Samsung S90H OLED TV Review: A Mid-range OLED for the Everyman

The Samsung S90H is the mid-range series in Samsung’s 2026 OLED TV lineup, slotting in between the budget Samsung S85H series and flagship Samsung S95H series. Samsung opted to pack every possible feature into the S95H, including the company’s latest-generation QD-OLED display panel with a Glare Free screen and a distinctive “FloatLayer” metal frame. Between the fancy frame and support for the Samsung Art Store (the S95H is the first OLED TV from the company to offer that feature), Samsung has positioned the S95H as a high-performance Art TV, a category the company pioneered with its The Frame series models.

The Samsung S90H, in contrast, is a more affordable TV option for viewers who simply want to tap OLED’s impressive picture quality for movie-watching and gaming and don’t mind having their TV display a blank, black screen instead of a Kandinsky painting when not in use. To that end, the Samsung Art Store isn’t supported by S90H series TVs, which also have a more conventional, bezel-less “Laser Slim” design.

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What is it?

The Samsung S90H is an OLED TV sold in screen sizes ranging from 42 to 83 inches. Unlike the S95H series, S90H TVs use a conventional W-OLED panel sourced from LG Display. Launch prices for the S90H series start at $1,399.99 and top out at $5,299.99 for the 83-inch model. Prices for S90H TVs have dropped significantly since launch, with the 55-inch model that Samsung sent me to review now selling for $1,399.99 (original price: $1,999.99).

It may lack the S95H’s QD-OLED panel and Art Store support, but the S90H series features the same Glare Free matte screen found on Samsung’s flagship OLED and Mini-LED TVs, including the Samsung R95H Micro RGB TV. This effectively diffuses reflections when watching in bright-room lighting conditions and, unlike earlier versions of the Glare Free screen, does so without overly elevating black levels in darker images.

The S90H uses the same NQ4 AI Gen3 Processor found in the flagship S95H series. This delivers a range of AI enhancements for picture and sound, such as AI Motion Enhancer Pro, which eliminates the “flickering ball” effect in sports, and 4K AI Upscaling Pro. There’s also an Auto HDR Remastering feature that upscales standard dynamic range programs to HDR, along with AI Customization Mode, which detects the type of content being watched and automatically adjusts picture settings. Pantone Validated color is another feature that, combined with the TV’s Filmmaker Mode, ensures colors look natural and true-to-life.

Audio on the S90H is delivered by a 2.1-channel, 40W speaker system with support for Dolby Atmos and Eclipsa Audio for YouTube. Sound quality is surprisingly good for such a slim TV, with features like Active Voice Amplifier Pro, which uses the TV’s AI processor to identify voices in movie and TV soundtracks and elevate the dialogue level, adding clarity and definition to the sound. Other audio-related features include Object Tracking Sound Lite, which uses virtual processing to link dialogue and effects to the onscreen action, and Q-Symphony for use with Samsung-branded soundbars like the Samsung HW-Q990H.

The S90H series features Samsung’s “Ultimate Gaming Pack.” This means the TV accepts a 4K 165Hz input across all four HDMI 2.1 ports, and there’s also support for ALLM, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and Nvidia G-Sync. Samsung’s Gaming Hub, which gets its own dedicated section in the TV’s smart interface, offers a wide range of apps such as Xbox, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Amazon Luna, and it supports a range of third-party wireless gaming controllers.

One UI Tizen

Samsung’s One UI Tizen serves as the S90H’s smart TV platform, and it’s supported with seven years of future OS updates. Samsung’s new layout for Tizen moves tabs from the side to the top of the TV’s screen for a cleaner arrangement. Along with the wide array of streaming apps accessible from the home page, a Live TV tab presents a grid guide of Samsung TV Plus free ad-supported channels. This guide can also show local channels pulled in by an attached antenna, though the TV’s built-in tuner only supports the ATSC 1.0 digital TV broadcast format and not ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV).

The S90H’s Tizen interface also features a Samsung Vision AI portal with the Copilot and Perplexity AI assistants. You can communicate with these bots using the TV’s built-in far-field mic or by pressing the AI button on the TV’s Solar Cell remote control, which draws power from ambient light in your viewing room. I’m generally a fan of Samsung’s Solar Cell remote, as it eliminates the need for disposable batteries. But the compact remote’s limited button array — there’s no input select button, for instance — means most controls need to be activated from onscreen menus, which can become annoying over time.

Tizen also features the Samsung SmartThings Hub, which lets you view a map of all connected smart home devices (Matter is supported) and control them using voice commands or the Solar Cell remote. Other new Tizen updates include Storage Share, which lets you access files across Samsung devices, and Karaoke for singing songs using your phone as a mic.

The S90H has a more typical, subdued look compared to the aluminum-framed flagship S95H OLED. Samsung’s Simple Plus Blade stand is made of plastic but gets the job done, and it can be snapped together and attached without having to use tools. The display panel itself is extremely slim, but a bottom section containing the power supply and connections extends the TV’s depth to 1.6 inches. Four HDMI 2.1 ports (one with eARC) are split between side- and bottom-facing panels, and there are also optical digital and mini-jack audio outputs.

Setup & Viewing Impressions

Measurements of the Samsung S90H were made using Portrait Display’s Calman Color Calibration software. All adjustments were left at the default settings in the Filmmaker Mode and Standard picture presets for measurement, with the exception of Brightness Optimization, a setting located in the Power & Energy Saving menu that automatically sets picture brightness based on room lighting. We turned that off for the tests.

HDR brightness measured on a white 10% window pattern was 1,553 nits in Filmmaker Mode and 1,414 nits in Standard mode. For a full-screen white pattern, HDR brightness was 292 and 274 nits, respectively, for the same modes. In standard dynamic range tests, the S90H measured 165 nits on a 10% white window in Filmmaker Mode and 481 nits in Standard.

If you’re wondering how those results compare to the flagship Samsung S95H OLED, that model hit a peak HDR brightness of 2,526 nits in Filmmaker Mode and 2,471 nits in Standard when we measured it. As for standard dynamic range results, the S95H measured 215 nits in Filmmaker Mode and 527 nits in Standard.

Clearly, the S95H offers a substantial brightness boost over the S90H, giving it an edge when it comes to displaying specular highlights in HDR content and overall screen brightness when viewing in well-illuminated rooms. In everyday use, however, I found the S90H’s picture to be amply bright even with my room’s overhead lights on, and with the lights dimmed, its brightness was more than good enough for movie viewing.

The S90H’s color measurements were also impressive, although here again, its performance fell short of the Samsung S95H. Color gamut coverage was 75.8% for BT.2020 and 99.4% for DCI-P3. The S90H’s color accuracy was exceptional out of the box, with grayscale Delta E (the margin of error between the test pattern source and what’s displayed on-screen) averaging 1.7 in Filmmaker Mode’s default settings and 1.1 in color point testing.

As usual when I test a TV, the first thing I watch during subjective evaluation is the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark disc. The S90H really smashed it here, displaying rich yet accurate color and excellent detail. Blacks were deep and solid in the demonstration reel’s darker shots, and highlights in these sequences looked exceptionally clean. For example, an image of a carousel at night showed clear transitions between the individual LED lights on its surface. On some Mini-LED TVs I’ve tested, those same transitions can appear blurred out as a result of backlight blooming, but on the S90H OLED, they looked perfectly clean and clear.

The S90H’s motion handling appeared to need a bit of adjustment help when I watched a reference scene from the James Bond movie No Time to Die, where Bond walks across a hillside cemetery to visit the grave of Vesper Lynd. At the default settings, there was visible judder and blur, but setting the control for each to +3 in the Expert Settings’ Picture Clarity submenu cleared things up without adding a soap opera effect.

When watching both No Time to Die and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, colors looked rich and detailed, and in the case of the Bond movie at least, skin tones were natural. With Dolby Vision content like this (Samsung TVs don’t support Dolby Vision HDR, instead displaying it in the base HDR10 format), I found that selecting the Active Tone Mapping option in the Advanced Picture settings menu helped to flesh out shadow detail in dark scenes, which otherwise was being buried with the default Static Tone Mapping option active.

We should note that, while Dolby Vision dynamic HDR is not supported, Samsung does support HDR10+ dynamic HDR, which seems to be making in-roads on some streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV+, Netflix and Disney+. However, Dolby Vision is much more common on physical media (UHD Blu-ray) and is currently the only dynamic HDR format available on Kaleidescape.

The sci-fi series Pluribus is one of the best shows I’ve seen on Apple TV, and I’m eagerly awaiting season 2, which is supposed to arrive sometime in late 2027 or 2028. That’s a long time to wait, so I’ve lately been rewatching some of the best episodes from the first season, like episode six, where Carol drives to Las Vegas to confront the debauched Mr. Diabaté. Watching the party scene in the casino, the glittering surface of a server’s green dress was powerfully illuminated by the S90H, and the colors of poker chips and multiple sports cars in the casino parking area looked vivid. Shadows in darker scenes from this episode also looked deep, with the S90H delivering the consistently strong contrast I expect to see on an OLED TV.

Samsung’s 4K AI Upscaling Pro did a good job overall of upscaling HD and lower-resolution content to 4K. When I watched regular HD Blu-ray movies with the TV’s Auto HDR Remastering feature turned on, it gave a slight brightness boost to highlights and also pumped up color saturation a bit. The effect of Auto HDR Remastering was milder than on the Samsung R95H Micro RGB, which revealed a significant loss of highlight detail when I enabled the same feature.

The Bottom Line

At Samsung’s current discounted price of $1,399.99, the 55-inch S90H I tested is an excellent OLED TV value. You’d need to spend substantially more to step up to the flagship Samsung S95H in the same screen size, and the benefits of that upgrade — primarily higher brightness and wider color space coverage — are likely to be lost on many viewers. As it stands, the S90H is sufficiently bright for most viewing environments, and its Glare Free screen helps its picture stand out even in rooms with bright overhead lighting.

The Samsung S90H is also priced at the same level as its main competition, the LG C6 OLED TV. That model offers roughly the same brightness as the S90H, but lacks the anti-reflective screen tech used on the flagship LG G6 OLED (and on the Samsung S90H with its Glare Free screen). With its solid combination of picture quality and features, the Samsung S90H is recommended for anyone wanting the benefits of OLED at a real-world price.

Pros:

• Good brightness for an OLED TV
• Glare Free screen
• Accurate out-of-box color
• Clean upconversion of HD and lower-res sources
• Solid combination of picture quality and features for price
• Wide range of screen size options
• Extensive gaming features
• Supports HDR10+ dynamic HDR
• Supports Eclipsa Audio

Cons:

• No Dolby Vision HDR support
• No DTS audio support
• No input select control on remote
• No ATSC 3.0 tuner

Our Ratings:

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Design

★★★★★★★★★★ Usability

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Features

★★★★★★★★★★ Value

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