With its new lineup of TVs, Samsung is making a decision that I think might prove somewhat divisive. The company is bringing the matte, glare-free display technology that debuted on last year’s S95D OLED to several more models — including its flagship Mini LED sets. Here at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Samsung is showcasing all of its latest TVs at its annual First Look event.

The new S95F QD-OLED gets blazingly bright, likely using a just-announced Samsung Display panel that’s technically capable of reaching 4,000 nits. According to the company, the glare-free coating has been improved to further cut down on reflections from overhead lighting, floor lamps, and sunlight. And similar to LG’s top-tier 2025 OLEDs announced earlier today, the S95F is capable of hitting a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. PC gamers, rejoice.

If you’re wondering what’s so controversial about Samsung’s glare-free screen, some people insist it results in a worse overall picture than glossy coatings and that the perfect blacks of OLED aren’t so inky black in all lighting conditions anymore. This issue has been debated at length on Reddit, in YouTube videos (hey, Caleb), and all over AVS Forum.

But clearly Samsung remains undeterred by the haters because now the glare-free display is also coming to the company’s Mini LED “Neo QLED” TVs for the first time. That includes the flagship 4K QN90F and both of this year’s 8K models. (Buying an 8K TV is very silly; I still very much recommend against doing that.) Samsung’s other 2025 4K TVs will stick with a glossy treatment, so at least there are options if you refuse to go glare-free.

These latest Mini LED TVs are also available in some truly enormous sizes: the QN90F tops out at 115 inches, while the (glossy) QN80F can be had at up to 100 inches. Samsung says the wonderfully named “Supersize Picture Enhancer” will help keep 4K content looking crisp even on that giant QN90F. You still won’t find Dolby Vision on any of these TVs no matter the size; clearly, that’s a philosophical choice at this point.

Vision AI

For 2025, Samsung is pulling all of its AI-powered TV features under new branding called Vision AI. These include the usual suspects like AI Upscaling, Auto HDR Remastering, and Adaptive Sound Pro. But there’s a new Click to Search feature that can identify actors on-screen, the location of a shot, or what clothes are featured in a scene “with just one click of the new AI button on your SolarCell remote.” Yes, there’s now a dedicated AI remote button.

Another new AI trick is Samsung Food, which “recognizes the food on your screen and provides recipes for bringing it to life.” I’m mildly curious about this and can’t wait to see how accurate or off the mark it is. Live Translate is a much more helpful addition: it can “instantly translate closed captions on live broadcasts in up to seven languages.”

The company is also using AI to provide more robust home security features. From tonight’s press release:

Samsung AI Home Security transforms your TV into a smart security hub. It analyzes video feeds from your connected cameras and audio from your TV’s microphone to provide comprehensive home monitoring.

It can detect unusual sounds and movements, such as falls or break-ins, to give you more peace of mind whether you’re at home, or away.

You’ll receive alerts and notifications on your phone or directly on your TV screen, helping you stay connected to your home while ensuring the safety and well-being of your loved ones.

Samsung is even leveling up Bixby, which isn’t something we’ve said in a long time. The company’s voice assistant can now “better understand context and assist with multiple actions — like changing the channel and raising the volume at the same time.” You can also now control your Samsung TV with the Galaxy Watch on your wrist. That’s got absolutely nothing to do with AI, but it might be convenient at times.

As for its lifestyle TVs, Samsung is announcing The Frame Pro, which you can read all about here. Pricing for all of these 2025 TVs will be announced over the next few months, and they’ll begin to ship this spring.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

The company created a sensation by making TVs that look more like art and less like tech. With The Frame Pro, Samsung is trying to deliver the best of both worlds.

Samsung’s The Frame has been enormously popular ever since its release. There’s no shortage of imitators at this point, with other manufacturers trying their hand at creating a TV that seamlessly blends in with home decor and can also convincingly look like wall art when idle. But none have captured lightning in a bottle quite like Samsung.

And in 2025, Samsung is looking to fend off copycats by introducing The Frame Pro. With the artwork side of things well handled, now the company is aiming to make The Frame Pro a good TV for everything else. The Frame has nailed the aesthetics and style from the start. People buy it for the vibe more than anything else. But as a TV, it’s always just been, well... fine. There wasn’t much wow factor in terms of brightness or the overall picture quality that came with the nice design. That might be changing now.

There are two main upgrades that put the “pro” in The Frame Pro. First, Samsung is moving to Mini LED, which the company says will give The Frame Pro a boost in contrast, brightness, and black levels. The regular Frame, which isn’t going anywhere, has never offered any local dimming to speak of.

But there’s an important caveat: this isn’t Mini LED in the regular sense. Normally, Mini LED TVs contain a ton of small dimming zones behind the screen. This lets them be way more precise in lighting up only the sections of the display that need it while preserving black levels and shadow detail elsewhere. The Frame Pro doesn’t do that.

Instead, Samsung is placing Mini LEDs along the bottom of the screen, while claiming that this approach still produces some level of local dimming. To me, it all still very much sounds like an edge-lit TV. But I’ll give this “Mini LED” tech a fair chance whenever I get one in for review.

Samsung is also boosting The Frame Pro’s maximum refresh rate from 120Hz to 144Hz, so PC gamers can get even smoother visuals than before. But if you were hoping “pro” might finally mean Dolby Vision support, that’s still a no.

The Frame has always been something of a compromise; maybe you’ve got a significant other who refuses to allow a dull black rectangle into the living room. So you, being the good and considerate person you are, ultimately agree to “settle” on The Frame. After first hearing about The Frame Pro, I was hopeful that it would be much less of a compromise.

But this asterisk around Mini LED has me a little less excited. Like recent models, The Frame Pro’s display has a matte finish to give your preferred art a more authentic appearance and mask the reality that you’re looking at a screen. But matte screens can sometimes lessen a display’s punch, so genuine Mini LED backlighting could’ve helped quite a bit in that regard.

The second major improvement is that The Frame Pro no longer has a thin wire running between it and Samsung’s breakout box that houses all the HDMI inputs and the TV’s other brains: that connection has gone fully wireless. This will result in an even cleaner look with less cable clutter. And the Wireless One Connect Box, which supports up to Wi-Fi 7, eliminates yet another telltale sign that The Frame Pro is a television. Now, all you’ve got to worry about concealing is the display’s power cord. Samsung says the wireless connection between the box and TV works at distances of up to 10 meters, “even with obstacles in its path.”

The Frame Pro is also getting the same litany of AI-powered features as Samsung’s other 2025 TVs. AI is such a focus this year that there’s a dedicated button on the remote for activating Click to Search, which can show you “who the actors are in a given scene, where that scene is taking place, or even the clothing the characters are wearing,” according to Samsung’s press release.

A new Samsung Food feature can recognize dishes onscreen and provide you with the recipes to make them — or something in the same ballpark, at least. Beyond that, the company is dialing up its AI-enhanced picture and sound optimizations, and AI is also reaching into accessibility features like Live Translate, which can “instantly translate closed captions on live broadcasts in up to seven languages.” That’s very neat.

The critical question is one I can’t answer yet: how much will this thing cost? How much more expensive will The Frame Pro be compared to the regular model? Samsung won’t be sharing pricing details until closer to the spring when it ships. If the company gets cocky and goes too high, that could ruin a lot of the appeal here. But if you already know that some version of The Frame is in your future, you’re probably very happy that The Frame Pro now exists.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

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Samsung is kicking off 2025 with a lineup of new AI-enhanced televisions. At CES 2025, Samsung unveiled the Neo QLED 8K QN990F and QN900F, plus the Neo QLED 4K QN90F, QN80F and QN70F. The TVs come with glare-free technology and a suite of AI features driven by Samsung Vision AI.

The Neo QLED 8K QN990F is Samsung’s top-of-the-line model and it features a super-slim, minimalist footprint and an NQ8 AI Gen3 Processor. Its AI abilities include proprietary 8K upscaling, frame-by-frame HDR remastering, adaptive sound, color boosting and AI Mode, which automatically optimizes picture and sound based on the content on screen. These represent updates to existing Samsung AI efforts.

In line with the minimalist aesthetic, Samsung is also shipping a Wireless One Connect Box for the QN990F, allowing users to keep their TV space wire-free. This is similar to LG’s Zero Connect Box, and it’s a clever bit of clutter-clearing equipment. Samsung claims the Wireless One Connect Box works at a distance of up to 10 meters, even with obstacles in its transmission path.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s QLED 4K line features an NQ4 AI Gen3 Processor, 4K AI Upscaling Pro, improved picture quality and a 165Hz refresh rate. The QN80F has a 100-inch option, while the QN90F comes in 115 inches.

Samsung’s AI ambitions cover all of its 2025 TVs, with Vision AI delivering new personalization and optimization features across the board. Click to Search can identify people, places and products on-screen and then provide relevant information about these things in real time. Identify the actors in a scene, specific pieces of clothing or the displayed location, for instance. In a similar vein, the new Samsung Food ability can identify the grub on your TV and even provide relevant recipes. This feature can also analyze the contents of your connected Samsung fridge and build specific shopping lists, or prompt you to order groceries or takeout from the TV using third-party apps.

Samsung AI Home Security turns your TV into a house-monitoring hub. It leverages the built-in microphone and connected cameras on your Samsung TV, and can detect unusual sounds and movements. It then delivers alerts to your phone or directly on the TV. Live Translate delivers real-time subtitle translations, and Generative Wallpaper allows users to create dynamic, personalized art canvases.

In OLED land, Samsung is introducing the S95F, S90F and S85F. As the flagship in this line, the S95F includes an NQ4 AI Gen3 Processor, improved glare-free technology, a 165Hz variable refresh rate and a brighter display than ever before.

There's also The Frame Pro, a TV so special that we have a separate story all about its new features.

As usual, Samsung is primed to reveal more details about pricing and availability of its new hardware during CES 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/samsungs-ces-2025-tv-lineup-includes-8k-ai-enhancements-and-a-wireless-connect-box-030058512.html?src=rss

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Samsung's Frame series of TVs are one of the best solutions available for making a giant display blend more seamlessly into your home. At CES 2025, the company is expanding its lineup with the Frame Pro, a more advanced version of the TV that includes Samsung's top-of-the-line Neo QLED panel. The catch is that we don't yet know if Samsung is using a 4K or 8K panel here, a choice that'll significantly affect how much the Frame Pro costs when it eventually launches (Samsung hasn't provided a price or release date yet, in true CES fashion). 

Besides the panel, the Frame Pro also uses Samsung's Wireless One Connect box, which lets you transmit content from consoles or set-top boxes to the TV without needing to plug things in directly. Instead, you plug into the Wireless One Connect and it'll beam things to the TV, which means you can make a much cleaner, cable-free setup that feels particularly useful with a set like the Frame.

It also uses Samsung's NQ4 Gen3 AI processor, an update on the 2nd-generation one that Samsung used on some of its sets last year. As is usually the case, we don't know exactly what this does for the set, but given the amount pixels a modern TV needs to push, an annual update makes sense. The NQ4 also gives a hint that this might be a 4K rather than 8K panel, as Samsung's just-announced Neo QLED 8K QN990F TV uses the NQ8 processor — perhaps the 4 or 8 are a nod to the TV's resolution. Either way, we'll know more soon.

For those who haven't seen the Frame before, it's a TV meant to be mounted to the wall, complete with a frame that's more reminiscent of something you might find in an art gallery rather than a media room. When you turn it off, you can choose to have it display a fine art image from a collection Samsung has curated, and the screen itself is matte with anti-glare coating that goes a long way towards making it feel like just another big TV mounted to a wall.

As is typically the case, Samsung is holding a CES showcase tonight where we'll get to see the Frame Pro as well as other new Samsung TVs in person — if we get more details on the Frame Pro, we'll update this post. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/samsungs-frame-pro-tv-features-the-companys-high-end-neo-qled-panel-030042346.html?src=rss

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Samsung has new soundbars and updates to an existing model to show off at CES 2025. First, the HW-QS700F is an all-new speaker that's designed to sit on a shelf or TV stand, but it can also be mounted at 90 degrees flat on a wall under a TV. The QS700F can optimize the sound based on how you've situated it for the best performance. It will come with a wireless subwoofer, but it's unclear if rear satellite speakers are part of the package. 

The company's flagship soundbar returns for 2025 with a significant tweak. The HW-Q990F will remain an all-in-one package with wireless subwoofer and rear satellite speakers included and retains the same angular look. But, the company says it reduced the size of the sub to less than half of the previous version. What's more, Samsung explains that it did so while providing even more powerful audio performance from the unit. As someone who reviewed both the Q990D and Q990C, I can tell you the previous subwoofer was enormous, so this is a great update. 

The Q990F remains an 11.1.4-channel speaker with "clearer, richer and more effortless sound" and Dolby Atmos support. The included rear surround speakers also pack in up-firing drivers, which enhances the overall effect of the immersive audio. And as I've noted before, having everything in one package is convenient and saves you from having to make extra purchases on top of a pricey soundbar. 

Samsung

Samsung will use AI to boost sound quality on its soundbars in 2025. Two features, Active Voice Amplifier Pro and Q-Symphony Pro, use artificial intelligence to enhance dialog over background noise and analyze sound with a Samsung TV's processor respectively. The company says Q-Symphony Pro will also be available on two new B-series soundbars, the HW-B750F and HW-B650F, which will arrive in 2025. 

Another item Samsung is keen to discuss at CES is its Eclipsa Audio platform it's developing in collaboration with Google. Details are scarce on the new 3D audio standard for now, but Samsung has already said its 2025 TVs and soundbars will support it. According to the press release, Eclipsa Audio enables content creators to adjust sound data and location for spatial audio. It sounds like Samsung and Google are developing their own take on Dolby Atmos. What's more, Samsung says creators will be able to upload videos with Eclipsa Audio to YouTube later this year, but there's no word on support for other platforms yet. 

Samsung first announced plans to develop 3D spatial audio in 2023 when it collaborated with Google on Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF). IAMF was adopted by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), which lists Amazon, Apple and Netflix among its members. This also isn't the first time Samsung has shunned Dolby as it has opted for HDR10+ over Dolby Vision for its TVs. 

There's no word on pricing and availability on any of the new soundbar models just yet. That info is likely to arrive closer to launch. For reference, the Q990D is $2,000, but once again, it includes a subwoofer and rear speakers. Sony's Bar 9 is $1,400 just for the soundbar itself.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/samsung-debuts-the-qs700f-soundbar-and-updates-the-q990-at-ces-2025-030042257.html?src=rss

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