Samsung's S95C QD-OLED TVs discovered to feature HDMI 2.1 ports with 40 Gbps bandwidth instead of 48 Gbps

Samsung announced this year’s top-of-the-line S95C QD-OLED TVs with 4x 48 Gbps HDMI 2.1 connectors, just like on the LG G3 and C3 models. Some users have complained that the Samsung models suffer from signal dropouts when connected to a PC via the HDMI port, yet reviews from established sites did not touch upon this aspect. The issue kept being dismissed as a defect on the affected sets and customers were advised to RMA. It turns out that this is not really a defect, but rather false advertising from Samsung. Vincent Teoh from HDTVTest just revealed in his highly anticipated S95C review that Samsung pulled an LG CX stunt and included 40 Gbps HDMI 2.1 connections instead of full-bandwidth 48 Gbps as advertised.

This explains why certain users were experiencing signal dropouts in HDR content on PC, since 40 Gbps is not enough to deliver 10-bit 4:4:4 in 4K at 144 Hz. Teoh initially thought that Samsung somehow messed up the specs in some parts of the world. Clearly not the case, as he flew to New York just to test a US model and the issue was there as well. Apparently, this restriction comes with all models that feature a One Connect external box, including last year’s QN95B QLED TV. The QN95C and S90C TV models do not suffer from this issue because they do not feature the One Connect box.

It is worth mentioning that the 40 Gbps bandwidth will only affect high-end PC gamers with at least a Radeon RX 7900 XTX / RTX 4080 GPU. The Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles are barely utilizing 32 Gbps most of the time, and Blu-Ray players or streamed movies should be fine too as they are mostly capped at 24 / 50 / 60 Hz. 48 Gbps would be enough for 144 Hz; however, if Samsung ever decides to up the refresh rate to 165 Hz or beyond, we would probably need to see a new HDMI 2 revision to support at least 80 Gbps, or maybe TV makers could finally embrace DisplayPort 2.x

Purchase the 55-inch Samsung S90C QD-OLED from Best Buy