HDTVTest’s annual TV Shootout contest has once again brought together the best TVs of the year from the world’s biggest brands to determine which one reigns supreme as the absolute pinnacle of consumer display technology. Having lost out to Sony last year, Samsung once again emerged at the top of the pile, with its flagship 2026 OLED TV ranking ahead of the best models from LG and its eternal Japanese rival.
This year’s contest, led by HDTVTest’s chief reviewer and YouTuber extraordinaire Vincent Teoh, was one of the fiercest blind shootouts we’ve seen in years, featuring four heavyweight televisions that have all earned stellar reviews: the LG G6 OLED, the Samsung S99H QD-OLED, the Sony Bravia 8 II QD-OLED and the Sony Bravia 9 II True RGB LED TVs.
Regular readers and viewers of Vincent’s popular YouTube channel will notice that this year’s shootout lineup has a very different feel to it. For the first time in years, Vincent decided to welcome back an LED LCD TV model to take on the best OLED TVs the industry has to offer. This decision was taken due to the rapid emergence of RGB LED displays as a truly viable alternative to self-emissive OLED technology, which was widely regarded as the most superior consumer display tech available in the last few years.
This year saw the launch of multiple premium RGB LED models, with Sony’s Bravia 9 II joined by the likes of Hisense’s URS9 (based on RGB-Mini LED display technology), LG’s MRGB95 (Micro RGB), Samsung’s R95H (Micro RGB), and the TCL’s X11L (SQD-Mini LED). And so to determine which RGB LED TV should get the honour of taking on the best OLED models, Vincent decided to include a semi-final round for the first time ever.
That contest took place last week, and saw the Sony Bravia 9 II emerge as the champion of RGB LED TVs by some distance, blowing away its backlit competitors thanks to its peerless colour accuracy, its unparalleled near-black detail and blooming suppression, its stunning bright room performance and more.
Having established the fourth model for the 2026 TV Shootout, Vincent wasted little time in getting his panel of independent judges to regroup for the final showdown. As is always the case with HDTVTest’s annual shootouts, the TVs are judged side-by-side in a blind test environment so that none of the judges know which models are which, in order to eliminate any chances of brand bias.
The judges then proceeded to analyse each of the TVs against the industry-standard Sony BVM-HX3110 reference monitor, a professional 4,000-nit display used by Hollywood colourists. Vincent selected the movie scenes to test each TV’s performance across eight categories: near black performance, colour accuracy, HDR, motion, uniformity, video processing, bright room performance and out-of-the-box accuracy, to determine which one truly came out on top.
With the final scores tallied, Vincent crowned Samsung’s flagship S99H QD-OLED TV with no less than three awards, after the judges voted it as the Best TV of 2026, the Best Home Cinema TV and also the Best Living Room TV.
What sets the Samsung S99H QD-OLED TV apart? Just about everything – it achieved a resounding win, coming out on top in six of the eight categories, thanks to its flawless near-black performance, its astonishing colour accuracy and its intensely bright and impactful HDR aesthetics. It also delivered unparalleled uniformity, consistently matching Sony’s reference monitor across some of the most demanding, high-luminance movie scenes Vincent could throw at it.
But Samsung’s achievement was no mean feat. Perhaps the most surprising performance belonged to the Sony Bravia 9 II, which showed us exactly why RGB LED technology deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as OLED. Not only did it come close to matching Samsung’s S99H HDR, bright room, video processing and out-of-the-box performance, but it stole the show in terms of motion and uniformity. It came second overall, but despite Sony’s incredible innovations in terms of backlight control, it’s clear that RGB LED cannot yet match self-emissive OLED in terms of its pixel-level contrast and near-black performance.
LG’s G6 OLED TV delivered pristine motion and solid near-black performance, but found itself outgunned by the vivid colour-saturation of QD-OLED tech, having to settle for third place. As for the Bravia 8 II QD-OLED TV, which was carried over by Sony for a second year following its 2025 debut, it put up a good fight, with its impressive out-of-the-box accuracy and processing capabilities reminding us of why it ranked first in the 2025 HDTVTest Shootout.
While the Sony Bravia 8 II has lost its crown, there’s no shame in losing out to such a stellar performer in Samsung’s S99H QD-OLED TV, which claimed a well-deserved victory. With such a huge leap in performance being made in just 12 months, we’re rubbing our hands with glee at the prospect of what next year’s shootout will bring.
