As part of its line TV for 2020, Samsung earlier this year announced the Q800T 8K QLED TV. It's the "affordable" entry in Samsung's three 8K offerings for the year, retailing for "only" around $4,499.99, and it's now available for sale. The Q950TS, by contrast, goes for around $13,000.

Some reviews have appeared of the Q800T in recent weeks, which are mostly positive except for qualms about the high price and lack of 8K content.

RTINGS, in their review published this week, gave the Q800T a score of 8.1 out of 10. It praises the TV's "Impressive reflection handling," "incredibly low impact lag," and that it gets bright enough to combat glare. Cons include what it calls "Impressive reflection handling," uniformity issues, and "low contrast ratio for a VA panel." 


"The Samsung Q800T is a great TV for most uses. It gets bright and it has impressive reflection handling if you watch TV during the day," the review says. "It's a good choice for movies due to its full-array local dimming and it doesn't have any issues upscaling 480p, 720p, or 1080p content. Unfortunately, it has some uniformity issues with visible dirty screen effect, which might bother you during sports. On the upside, it's an excellent gaming TV due to its fast response time and incredibly low input lag."

The 8.1 rating for the Q800T places it 23rd overall on RTINGS' rankings of TVs. It ranks ninth among Samsung models, second overall among 8K TVs behind Samsung's own Q900R, and fifth among TVs from 2020.

At the end of May, the British site Expert Reviews published a review of the Q800T. The review praised the TV's HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, as well as its AI 8K upscaling, although the major drawback is the same one as with all 8K TVs at this point: There's no 8K content to watch on it. In addition, the review mentioned the lack of  Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos, and the high price.

"If you were expecting to have to sell your car and remortgage your home to afford an 8K HDR TV in 2020, then we have some good news for you: you may only have to sell the car," the review joked. "Samsung’s Q800T still isn’t exactly what you’d call affordable but, compared to 8K OLED models from the likes of LG (whose new ZX OLED starts at £24,999), this is currently as attainable as 8K gets."

Also this week, the popular YouTuber The Villa Man posted an unboxing video of the Q800T.

The Q800T is one of the TVs that received the Recommended TV Designation from Netflix in May, along with others from Samsung's QLED 8K, QLED 4K and Lifestyle TV lines.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Samsung.