Samsung LED TV

Picture is crisp and crispier. Excuse me while I pick up my eyeballs off the floor., April 23, 2010

The Good:

*Vibrant colors–of which ancient, grunting, CRT-watching man could only dream.

*HD content is displayed so realistically I’ll quit my job and live under a bridge to watch TV all day.

*Even standard-def shows look quite good on this set, like super models only five or ten years past their prime.

*Black levels are significantly deeper than I would have expected based on all the online whinging about edge-lit LED screens (e.g., “Give me local dimming, or give me death!”).

*Supa-thin profile makes the compact fluorescent “flat” panels look McDonald’s chubby.

The Tolerable:

*Crowded buttons on the remote, which I hardly use in favor of the cable company’s universal (or maybe no more than planetary) remote. I’ll only pick up the Samsung remote on occasion to adjust advanced settings, but when I do, I often push an unintended button.

*Very slight edge-lit brightness on black borders. Much of what’s on TV will fill the screen, so you won’t even have the opportunity to notice the effect. Really, it’s not that bad–I’ve seen far worse light leakage while watching movies on my 2007 alum iMac.

The Tolerated:

*There’s only one thing that bugs me a bit, and it’s not a deal breaker. (Besides, I already bought the TV, so the deal has been, well. . . concluded, if you must.) When the screen is mostly black and only a small graphic is displayed somewhere, the LEDs go a bit dim–you can actually see, over a fraction of a second, the light levels drop. I’m assuming that the TV was set up this way so that the LEDs wouldn’t be leaking ghostly light on a largely black screen. I’ve fussed with the settings, but I can’t make this effect go away. I haven’t yet fully explored all the setting menus, so I just might hit pay dirt soon, or maybe Samsung will nix that effect with a firmware update. At any rate, whatever text is dimmed is still very legible, and when the next screen-filling scene pops up, the LEDs power up without any detectable delay so that thereafter the screen’s as bright as it should be. No biggie–it’s not enough of a problem for me to scratch a star off the rating.

The Tweakable:

*Turning off motion smoothing is not difficult under most circumstances; indeed, some content begs to be smooved, e.g., sports and competitive cooking shows. But when I first plugged in a movie via the USB drive, I got motion smooving by default and wanted none of it. Whenever I pushed the remote’s “Menu” button, I ended on a screen far, far away from the USB drive’s content, and ended up adjusting the picture settings for the cable feed and not the target movie on the USB drive. I was bedeviled awhile, but a bit of snooping around the owner’s manual led to this minor discovery: by pressing the “Tools” button on the Samsung remote, I could enter a submenu that let me turn off the smooving effect without leaving the movie. Cheap soap opera video effect, begone!

Conclusion:

The picture is what matters most, and this TV’s output makes my jaw drop to the floor. Which is rather fortuitous, because I need something down there to catch my eyeballs.

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I got two lemons, April 18, 2010

By 

C. Stephens – See all my reviews

  

I’ve purchased two of these TVs from Amazon.com, and I’ve had to return them both due to problems. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I will not be purchasing another Samsung TV. Thankfully, Amazon’s service department was fantastic through the entire ordeal.

For the first TV, within the first few hours of use I noticed that the left side of the screen was darker than the right side, and that it was also flickering occasionally. I called Samsung tech support, and I was very unhappy with their service. First, when they asked for the model # of the TV, they asked me to confirm it several times because this particular model was not in their system. I realize this is a new model, but not having any record whatsoever of my particular TV model was not confidence inspiring. After walking through a series of troubleshooting steps, they tried to prematurely pin the source of the problem on my cable box. Samsung support said the dark left side of the screen was caused by my cable box, and this was before we tried the “test image” under the “diagnostic” section of the TV menu, which also showed the problem, clearly demonstrating that the problem was in the TV itself and not related to anything connected to it. After they finally acknowledged that there was a problem in the TV they arranged for a local repair shop to contact me. They said it would be 24-48 hours before I was contacted. No thanks. This brand new TV was going back. I’m not waiting for days for service contact and further days or weeks for a ‘repair’ of a brand new 00 TV.

Amazon’s service folks were great we worked it out so that a new TV would be delivered, and the old defective TV would be picked up, all in one go.

The second TV also had a problem. The TV ‘creaked’ or ‘popped’ or ‘clicked’ about every 3-5 minutes when the TV was on, and would continue this for several hours after turned off. I’m not sure if it was the plastic body making noise due to heat, or something electronic inside the TV, but it was far too loud and happened far too often to be acceptable. At best, it was distracting when watching TV, and at worst it was indicative that something was wrong inside the TV (try googling: “samsung TV clicking”). I did confirm that this was definitely the TV, by removing and unplugging all other components, and noting that the behavior still did continue.

So again, I contacted Amazon’s service folks to arrange a return. This time I did not order a replacement. There was no charge to me on any of the shipping in either direction since the TV was considered defective.

For the short while I had this TV, here are some of the things I noticed about it:

1.The 120MHz Auto Motion Plus option defaults to “standard”. This makes the picture look real, “too real” almost (I’ve seen people describe this as the “soap opera effect”). This might be OK for sports but I preferred this option to be off for normal movie / TV show watching. Try disabling this feature first if you think the picture looks “strange”.

2.The TV has an ambient light sensor which lowers the brightness of the picture automatically when the ambient light is low (e.g. in a living room with lights off). I found that the TV picture got way too dark when the lights were turned off in the room. After some investigation, I discovered that you can set the amount of dimming that occurs when this option kicks in. This is under the “Eco Sensor” option. It defaulted to maximum dimming, which made the picture totally unsuitable for viewing (shadows and darker parts of the image were completely blacked out). I adjusted this so that it did dim, just not as much, and then it was OK. So if you find that your TV is too dark when the room is dark, but OK when the room is well lit, then check this option.

3.The TV appeared to be inconsistent in holding it’s settings after losing power. For example, every time the power went out, or the TV was unplugged, I had to manually re-set the options I’ve described above (Auto Motion Plus and Eco Option dimming level). Oddly, sometimes, the TV would retain it’s settings. Not sure if I got a lemon or what but this was very frustrating as it would take a few minutes to reset these things manually with the remote.

[*** This was user-error, not a problem with the TV - see "UPDATE (Jun 2 2010)" at the bottom of this review ***]

4.I was not particularly pleased with the quality of the stand. It looked nice, but for the two TVs I had I found that neither was level when sitting on the stand. The first one tilted to the left and the second one tilted to the right (just to be clear – both were on the exact same level surface, so I’m sure the problem was the TV stand itself). The TV stand is not adjustable, so there’s no real way to deal with this.

5.Otherwise, this is a good looking TV, it is ultra-thin, and very sleek. Unfortunately, for me,…

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One fine television, March 19, 2010

By 

R. Lewis “samplerman” (Tempe, AZ) – See all my reviews

  

Amazing picture. Sound not so great as tiny speakers aim down from the bottom ridge of tv. I cant believe how thin the television is and how bright the picture is. It plays most everything I’ve thrown at it in perfect color and very little pixelation. No warm up time like Standard LCD TVs and much easier to watch. I highly recommend this TV. If you’re going to buy an LCD television…make sure it is backlit with LEDs. Samsungs out-perform all the other brands.

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