A major row is brewing this morning over claims that Samsung has been cheating when it comes to reviews of their TV’s.

Leading TV publication FlatpanelsHD claim that they have found evidence that the South Korean TV manufacturer is designing its TVs to recognize and react to test patterns used by reviewers.

As soon as the issue was identified Samsung responded claiming that they are set to provide software to rectify the problem.

According to FlatpanelsHD, Vincent Teoh of YouTube channel HDTVTest there is a major anomaly that has resulted in the 2022 Samsung S95B QD-OLED TV and QN95B LCD-based QLED TV, artificially boosting brightness levels beyond normal limits when certain test patterns are detected.

What the momentary boost does is provide measurement results that look great but misleads the reviewer as the boost is not natural and cannot be sustained under real-world viewing conditions because the this could damage the QD-OLED or LCD-based panel in a short period of time.

Ecoustics a leading Hi Fi publication claims that Samsung has been caught with their “pants down” by Vincent Teoh.

Samsung claims that a firmware update will be provided, but it isn’t clear whether that firmware update will eliminate the cheating or just make it less noticeable.

A statement from Samsung claims “To provide a more dynamic viewing experience for the consumers, Samsung will provide a software update that ensures consistent brightness of HDR contents across a wider range of window size beyond the industry standard.”

The publication responded claiming that the Samsung statement makes it sound almost as if Samsung will expand its cheating algorithm to cover more window sizes, but this is obviously something we will examine again in future reviews.

The company promised that a software update will be provided for QN95B “soon”.

Samsung did not comment on other TV models which observers claim have the same cheating algorithm built in.