Why I wish I had never bought my Samsung OLED TV

In June 2024, in a dusty TV store empty of customers except myself, my wife, and my kids, I stared intently at my LG C3 and Samsung S90C. I moved back and forth between the two OLED displays for an easy 20 minutes, blissfully paralyzed by the choice in front of me. The video sales representative only tried to explain that there was no wrong decision.

A year and a half later, I disagree: I regret choosing Samsung over LG. I regret it every time I adjust the volume on my TV, every time I connect a new device, and especially since the Logitech Harmony Amazon Alexa integration threw me off the bed and I had to fumble with the Samsung remote to switch inputs.

Samsung’s QD-OLED panel itself is great; If there is nothing special in 2026. The problem is the software. I’d pay Samsung $100 right now for this “smart” TV to be as stupid as the ones I grew up with.

Heck, I’d give Samsung $50 just to let us disable the volume indicator. Failing that, let’s see if shame will work.

Let me be clear: One of the final reasons I chose the Samsung S90C over the LG C3 is because LG has let me down before. My LG E7 OLED was purchased from Fry electronics that are not long for this world In 2018, it eventually developed a major thermal defect (not typical burn-in) that sometimes discolored the image. Before that, my previous Sony TV developed a line of dark pixels shortly after the warranty expired.

But both the Sony and LG had unobtrusive on-screen audio indicators, just small icons near the edge of the screen. Samsung believes that anyone who needs things louder or quieter will be willing to put up with it This deviation:

This ugliness extends about a third of the way across the screen, both vertically and horizontally, obscuring the stunning animated art I’m trying to view underneath. And if you’re using a receiver, it takes up all that screen space in the transmission Essentially zero information. Not the current volume level, unless I’m using the TV’s built-in speakers, and not whether I’m getting a stereo, surround sound, or Dolby Atmos signal.

It’s Samsung’s equivalent of Microsoft Clippy, but worse: “It sounds like you’re trying to adjust the volume!”

We watch a lot of movies that contain very high action and Very quiet dialogue, at the hour when the kids are supposed to be in bed, so we adjust the volume all the time.

In 2023, “1544CT” will be used in Samsung community forums He complained about it “As someone who watches a lot of movies and shows, I can no longer recommend Samsung until this annoyance is fixed.” But they don’t seem optimistic. After all, the company has not taken any action yet 26 page topic About the inconvenience that occurred in 2020, which has now received more than 130,000 views.

There are many Reddit threads and even Change.org petition to fix it. Although a Samsung moderator promised to hand over the complaint to the company’s engineers, another three years and nearly 50,000 additional views passed without resolution. Some users reported getting the v2203 update which reduced the overlay size, at least, but this update appears to It may have been paused in December Because of the issues. Will we get it?

Problem 2: Samsung doesn’t have a proper concept of the HDMI input, so I fumble for the remote every time I connect a new device.

Here’s how my Samsung TV will work in 2026:

I guess not everyone always connects new devices Portable gaming devices and 3D analog and Mini SNESes Via HDMI like me. But on my LG TV, and every one I’ve ever owned with HDMI, I could just press a button to cycle through the HDMI inputs until the correct picture appeared.

Fortunately, the PS5 and Switch 2 have very good implementations of HDMI-CEC, the communications protocol that allows them to send commands to my TV. When kids want to watch Netflix or shoot Astro Botthe power button on the DualSense pad or Switch 2 Joy-Con will do this. But strangely enough they would not turn on my TV and receiver on.

I used to get over most of this By setting up complex Logitech Harmony Hub routines It would fire up when I said “Alexa, turn off the TV” or “Alexa, turn on the Nintendo Switch.” But since my infrared Wi-Fi remote stopped syncing with Amazon and Logitech’s servers properly this year, I’ve had to use Samsung’s software and remote more than ever.

One day, I had the idea to try Home Assistant, when a Samsung TV and Samsung SmartThings appeared on the list of potential integrations. Maybe I can switch HDMI devices from my phone? But Samsung doesn’t offer individual HDMI ports there either; I can just tell my screen to switch to “TV” or “HDMI”, and no other sources or channels.

Those are other HDMI sources He does He comes out In the Samsung API, because Homebrew integration with third party Made my other connected devices like “PlayStation 5” and “AVReceiver” appear in Home Assistant – but only after I connected my TV to the Samsung Cloud and created a custom API key. Yes, I have to go online through Samsung’s cloud and go back home to change the HDMI inputs. And it’s still not reliable, because Samsung Cloud sometimes tells me I’ve made too many orders, and sometimes it needs a completely new token before it will accept orders again.

I’m about to hunt down an old school infrared universal remote at this rate and teach my kids some pointing skills. But hey, Samsung, how about a $50 repair? I have PayPal, Venmo, hell, I’ll type my card number into the TV itself if you let me.

I asked Samsung a few days ago about potential updates, but it didn’t have an answer by press time.