Review Of Samsung UN46B8500 Television

All hail the new king of LCDs—for now that is! The best LCD in the market today blows away this reviewer with a picture quality that is truly unmatched by competition. The screen costs a bomb, but excellence doesn’t come cheap, doest it?

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

The deepest black levels seen in the new range of LED backlit LCD screens launched recently. Beautiful shadow detail and amazing color saturation. Well controlled blooming in comparison to competition. A wide range of picture adjustments to best suit your needs. Powerful video processing adds to the appeal of this LCD. The adjustable Dejudder is one more plus point. Yahoo widgets and other interactive services like TV guide are interesting. All these features have been packed up in a beautiful looking 1.6 inch deep panel. This monster is also very power efficient.

Thumbs Down:

Obviously, such a high end product is going to burn a deep hole in your pocket. The viewing angle of this screen is a little short and is best viewed from a 90 degree angle. The glossy screen also reflects the ambient light making viewing from an angle even trickier. Almost useless, albeit beautiful secondary remote.

Specifications:

The 8500 UN46B8500 is 46 inch screen offering a 1920 x 1080 resolution. This TFT active matrix LCD is also blessed with LED backlighting. This massive LCD also is lightning quick with a response time of just 2ms. Apart from the truly amazing picture quality, the sound quality is great due to the inbuilt SRS TruSurround HD audio technology. The LCD is also packed with connection ports, although analog plug-ins is tricky and may need connectors.  You can also access the Yahoo widgets through the internet connection to access news, weather, traffic updates, stock market and many other interactive widgets.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Samsung has launched three series of LCD screens this year, namely the 6000, 7000 and the 8000. These screens were good, and to some extent even managed to rattle some of the opposition. Come year end and Samsung drops another bomb with the 8500 series. With two models, the 8500 is a marvel of technology and LED backlit technology has finally shown its true ‘colors’! The 8500 series has two massive screens measuring 46 inches and 55 inches. Jam-packed with features and options, the 8500 series has taken viewing pleasure two steps ahead from where it was earlier. The active dejudder is an intelligent feature, cranking up the smoothness levels. The earlier Samsung models featured LED only at the edge of the screen, but the 8500 series has a whole array of local dimming LEDs behind the screen. Although so much has been added, the screens are still amazingly thin and measure only 1.6 inches thick. Because of these LEDs, the picture quality is much better and offers a deeper black.  The screen also looks great. With a bold black border, which in turn has a transparent trim gives the impression of opulence. The LCD is supported by a transparent stalk which has blue lights. These can be turned off if u desire so. The stand has a brushed metallic finish and can swivel the screen. The 8500 series looks best on a stand, for it can then truly showoff it’s ultra slim profile. The tapering edges lend an optical image, to make the screen look even slimmer than it actually is. The energy efficient screen also stays cooler than the other screens in the market. Surprisingly, for a panel this big, it is pretty light. We liked the screen from the first moment.

Razzle Dazzle:

As we’ve said earlier, there are so many features in this screen that it simply shoots the competition down. Due to the array of backlighting LEDs, you are treated with intense black areas. This renders the colors sharper and shadows deeper. The whole game to achieve the best colors has heated up, and the first step is to achieve a black as black can be! Samsung has taken a step more than its rivals to create the 8500 series. There are subtle features that make the 8500 a complete package. For example, the remote has RF capability. Once pairing it with the screen, we did not have to point the remote at the screen to operate it. No line of sight is required. The buttons are big and backlit, but the glossy finish kept picking up fingerprints. The scroll wheel, although an improvement from the previous models was not quite a hit with us. Samsung has also provided a smaller hockey-puck style for just remote to just change the channels and power on/off the screen.

Inside Dope:

Samsung introduced the LED backlighting in 2007 and the second model followed in 2008. Samsung was also the only manufacturer then to control the illumination of the LED elements individually. The other manufacturers had screens with LED elements at the edges, but all of these lit or shut off at the same moment. Since the number of LED elements will always is less than the pixels, there are some LED lights that remain illuminated in dark areas. This results in ‘Blooming’. To eliminate this, Samsung has drastically increased the LED zones in the 8500 but they won’t disclose details on the number.

The other interesting spec is that the 8500 has a 240Hz refresh rate. It is double from the usual 120 Hz refresh rate, but it was barely recognizable. Samsung promises better resolution through this higher refresh rate. You can tweak blur reduction and judder through the Auto Motion Plus dejudder process. The intricate features of this screen are well hidden in the menus, but are easily accessible incase you want to alter them.

Something that interested us a lot was the Yahoo widgets. It is quite an interesting feature and can be accessed once you have hooked your screen to the internet. You can access Yahoo Videos, Flickr photos, Youtube, the stock market updates amongst other stuff. The weather and traffic updates are really nice tools to keep in touch with what is going on outside your window.  There is a possibility that with this new screen installed in your living room, you are hardly going to leave it!

The list goes on about the features, and one that we found really out of the box was the in-built content such as games, workout tips, music and recipes. You can also download updates for this section from the internet. High definition art and music are pre loaded on the system.

Nitty Gritty:

We found the color accuracy of the 8500 almost accurate barring a slight bluish grayscale in the midtones on occasions. All the features were tightly packed into an intuitive menu and the LCD is very user friendly, the way any home appliance should be. I know I’m downgrading the state-of-the-art LCD with LED backlighting as a home appliance, but that’s the reality, isn’t it? The sheer viewing pleasure is unmatched and totally eye-candy. The digital integration of home gadgets is amazing, and the 8500 is just another example of this silent but powerful evolution. If you desire an excellent LCD, look no further. This is the best one to cross my path as yet!

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