LG CX OLED TV vs. Samsung Q90T 4K QLED TV | Is OLED still king?Posted by Ratliff Wang on May 21st, 2021 Welcome back everyone, i'm caleb dennison, and today i have the pleasure of pitting the lg c10 oled against the samsung q90t qled. Both of them are heavy hitters this year, both cost a good chunk of money, and, if you're gon na spend that much money on a tv should definitely get the one, that is right for you. We'Re going to talk about the core differences in the technology. Behind these tvs go through the user experience and some of the features, differences, but ultimately land on picture quality, which i think is what matters most there's a lot to cover. So let's get right into it. Let'S start with the samsung q90t, which by the way, looks a lot like last year's q90r, at least from the outside. It'S got the same style of stand. It'S an imac style stand which leaves enough room for a sound bar. That'S good news! Also! It'S about the same thickness as we saw uh last year with the q90r, which is to say it's not particularly thin, but it needs room for its back lighting system more on that in a second other design. Elements include really thin bezels, although you do get a little bit of a black matrix border around the image and then also samsung offers a no gap wall mount which puts this thing right against the wall and it's a really attractive. Look from the screen tech side. It'S got both an anti-glare and a wide angle. Viewing filter, which put together, increases the experience of the tv. You get better black levels that way, and you can also get better color saturation when you're not sitting right smack dab in the center of the tv. The only downside to having those layers in place is that in very limited situations where you've got a bright light source and something dark on the screen, you can kind of see this rainbow effect. It'S a little bit distracting. But again, it's not something that you see that often this tv can do up to 1100 nits in hdr, which is going to do great things for hdr. Highlights we'll show you that in a few minutes, but it also has really good black levels for an led tv, samsung's really figured out how to control uh light bleeding from around bright objects. On a black background, we call those halos, so you get a really good contrast out of this television. At the end of the day, though, it is an led backlit tv with an lcd panel, so where does the q come in for qled? Well, that refers to quantum dots, which essentially help expand the color gamut of the tv and the overall brightness potential of the television, but as an led backlit lcd tv. It also comes with a few problems. For example, screen uniformity can be a problem with these tvs and there's basically a lottery system. Sometimes you get a really good clean panel, and sometimes it looks a little dirty, and by that i mean it's going to have some splotchiness, sometimes some vignetting in the corners where things are looking a little bit dimmer than they should, and sometimes you get full on Vertical bands on the tv, this one is pretty good, but we still see some problems and that's something that you just don't get with oled stepping away from the qled technology, though, for a minute, i want to talk about the gaming prowess of this tv. browse around here doesn't have full on hdmi 2.1 inputs, but it's got all the fun stuff that people associate with hdmi 2.1. So that is to say that it does do 4k 120 hertz gaming. It does do variable refresh rate through freesync. So that's going to be great for the new consoles that come out, and it also has an auto game mode that it flips into to reduce input, lag and give you the best most responsive experience as an lcd tv. It does have a very good response time. Overall, although it's not as lightning fast as oled, [, Music ], now, let's take a minute to talk about the lg c10 oled and starting with design, it's really hard to compete with an oled tv. I mean they're, just so incredibly thin. But one thing about this tv is that it does have a little bit of a bump out on the back. So if you're mounting it to the wall, it's not going to go flush up against the wall like the samsung, we just showed you. Can the tv's got super super thin bezels in fact they're almost not there, but it also has a black matrix border, as you can see right there, which is a little bit bigger than what we saw on the samsung and then the stands a little bit different. Obviously it's wider, but it's not as deep. It also serves to aid the audio which i'll talk about in a second overall, though, the impression that you get from an oled tv is just striking. Now this tv does have an anti-glare layer over it, but it's not nearly as effective as what you see on the samsung. So there is some glossiness to this screen, but on the other hand you don't get that rainbow effect. Now, let's talk about peak brightness, this tv can get up to about 750 nits in hdr, which obviously is significantly lower than the 1100, or so that the samsung can do. On the other hand, it also gets perfectly black like there is absolutely no light whatsoever coming from the tv in the black areas and when you start with that foundation of black, then you get a really great contrast. So, even though this tv isn't as zingy as maybe the samsung is, it has a richer overall picture and that's possible because of oled technology organic light emitting diode right. There is no backlight. There is no lcd panel layer. There is no multiple other layers between them. So that's why it's razor thin, but basically what you've got is little tiny pixels filled with organic compounds that light up when you apply electricity to them, and when you take that electricity away, it gets completely black and that's why, even though it doesn't get as bright, You still get amazing perceived contrast with this tv. What that means is that it does just fine with wide color gamut and great color saturation. Overall, it doesn't need that kind of assistive technology. On the input front, it does have four hdmi 2.1 inputs, and i say hdmi 2.1 because they've been certified by hdmi. They are not full spec hdmi and i almost don't even want to go there just suffice it to say that it does have enough throughput to handle anything that you might plug into it, and what it means for gamer specifically, is that it does 4k hertz gaming With variable refresh rate, but the difference when we get into the variable refresh rate or vrr is that this tv supports both nvidia g-sync as well as amd freesync. So if you want that enhanced capability - and i think a lot of high-end pc gamers - might want that. This tv definitely supports it and through four different ports. As for the user experience on these tvs, i would say it's a draw. Both of them have some fun things going on for them, and some minor annoyances, both samsung tizen and lg web os are serviceable in terms of letting you get to apps and watch content. Both offer voice assistance, so samsung added amazon a-l-e-x-a. I won't say her name for your benefit, which is a huge improvement over built-in bixby, whereas lg uses a combination of its own voice assistant, along with the google assistant. Also, both tvs automatically recognize what you're plugging into them. So it can recognize your brand and model of blu-ray player or game console and it'll automatically. Let you control those devices with the main remote control. Now, let's talk about picture quality for a moment. I already mentioned that the samsung qled can get significantly brighter than the lg oled, but that the lg oled's black levels give it a little bit of an advantage of its own. And i also mentioned earlier about screen uniformity being a problem on some led tvs. And you can definitely see that here with the samsung q-lid. This is by no means the worst i've seen we've seen some very splotchy tvs. Overall, this thing is fairly clean, but what you can also see is a little bit of blooming around the 20 or the 40 sticker down in the bottom right. You can also tell that the color is totally different on the right. It'S very clearly gray on the lg oled, whereas on the left it looks more like a magenta gray, and actually you can see that in real content. So, as we take a look at this scene from a video game here, you can see that the clouds on the q led are clearly pinkish, whereas they are bright white on the oled and that's something that we noticed in sdr as well as hdr. Now, thinking that this might be a picture preset issue, i took the samsung out of its movie mode, which is usually its most accurate and put it into natural and that helped pull some of the magenta out of the whites and the grays. But it didn't fix it entirely and it also over brightened the image overall, which you can see in this series of tests. Here we went back to the screen uniformity and you can see how much brighter the samsung is than the lg and that's not right. The color issues that i'm having here, though, aren't just in the whites and they're a problem in both the natural mode and in the movie mode for the samsung, both in sdr and hdr. You can see that again in this video game scene, where the lg is expressing correct browns, whereas on the samsung they look a little bit off and in this scene here you can see very clearly that the landmass in the lower left is green on the oled, Whereas it just looks blue on the samsung on the left, now it's fair to question whether you would notice this kind of stuff if you weren't putting the tvs right next to each other and honestly, i think most people wouldn't, but when we're talking about getting the Best picture quality out of your tv, especially for the money that you're spending the out of box picture settings and i went with isf brightroom for sdr and then cinema user for hdr on the oled. And then we chose the movie mode for the samsung and sdr and then it carried over to hdr movie when we put in hdr content, i mean these are standard out of the box settings and frankly, the lg is looking far better out of the box than The samsung, the algae, also has more options and more customization available as well, and it supports dolby vision which looks superior to hdr 10 when you're watching content on netflix. I know that some folks don't feel that the samsung not supporting dolby vision is a big deal, but i really enjoy dolby vision, content and i frankly miss it. When i'm watching on this samsung, i will say in the samsung qled's defense, however, that its overall hdr experience is a little bit better than the lg oled i mean those super bright highlights definitely help a great deal. I think there's a little bit of over brightening happening in some cases, and so you lose a little bit of detail in the bright highlights, but generally it's a very poppy experience. I mean it definitely leaps out at you. The other thing going in the lg c10 oled's favor is its sound quality. It is significantly better than the samsung q90t and it's actually just not half bad. In general, it's got a surprising amount of bass and overall clarity i will say the samsung has some cool, sound tracking features and it will also automatically raise the volume and the dialogue sounds if it senses noise in the room that sort of special ai feature. But in general the oled sounds better, so where does that leave us with our little battle between the lgc10 oled and the samsung q90tqled? Well, for me, it's kind of a no-brainer. I definitely prefer the lg oled. I think it has better picture quality overall, better sound quality and it's an outstanding gaming rig. The samsung might be better for folks who need just a brighter tv or who are worried about burn-in oled burn-in can happen. It'S not very common with regular usage of the tv, i think you'll be fine, but if you're too concerned to take the risk, the samsung's a very good tv overall. However, i definitely think the lg oled wins this battle, thanks as always for watching everyone. What do you think about the results of our q led versus oled battle? Leave a comment down below like subscribe, hit that notification bell and, as always visit digitaltrends.com for the latest tech news and reviews?Like it? Share it! More by this author |