Samsung TVs accused of cheating in benchmarks, official denies

Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones has previously been accused of cheating benchmarks, limiting the performance of games and other apps in the name of “optimization.” It is not uncommon for manufacturers to go to great lengths to highlight the performance benefits of their products, such as “skillfully” selecting appropriate test items or picking favorable test criteria to exclude underperforming ones. Almost all manufacturers do this, although some of Samsung’s recent TV benchmarking has been questioned.

According to FlatPanelsHD, both Samsung’s S95B and QN95B TVs appear to contain cheats designed to recognize whether or not a benchmark is being run. Typically, TVs use 10% of the screen for testing, calibration, etc. Samsung has programmed this with this in mind and will make the TV behave differently during benchmarks, temporarily boosting performance, but actually in normal use is unsustainable.

FlatPanelsHD found that the test mode window made a difference when running at 9% and 10% area, with completely different brightness and color readiness. When tested with a standard 10% window, these TVs were about 80% brighter, going from 1300 nits to 2300 nits, and wouldn’t exceed 1300 nits if the window was shrunk down to 9%.

Samsung officials denied the allegations in a reply to FlatPanelsHD, saying they would be addressed in a future update:

“Samsung will continue to focus on continuous product innovation to provide our consumers with the best possible picture quality. In order to provide consumers with a more dynamic viewing experience, Samsung will provide software updates to ensure that HDR content that exceeds industry standards is displayed in larger consistent brightness across the size of the window.”

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