While I was more blown away than I’d frankly expected to be by Samsung’s debut 8K TV when I reviewed it recently, it wasn’t perfect. A quartet of picture issues occasionally tried to intrude on the 85Q900R’s mostly ‘next-generation’ picture performance.
First, there was more backlight blooming around stand-out bright objects than I’d have ideally liked to see – especially given the ability of Samsung’s excellent 65Q9FN 4K TV in this area. Second, I saw a couple of examples of strange backlight ‘pulsing’ in some relatively monotone parts of pictures. Peak light areas against dark backdrops, meanwhile, could lack a little intensity compared with Samsung’s Q9FN 4K models. And finally, very dark areas could crush out some shadow detail.
It appears, though, that Samsung has been paying close attention to the reviews myself and others have posted of its 8K debutante, and has been beavering away on finding ways to fix the flaws. It’s about to roll out a new firmware update to the Q900R range that appears to completely fix the ‘pulsing’ problem, while also drastically improving the other three issues.
Though Samsung hasn’t yet confirmed when the update will start to roll out, I understand that it is likely to be some time this week. But I’ve already had the chance to see the update running on an 85Q900R, using some of the exact problematic scenes that I referenced in my review – and the difference the update makes is dramatic.
The biggest problem by far with the original Q900R firmware was the backlight blooming. This has been drastically improved in the new firmware by changes to the direct backlighting and local dimming algorithms. Where previously an isolated bright area would cause pronounced backlight haloing to seep a good few centimeters into the darkness around it, now the intensity and extent of the clouding has been drastically reduced. This makes high contrast scenes look much more convincing and consistent.
What makes this reduced blooming even more impressive is that Samsung has somehow achieved it at the same time that it’s managed to both boost the intensity of stand-out bright parts of mostly dark images, and bring out much more shadow detail in dark areas. All with seemingly barely any compromise of the TV’s mostly excellent black levels.
Finally, the pulsing issue I noticed – particularly in The Revenant – was completely absent during the admittedly quite brief demonstration I was given of the 8K update in action.
I should stress that these profound improvements to what was already an outstanding TV have only been witnessed so far in a Samsung demonstration. I’m about to review a 75-inch version of the Q900R that carries the latest firmware, though, so if you’re interested in taking the 8K TV plunge, keep an eye out for that in the run up to Christmas.
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Samsung 85Q900R 8K TV Review: The Future Is Now
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