Last year, Samsung introduced an innovative new anti-glare coating for its OLED TVs. It was stunning. The technology reduced the glare significantly without impacting the brightness or picture in any overly noticeable way. It was a game-changer for OLED TVs. Now, in 2025, the anti-glare gods are smiling upon those who want the fanciest of the fancy Samsung Neo QLED 8K TVs, with the anti-glare technology coming to this range, including the flagship QN990F, for the first time.
Sure, there are also other improvements, like generative AI upscaling, a Wireless One Connect Box, higher frame rates for gaming, and so on. They’re all (mostly) spectacular. But it’s that anti-glare coating that’s going to make the biggest and most noticeable difference for anyone who likes to watch TV during the day with the curtains open. So, pretty much everyone.
As you would expect from a $12,000 TV, the performance is very, very good.
Table of contents
- First impressions
- Specifications and price
- Anti-glare coating
- Wireless One Connect Box
- Gaming performance
- General viewing
- Gen AI upscaling
- Who is the Samsung QN990F for?
First impressions
Walking into the very bright hotel room that housed the Samsung QN990F, I couldn’t see a single reflection on the screen. It was like magic.
Picking the settings I like from the AI-generated options was also a breeze. While I like to get more granular than this allows, I can see people who aren’t super tech-savvy really enjoying being able to pick the option they like out of the four presented to customise their new TV to their tastes. It gives people some level of control, even if they’re nervous about touching the contrast slider, or don’t know what all the terms mean.
The remote will be very familiar to anyone whose had a Samsung TV in the last five years: minimal buttons, and a solar panel on the back for charging.
All up, this TV makes an excellent first impression.
Samsung QN990F specifications and price
| Resolution | 8K (7,680 x 4,320) |
| Picture Engine | NQ8 AI Gen3 Processor |
| Picture upscale | 8K AI Upscaling Pro |
| Operating system | Tizen Smart TV |
| Features | Multi-view (up to 4 videos) Karaoke mic Alexa Bixby Game modes Gaming hub 240HZ for gaming |
| Ports | HDMI x5 USB-A x3 USB-C x1 Ethernet x1 Optical x1 RF in x1 |
| Weight | With stand: 53.4 kg Without stand: 42.7 kg |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | With stand: 1877.4 x 1145.2 x 304.9 mm Without stand: 1877.4 x 1067.1 x 13.3 mm |
| Price (RRP) | $11,999 (85-inch) |
| Warranty | 12 months |
| Official website | Samsung Australia |
The three big call-outs here are:
- The upgrade to 240Hz for gaming, making this an option for PC gamers who want to be extra with their monitor choices.
- The One Connect Box is wireless now, and it doesn’t have to be in line of sight for it to work. You also don’t have to plug it in at all, if you just want to watch streaming. This means that people who want to just watch streaming services and play games on Xbox Game Pass don’t even need to plug in the One Connect box. Or if you have a setup for your room where the aerial port is away from where you’d ideally like to have the TV, you can do that.
- Five HDMI ports. This isn’t going to be something that everyone needs, but this is huge for me. Being able to have a soundbar, Apple TV, PS5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch 2 plugged in at the same time, without having to play musical HDMI cable/Sophie’s choice between the consoles would be glorious.
Anti-glare coating
The anti-glare coating is really the hero of this TV filled with hero features. I was hesitant at first, thinking that the matte screen would change the colours or picture in some way. If it does change the picture, it’s only in very, very minor ways that I couldn’t notice unless I was trying to take a photo of the screen.
I spent roughly four hours with the TV in a very bright hotel room; the lights were on, and the sun was streaming through the curtain-less window. While four hours isn’t really enough time to fully judge a TV, that room was a good showcase for the power of anti-glare. Despite the glare, I could enjoy the super-dark night scenes of A League Of Their Own almost as though I was watching it in a pitch-black room.
One thing to note: the anti-glare performance is way more obvious in person. Because of smartphone camera wizardry, my photos showed glare not visible to the naked eye.
For those who have living rooms with west-facing windows, this is the TV you have been dreaming of.
Wireless One Connect Box
I expected a bunch of lag when using the Wireless One Connect Box, but it was actually pretty great. It only adds 11ms of lag, which is almost nothing. It’s super convenient to use.
If you’re a competitive gamer (or need every advantage you can get) there is an additional HMDI 2.1 port on the TV that you can plug your favourite console into directly if that’s important to you. You can’t plug the Wireless One Connect Box into the TV to reduce lag.
Gaming performance
I didn’t get a chance to game much on the QN990F, because the time I had with the TV was quite limited.
But Assassin’s Creed Shadows looked great and the updated gaming dashboard is super helpful.
Having the TV go up to 240Hz means that this could be the most over-the-top PC gaming monitor on the market (and that’s a high bar). It’s got more than enough grunt to handle everything current-generation, and likely next-generation, consoles can throw at it.
Hopefully, I’ll one day be able to spend more time gaming on this TV so I can update this section.
General viewing
For the most part, watching anything on the Samsung QN990F looked amazing, both in the customised AI picture setting, and on Filmmaker Mode (which strips away all processing and just shows the image as intended).
I did initially have some trouble with the motion smoothing. With the setting on full, everything looked absolutely terrible and unnatural, like it was trying to generate extra frames and draw everything from memory. Unbelievably bad. With the motion smoothing off, there was heaps of judder with everything then looking like it had a frame rate of five. Also very bad.
Once I turned the smoothing down from 10 to 4, things looked really natural, though. Finding the Goldilocks zone takes time, but is worth it.
The benefit of having an 8K TV isn’t watching 8K content (unless you’re really into those tech demo videos of birds and fish), but the 8K upscaling. 1080p and 4K shows and movies looked fantastic, and I was able to sit closer to them, meaning you can get a bigger TV. I could see every pore and wrinkle. 8K resolution is going to buy so many Hollywood plastic surgeons’ second yachts.
However, the upscaling wasn’t always perfect…
Gen AI Upscaling
This is the one area I’m a little iffy on. On most of the shows and sports I watched, the upscaling was amazing. It made the ball clearer when streaming a game of soccer, and it reduced the noise in a very old episode of Gilmore Girls. When it worked as intended, it was brilliant.
But every now and then, when I was watching an older episode of something in standard definition, there would be a noticeable pop of textures coming in on the background a second after the scene started. It reminded me of playing a video game on a computer with a low-quality graphics card, and it was really distracting. It’s the difference between the older style of AI upscaling, which just tried to make things a bit sharper, and generative AI upscaling, which is actively trying to add in details and guess what the scene should have looked like.
The difference is most noticeable in season one episodes of One Tree Hill, which were recorded on film rather than digital, and thus come with all the noise that film produces. On the QN990F, it was trying to define shapes that weren’t there in dark scenes, attempting to make sense of the film artefacts. On my QN900C at home, the AI upscaling deals with the people and key props in the scene and leaves the darkness seemingly alone, but the generative AI upscaling on the QN990F was trying to enhance things that weren’t there.
While there is a debate to be had about preserving artistic intentions, and whether this goes against that, I’m more iffy on it because the pop-in effect is distracting and didn’t add anything meaningful to the experience. On these SD shows (primarily One Tree Hill, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and other episodes of Gilmore Girls), I was better off switching to Filmmaker Mode and taking the processing out of the equation completely. Which is a shame, because when the technology works, it’s really impressive. It’s just a matter of getting it to work consistently. I hope it can be fixed in a software update down the line.
Turning off the processing negates the benefits of upgrading to a TV with fancier processing. But at least it’s not on every show, and it’s easy to switch between the settings to suit the programme you’re watching.
There is a chance this Gen AI upscaling might improve in a software update. I can see it getting much better/faster at processing in the next generation of TVs for sure. I’m just not sure it’s quite ready yet.
That said, While the generative AI upscaling was distracting in SD content, it looked good on 1080p Full HD content, and even better in 4K. I wish there was an option to opt for something between Filmmaker Mode and the generative AI upscaling for lower-resolution content. Perhaps there could be an old-school upscaling mode as a mid-point?
Who is the Samsung QN990F for?
This is the TV for people who want to have their living room configured the way they like, with their TV in one place, and their peripherals somewhere else.
It also has an absolutely stunning picture. While this isn’t the ideal TV for watching 20-year-old SD teen dramas that were produced film, it is pretty incredible for games, TV shows and movies in HD and above, and especially 4K TV shows. There might not be much 8K content available, but there doesn’t have to be when there’s upscaling.
When it comes to picking between premium Samsung TVs, the QN990F range is for people who want 8K, the Wireless One Connect Box, and big sizes for bright rooms. Meanwhile, the Samsung S95F is for people who want the absolute best 4K picture possible on an absolutely stunning OLED TV. You really can’t go wrong with either.
The post Samsung QN990F review: Oh my stars, it’s so pretty appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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