Why You Can Trust CNET Samsung LA52A750 review: Samsung LA52A750
The Samsung LA52A750 is a largely excellent TV, but t demonstrates some of the disadvantages of large-screen LCDs.
- Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Design
We've seen the future of TV design thanks to CES 2009, and Samsung's "Touch of Colour" designs are only the start of how crazy they can get. If you're the minimalist sort, the design of the 750 series may not be to your taste, but it's not as far out as some of its rivals. The red splash is there, but it's relatively subtle.
Samsung LA52A750
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Its build quality is good, and the screen looks good, though it does lack the swivel function of other televisions stands.
There is not much to say about the remote, only that it's the same red-flavoured one we've seen on models such as the 9 series. It's friendly and easy to use, but that's pretty much all she wrote.
Features
The Samsung LA52A750 is a full-HD panel and features what Samsung claims is a 70,000:1 contrast ratio. This is obviously lots, but we anticipate the actual figure is closer to a tenth of that. Still, it's an impressive number for an LCD panel without an LED backlight.
It's got 100Hz technology which will help some things look less blurry (credits, maybe), but it creates its own problems with complicated content like movies or sport.
This television was one of the first to feature a network port, and come June this model will be well and truly outclassed by the forthcoming Yahoo widget-capable machines, but the ability to stream content without a set-top box is still a classy addition. It is DLNA compatibile, so it is guaranteed *cross fingers* to work with other DLNA-stickered products.
This set also features the most HDMI ports currently available on a television — four in total, with one side-mounted for easy access. Component inputs are a little lacking at only two, and there's no S-Video input at all — but there are still two AV inputs if you need legacy ports.
Performance
If you are looking to buy a really big TV, at this 52-inch size we'd typically say that you should buy a plasma — and within 10 minutes of testing this TV that impression still held firm. While LCDs are perfect at the 40-something-inch mark, the Samsung 750 showed some issues relating to trying to stretch this screen that little bit further. But despite a couple of flaws, we were generally impressed with its performance.
Picture processing is generally Samsung's particular strong point. While the LA46A750 gives you a series of picture options, the basic settings — i.e. when everything is turned "OFF" — are very impressive indeed. This was evident from a DVD copy of King Kong and its relatively noise-and-judder free images through to our synthetic benchmarks — the 750 aced pretty much every test in our HQV video suite. Switching to the rooftop scene from MI3 on Blu-ray, we beheld the least judder we've ever witnessed from the flyover, and had to triple check that the 100Hz feature was indeed turned off. It was.
Sound was generally good, and while it's a lot better than the CRTs of old, it lacked the sparkle of some of its competitors' sets. Some dialogue, particularly that of nasally actors like Jack Black, tended to get lost in the general boom of the rest of the soundtrack.
The onboard tuner was generally good, and uses the freely available EPG. Even poor-quality content like daytime US sitcoms looked good and relatively crisp. As long as you don't turn on 100Hz, that is — not everybody loves Raymond when there's a jelly-like doppleganger clinging to him.
While the performance was generally positive, we must come to the television's only flaw. While black levels were generally excellent, there was one major caveat: two little pillars of "grey" flanking all of our content. Whether this is due to light bleed or an effect of the curvature of the earth due to the profound SIZE of this screen it's hard to say. Watching the Batman Begins Blu-ray, it appeared there was a slight smoke haze at each side of the screen which only got worse if you turned off the lights. We found it annoying, however, we think that 90 percent of people won't notice.
Conclusion Despite being on the market for several years, large-sized LCDs are still woefully expensive. There is a reason that rival Panasonic doesn't double-up with LCDs and plasmas of the same size — plasma is better and it's cheaper.
A 52-inch 700 series for AU$5,999 or a 50-inch Kuro for AU$6,500 — there's no competition, get the Kuro.