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The Samsung S95F was our pick for the best OLED TV for bright rooms in 2025, thanks to its anti-glare matte screen that eliminates reflections, and its high brightness. These combined to make even dark movies viewable in really bright rooms on it: something most other OLED TVs just couldn’t achieve — even the S95F’s rival, the LG G5.

It remained the king until the LG G6 arrived this year. While the G6 still shows some mirror-like reflections when the screen is turned off, the brightness of these reflections is toned so far back that they don't really distract any more when you're viewing something.

You can now watch movies — even the super-dark The Batman — in Filmmaker Mode in bright conditions without distraction, but with the deep black tones OLED is famed for retained. When I compared the G6 with the S95F, I actually picked the G6 as the new king of bright-room OLEDs.

Fast forward a few months and the Samsung S99H (known as the S95H in the US — it's the same TV with a different name) has arrived in our testing lab. It has the latest version of Samsung's anti-reflection matte layer, so can it reclaim the crown as the best option for bright-room viewing? I've already compared the S95H/S99H with the G6 where I focused on other picture quality elements such as dark-room viewing and colors, and they came out basically even. So let's see how they compare in bright conditions.

The first area I decided to test was both TVs' reflection handling capabilities. This meant which TV was the outright most effective at eliminating mirror-like reflections caused by lights and objects.

Using the overhead lights in our testing lab, after getting the right angle, it was pretty clear the S95H/S99H was the superior model. Looking at the screen, the light from the overhead light is reduced to haze and the actual shape of the light is illegible: perfect if you’ve got pesky lights or windows in your bright room that you can’t hide, and that your eye is drawn to involuntarily focus on.

On the G6, the shape of the light, and the light itself, was still legible. It was certainly an improvement over its predecessor, the LG G5, as the latter had a pretty reflective screen — but there was no doubt that the overhead light was still visible.

Even looking at the shut-off, blank screen, you could see objects, such as other TVs we store in the same room, on the screen of the G6. The S95H/S99H on the other hand had absolutely nothing on screen, other than the haze of light from overhead. So for pure reflection-killing, the S95H/S99H is best.

Watching a movie is a more complicated story, however. With both TVs set to Filmmaker Mode, and watching the dark-tone torture test that is The Batman, the G6 did a better job maintaining black levels and delivering more impactful contrast than the S95H/S99H.

In a scene where Batman stands in a dark subway platform, having just defeated a gang of thugs, the first thing that was apparent was the S95H/S99H’s Filmmaker Mode was very dim compared to the G6. Due to the low perceived brightness and the raised black tones of the mate screen, large parts of the scene were illegible, with Batman himself partly obscured in black and the detail in the walls at the back of the platform not as clear as they were on the G6. The G6 also has better shadow detail, with more of Batman’s suit and the creases in the thug’s black jackets more legible too.

Switching to Alien: Romulus, it was the same story. As the crew approached the Nostromo, the blackness of space was much inkier and deeper on the G6. The S95H/S99H had a hazy gray sheen over it from the matte screen, which affected the integrity of the black tones. It also meant the rings around the moon didn’t have quite as much punch as the G6.

I found it odd that there was such a perceived brightness difference between the two as when I measured their brightness, the gap wasn’t as big as the real-world viewing suggested. The S95H/S99H clocked in at 2,739 nits of peak HDR brightness (10% window) in Filmmaker Mode, while the G6 clocked in at 3,004 nits. While 250 nits is nothing to sniff at, the pictures on screen suggested a bigger gap.

In fact, fullscreen HDR brightness was about as close as it gets. In the same HDR Filmmaker Mode, the S95H/S99H hit a measured fullscreen brightness of 449 nits, while the G6 hit 451. The human eye can’t perceive that little difference, yet in person, the G6 had the more complete picture.

In fact, watching in a darker room, the S95H/S99H delivers a richer, stronger picture. The same subway scene from The Batman shows deeper blacks and looks more accurate to the movie’s gloomy tone. On the G6, I found that its brightness hampered it slightly. While it did demonstrate good shadow detail, its brightness affected the quality of the darker tones on screen, and the image just wasn’t as satisfying as on the S95H/S99H.

In fairness to both TVs, some settings tweaks can solve some of the issues above. On the G6, dropping contrast from 50 to 49 takes away some of that over-brightness, while switching Tone Mapping from the default Static to Active on the S95H/S99H in Filmmaker Mode adds some brightness, although the image doesn’t feel as accurate then. But for these tests, I kept both TVs in their default settings.

Honestly, both these TVs are fantastic for bright-room viewing. They both do a great job of eliminating reflections and delivering excellent picture quality despite being in a bright room. OLED’s nemesis has always been bright rooms and reflections, and it’s great to have two TVs that can handle the light. You can’t go wrong with either of these TVs for bright rooms and they’re both excellent OLED TVs.

If you have a bright room, either of these TVs would work. Your choice may depend on your circumstances. If you know you'll be watching a lot with light flooding in during the day, the S95H/S99H is the better option for keeping reflections to an absolute minimum. If you can control the light in your room more, the G6 is probably the better option.

For me, if I had to pick one TV for bright-room viewing, I’d go for the G6. While the S95H/S99H is seriously good at dealing with pesky reflections, and is an improvement over the superb S95F, I favored the G6’s richer black tones in brighter rooms.

Although the G6 isn’t as complete at removing mirror-like reflections, so there are some present in darker scenes, it’s effective enough to make watching darker movies in a bright room feel less like a chore than it did on its predecessor, the G5 — but with the contrasty feeling you want from an OLED TV.

There's always a trade-off with choosing a bright-room TV of reflection reduction versus preserving the image accuracy. Last year, the balance fell in favor of Samsung's matte display. This year, the G6’s better black level performance combined with drastically lowering the impact of mirror-like reflections is enough to make it my pick for bright rooms — but the Samsung S95H/S99H is a brilliant TV for light rooms still.

• Valve releases Windows 11 drivers for the Steam Machine
• This means you can install Windows 11 on the console-like PC
• You probably shouldn't, though

Valve has released official Windows drivers which should mean anyone who wants to install Windows 11 on its Steam Machine compact PC will be able to do so.

However, I and many other PC gamers have been left wondering why you’d want to do that — and it’s not just because of a general dislike of Microsoft’s operating system.

Of course, Windows 11 does have its issues, with a worrying increase in bugs and performance-damaging problems. It’s also bloated, and filled with AI features that few people, especially gamers, seem to want.

So, installing it on a device designed to run a more lightweight Linux operating system is a baffling choice. Much has been made of Valve’s decisions (some of them taken because of the global memory shortage and high component prices) to fit the Steam Machine with rather underpowered hardware. There’s no dedicated GPU, just an integrated one that uses older AMD technology and 16GB of DDR5 single-channel RAM.

Those are pretty poor specs for a gaming PC, and while some of this is outside of Valve’s control, at least SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that the Steam Machine runs on by default, is a lot more lightweight than Windows 11, and is streamlined to prioritize launching and playing games. This means it can offer better performance

Windows 11, on the other hand, is a much bigger, and some would say rather bloated, operating system that runs on a variety of different hardware, with people using it for different things, not just playing games. This means performance is often worse even if the same low-powered components are used.

So, putting Windows 11 on a Steam Machine means you’ll likely get poorer performance, and Windows 11’s interface isn’t designed to be used on a TV with a controller, unlike SteamOS’ Big Picture Mode interface. You can use Steam Big Picture Mode in Windows 11, of course, and Microsoft has been working on a similar console-like interface with its Xbox mode, but it’s not perfect.

So, why would anyone in their right mind installing Windows 11 on a Steam Machine, especially as it seems Valve hasn’t implemented dual-booting (so you can pick between Windows 11 and SteamOS when you turn the machine on, hopefully that comes later)?

Well, while SteamOS is designed for a console-like simplicity, for a lot of mainstream users, Windows 11 will be more user-friendly (if you’ve ever had to troubleshoot an issue with Linux, you’ll know it’s not for the faint of heart). If you’re planning to use the Steam Machine as a standard PC (which Valve says you can do), then installing Windows 11 kind of makes sense. Kind of.

SteamOS is also essentially Linux with the Steam store as the interface, and that makes playing and buying games through Steam very easy. But for playing games from other stores, such as Epic Games Store, GOG and even Xbox, it’s a bit more of a faff. You can install Linux or open source versions of those launchers and add them as non-Steam games, but it’s again fiddly and more complicated than with Windows 11.

Finally, if you play a lot of online multiplayer games, such as Fortnite, that use anti-cheat software, you might have no option but to play those games in Windows 11, as many anti-cheat tools don’t support Linux, and therefore can’t be played by default on the Steam Machine.

However, I still feel on the whole you just should do this, and not just because of Microsoft’s OS being unsuitable; Valve should take some blame as well.

As WCCFTech reports, because there’s currently no way to dual boot these operating systems, installing Windows 11 on the Steam Machine will overwrite SteamOS, so if you find Windows isn’t working well, it’s more of a pain to switch back to SteamOS.

As some commentators on WCCFTech’s article also point out, Valve doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to supporting Windows drivers with its Steam devices, with the Steam Deck being a prime example. Valve’s handheld also runs SteamOS and you can install Windows 11 on it, but Valve has been pretty poor at updating its drivers, with one claiming people are still having to rely on graphics and sound drivers that are two years old.

Needless to say, playing with outdated drivers is not going to be enjoyable. In better news, Valve has also made having to use Windows 11 less necessary for a lot of games by continually updating its Proton compatibility layer, which allows you to run Windows 11 games in Linux, rather than having to wait for a Linux port of the game (which rarely comes due to the discrepancies in user numbers for the two platforms).

As Neowin reports, Valve has updated Proton to support even more games than ever. It’s a brilliant tool that means there’s less need to use Windows 11 with the Steam Machine or Steam Deck.

So, while I do applaud Valve for giving users the option, as it helps show how open the Steam Machine, and gaming PCs in general, can be, I think Valve has also made this option pretty pointless, for both good and bad reasons.