When comparing Samsung Q8C 75" (QN75Q8C) vs Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E), the Slant community recommends Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E) is ranked 10th while Samsung Q8C 75" (QN75Q8C) is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E) is:
The Sony A1E is an 4K OLED TV with perfectly uniform blacks and infinite contrast ratio, achieved by its ability to manipulate pixels individually. This, along with its color uniformity and wide color gamut, gives it exceptional picture quality and makes it the perfect choice for movies. It also has no issues with brightness levels as the panel can reach up to ~650 nits of brightness when playing HDR content, and it handles reflections very well.
Specs
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Pros
Pro No image retention problems
Unlike the OLED TVs, it does not suffer from any image retention so you can leave the TV on for long periods without having to worry about pixel damage.
Pro Ideal for console gaming
The TV is fully compatible with all the current generation gaming consoles, including the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U. The Q8C also supports HDR gaming, which will allow you to experience the full range of HDR effects in the latest console games, like Hitman, NBA 2K17, Final Fantasy XV, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and World of Tanks.
Pro Good for watching sports
The Samsung Q8C is an excellent option for sports fans as the TV can display fast and dynamic content very clearly. The clear representation of dynamic content is achieved by the TV’s rapid pixel response time of 10.7 ms which almost eliminates the motion-blur effect. As the pixels can change their colors in nearly 1/100th of a second, fast-moving objects don't leave trails.
Additionally, the Samsung Q8C is especially good for watching outdoor sports, like football, rugby or golf, because the TV has high color uniformity which makes sports fields look more even and consistent.
Pro Has a large panel
The Samsung Q8C comes with a massive 75-inch LED panel. The panel has around 2400 square-inches of viewable area, which is a third more than what the 65-inch competitors offer.
Pro HDR-ready TV
The Samsung Q8C is more than capable of handling HDR content because of the TV’s wide color gamut, high HDR peak brightness, good native contrast ratio, and uniform blacks.
Pro Curved panel gives extra deep experience
The main feature of the Samsung Q8C is its curved panel which can give you an immersive feeling of being surrounded by the TV. However, if you are not a fan of curved TVs, there is a flat, equally priced version of the Samsung Q8C simply called the Samsung Q8.
Pro Eye-catching design
Tthe Samsung Q8C looks great because of its extra thin bezel and brushed metal finish on all exterior parts which make the TV look classy.
Pro Good reflection handling
It's an excellent choice for bright rooms with lots of windows because of the TV’s ability to handle reflections, which is achieved by the aid of the TV’s glossy screen finish and anti-reflective coating.
Pro Accessible inputs
Samsung Q8C comes with the One Connect box which moves all the hard-to-access rear inputs away from the TV. This way, you’ll always have full access to all inputs and outputs of the TV even if it’s mounted on a wall. Additionally, the One Connect box can be used as a USB charging hub.
Pro Stylish remote
The Samsung Q8C comes with an eye-catching remote. The remote is made from metal and has a shiny metal finish. Apart from being stylish, the remote offers some extended functionality, like a microphone and voice control.
Pro Nice-looking picture
Picture-wise, the Samsung Q8C has everything necessary to provide excellent quality.
The TV can reproduce eye-catching bright scenes; especially in HDR mode, where it can sustain up to 700 nits of brightness making its colors look genuinely crisp and vivid. In SDR mode, however, the sustained luminosity drops to 400 nits, which is still higher than what the competitors in the price range of the Q8C offer.
As for dark scenes, the Samsung Q8C has it all sorted as its panel has a relatively high native contrast ratio of 4761:1, combined with well-uniformed blacks; which allows for deep scenes with noticeable brightness shifts among multiple regions of the screen.
Pro Excellent gaming TV
The Samsung Q8C offers smooth and lag-free gaming experience because of its low input lag and well-managed motion blur.
The input lag of the Q8C is 23.6 ms, which means that it takes less than 1/40th of a second for a TV to react to the input from an external source like a click of a button. In terms of input lag, the Samsung Q8C is on par with its closest competitors, including the LG seven series OLED TVs.
The panel has a full pixel response time of 10.7 ms, ensuring that it takes less than 1/100th of a second for its pixels to change their color; thus, even fast-moving objects won’t leave trails on the screen. As a result, the TV has almost negligible motion blur.
Pro Perfect TV for movies and HDR content
The Sony A1E is an 4K OLED TV with perfectly uniform blacks and infinite contrast ratio, achieved by its ability to manipulate pixels individually. This, along with its color uniformity and wide color gamut, gives it exceptional picture quality and makes it the perfect choice for movies. It also has no issues with brightness levels as the panel can reach up to ~650 nits of brightness when playing HDR content, and it handles reflections very well.
Pro Virtually no reflections
The Sony A1E's panel has a glossy finish that handles reflections exceptionally well.
Pro Great performance in bright environments
The Sony A1E has a practical peak brightness of ~650nits for both SDR and HDR content — it can sustain this level of brightness when playing content. While the number here isn't very impressive compared to some other high-end TVs (e.g. the Sony X930E with ~1.4k nits of brightness), the panel of this TV offsets this by being an OLED. It can handle reflections very well and will not have any issues with fighting light in bright environments.
Pro Decent sound quality
The sound quality of the Sony A1E is suprisingly good for a TV (which isn't known for having good sound). The speakers can get really loud without much distortion happening, and its frequency response is perhaps one of the best measured in a TV's speakers. While an external audio set-up will definitely be better, the built-in speakers should suffice for most users that doesn't wish to spend additional money on an audio set-up.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
The Sony A1E runs on Android TV — normal Android apps from the Google Play Store (or other app stores) will work on it.
Pro Interface is ads-free
The user interface of modern smart TVs can include some advertisements similar to those on the internet or in a mobile app. The Sony A1E does not include any, and it also has a feature for limiting ads in third-party applications.
Pro Excellent for dark rooms
The Sony A1E performs exceptionally well in dark environments. Its ability to produce absolute and perfect blacks means the reproduction of dark highlights and scenes in movies will look great — this is further improved when there's no light around the TV as it allows the blacks to stand out more. This makes it great for watching all sorts of movies in a cinema-like setting, particularly movies with many black highlights/scenes where this is immediately noticeable even to undiscerning viewers (e.g. Interstellar).
Pro Extremely low motion blur
Because the Sony A1E has an OLED panel, it has near-perfect pixel response time; the motion blur is virtually non-existent at sub-1ms, which means this TV will have no issues with displaying extremely fast-moving objects — they will look smooth without any blur or lag.
Pro Decent for gaming
Input lag is one of the most important factors when considering a TV for gaming — it's representative of how fast the TV can display the image after receiving the input. The Sony A1E has ~30-40ms of input lag, which is decent enough for most gamers, but competitive gamers might find this lacking.
Pro Dark scenes are perfectly reproduced
The Sony A1E can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its OLED panel, which gives it infinite contrast ratios — it can reproduce dark scenes perfectly because of this.
Pro Wide viewing angle
The picture quality of the Sony A1E does not suffer from much deterioration when viewed from other angles. The brightness will decrease with deviations in viewing angles, but the black levels seem to be maintained perfectly.
Pro Excellent for watching sports
The Sony A1E's versatility is top-notch. The motion blur (sub-1ms) along with great overall color uniformity makes it an excellent choice for sports.
Pro Great color reproduction
The color gamut of a TV refers to the range of colors the display can reproduce — the wider the color gamut, the more colors it can display, and the better the overall picture quality will be. This is extremely important for HDR content because it requires a much wider color gamut than SDR content. The Sony A1E has no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR.
Cons
Con Not good for group watching
Unfortunately, the curved panel of the Samsung Q8C looks good only from a single spot, which is located at the center of a circle made by the curve. If you need a TV that is suitable for group watching, this might not be the right option for you.
Con Narrow viewing angle
The maximum viewing angle of this TV is 14 degrees, making it useless for group watching, as those who view the TV from the sides will see degraded colors and shadows.
Con Suffers from image retention issues
The main drawback of OLED panels are image retention issues with static images — pixels on the panel gets burned in when the picture doesn't change for extended periods of time. Noteworthily, the static image doesn't have to be whole like a full wallpaper on the TV; it can happen with content that has a static image anywhere on the screen (e.g. the logo of some TV channels).
As the Sony A1E has an OLED panel, it unfortunately suffers from this problem. There might be some retainment of artifacts for ~10 minutes when this happens, and it usually goes away after watching other content without static images. It's worth noting that while this issue is present, the Sony A1E reportedly handles this pretty well — most users report the artifacts going away only ~5minutes of playing normal content.
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The Sony A1E can currently only play HDR10 content. It does not support Dolby Vision.
Con Might be hard to access inputs when mounted to a wall
The Sony A1E is extremely thin and it has a reflective finish on the back. After mounting it to a wall, the inputs might be hard to access and because of the reflective finish, it can pick up fingerprints/smudges when attempting to access the inputs (which also becomes hard to clean because of how thin it is).