Samsung Q80T QLED TV review

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensamsung makes a lot of television but the q8t strikes a sweet spot between picture quality size and a price that's not out of this world let's take a look i'll start off with the price this tv is 1500 for the 65 inch size you see here it's available from 49 all the way up to 85 inches of course the larger it gets the more expensive it gets but the price range really solid again for the features and the picture quality that you get as usual with samsung the design on the q8t is pretty slick the stand here first thing you'll notice is actually a central pedestal which is kind of going away on tvs these days most the models you see on the market have splayed stand legs to either side this thing a nice central pedestal i really like the look a lot better because it keeps the tv high gives you this kind of sense that it's floating there's a big piece of metal down here nice and solid so you don't need to worry about any of that tipping that some of the older pedestal models had of course you can mount this tv on the wall if you want to going around the edge super thin samsung of course uses matte black like pretty much everybody else super tiny samsung logo around back you can see it's relatively thick that's because it's got that full array local dimming backlight of course not a huge deal not too many people watch tv from the side it's also got this nice textured finish to the back the remote's another important part of the design this thing's super simple it's got just a few buttons and of course it's got voice activation on there new for this year samsung actually has real voice assistance not just bixby but google assistant and amazon alexa and you can activate either those assistants hands-free without touching the remote if you decide to it doesn't have the mic built into the television the mics built into the remote so again if you want that hands-free activation it is an option of course just like any other alexa or google assistant device you can use a control smart home you can check the weather and do all those other little things from the television as opposed to having to use a speaker alexa turn off the lamp now we'll take a look at smart tv this uses samsung's tizen system and one of the first things you'll notice it doesn't take up the entire screen i really like that you can keep an eye on what you're doing as well as browsing apps and driving around the screen here so as you can see plenty of apps in the samsung ecosystem one of the best out there although not quite as many as you get on a google tv or roku television the samsung app system though it has this nice design where you can kind of see new tiles and shows that pop up right on top when you drive over the top it also has a really nice settings menu so i'll go over here and go up to the top you can see there's quick access to a lot of different settings including game mode picture mode and other extras you can get to really quickly without diving deep into the menu i like that a lot let's try the voice activation right now we're going to just put the remote right here and say alexa what's the weather and there you go connectivity is very good for this tv around back you'll find four hdmi inputs that handle the bulkier devices i didn't get the chance to hook up a ps5 or an xbox series x to this tv in time for the review but i can tell you that based on its specs should be very good for those new consoles the tv has 4k 120 hertz input so you get that smoother motion the tv also has variable refresh capability which allows it to avoid tearing and other artifacts that some lesser tvs might experience on those new consoles as with all tvs i did test input lag and on the samsung it's excellent so you're not going to get any delay between playing the game and seeing the results on the screen i spent most of my time in the review looking at picture quality and the q8t is excellent i compared it directly against a vizio p series a tcl6 series and a sony x900h it's right in the middle of those very good full array local dimming tvs it's hdr quality was very good but it didn't have the bright highlights and the pop that the vizio and the tcl showed i also didn't measure those highlights quite as high on the samsung as on those other tvs black levels were also not quite as good as on those other televisions that means that areas of darkness were a tiny bit lighter a little bit less realistic on the samsung in my side-by-side comparison on the other hand it was a very smooth image a very natural image and the samsung did a great job of controlling blooming which is stray illumination in some dark areas so that was a point in its favor video processing was also very good on this tv and speaking of gaming input lag again extremely good so at the end of the day the samsung q8t isn't the best value and it doesn't have the best picture quality what you're buying this tv for is design and features it has a really nicely integrated external look with a great remote and a really nice smart tv system it also has excellent connectivity if those are reason enough for you or you just like the samsung brand the q8t is the best value in the lineup for 2020. its image quality is definitely better than any samsung tv that doesn't have full array local dimming and if you spend more on a samsung tv like the q90 or any of its 8k televisions you're going to run into the issue of oled oled tvs from lg and sony perform better than those televisions in my experience and the 8k really isn't worth it unless you get to gigantic screen sizes even then you're really not seeing any benefit because there's no 8k content that's why the samsung q8t sits at the sweet spot between price picture quality and of course the fact that it's a samsung i'm david katzmeyer for cnetsamsung makes a lot of television but the q8t strikes a sweet spot between picture quality size and a price that's not out of this world let's take a look i'll start off with the price this tv is 1500 for the 65 inch size you see here it's available from 49 all the way up to 85 inches of course the larger it gets the more expensive it gets but the price range really solid again for the features and the picture quality that you get as usual with samsung the design on the q8t is pretty slick the stand here first thing you'll notice is actually a central pedestal which is kind of going away on tvs these days most the models you see on the market have splayed stand legs to either side this thing a nice central pedestal i really like the look a lot better because it keeps the tv high gives you this kind of sense that it's floating there's a big piece of metal down here nice and solid so you don't need to worry about any of that tipping that some of the older pedestal models had of course you can mount this tv on the wall if you want to going around the edge super thin samsung of course uses matte black like pretty much everybody else super tiny samsung logo around back you can see it's relatively thick that's because it's got that full array local dimming backlight of course not a huge deal not too many people watch tv from the side it's also got this nice textured finish to the back the remote's another important part of the design this thing's super simple it's got just a few buttons and of course it's got voice activation on there new for this year samsung actually has real voice assistance not just bixby but google assistant and amazon alexa and you can activate either those assistants hands-free without touching the remote if you decide to it doesn't have the mic built into the television the mics built into the remote so again if you want that hands-free activation it is an option of course just like any other alexa or google assistant device you can use a control smart home you can check the weather and do all those other little things from the television as opposed to having to use a speaker alexa turn off the lamp now we'll take a look at smart tv this uses samsung's tizen system and one of the first things you'll notice it doesn't take up the entire screen i really like that you can keep an eye on what you're doing as well as browsing apps and driving around the screen here so as you can see plenty of apps in the samsung ecosystem one of the best out there although not quite as many as you get on a google tv or roku television the samsung app system though it has this nice design where you can kind of see new tiles and shows that pop up right on top when you drive over the top it also has a really nice settings menu so i'll go over here and go up to the top you can see there's quick access to a lot of different settings including game mode picture mode and other extras you can get to really quickly without diving deep into the menu i like that a lot let's try the voice activation right now we're going to just put the remote right here and say alexa what's the weather and there you go connectivity is very good for this tv around back you'll find four hdmi inputs that handle the bulkier devices i didn't get the chance to hook up a ps5 or an xbox series x to this tv in time for the review but i can tell you that based on its specs should be very good for those new consoles the tv has 4k 120 hertz input so you get that smoother motion the tv also has variable refresh capability which allows it to avoid tearing and other artifacts that some lesser tvs might experience on those new consoles as with all tvs i did test input lag and on the samsung it's excellent so you're not going to get any delay between playing the game and seeing the results on the screen i spent most of my time in the review looking at picture quality and the q8t is excellent i compared it directly against a vizio p series a tcl6 series and a sony x900h it's right in the middle of those very good full array local dimming tvs it's hdr quality was very good but it didn't have the bright highlights and the pop that the vizio and the tcl showed i also didn't measure those highlights quite as high on the samsung as on those other tvs black levels were also not quite as good as on those other televisions that means that areas of darkness were a tiny bit lighter a little bit less realistic on the samsung in my side-by-side comparison on the other hand it was a very smooth image a very natural image and the samsung did a great job of controlling blooming which is stray illumination in some dark areas so that was a point in its favor video processing was also very good on this tv and speaking of gaming input lag again extremely good so at the end of the day the samsung q8t isn't the best value and it doesn't have the best picture quality what you're buying this tv for is design and features it has a really nicely integrated external look with a great remote and a really nice smart tv system it also has excellent connectivity if those are reason enough for you or you just like the samsung brand the q8t is the best value in the lineup for 2020. its image quality is definitely better than any samsung tv that doesn't have full array local dimming and if you spend more on a samsung tv like the q90 or any of its 8k televisions you're going to run into the issue of oled oled tvs from lg and sony perform better than those televisions in my experience and the 8k really isn't worth it unless you get to gigantic screen sizes even then you're really not seeing any benefit because there's no 8k content that's why the samsung q8t sits at the sweet spot between price picture quality and of course the fact that it's a samsung i'm david katzmeyer for cnet\n"