Sony Leads QD-OLED to One-Two Finish at 2025 TV Shootout
July 30, 2025
McLaren wasn’t the only team to score a 1-2 finish over the weekend. While they topped the podium in Belgium, Sony and Samsung drove QD-OLED to a dominant one-two win at the 2025 Value Electronics TV Shootout in New York.
Like F1 racing, the annual TV Shootout is all about high performance. Winning takes both cutting-edge technology and expert execution. Like Piastri and Norris in their McLarens, Sony and Samsung made the most of QD-OLED’s strengths to deliver decisive wins over WOLED entries from Panasonic and LG.
Photo from the 2024 Value Electronics TV Shootout. (Courtesy: Mark Jessamy Photography)
The “2025 King of TV” title marks Sony’s fourth straight win with a QD-OLED and their seventh overall—an impressive streak in a fiercely competitive market. Samsung followed close behind with their S95F, giving QD-OLED its first one-two finish since 2022.
Competition was stiff this year with four excellent top-of-the-line OLED TVs:
Sony XR80M2 QD-OLED
Samsung S95F QD-OLED
Panasonic Z95B WOLED
LG G5 WOLED
Value Electronics’ judging process is all about accuracy—not what “looks best” to the average viewer. Each TV is calibrated to match a $40,000 reference monitor, and judges evaluate performance in a dark room with all image processing turned off. TVs that most closely replicate the reference image earn the highest marks; even sets that look more vibrant or pleasing can lose points if they stray from accuracy.
Detailed scoring from Value Electronics 2025 TV Shootout, showing Sony’s QD-OLED K65XR80M2 is 2025’s “King of TVs”
This year’s results once again highlight QD-OLED’s technical edge—especially in color purity and brightness retention under reference-mode conditions. Unlike WOLED’s reliance on white subpixels, QD-OLED delivers richer saturation and more accurate tones, even after professional calibration.
With every TV professionally calibrated and all processing disabled, it’s tough to stand out in this competition. That Sony and Samsung’s QD-OLEDs rose to the top—scoring closest to the $40,000 reference monitor—speaks to the intrinsic strengths of the technology. In a race where only true color and contrast fidelity matter, QD-OLED once again proves it’s built for the podium.
