Samsung UE40B7020W 40-inch Widescreen Ultra Slim Full HD 1080P Crystal LED TV with Media 2.0 and Freeview
Posted by Notcot on Apr 8, 2010 in Home Cinema & Video |
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If I manage to make one thing clear in this review, it’s that this TV is brilliant. The 1080p is so clear that it’s practically like looking through an empty frame.
The picture quality is superlative; the blacks are deeper than ever and the colours are as vibrant as a bolt of lightning. Compared to previous LCD TV’s I have owned in the past, the samsung led TV’s are a cut above the rest. I’m not sure on the Sony 200Hz motionflow against this TV but the picture looks very smooth indeed. When I say flat screen, I really mean flat! There is literally no room wasted when hooking the thing to the wall and blends into its surroundings seamlessly.
Thoroughly recommended for anyone who seeks exceptional quality from their television!
Rating: 5 / 5
Best looking TV around, best panel technology. The platinum black TV is a stunner – slim TV is neat, not the most important feature in my book, but when looking at this TV edge on while an image is being displayed, its stands out as an amazing piece of consumer design.
The other reviews here say this TV is the best. Those reviews are right, the 7-series LED panel is the best.
For blu-ray, I have it twinned with the BD-P4600 player, these two together are stunning.
I put ‘The Golden Compass’ blu-ray in and the TV image knocked me for six – way better than I imagined. I’ve played many more movies since, but this one was gob-smackingly good.
I cant complain about the sound as it is effectively a flat speaker design. Plug the A/V out to a decent speaker and you can address the sound issues that are noted in other reviews.
Features;
USB connectivity is very, very good, 320GB USB HD worked first time. No issue with any USB drive that I have used. Playing photos, movies and music is great, and photos are fab on this TV.
Music playback is not like an MP3 player, if it created music libraries based on artist, album etc it would be better as it only provides for folder based browsing of music at present. Playback of DivX 3.1 encoded AVI is spot on.
YouTube playback over Internet is great, keyword search, find a video, play – simple. Good playback even on a 1MB Internet link.
The other Internet (Internet@TV) items are less useful, but I’d hope that Samsung will improve that aspect with more time.
Firmware update is a doddle – TV will auto-update 45 mins after TV goes to standby mode plus some other options.
The mini-remote control is a lovely item VOL+- and CH+- on a tiny remote – class design too.
The main remote is good, button lighting on/off is good when room is darkened. All the other buttons you’d expect.
PIP is great, allowing picture-side-by-side is a bonus – every TV should have this.
Std def TV playback is better than I expected, most large TVs display a grainy/blocky std def image, but this TV is very good.
I’ve no HD source other than the blu-ray so far, must get Sky+HD now.
Composite (EDTV) video from the Wii is better than the normal Wii display mode.
DVD upscaling on this TV gives a very, very good image.
Styling and design – 11/10 – this TV is that good.
Blu-ray video – 10/10
DVD video (via Blu-ray player) – 10/10
USB features – 10/10
Internet@TV features – 5/10
Install – 8/10
Networking setup – 8/10
DLNA – untested – other reviews suggest its v good.
Teletext – very speedy as it stores all the pages, and sub-pages – twin teletext with side-by-side picture and its neat.
Rating: 5 / 5
This tv is the slimmest tv I have ever seen, it weighs lesss than half the weight of my last tv too but this isn’t hard to believe given its size. The picture quality is one of the best i’ve seen, colours are vivid and areas that should be black are actually black (My last tv had a problem handling dark scenes). The connections are more than enough although I have alreay filled the 4 HDMI ports, one thing I found particularly usefull, was the inclusion of an Optical output. With a descent surround sound system you can have almost 5.1 sound whatever you’re watching, it is capable of outputting 5.1 but no aired tv stations support it yet. The menus are easy to navigate through and this gives you a lot of tweaking to fine tune to your desired settings. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a new tv, the mix of stunning picture quality and beautiful design make it the perfect piece to have at the centre of any home theatre system.
One final note,
I had one problem with the tv early on, it would randomly turn off into standby and then come back on instantly for no apparent reason. This happend quite often and was really annoying especially during the Champions League final. I sorted the problem out with little hassle by downloading the firmware update form Samsung’s website. I have had no problems with it since.
Rating: 5 / 5
Okay so had a few problems at first, out of the box colour/picture settings for standard tv and even HD TV input (SkyHD Box) are simply awful. Why Samsung do this is a mystery to me. It got to the point that I almost took the thing back after a week I thought it was so bad (noise in the picture, jaggies due to upscaling, over the top colour enhancement etc). Only a last minute visit from a professional AV installation mate I have turned the tide. Once he’d had 5mins adjusting the settings normal TV looked pretty darn good, HDMI crystal clear to the point it’s like looking through the window on the scene and the contrast ratio, well you have to see it “tuned” to believe it. You truly notice the difference from other high end TV’s (e.g. Sony Z5500 series).
Thankfully you can verify the screen quality in the showroom by checking out a blu-ray input as the TV has a BDWISE setting that pre-selects the colour and picture settings, meaning that you can see what standard TV and HD Input will look like in your home (once tweaked).
As regards the lack of 200Hz, I have to say that you won’t notice the difference between 100 and 200Hz. I’ve watched lots of sport on this thing (in HD of course) and there’s no bluring at all. Personally I think manufacturers are playing a numbers game here. The eye cannot distiguish refresh rates higher than around 85Hz, so make of the higher numbers what you will.
The speakers are a bit simple, okay for normal tv but if your buying this thing or it’s bigger bethren to watch movies on then a dedicated surround system is a must.
All in, once tweaked, knocks the competition out of the ring.
Rating: 5 / 5
The way this TV upscales standard Freeview TV and standard DVDs is hugely impressive (provided you’ve got a strong off-air signal and a decent DVD player). It’s such a relief to realise that I don’t have to throw away my (large) DVD collection, and can enjoy them all over again with near BluRay quality. It’s also the first TV I’ve ever owned which gave me perfect pictures staight out of the box, with no “tweaking” needed. It has literally transformed my viewing experience. But be warned – it gives poor quality digital TV signals (notably standard Sky boxes) and “budget” BluRay players very short shrift – you’d be far better off sticking with a high-quality DVD player than switching to a low-quality BluRay player. The other faults all relate to its super-thin dimensions. Whilst its thinness will draw gasps from your friends and make it perfect for wall-mounting, its tiny speakers are next to worthless, the absence of SCART sockets is a pain (just one mini SCART socket), and the rim-mounted LEDs mean that contrast is low on very dark scenes (the end credits on many films and TV programmes – white letters on a black background – look more like light grey on a black background). But I can live with that, given its plasma-like blacks, low power consumption, and excellent contrast in all but the darkest scenes.
Rating: 5 / 5