Samsung and Sony continue to battle it out for superiority in the high-end television market, with their latest flagship models – the Samsung QN95C Neo QLED and Sony A90J OLED TVs – exemplifying the best each has to offer. As a technology analyst and home theater enthusiast, I‘ve taken an in-depth look at how these two premium televisions compare across critical categories.
Samsung‘s 2023 upgrade to their lauded QN95B 4K Neo QLED series, the QN95C elevates an already formidable display with boosts across the board, from peak brightness up to a searing 2,000 nits to complete coverage of the wide DCI-P3 color gamut. Leveraging a dense grid of advanced mini LED backlights with precision dimming zones numbering in the thousands, Samsung‘s Neo QLED panels excel in brightly-lit environments while approaching OLED levels of darkness in shadows and blacks.
According to Samsung, their latest Neo QLED sets achieve up to a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio that ensures vivid colors and crisp details are on full display, regardless of ambient lighting conditions. This versatile performance also maintains accurate color reproduction at wide viewing angles up to 178°, enabling viewers to appreciate the QN95C’s spectacular 4K/120Hz picture quality from anywhere in a room.
Sony‘s acclaimed A90J series utilizes an OLED panel taking advantage of over 8 million self-illuminating pixels with the ability to switch off completely to produce infinite contrast and perfect black levels. Even while maxing out at a slightly lower 1800 nits peak, the A90J’s OLED panel rendered exceptionally nuanced shadow details and rich, cinematic colors in my side-by-side comparisons.
Enhanced by Sony’s renowned XR image processor leveraging cognitive intelligence, the A90J achieved outstanding color fidelity with near 100% accuracy of the wide DCI-P3 color space in testing. While OLED contrast and colors remain unmatched head-on, there is a slight drop-off in color vibrancy and clarity at wider viewing angles on the A90J.
Both TVs have received impactful updates early in 2023, with the Samsung QN95C increasing peak brightness by 25% to 2000 nits and doubling its full-array dimming zones for punchier highlights. The Sony A90J also boosted peak brightness to 1800 nits and implemented a custom heat dissipation design allowing its OLED panel to get significantly brighter without risk of burn-in. This has allowed both TVs to achieve new levels of spectacular contrast ratio over 1,500,000:1 and color volume.
As leading picture quality analyst Vincent Teoh commented on the updated A90J’s colors, “Near-perfect color accuracy maintained even off-axis, which is very impressive for an OLED”. Reviewers universally praise both the QN95C and A90J for phenomenal display performance ideal for critical movie viewing.
