Gadgetory

in this box is the q9f one of the highest end TVs that Samsung makes this thing is 65 inches 4k it's got a quantum dot display it's HDR it's got big speed voice basically all the bells and whistles oh and it's beautiful but that's not actually what we care about today almost exactly a year ago we made a video investigating the gaming experience on LG's Nano cell TV with a focus on input lag but there's a lot more to a gaming display than just low input lag which brings us to this this is the first TV to reach our lab with variable refresh rate support right out of the box you guys heard me this puppy right here has free sync so naturally we wasted no time at all hooking it up to yeah got you guys there's nothing in there I did say we wasted no time at all so it's already hooked up to an Xbox one X and a Vega equipped PC so we could test it let's dive right in shall we after we all dive into my pants where I can show you my Mac Wheldon underwear yes my friends Mac Wheldon underwear is so comfortable that if you don't like it you can get a full refund with their Tryon guarantee use offer code tectus at the link below to get 20% off so some of you are probably wondering first of all do I really have to spend over $3,000 on a fancy q9f if I want freesync and second how did Samsung manage to deliver a variable refresh rate display to my living room before the Nvidia big format gaming displays that we saw at CES 10 months ago the answer to both of them has to do with how free sync is implemented so even though the announcement only came in late March of this year Samsung was able to push free sync support to almost their entire 2018 lineup including the $700 49 inch and you eight thousand because unlike Nvidia g-sync free sync does not require a proprietary not to mention pricy Hardware module to be included in the display instead free sync relies on hardware that is already baked into industry standard basis Pesa fication x' like DisplayPort and in this case HDMI now to be clear hdmi 2.0 ports like the ones found on the back of the q9 F's external one connect box weren't originally designed to include variable refresh rate the way that DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.1 ports were but hdmi 2.0 does allow vendor specific extensions which is exactly how Microsoft added free sync to their Xbox 1s and Xbox one X back in April this year giving AMD and Samsung a built-in audience of millions of gamers and therefore a strong incentive to tack free sync onto these TVs improving the gaming experience now the main benefit of free sync and other variable refresh rate technologies is that it synchronizes the framerate of your game with the refresh rate of your display to combat stuttering or hitching during animations and tearing a visual anomaly where the top and the bottom of the frame aren't aligned in the real world we found that the main benefit is that it makes frame rate dips that occur during intense scenes less noticeable that is as long as the dips aren't too low bringing us to this important point just because a TV has free sink doesn't mean that it's just like a make everything good button or that it's even a good implementation of it and the main factor here is something called the variable refresh rate range so any display has a limit to how fast it can go but this variable refresh rate range also specifies a limit to how slow it can refresh so like if you buy a 60 Hertz monitor and you play csgo on a high-end PC that can push out 200 frames per second turning on free sync isn't going to magically make your monitor refresh at 200 Hertz your eye is still gonna see 60 frames every second then on the other end of the spectrum if your game renders below the lower limit of your free synced display the display will be forced to repeat some of the frames that has received and this introduces stuttering so back to our TV now then Samsung's free sync implementation has three different ranges to keep in the back of your mind if your PC gaming at 1080p you got two options basic with a range of 90 to 120 fps and ultimate with a range of 48 to 120 fps and it should be noted that I'm using fps and Hertz sort of interchangeably here because that's kind of the point as for if you're plugged into an Xbox one S or 1x basic won't even be an option as for why anyone would even want to use basic well supposedly it can help resolve flickering issues that LCDs can sometimes run into at high frame rates as for 4k gaming well there you're going to be left with a much narrower range it's pretty common for 4k monitors to offer a 40 to 60 FPS range but here on this TV you only get 48 to 60 making the sweet spot just 12 frames wide before you'll start to get stutters when the action gets intense in fairness this thing is mostly targeting console gamers which at the moment basically means it's for the Xbox one X and for the most part game developers work hard to optimize their games for a smooth experience anyway and in some cases they actually do such a good job that in halo 5 Guardians for example we didn't see any stuttering or tearing with or without free sync on with that said severe framerate drops definitely do happen especially when there's a lot going on at once and this implementation of free sync isn't going to help you with all of them because even though the Xbox 1s and One X support free sync - which includes low framerate compensation this TV only supports a modified free sync 1 so it's got HDR which is kind of a free sync to feature but it doesn't have LFC so then while having free sync on removed to the frequent tearing during Call of Duty World War 2 zine engine cutscenes it didn't do much to combat the hitching that happens when you move into new areas of the map or when Forza 7s trying to load up your car and character model before a race so then should you get a free synced TV like this one today from just an overall experience standpoint yeah yeah maybe I mean it's not like you're paying extra for it and it looks great in the input lag is even less than the ones we tested last time around but if you are specifically after a robust variable refresh rate experienced well then it gets a little bit tougher because there is a lot coming in the next year or two that is going to change the landscape here so desync TVs from the likes of HP a sous and acer are gonna be coming out in the we hope next few months here and I mean this year we might even see TVs from Samsung that are equipped with HDMI 2.1 which would mean among other things 4k at 120 Hertz and the real full fat official variable refresh rate implementation so if you desperately need a TV today is certainly better than not having it but as it always is with high technology well you could get it even better if you wait speaking of waiting don't wait check out fresh books the small business accounting software that's custom-built for how you want to work if you're a small business owner or a freelancer freshbooks is a simple way to be 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