is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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In June 2024, in a dusty TV shop empty of customers save myself, my wife, and my kids, I stared deep into the LG C3 and Samsung S90C. I went back and forth between the two OLED screens for easily 20 minutes, happily paralyzed by the choice in front of me. The Video Only salesperson attempted to explain that there was no wrong decision.
A year and a half later, I disagree: I regret picking the Samsung over the LG. I regret it every time I adjust the volume on my TV, every time I plug in a new device, and especially ever since the Logitech Harmony Amazon Alexa integration shit the bed and I have to fumble a Samsung remote to switch inputs.
Samsung’s QD-OLED panel itself is phenomenal, if nothing special in 2026. The problem is the software. I would pay Samsung $100, right now, for this “smart” TV to be as dumb as the ones I grew up with.
Heck, I’d give Samsung 50 bucks just to let us disable the volume indicator. Failing that, let’s see if shame works.
Let me be clear: One of the final deciding reasons I chose the Samsung S90C over the LG C3 was that LG had failed me before. My LG E7 OLED, purchased from a not-long-for-this-world Fry’s Electronics in 2018, eventually developed a large heat blemish (not your typical burn-in) that sometimes discolored the picture. Before that, my previous Sony TV developed a line of dark pixels shortly after the warranty expired.
But both Sony and LG had unobtrusive onscreen volume indicators, just little icons near the edge of the screen. Samsung believes that anyone who ever needs things a little louder or quieter is willing to tolerate this aberration:
This eyesore stretches nearly a third of the way across the screen, vertically and horizontally, obscuring the incredible moving art I’m trying to watch underneath. And if you’re using a receiver, it consumes all this screen space to convey basically zero information. Not the current volume level, unless you’re using the TV’s built-in speakers, and not whether I’m getting a stereo or surround or Dolby Atmos signal.
It is the Samsung equivalent of Microsoft Clippy, but worse: “Looks like you’re trying to adjust the volume!”
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