Samsung QN90F

No onscreen reflection pain, plenty of bright room gain

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Once the exclusive preserve of the ultra high-end LCD world, Mini LEDs are now starting to feel pretty much ubiquitous from the mid-range up.

In the QN90F's case, the diddy lights illuminating its screen are only a fiftieth the size of Samsung's 'big old' LEDs, opening up all sorts of extra light control and brightness potential. Especially considering that the Mini LEDs are backed up by a local dimming system that, in the case of our 65in sample, features 720 separately controlled zones.

There are TVs around now that boast more dimming zones than that; Hisense's U8Q boasts more than 2000 in fact, despite costing less than the QN90F.

We've been around the block enough times to know, though, that it's not the number of zones you've got but what you do with them that counts. And no TV at this level that we know of is potentially better equipped to make more expert use of the dimming zones available to it than the QN90F, thanks to its deployment of a picture-processing system that includes no less than 128 AI neural networks. That's a massive 108 neural networks up on the already acclaimed processing engine of the QN90F's predecessor.

The panel in the QN90F is uses VA tech, meaning it should be capable of delivering better native contrast than the IPS alternative. The panel is finished off, too, with one of Samsung's remarkable anti-glare filters. These work so well at suppressing reflections that they allow you to forge a direct connection with what you're watching - even in rooms that aren't fully blacked out.

The QN90F's heavily AI-driven NQ4 AI Gen3 Processor boasts a 2x faster NPU, 2.1x faster GPU and 17 per cent faster CPU than its 2024 predecessor, and is claimed to be particularly effective at upscaling HD and SD content to 4K and dynamically tone mapping HDR content to the fullest extent of the screen's considerable capabilities.