Samsung S85F QN77S85FAEXZA 77"

The Samsung S85F is a massive 77-inch OLED that nails the fundamentals: perfect blacks, accurate color, and top-tier gaming features with four HDMI 2.1 ports. HDR brightness is the main compromise here, so it's best in a darker room. Pricing is aggressive, making it one of the best value OLEDs at this size. If you can live without Dolby Vision and want a huge, immersive screen for movies and games without breaking the bank, this is the one to beat.

Let's talk about what this panel does well. The near-infinite contrast is the star of the show, as it always is with OLED. Black pixels just turn off completely, so you get that incredible depth in dark movie scenes or moody games. The Pantone Validated color accuracy is a nice touch, meaning colors look natural and true right out of the box without you needing to mess with a million settings. The Motion Xcelerator 120Hz keeps things buttery smooth, and multiple customer reviews specifically call out how well it handles PC gaming at 120Hz with no ghosting. One owner running an RTX 4090 mentioned the setup was seamless and the TV auto-detected everything perfectly.

The NQ4 AI Gen2 processor does a solid job upscaling lower-resolution content. You're not going to be stuck watching a blurry mess if you're still hanging onto some old 1080p shows. It sharpens things up intelligently without making everything look like a weird soap opera, unless you want that. The gaming chops are genuinely impressive for a TV in this price bracket. The 86th percentile gaming score puts it well above average, and having four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports is a bigger deal than it sounds. Most TVs in this class still skimp and give you only two, so you won't be swapping cables if you have multiple consoles and a PC hooked up.

The LG C5 is the most direct competitor you should be cross-shopping. LG's OLED evo panels typically get brighter than Samsung's standard OLEDs, and the C5's HDR performance will likely outshine the S85F in a side-by-side comparison. LG also uses Dolby Vision, which Samsung stubbornly refuses to support in favor of HDR10+. If you have a lot of Dolby Vision content on streaming services or Blu-ray, that's a real point in LG's favor. But Samsung fights back with that gaming feature set and often a lower street price.

Then there's the Sony A95L, which is in a different league entirely. It uses a QD-OLED panel that delivers both perfect blacks and incredible color volume and brightness. It's the absolute best picture quality you can buy right now, but you'll pay a massive premium for it. On the flip side, the TCL QM7K and Hisense U8 series are Mini-LED TVs that can't match the per-pixel contrast of OLED, but they get searingly bright and cost less per inch. If you're in a sun-drenched living room and watch a lot of daytime sports, a bright Mini-LED might actually serve you better than this Samsung OLED.

Pricing on this set is all over the map depending on where you look, with a wild spread from $990 to $30,000 across vendors. Obviously, ignore that $30,000 outlier, that's likely a bundle with a mount and protection plan that got scraped weirdly. The real story here is that you can find this 77-inch OLED for well under two grand from major retailers, which is a steal for a screen this size with this feature set. Best Buy seems to be the most consistent vendor with straightforward pricing and a price match guarantee, so that's where we'd start looking.

When you stack it up against the competition, the value proposition gets really interesting. The Sony BRAVIA XR A95L is a QD-OLED masterpiece but costs significantly more. The LG C5 is the direct rival and trades blows, often with better HDR brightness but at a higher price. The S85F undercuts them both while still delivering that core OLED experience. If you can live without the absolute peak brightness and plan to use it in a darker room, the money you save here could buy a very nice soundbar to fix the weak built-in audio.

Samsung's S85F sits in a sweet spot that's getting harder to ignore. You're getting a massive 77-inch OLED panel with those perfect, inky blacks the technology is famous for, but without the eye-watering price tag that usually comes with screens this size. The display itself lands in the 97th percentile in our database, which basically means it's one of the absolute best panels you can buy right now in terms of raw visual real estate and tech. Samsung is pushing their 'Vision AI' and the NQ4 AI Gen2 processor here, and while the AI branding can feel a bit buzzword-heavy, the actual picture processing does some heavy lifting for upscaling and motion.

Who is this for? It's a killer pick for gamers and home theater fans who want a huge, immersive screen. The gaming score of 88.4 out of 100 tells you this thing is built to handle a PS5, Xbox Series X, or a beefy PC without breaking a sweat. You've got four HDMI 2.1 ports with 120Hz support, FreeSync Premium, and ALLM, so it auto-switches to low-latency game mode the second you fire up a console. But it's also a strong budget pick for a premium OLED, scoring an 86 out of 100 in that category, which means it delivers a lot of that flagship experience for less cash.

But there's a catch, and it's one you'll want to think about. The HDR brightness is where Samsung made some compromises to hit this price. It scores in the 38th percentile for HDR, which is frankly disappointing for an OLED in 2025. It'll handle HDR10+ content just fine, but it lacks the searing peak highlights you'd get from a QD-OLED or a high-end Mini-LED set. If you're in a bright room, this TV won't punch through the glare the way some competitors do. In a dedicated, light-controlled space though, that contrast is still going to look stunning.

If your TV room is flooded with natural light and you do most of your watching during the day, this is not your TV. The HDR brightness is the Achilles' heel here, and you'll constantly be fighting reflections and wishing the picture had more punch. Look at a bright Mini-LED set like the TCL QM7K or Hisense U8 instead. Those won't give you the perfect per-pixel blacks, but they'll cut through glare and deliver a more vibrant picture in a bright environment.

Also, if you're a home theater purist who demands Dolby Vision support for your 4K Blu-ray collection, Samsung's ongoing refusal to license the format means you should look at the LG C5 or Sony A95L. The HDR10+ ecosystem has grown, but Dolby Vision is still more widely supported across streaming services and physical media. And if you're expecting room-filling sound from the TV alone, you'll be disappointed. Budget for a soundbar, or consider a Sony OLED which generally has better built-in acoustic surface audio.

For the dedicated home theater enthusiast on a budget, this TV is a no-brainer. Put it in a basement or a room where you can control the light, pair it with a decent soundbar or surround system, and you'll get a cinematic experience that feels like it should cost twice as much. The 77-inch size is the real sweet spot for immersion, and the gaming performance means it pulls double duty as the ultimate living room gaming display. The overwhelmingly positive customer reviews back this up, with multiple people calling it a massive upgrade from older sets and budget brands.

But if you're putting this in a bright, open-concept living room with lots of windows, think twice. The HDR brightness just isn't there to fight glare and make specular highlights pop in a well-lit environment. You'd be better served by a bright Mini-LED like the Hisense U8 or even stepping up to an LG C5 with its brighter OLED evo panel. And if you're a stickler for the absolute best picture quality and have the budget, the Sony A95L remains the king of the hill, though your wallet will feel the difference.