Is Micro RGB Finally a Reason to Upgrade Your TV? (Samsung R95H Review) (Video)

Samsung's 85-inch R95H stopped me mid-step the first time it turned on, and the reason was color. Brightness and size are the usual pitch for a flagship TV. This one's pitch is how it makes red, green, and blue in the first place, and you can see the difference in about 20 seconds.

A typical LCD TV starts with a white backlight and filters its way to color, throwing away whatever light it doesn't want. That works, but colors come out a little thin because some of the light never makes it through. The R95H replaces the white backlight with thousands of tiny red, green, and blue lights that produce color at the source. Each light also switches on and off by itself, so dark parts of a scene go properly dark.

You see it right away. Reds look deep and saturated, and greens look alive. Samsung says the panel covers 100 percent of the BT.2020 color range and beats what the best OLED TVs can manage. I didn't measure that, and I didn't need a chart to see it.

My living room is full of light. On most TVs, daytime dark scenes become a mirror of me and the windows behind me. I worried Samsung's glare-free finish would mute the picture. It didn't, and the R95H kept showing the picture so well that I wondered why I'd been saving my good viewing for after dark. The Hisense UR9, the other RGB TV I reviewed recently, turned into a mirror in that same light.

For games, you get 4K at up to 165Hz, variable refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and auto low latency mode, which switches to game mode the moment you power on a console. There are four HDMI inputs with eARC. Samsung doesn't publish an input lag number, so here's how it felt: after hours on Xbox Series X and PS5 Pro, I never noticed a delay between the controller and the screen. Samsung's AI Motion Enhancer Pro also keeps a soccer ball, a golf shot, or a scrolling ticker from smearing.

The built-in sound is a 70-watt Dolby Atmos 4.2.2 system with Object Tracking Sound+, so effects move around the room. They're some of the best TV speakers I've heard. They won't replace a soundbar, and no TV I've tried does. The feature I didn't expect to like is AI Sound Controller Pro, which splits audio into voices, crowd, and background and lets you adjust each one. I assumed it was a gimmick, but it works better than it has any right to. You can turn up the commentary and turn down the crowd during a game, or keep dialogue clear at night while everything else stays quiet.

The catch is price. The R95H retails at $6,500, and the lowest sale price I've seen is $5,500. If you're the person who notices when a red doesn't look like a red, and your budget has room, this is some of the best color you can hang on a wall. Samsung doesn't own this idea, though. Hisense got its RGB TV out first, and the UR9 costs a lot less for the same core approach, as long as your room isn't flooded with daylight. If you want the R95H because it says Samsung or because it's new, I don't think the badge is worth the extra money on its own.

That stop-and-stare moment from the first day hasn't faded. Firing up a game or HDR content still grabs me, and the R95H has made me more annoyed at every other screen in my house.