Customer Reviews

Beautiful television, great picture, poor sound, menus and limmitations
Pros:

1- amazing size to performance ratio. This TV is incredibly thin. You will have to see it to believe it. At just over an inch thick (not to mention 55" from corner to corner), this television boasts some of the best stats available, compared to any other brands/models out there.

2-LED back lighting. This feature is what initially caught my eye. When I first saw it I noticed immediately how incredibly deep the blacks were. This boost in depth of the color plate seems to permeate the entire color spectrum, allowing for deeper, more remarkable fullness when viewing all forms content.

3- base statistics. The contrast ratio (although I have read many conflicting, reports, including the manufactures own specification information, which makes it difficult to place an exact quantitative value), 120hz, 1080p, 4 millisecond response time, USB x2 connections, LAN access, ect... They are all there. This television has the capabilities to seamlessly bind your computer or local area network and your home theater into a truly coherent "media center" provided you have the gumption.

4- "Xbrite" like display. I call it this for lack of a better option. The screen itself of this LCD is not matted like many of its predecessors, it is glossy resembling a plasma TV or some of its smaller LCD PC monitor cousins, which allows it a brighter, fuller color clarity. This could be considered as "bothersome" by some because it allows for more apparent reflections of light, casting it back into the viewers eye, but the shear intensity of light emitted by this TV puts this claim to rest.

Cons:

1- Menus. After spending multiple hours removing my previous television, measuring and cutting holes in walls, fuddling with cables, and vacuuming dust bunnies and drywall dust, I found my self at the heart of my disappointment with this TV. Navigating the menu system. Don't get me wrong, it is not difficult, but it is entirely cumbersome. To start off a simple task like switching sources is made time consuming and attracts attention because you have to hit a minimum of 3 buttons on the remote to switch to your closest input. This may seem like someone complaining that you have to turn the faucet on to fill a glass of water but just play with it for a bit and you will see what I am talking about. The menus themselves are all animated and take a moment to load, which adds to the frustration when trying to navigate through them, and when you get to the input you want you have to manually exit the menu by pressing the "enter" or "return" button on the remote. This problem could have been easily alleviated by having shortcut buttons to the individual inputs on the remote, like most other manufactures offer.

2-Sound. The sound quality is greatly deteriorated by the fact that the speakers on this model face the opposite direction of the screen. Reverberation off a wall is not an adequate substitution for direct focus. The sound quality is not bad in itself, such as being boxy, tinny or deteriorating with increased volume, it is just not as full as others that I have heard (but this is to be expected being the form factor that it is). It will be necessary to have a surround sound system with this TV, but you probably already have one if you are seriously looking at this model.

3 Limitation of inputs. For some insane reason, Samsung preemptively decided which inputs (HDMI) you could use for which devices and placed limitations on those inputs as they saw fit. This is entirely lame and a let down. Scrolling through the menu selections on various HDMI inputs you will notice that a good majority or your picture modifications are not adjustable according to what input you have currently selected. Despite changing the labels of the inputs and reorganizing HDMI inputs, you are not able to get the full gamut of picture corrections that you payed a lot of money for. This, for me, is the biggest let down of the television. There is nothing worse than seeing a whole slue of options that are supposedly available, but are "grayed out" for some unknown reason. I expect, at this price and ability, to be able to fully customize each input that the televesion has, regardless of what peripheral I am connecting to it.
This con might not prevent you from purchasing this TV, but you should be at least aware of it. I have a lot of different devices connected at any given time, ie. blue ray, dvd, vhs, xbox 360, ps3, wii, xbox, n64, psx, snes, nes, pc, camcorder, camera, and some flash based devices, like some of the newer ipods/iphones, and it really bothers me that I cannot change the settings to what ever fits my needs best.

4- Dynamic contrast. This feature seems to be a blessing and a bit of a curse. On one hand you get dark, rich colors, and on the other you get much darker whites when the majority of the screen is dark in hue. You only need to scroll through the menu system of the TV on a static, dark background to see this flaw in action. How dynamic contrast works is that it lowers the backlighting of the television when it senses most of what it is displaying is dark, which makes any contrast in hues, i.e. whites to blacks, much darker than they would normally be. This may not be a deal breaker for some, but depending on what you watch, there is a noticeable difference. I personally like to watch a lot of the space/nasa documentaries, and when they show Hubble images of deep space that are for the most part black, with just a few pin points of light, you notice that that you are loosing quality/brightness of image (as compared to other flat panels without this dynamic contrast perk).

5- Lack of inputs. This downfall is the price you pay for having such a small form factor I guess. 4 HDMI is ok, minus them all being individually limited, but there is only one component in, no composite/S video in at all and the stereo out is a 3.5mm jack so you need an adapter, which is not included. The TV does have optical audio out, so if you have a somewhat capable/newer surround sound system you will be ok, provided you spend the money and buy the expensive cabling to connect it (heaven forbid that your receiver is more than a few feet away or else you are going to feel it in your wallet). Another problem that all of these digital connections bring, that is rarely advertised, is that there is a lot more optimization involved to make them work normally. Say "good by" to just plugging things in and having them work. If you don't have a lot of patients for reading user manuals or trial and error, it might be necessary to pay the extra cost for having some "Geek" come to your house and make everything work properly for you.
Another slight annoyance is that this TV does not offer any sort of video out. A slight inconvenience really, but I would like to keep my options open.

6- 120 hz it more like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Some people like its effects on movies/games, I personally have turn it off to make the TV look normal to me. You really need to evaluate the feature for your self and make a decision. For me, it looks like it increases the frame rate at times and slows it down in others, which gives the overall viewing quality a "hurky-jerky" feel. Others that have seen the feature on my TV say it gives it more of a 3D quality or that it is more like looking out a window, as apposed to viewing a TV. Its effect is much more noticeable while viewing certain media such as , blue ray, DVD's or video games. I can barely notice it while watching HD/SD content from Comcast (1080i/480p respectively).

7-"Media Center" short comings. What, no youtube? Even my phone has that. I would also like to see WMC connectivity, a flash enabled web browser, and come to think of it, bluetooth, so you can connect a qwarty keyboard to actually take advantage of it all. This would truly bump this TV into an upper eschelon, rivaled by no other device to date.

Summary
All in all, I think this TV is feature rich with a few let downs that could be corrected with a bit of ingenuity (hopefully made possible in the way of firmware upgrades, putting the LAN feature to good use). I would not personally recommend this TV to any of may friends because I would not want to hear them complain, but I would tell them to come over, play with it and decide for themselves if it is the right choice for them. Knowing what I know now it would be hard to say if I would upgrade again from what I had previously (LG 50px4dr) to this TV, but I can truthfully say that the picture quality on most devices (cable, xbox 360 and others (NOT PLAYSTATION 3, I get a weird snowy pixelated effect on the home screen that drives me crazy and was the reason I bought a new TV in the first place)) is vastly superior to most other televisions that I have seen. The bottom line is that you need to play with this television for a bit before you purchase.

Shockingly Good, but the 8000 will be the Kuro replacement
I was a committed DLP fan before undergoing a conversion experience on Friday April 17th. I had planned to replace my Samsung DLP with a Mitbushi DLP or LaserVue. In the final hours, I just couldn't go through with it.

A major Los Angeles vendor set up a display with the UN55B7000 sandwiched between a LaserVue and a Kuro 151. The results were pretty plain to my eyes. The Luxia pretty well crushed both of them. The cult of Kuro will denounce me for heresy and blaspheme, but this is what I saw. About 1 hour of fiddling with the settings on LaserVue did not change the situation much. The Kuro was locked in at calibrated settings which the employees would not allow me to change. Evidently, it was fully tuned up. Once again, this left me with the impression that a fully calibrated Kuro is an over-rated beast indeed. No wonder Pioneer quit the market.

The bottom line: I bought this unit the next day. It took about 2 hours to tune up after I took it out of the box. [Use the natural color setting. Customize motion smoothing to 7 for jitter control and 7 for blur control, or shut it off entirely] Since then it has been pretty astounding. Unbelievable color. Unbelievable reds. Unbelievable contrast ratios. Unbelievable black levels. Very bright. Generates no perceivable heat. Does not get hot. The detail and sharpness and depth of image is truly astounding. I have never seen anything that can compare, and I have been shopping for several months now.

Cons

I am still questioning the merit of the 120Hz motion smoothing technology. It does weird things to slow motion instant replays. It does stranger things to 24fps movies. Seems to work best with live actions sports and HDTV programs shot on digital. You can always turn it off. Blu-rays seem more natural with the technology switched off. Ultimately, Blu-Ray looks magnificent either way.

Advice

A word of advice for the first reviewer and everybody else. You should never, never, never use the speakers on your HDTV. All HDTVs are equipped with pathetic 10 watt reference speakers that stink. All HDTV owners should invest in some sort of home theater surround sound system. It doesn't have to be that expensive. Even a $300 Home Theater in a Box will make a world of difference.

Samsung LED 7100
Wow! Do you want the best picture available today. Look at the Samsung 7000 series LED TV.

I have had this for a week now and am very, very pleased with the set. I have the 7100 series from Best Buy. This is a special model only sold through Best Buy. It is the same as the 7000 except for some cute little add ons. One being the ability to scroll through a series of museum paintings. This allows you to use the set as a picture viewer/screen saver and when used with your audio system makes a nice back drop for a party or something of that sort. You can not add pictures. It also allows you to go to the internet and use Yahoo widgets and about five other widgets. There are also a couple of games built in. Will most people use these features? Probably not!

The other feature is the Touch Of Color which I really do not care for anyway. The 7000 is generally $300 cheaper than the 7100 so you chose.

The 7100 series is on sale the week of Apr 28, 2009 for $3,100. This is a $600 price drop. This is the same thing that happened to the Sony 240 hz set. In January 2009 it was $3,900 and is down to $2,800. If you want to wait, it will drop more but that is technology.

My wife usually does not say anything about the TVs we have except if she can not get the remote to turn everything on. She and my son were watching James Bond - Quantum of Solace on bluray. She told me that it was like sitting in the director's chair on the set. The quality of the bluray screen is so clear that it takes on a 3D appearance. The colors are true, the whites are white and the blacks are black. There is no bleeding or blurring of motion. The dark scenes are just as life like as the light scenes.

If I spend this much on a TV, then I will also have a good sound system so the built-in speakers are not a problem. The TV remotes are not that useful. The small round remote is useless. Again, I have the set connected to an amp, a cable box, a bluray player and an old VHS player. I use a programable remote so I do not use the Samsung remote.

The thinness of the set makes the set shrink from the viewer. I mean my old 56' cabinet was two feet deep. This set is 1 and 1/4 inches deep. It hugs the wall so well that it does not dominate the room even though it is 55". The most important part is that there is little to no heat generated by this set. It uses 40% less power than an LCD of the same size. This should help the set last longer and save power on AC and set top use as well.

When using this set to compare pictures make sure that you look at about a dozen different high definition stations. The high definition stations are not all the same! HDNet1, HDNet2, The Science Channel, and ABC in my area are tremendous with the quality in the order shown above. The worst are CBS, PBS, and TBS. There is a big difference in video and audio quality of these stations. Again, look at several stations your area may be totally different.

I had planned to purchase the Sony 240hz TV. I am so glad that I did not. The matte finish on the Sony does little to cut down glare but really, really mutes the picture. The colors and picture on the Sony are also muted by the matte finish.

The picture on the Samsung LED is like looking through a really, really clean window. In other words - awesome!

Pro: Picture quality.

Con: Price.