Samsung Neo QLED 85QN900A Review

A MiniLED wonder, a compelling case for quality 8K sets at long last

Samsung invested earlier than anyone else in 8K TVs and its top such television for 2021 is proof that such choices can and do lead to amazing, almost faultless flagship products over time. (Image: Samsung)

This review comes undeniably late, of course, due to factors that were not part of the initial planning or under the control of yours truly (don’t you just hate it when that happens?). But, funnily enough, it is also a review that’s kind of timely: it’s closing out 2021 featuring the best 8K television of the year for general use and one of the very best overall, which is not a simple statement. It’s an award in and of itself, considering the number of extremely strong TVs that made it to market during the last twelve months. It is also a statement representative of Samsung’s intentions: the Koreans are getting ready for a daring, challenging 2022 — and the QN900A is an almost ideal jumping-off point for the company.

Calling a product “best in class” obviously calls for an explanation, so here’s how and why the Samsung Neo QLED 85QN900A earned that distinction in the course of 100 hours of practically non-stop testing. And then some.

Design to die for, premium built, top connectivity

There are quite a few televisions bragging about thin bezels around their screens these days, most of them being OLEDs, but it was actually Samsung that achieved the “almost not there” bezels in 2020 with its Q950TS model. The QN900A offers a similar “Infinity” design, allowing for the picture to go right up to the edges of the screen, only it’s even more refined than before. The effect achieved by this engineering feat is mightily impressive: the picture really does seem like “it’s floating in mid-air” when viewed head-on, in broad daylight too (a few TVs have been doing that in the dark for a while now). There’s something vaguely futuristic about it, which is high praise in design terms, no?

Samsung’s QN900A televisions are spectacularly designed and built on the same level of quality. They are flagship models through and through. (Image: Samsung)

Just as impressive is the panel’s thinness: just 15mm across the entirety of the QN900A’s back surface. From a manufacturing standpoint, that is even more impressive than last year’s similar thinness of the Q950TS panel, given the new model’s advanced local backlighting system (more on…