Samsung Q60D QLED Review

QLED here means a quantum dot film and nothing more. The Q60D is edge-lit with no local dimming whatsoever, so contrast comes down to the native VA ratio and every dark scene arrives as a uniform grey lift rather than as black, with the flashlighting along the bottom edge that edge-lit panels have always had. Peak output sits around 400 nits, fine for daytime broadcast and not enough to make HDR mean anything. The tone mapping simply squeezes everything into a range the panel can physically reach.

Refresh is 60Hz native with no variable refresh and no FreeSync, so a current console gets a television that cannot use half of what it outputs. Tizen is quick, the remote is good, the panel is genuinely slim, and none of that is what anybody buys a television for. The problem is not that a cheap set is cheap. It is that the 65-inch listed at $999 while Hisense and TCL were selling Mini LED backlights with hundreds of dimming zones, 144Hz panels and Dolby Vision for the same money or less. The badge is doing all the work here.