Samsung's S99H OLED Just Became The World's First TV To Win Every Top Award At This Event

Many people put a lot of stock in awards because they often signal quality. The last sci-fi movie to win an Oscar for Best Actor must be worth a watch, so by that same logic, a TV that won an award is worth owning. But what about a TV that swept awards from a panel of independent judges? That might be even more worth owning.

Last week, Samsung announced that its S99H OLED was the first TV in history to win all three awards from the HDTVTest 2026 TV Shootout. It wasn't the first HD or OLED television to sweep the awards; it was the first TV period. In what the company calls a historic first, the S99H OLED won Best Home Cinema TV, Best Living Room TV, and the coveted Best TV of 2026. In 2025, we knew Samsung's S99H OLED would be one of the most exciting TVs coming out in 2026, but we had no idea it would be this big.

Each TV in the Shootout was evaluated using various performance metrics. These included the ability to display high-fidelity movies in a dark room and deliver broadcasts with dodgy signals in bright rooms. The S99H OLED competed against flagship models, including the LG G6 OLED and Sony Bravia 8 II QD-OLED, but Samsung's OLED TV won in the end.

Not all awards are created equal. Sure, the word "award" sounds impressive, but the Golden Raspberries were invented to immortalize the worst of the worst in cinema. The point is, even if you've never heard of the HDTVTest Shootout, you shouldn't discount TVs that win awards.

The HDTVTest Shootout — run in association with Crampton & Moore, an independent UK TV and appliance retail chain — is a series of blind tests that pit different TVs against each other. Eight industry professionals and reviewers, including HDTVTest's own Vincent Teoh, scored the TVs on how they handled specially selected movie scenes. These tests measured settings such as HDR performance, color accuracy, and video processing. However, instead of judging the TVs against one another, the panel pitted them against the Sony BVM-HX3110. Why was that chosen as the control? Because, according to HDTVTest, it is an "industry-standard" monitor that Hollywood colorists use for their jobs.

While the Samsung S99H OLED's award sweep is noteworthy in and of itself, it is also impressive for another reason: The TV almost didn't win. For the first time, this year's HDTVTest Shootout held a semi-final round where one LED TV got the opportunity to compete against OLEDs. The winner of this round was the Sony Bravia 9 II True RGB LED TV. And despite being an LED monitor, the Sony Bravia 9 II gave Samsung's S99H OLED the stiffest competition of the year, surpassing the other TVs to become the second favorite display of this year. No playing favorites here.