I’ve been very open about my love for the Sony Bravia 8 II – some might say nauseatingly so – having done the modern equivalent of shouting it from the rooftops by writing about it on the internet time and time again.
When it launched last year, the Bravia 8 II didn’t so much beat its very accomplished competition; it smashed it, leaving the likes of the LG G5, Panasonic Z95B and Samsung S95F sobbing and nursing their wounds.
Rightfully, it romped to victory in the 2025 What Hi-Fi? Awards, taking the Product Of The Year gong in the TV category.
It’s testament to Sony’s achievements with the Bravia 8 II that even this year, it is still very nearly the best TV available.
Wave after wave of new rivals have appeared, both OLEDs and fancy RGB Mini LED sets, and the Bravia 8 II has stood firm, batting each back while barely breaking a sweat.
With one exception: the Samsung S99H.
Yes, the only TV that we, as a team, and I personally rate higher than the Bravia 8 II is Samsung’s flagship QD-OLED. And, I’ll confess, it isn’t the TV I expected to topple the mighty Sony.
There’s no such thing as perfection
So, the S99H (known as the S95H in most regions outside the UK, where the S95H is an entirely different model) is now perched atop our list of the best TVs, but it isn’t without its controversies.
The most obvious is its wide metal bezel, onto which the main panel is mounted to look as if it’s floating.
It’s a striking design that looks stunning when the TV is wall-mounted, but weird and incongruous when it’s plonked on a TV stand with the (let’s face it, unforgivably cheap-looking) bundled feet attached.
Samsung has done away with the excellent One Connect box of its previous OLED flagships, too. Which means that, rather than having a separate device through which all connections (and power) are routed, leaving just one cable running to the display, the S99H has a typical collection of ins and outs on its rear.
Given that the design encourages wall mounting, that’s a bit of a shame. Yes, the S99H is compatible with Samsung’s new Wireless One Connect Box, but this is an expensive optional extra that is far from widely available (I currently can’t find a single UK retailer that’s selling it).
The final fly in the ointment is a lack of Dolby Vision support. I realise this is nothing new for Samsung TVs, but it remains a major annoyance. Samsung’s own HDR10+ is all well and good from a dynamic metadata point of view, but it doesn’t marry that to ‘as the director’ picture tuning with a single preset in the way that Dolby Vision does when it’s done right.
Even better than the best where it matters
Those flaws, though, pale into insignificance in the face of everything the Samsung S99H gets right.
Picture quality is, of course, the most important factor to any TV. And the S99H is the only TV that has got the better of the Bravia 8 II in this regard.
It very much feels as though Samsung has looked at what makes the Bravia 8 II so good and found a way to beat it at its own game. So, while the S99H has a newer, significantly brighter QD-OLED panel than the Bravia 8 II, Samsung has combined that with the most subtle and cinematically authentic tuning that we have yet seen from the brand.
In other words, this is a TV that is capable of dazzling to an almost unprecedented level, that pairs perfect blacks with the sort of brightness usually associated with a top-end Mini LED model; but put it into its Filmmaker Mode and it will also deliver your movies and TV shows in the manner the director intended.
One area in which the Bravia 8 II was always head and shoulders above its rivals was solidity and three-dimensional depth. The S99H is a match for it here as well. This is an image with a great sense of scale and immersion, without any sense of over-sharpening.
There really is no way in which the S99H’s picture is anything other than excellent, regardless of what it is you look for in a TV. And it has a feature set to match.
The HDMI sockets might be mounted to the rear of the TV, but they are all full-fat HDMI 2.1 affairs (the Bravia 8 II has just two of these) capable of handling 4K/165Hz signals (the Bravia 8 II tops out at 4K/120Hz), VRR and ALLM.
And yes, if you can find one, the Wireless One Connect box can add even more HDMI 2.1 sockets, should you need them.
Pair that specification with the actual gaming performance, which is exemplary, and this really is a gamer’s delight of a TV.
Tizen is rapidly returning to the top of the smart TV platform charts, too, regaining some of the usability it lost in a redesign a few years ago while offering one of the most comprehensive app selections you will find on any TV.
All of those apps are really well optimised, too, delivering all of the resolutions and dynamic range formats they should (Dolby Vision notwithstanding).
The S99H even sounds good by TV standards. Yes, it would still be close to criminal not to pair a TV this good with a dedicated sound system, but if you really must use the integrated speakers, they are at least decent – albeit not quite to the level of the Bravia 8 II’s Acoustic Surface Audio+ setup.
All hail the new flagship TV king
All of which is to say that the Samsung S99H is a magnificent TV. It’s the one model that has finally bested the Bravia 8 II in our testing, and the only TV I would seriously consider swapping my own Sony for.
Given how much I’ve raved about the Bravia 8 II over the past year, that’s about as strong an endorsement as I can give.
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