content as originally intended (usually 24 FPS). These viewers tend to call anything higher "soap opera effect," and if a TV can't process motion well, it can look quite off-putting.
QN900F 24p judder (left) judder reduction set to 10 (right).
Thankfully, the QN900F does a solid job handling motion. If you're like me and enjoy adding a little motion interpolation to clean up stuttery low-frame-rate films, you shouldn't have many issues. It didn't blow me away, but it did a decent job of bringing stuttery footage up to 60 or higher FPS without too many artifacts.
For gaming, motion performance becomes even more important. Since the QN900F is a Mini LED TV and not OLED, pixel response time isn't instant. This means default motion performance at 60 or 120Hz won't blow you away—there's some trailing behind moving objects—but overall, for an LCD-based display, it does a fairly decent job.
However, there's one feature that really impressed me: the TV has black frame insertion/backlight strobing that works even at 120Hz. This effectively shows you 240Hz motion while only needing 120Hz input. This comes at the cost of brightness, but since this is such a bright TV, it's a killer feature for console gaming, allowing much better motion performance and target tracking, or even improved film motion.
The 28ms of total system latency is excellent for a Mini LED, right next to some of the best OLEDs. When switched to 4K 165Hz, the input lag is very low—in fact, it's the fastest TV I've measured so far, making it a good option for PC gamers.
Viewing angles have been a problem for many Mini LEDs in the past, but surprisingly, the QN900F does a pretty good job in most cases. Viewing from left or right angles is actually good—a step above most mini LEDs. However, it does worse when viewed from below and really falls apart when viewed from above. To be fair, you probably won't often be looking down at your TV, but the effect is severe. If you're hanging this TV, under no circumstances should you position it so you're viewing from above the center of the display.
Samsung QN900F Viewing Angles.
The QN900F's audio is pretty decent but nothing to write home about. If you're investing in this TV, I'd recommend at least a nice soundbar or a full sound system to take full advantage of the display. The timbre and clarity of the audio are pretty good for built-in sound—definitely a step above most TVs—but the bass is lacking, and it won't have the precision of more expensive alternatives. It has the latest support for enhancements like Q-Symphony, Dolby Atmos, and Active Voice Amplifier so there is plenty of opportunity to expand to a surround system and tweak the settings to make voice come through with higher clarity.
Good image quality doesn't matter if the interface is so frustrating you want to throw your TV out the window. Thankfully, it's not that bad, and packs in many enhancements and extra features that Google TV plainly doesn’t have. I've heard many people say they love Tizen OS, and it's decent, but I do get frustrated with it occasionally—not just on this TV but on every Samsung TV I've owned. Sometimes the OS randomly slows down when navigating settings, and it forces you to sign in to use apps.
Tizen has added some new AI features this year, including AI Live Translate, improved content upscaling, and further improvements to Adaptive Picture mode. Still present is the laundry list of lifestyle features, including far-field mics for either Alexa or Bixby voice control, SmartThings hub functionality and map mode, Gaming Hub enabling console-less gameplay, Samsung Health with work-out tracker, Karaoke Mode, and the Game bar. If you are invested in the Samsung ecosystem - there are many standout features here that keep getting more functional every year.
In the past, I've had TVs where Samsung updated the firmware and changed things significantly—and not in a good way (looking at you, S95B). I haven't heard many complaints like that recently, and hopefully nothing similar will happen with the QN900F, but I'd like to see work on both Tizen OS speed and ensuring that updates always positively improve image quality or add desired features.
One thing I do love about Tizen are the features available such as Samsung TV Plus, an app which allows you to stream hundreds of live TV channels for free, the new AI picture settings quick access making exiting the image much quicker, and all the new AI features such as AI upscaling and motion enhancer. Upscaling 4K content to 8K is a must have for these TVs as not all content is 8K yet, and thankfully the QN900F does a good job refining lower resolution content so that most high quality streamed video looks even better than native 8K giving you the best image quality possible.
Let's get this out of the way: is the QN900F a good TV? Yes, and it brings something to the table that not many others can: resolution. At 8K, the QN900F is breathtaking, making films and native 8K YouTube footage look excellent, while also making 4K footage look slightly better than native 4K on other TVs thanks to great upscaling.
Most impressively for gaming, especially on PC, you can run everything natively at 8K, which is where the QN900F really shines. It's a shame it's not available in 48" or 42" sizes, as I could see PC gamers jumping at an 8K TV that provides massive image quality improvements across all apps and games right out of the box. That said, this extremely high resolution comes at a cost—both in terms of price and some compromises in contrast and brightness versus its full potential.
Samsung QN900F Excellent HDR Impact.
The matte coating was a bizarre choice for a display focused on clarity. I was hoping for a glossy coating to further improve clarity and take full advantage of the massive resolution. It's also strange that contrast suffers in bright rooms when the TV seems designed for those conditions. Because of Samsung's choices, this TV will actually work best in a light-controlled room, where you'll get far better image quality. However, even in a bright room, If you are bothered by reflections and prefer the trade off, consider this one of your top options.
Overall, this is one of the best 8K TVs I've tested, and it will compete with some of the top mini LEDs available—at least from what I've seen so far (though there's more to come later this year in the 4K category). With a packed spec sheet and Samsung software features adding to the experience, this could be the centerpiece of a connected home for years to come.
I can definitely recommend the Samsung QN900FSamsung QN900F if you're after a new 8K TV in 2025, but be aware it's not perfect. If 8K isn't an absolute must for you, consider waiting for a sale given the high price, or see what competitors offer before making your final decision. Everyone is making big upgrades this year, and it'll be interesting to see how the QN900F stacks up throughout the year.
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