A week with this Samsung smart monitor convinced me I might be done with TVs

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There I was: logged off of Slack, legs kicked up, and mentally prepared for the start of another exhausting but thrilling NBA season. This year’s opening double-header was broadcast on Peacock, so all it took was a few taps on the remote to pull up the streaming service and watch the Houston Rockets upset the defending champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder. They didn’t.

But that’s been my life this past week with Samsung’s latest M9 (M90SF) 32-inch smart monitor–>, a display that can extend any Mac, Windows, or Linux system while doubling as a TV. All it takes is a press of a button, and you’re looking at a consumer product that my parents would ground me for putting on my wishlist as a kid.

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To be clear, this isn’t the first monitor hybrid on the market, and it’s certainly not the first for Samsung. But this is one of, if not the most, capable. 

It demands a high price — $1,600, during the rare times that it’s not discounted — but for folks who want a monitor that looks just as good in the office for professional work as it does for after-hours content consumption, this might be your best option today. 

For a rather sophisticated TV, setting it up is fairly straightforward. There’s a delightful, cool-to-the-touch aluminum hand feel as you snap the base mount to the stand and to the back of the monitor, and the rear USB-C port (alongside an HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and two USB-A ports) is powerful enough to deliver 90W for a single-cable, pass-through experience.

That’s to say, the M9 is one of the better-looking smart monitors I’ve tested; it has a definitive industrial appearance that’s refreshing to see in a market full of split decisions. Smart monitors tend to have a toy-ish look and feel that doesn’t induce much confidence, but not this one.

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However, the M9’s design isn’t perfect. The first flaw is that you can’t physically rotate the monitor with the default stand, even though height and tilt adjustment are fairly flexible. Instead, you’ll need a taller VESA mount to fully rotate the 32-inch screen by 90 degrees. 

Then there’s the absolute tank of a power brick that you’ll want to avoid hanging and requires ample space to stow away. My sit-stand desk happens to have a cable compartment underneath it that has just enough space to tuck the power brick away, but your setup may not be as flexible.

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The viewing experience of the M9 is quite nice, thanks to an inky OLED panel that yields great contrast levels and bright-enough colors, whether you’re in PC mode, Tizen OS (the TV operating system), or both at the same time, thanks to split-screen viewing. 

There’s no perceivable shift in color when staring at the monitor from different angles — doing so only highlights the effectiveness of its anti-glare properties.

When watching streaming services, including YouTube, I found the picture quality on Tizen OS to be much better than when I extended or mirrored my Mac. The native apps just do a more reliable and quicker job at adapting video resolution, and navigating the TV with the included solar-powered remote is as responsive as any other 2025 TV I’ve tested.

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Where things fall short for me is color accuracy, especially with the default picture settings. When editing product shots in Adobe Lightroom, the monitor portrayed raw images with more saturation and sharpness than my MacBook Pro. Fortunately, that was something I was able to calibrate, and I recommend anyone planning to use the M9 for professional work to do the same.

To my surprise, the built-in 4K ultrawide webcam and internal speakers have been above average, especially for a monitor. The video feed has a good amount of detail, though possibly too wide of a field of view for some, and the speakers didn’t make me run for a dedicated sound system at first listen. Instead, it’s a fairly balanced audio profile that gets loud enough for watching TV.

ZDNET’s buying advice

Ultimately, the Samsung M9<!–> is the company’s best attempt at a monitor for work and play. It’s built well, the duality of operating systems is highly versatile, and the few shortcomings, including the lack of Wi-Fi 6E (let alone Wi-Fi 7) and the inability to rotate the screen with a VESA mount, are manageable.

At a retail price of $1,600, I would only recommend the monitor if and when it’s discounted; there are simply too many competing QD-OLED and OLED monitors on the market with better specs and lower price points that prevent the Samsung M9 from being the definitive option.

But if space is limited and your budget aligns, you’re looking at a smart monitor that should check all the right boxes for you.