Samsung Q800T 8k TV Review (2020)

 

                   Samsung Q800T 8k TV Review (2020) 

-In this Blog I'm going to review  Samsung Q800T 8k TV Stay tuned. Hey, what is up guys Ayush here. If you're new to this blog let me just give you guys a quick background about me. My name is Ayush Shrivastava. Samsung has doubled down on 8k this year introducing3 new 8k TV models. The Q800T is the least expensive of the 3and is the only one to come in under our price limit of $5000 in the US, so today we’regoing to look at how this new model performs and see if 8k is worth buying right now. Hey there,Before we dive into the picture quality, we’llcheck out the design of the TV. Then we’ll check out the motion handlingand input lag, sound and smart features, and finish up with an overview. As always, you can check out the timestampsin the description or the YouTube chapters to skip to what you care about. We bought the 65 inch model of the Q800T,but we expect our results to be valid for the larger 75 and 82 inch sizes as well. The design of the Q800T follows a similardesign language to some previous Samsungs, including this year’s Q90T with the centraliMac style stand. It’s different than last year’s 8K setthan had wide set feet, but you should still have enough room in front to put a soundbar. The stand is very heavy and supports the TVwell, and won’t take up much room on an entertainment cabinet, though it would probablylook even better wallmounted because of its side profile. We can see that it is nice and thin with asort of boxy style, coming in at about one and a half inches thick, meaning it’ll sitclose to the wall. The back has this nice etched pattern in theplastic. The build quality is great, but the back panelof our unit feels flimsy and flexes a lot. It feels like it can be easily removed anddoesn’t feel set in place properly. We don’t know if this is a wide set issue,but it was very different than our Q90T which felt great. If you’re TV has a similar issue, let usknow in the comments below. It has nice clean thin bezels with metal edgesand looks premium. Unfortunately, this year Samsung removed theOne Connect from a lot of models and that is the case for this set. The Q800T has the standard set of HDMI portsand other connections along the back side of the unit. There are 2 USB ports, an optical audio port,4 HDMIs, an ethernet port, and a tuner. If you have legacy devices that need compositeor component, this TV will not work for you. Even though the One Connect is missing, theback of the TV has channels to run cables through and out the back of the central stand,so you should have no issue organising your cables neatly. Alright, let’s check out the picture quality. We'll be comparing to currently availableTVs but competing models may change as new TVs are released throughout the year. For an updated comparison with new modelsas we buy and test them, see the review page on our website which is linked below. First, let’s get an important item out ofthe way. This is an 8k TV, meaning it has 4x more pixelsthan a typical 4k TV. This increased pixel density means the TVhas a sharper image from closer distances away. 8k photos look exceptionally detailed andplay well through the USB port. The HDMI 4 port on this TV supports higherbandwidth signals. When connected to our RTX 2070 Super graphicscard an 8k 30Hz resolution appears in the EDID. We were able to send this signal from ourPC over HDMI 2.0, but with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. The TV should accept higher signals, suchas 8k at 60Hz, but this seems to require an HDMI 2.1 source, which none are availableon the market currently. We will revisit this once we buy an HDMI 2.1graphics card. This 8k support does allow you to play some8k content like YouTube, but with the 30 fps framerate limitation on PC. Luckily, the built-in TV YouTube app now supportsAV1 codecs with the possibility of 8k 60hz content. There is currently a lack of content and 8ksources, so any image sent to the TV is upscaled from the native resolution up to the 8k resolutionof this panel. This means most of the content you’ll watchwill always be upscaled. Some people do prefer this as it looks a bitsofter, while others might not like always watching outside of the native resolutionof the TV. The upscaling is good on this TV, so thisshouldn’t be a real issue. At 8K resolution we did notice some subpixeldithering, which is visible in the shadows but only at very close distances from theTV. Alright, now that we’ve covered the resolution,lets check out the rest of the performance. The contrast ratio of a display is the relativebrightness of the brightest whites in a scene compared to the darkest blacks. We measure this on a checkerboard pattern,both with and without local dimming. The native contrast ratio is pretty low fora VA panel, and falls in line with other VAs that use a similar Ultra Wide Viewing anglelayer. We’ll talk more about this in a minute,but back to the contrast ratio luckily it gets a lot better with the aid of local dimming. At about 9000:1 it’s great and will delivera punchy picture. Let’s talk a little more about the localdimming. The implementation on the Q800T is good. In real life content, it looks great, boostinghighlights without much blooming and delivering dark inky shadows. Subtitles are well handled this year and shouldnot blind you or have distracting blooming. Apparently, this is due to Samsung using AIto detect subtitles and handle it differently than regular content, and if this indeed thecase it’s doing a great job. When looking at our local dimming test pattern,there a some problems that arise and stand out. The fast moving circle makes the individualzones visible as you can see each one turn on or off as it moves, creating checkboard-likepattern, which we like to refer to as the golf ball effect. It’s very distracting but we never noticedit in real content. A little less of an issue were the slow transitioningzones, that leave a trail of the zones actively dimming behind fast moving objects. Since these issues only came up on our testpattern and not in real life content, the local dimming should be good for most people. So now onto the viewing angle that I promisedI’d come back to. Samsung has implemented a new version of theirUltra Wide Viewing angle technology in the Q800T. We don’t know exactly how this works, butwe suspect that this additional layer acts as a lens to diffuse the light from the screenhorizontally. Normally VA panel TVs have very narrow viewingangles because of the inherent properties of the panel, but with this added layer ontop it can disperse light at larger angles. This translates to better viewing angles thanVAs can typical produce. The Q800T has decent overall viewing angles,with colors only washing out at angles over 45 degrees off centre. Onto the reflection handling. Good reflection handling is important forbright rooms that may have sunlight or lots of interior lighting, as ambient light canwashout the picture or make it hard to see altogether. The Q800T has great reflection handling, althoughits not as good as some other Samsungs we’ve tested. Nonetheless, it should be good enough to cutthe light from most bright rooms. An interesting thing to note is due to theultra wide viewing angle layer and anti-reflective coating, reflections are dispersed acrossthe screen and have a sort of rainbow effect to them as you can see here in our test photo. Another important aspect of combating ambientlight in bright rooms is good screen brightness. The Q800T gets nice and bright in most scenes,so it should counteract glare. It isn’t quite as bright as last years Q900Rin most scenes, but can get brighter in some. For SDR content, it is a great performer. In HDR, a high peak brightness is importantfor different reasons, namely to make highlights pop. The Q800T has a great high peak brightnessin real scenes at almost 1200 nits, helping deliver content to you as the director intended,with the highlight detail intact. HDR also has the ability to display colorsfrom wider color spaces than SDR, so a TV that can take advantage of this will makefor an even better HDR experience. The Q800T has a good color gamut and colorvolume, which means you’ll get wide coverage of the P3 and Rec 2020 color spaces for animage that really pops. Its color gamut is not as wide as last year’sQ900R, but still does a good job at filling out its color volume, which is the wide colorsit can produce at different brightness levels. Before we move on to the motion handling ofthe set, we’ll finish up the picture quality with the uniformity performance. We test the gray uniformity of each TV bytaking a photo of a 50% gray slide and a dark 5% gray slide. This is meant to show if a display can producethe exact same color across the entire screen. Darker areas or blotches are known as thedirty screen effect, and can be distracting when watching content with uniform colorssuch as sports or video games. Unfortunately, this is one area where theQ800T underperforms. There is noticeable DSE in the mid-gray slide,as well as a weird pattern we haven’t really seen before. It’s definitely visible in this photo andin real life, but the camera has a hard time showing it off compared to how our eyes seeit, so we took another photo that was heavily edited to show off what pattern to look for. It’s disappointing as it was the first thingI noticed when the TV was being tested, but it is only visible on uniform colors. We don’t know exactly why this is happening,but we hypothesize it could be related to the extremely high pixel density and arrangementof the full-array backlight. This is one aspect of TVs that can vary dueto tolerances in the manufacturing process, but we expect our unit to be representative. Let us know in the comments below if you buythis TV and how yours compares! Okay let’s check out the motion, and we’llstart with the response time. To learn more about motion on TVs,  The Q800T has a good response time. Motion looks smooth and doesn’t have a trailbehind it, known as ghosting. There is significant overshoot in the darktransitions, but it shouldn’t affect most content too heavily. Last years Q900R had an even better responsetime, so if you are sensitive to motion, the Q900R is the better bet. The photo of our moving logo also looks smoothand clear, and the backlight flicker at 960 hertz isn’t really noticeable, so whilethe TV isn’t flicker free it also shouldn’t be a problem for most people. For those who really care about the clearestmotion, black frame insertion is a feature which flickers the backlight, reducing persistenceblur. Like the other Samsung’s from this year,BFI is enabled in the picture clarity menu as LED clear motion. For 60 fps content it flickers at 60HZ andlooks good as you can see from the moving RTINGS logo photo, and also flickers at 120Hz for 120 fps content. Now, often one of the most important aspectsfor gamers is a low input lag. A low input lag means that there is very little,if not an imperceptible amount of time between a ler input and the action appearing in game. The Q800T has a great low input lag around10 milliseconds in game mode at most resolutions including HDR. At 120 fps, that is almost halved at around5 and a half milliseconds. This is definitely suitable for even the mostdemanding players. Samsung TVs also support Variable refreshrate technologies to deliver a tear-free gaming experience. This year, on top of Freesync and HDMI forumVRR, the Q800T works with NVIDIA graphics cards. This means you’ll be able to experiencetear-free gaming no matter which graphics card you use or which gaming console withVRR features you use. The Samsung Q800T supports almost all resolutionsnatively, including 8k30. It is also supposed to support 4k120 and 8k60,but these resolutions seem to require an HDMI 2.1 source, which currently aren’t available. When they do become available, we will retestthe Q800T to verify it supports these resolutions. You can check out and follow the full reviewon our website for an update on this as it becomes available. So now on to the smart features. Like other Samsungs, this uses the Tizen smartinterface which is smooth and user friendly. There is a great selection of apps to choosefrom and now has the Apple TV app built in. You’ll find ads on the home menu, but you’llhave access to all the apps you’ll need to cut the cord or expand your media selection. And lastly, for the sound. The internal speakers of this set are unfortunatelydisappointing. The bass leaves much to be desired and itcompresses quite a bit at louder volumes. Luckily it has a flat response in the voicefrequencies so dialog should be clear. You’ll most likely want to upgrade yoursound setup to match the great picture, so a dedicated sound system or soundbar willelevate your experience immensely. Check out our reviews for soundbars to findone that meets your specifications. So overall, the Samsung Q800T is a good performer. If you are looking to move into the maximumresolution territory of 8k, the Q800T is a great option. Last years Q900R and the Q800T trade blowsin a lot of categories, and which one will be better for you will depend on what is importantto you. For you sports fans or gamers out there, thegray uniformity issue on the Q800T may be bothersome, so the Q900R would be the betteroption. If you watch a lot of movies or TV shows withsubtitles, the Q800T would be the better option. Alright, that’s it! What do you think of the Samsung Q800T? Do you find the 8k worth the price?