 In this box is the Q9F, one of the highest end TVs that Samsung makes. This thing is 65 inches, 4K, it's got a quantum dot display, it's HDR, it's got Bixby voice, basically all the bells and whistles. Oh, and it's beautiful. But that's not actually what we care about today. Almost exactly a year ago, we made a video investigating the gaming experience on LG's NanoCell TV with a focus on input lag. But there's a lot more to a gaming display than just low input lag, which brings us to this. This is the first TV to reach our lab with variable refresh rate support right out of the box. You guys heard me, this puppy right here has freezing. So naturally, we wasted no time at all hooking it up to, yeah, got you guys, there's nothing in there. I did say we wasted no time at all, so it's already hooked up to an Xbox One X and a Vega equipped PC so we could test it. Let's dive right in, shall we? After we all dive into my pants where I can show you my Mac Weld and Underwear. Yes, my friends, Mac Weld and Underwear is so comfortable that if you don't like it, you can get a full refund with their try-on guarantee. Use offer code tech tips at the link below to get 20% off. So some of you are probably wondering, first of all, do I really have to spend over $3,000 on a fancy Q9F if I want FreeSync? And second, how did Samsung manage to deliver a variable refresh rate display to my living room before the Nvidia Big Format gaming displays that we saw at CES 10 months ago? The answer to both of them has to do with how FreeSync is implemented. So even though the announcement only came in late March of this year, Samsung was able to push FreeSync support to almost their entire 2018 lineup, including the $700 49-inch NU8000, because unlike Nvidia's G-Sync, FreeSync does not require a proprietary, not to mention pricey hardware module to be included in the display. Instead, FreeSync relies on hardware that is already baked into industry standard VESA specifications like DisplayPort, and in this case, HDMI. Now, to be clear, HDMI 2.0 ports, like the ones found on the back of the Q9F's external One Connect box, weren't originally designed to include variable refresh rate the way that DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.1 ports were. But, HDMI 2.0 does allow vendor-specific extensions, which is exactly how Microsoft added FreeSync to their Xbox One S and Xbox One X back in April this year, giving AMD and Samsung a built-in audience of millions of gamers, and therefore, a strong incentive to tack FreeSync onto these TVs, improving the gaming experience. Now, the main benefit of FreeSync and other variable refresh rate technologies is that it synchronizes the frame rate of your game with the refresh rate of your display to combat stuttering or hitching during animations and tearing, a visual anomaly where the top and the bottom of the frame aren't aligned. In the real world, we found that the main benefit is that it makes frame rate dips that occur during intense scenes less noticeable. That is, as long as the dips aren't too low. Bringing us to this important point, just because a TV has FreeSync doesn't mean that it's just like a make everything good button, or that it's even a good implementation of it. And the main factor here is something called the variable refresh rate range. So, any display has a limit to how fast it can go, but this variable refresh rate range also specifies a limit to how slow it can refresh. So, like if you buy a 60 Hertz monitor and you play CSGO on a high-end PC that can push out 200 frames per second, turning on FreeSync isn't going to magically make your monitor refresh at 200 Hertz. Your eye is still gonna see 60 frames every second. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, if your game renders below the lower limit of your FreeSync display, the display will be forced to repeat some of the frames it has received, and this introduces stuttering. So, back to our TV now then. Samsung's FreeSync implementation has three different ranges to keep in the back of your mind. If you're PC gaming at 1080p, you got two options. Basic, with a range of 90 to 120 FPS, and Ultimate, with a range of 48 to 120 FPS. And it should be noted that I'm using FPS and Hertz sort of interchangeably here, because that's kind of the point. As for if you're plugged into an Xbox One S or One X, Basic won't even be an option. As for why anyone would even want to use Basic, well, supposedly, it can help resolve flickering issues that LCDs can sometimes run into at high frame rates. As for 4K gaming, well, there you're gonna be left with a much narrower range. It's pretty common for 4K monitors to offer a 40 to 60 FPS range, but here on this TV, you only get 48 to 60, making the sweet spot just 12 frames wide before you'll start to get stutters when the action gets intense. In fairness, this thing is mostly targeting console gamers, which at the moment, basically means it's for the Xbox One X, and for the most part, game developers work hard to optimize their games for a smooth experience anyway, and in some cases, they actually do such a good job that in Halo 5 Guardians, for example, we didn't see any stuttering or tearing with or without FreeSync On. With that said, severe frame rate drops definitely do happen, especially when there's a lot going on at once, and this implementation of FreeSync isn't going to help you with all of them, because even though the Xbox One S and One X support FreeSync 2, which includes low frame rate compensation, this TV only supports a modified FreeSync 1, so it's got HDR, which is kind of a FreeSync 2 feature, but it doesn't have LFC. So then, while having FreeSync On removed the frequent tearing during Call of Duty World War II's and engine cutscenes, it didn't do much to combat the hitching that happens when you move into new areas of the map, or when Forza 7's trying to load up your car and character model before a race. So then, should you get a FreeSync TV like this one today? From just an overall experience standpoint, yeah, maybe, I mean, it's not like you're paying extra for it, and it looks great, and the input lag is even less than the ones we tested last time around, but if you are specifically after a robust variable refresh rate experience, well, then it gets a little bit tougher, because there is a lot coming in the next year or two that is gonna change the landscape here. So G-Sync TVs from the likes of HP, Asus, and Acer are gonna be coming out in the, we hope, next few months here, and, I mean, this year, we might even see TVs from Samsung that are equipped with HDMI 2.1, which would mean, among other things, 4K at 120 hertz, and the real, full fat, official variable refresh rate implementation. So if you desperately need a TV today, this is certainly better than not having it, but, as it always is with high technology, well, you could get it even better if you wait just a little bit longer. Speaking of waiting, don't wait. 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