Samsung LE52F96 review: Samsung LE52F96

With Pioneer claiming a monopoly on black reproduction on its excellent plasma televisions, it's nice to see Samsung pop up and say "actually, we've got something you should look at".

8.3

Samsung LE52F96

The Good

LED backlight; HD picture quality; great connectivity; styling.

The Bad

Price; Freeview picture quality; sound.

The Bottom Line

This set provides a ratings challenge because we love the styling and HD picture quality but weren't blown away by the sound or Freeview quality. At this price, we would expect a more rounded performance but this could be seen as the first step for LED backlights

Traditionally LCD TVs worked by having an LCD panel, behind which was a backlight that was uniform and either on or off. LCDs emit no light of their own -- unlike CRT and plasma screens, which both produce light. This means that LCDs struggle to produce black because there will always be some light that will leak through the panel. Enter LED backlighting, which aims to produce deep, inky blacks. But does it work, or is it simply a £2,700 gimmick?

Design
The usual Samsung design ethic has been applied to the F96 series. The company remains a leader in aesthetics and we are always excited to get one of its TVs out of the box. This TV features the piano black finish we've come to expect from flat panel screens these days. The F96 adds a few extra design touches that improve it further.

The blue LED is also a switch to put the TV into standby. It's both aesthetic and practical

It's worth saying that the F96 only comes in 52 and 70-inch models. Our 52-inch review sample is enormous and big enough to fill any lounge, so be prepared to clear a bit of space and throw out some unnecessary junk/family members if you're buying the 70-inch version.

Firstly, there is a blue LED stripe at the bottom of the screen. As with previous models, this can be disabled if you don't like it, but it also acts as a standby button, which we think is funky but not totally necessary.

On the right hand side of the screen there are some illuminated, touch-sensitive buttons which add to the functionality without distracting the eye too much.

The touch-sensitive controls on the TV turn themselves off when they are not in use

There are a healthy selection of inputs at the rear and side of the TV, with three HDMI sockets -- one of which is on the side panel of the screen -- which we think is a suitable number for most people. Although if you had a hi-def disc player, PS3, Xbox 360 Elite, as well as Sky HD or Virgin's HD service, you might yearn for four.

Features
It would be wrong of us to start with any feature other than the LED backlight because it's the most important part of this TV. The backlight works by having an array of light emitting diodes behind the screen. These replace the more traditional cold cathode tube on regular LCD TVs which while nice and bright, can't be selectively dimmed in certain areas.

Side inputs make hooking up camcorders and games consoles very simple

As LEDs can be turned off when they aren't needed, this TV can generate much deeper blacks than most LCD TVs. Samsung even claim a dynamic contrast ratio of 500,000:1, which we'll treat with the appropriate sceptisism. Suffice to say, whatever the true figure, this screen does do a great job.

The selective dimming of the LED array isn't especially accurate, which means if you have a totally dark screen and a bright white object, you'll see light bleed around the edges. In real-world viewing this isn't really a problem, but it will show up from time to time as a mild halo around bright objects on a dark background. For example, when you adjust the volume while the screen is showing black, you'll be able to see what we mean.

The Samsung, like all its brothers and sisters, has an immensely customisable picture. There are controls that enable you to adjust every facet of the image, including all of the individual colour components. This is a great thing if you want to optimise the TV for your viewing tastes.

Performance
HD DVDs on the Samsung were stunning. The 1080p panel makes the most of high definition material and we saw stunning levels of detail and the picture was wonderfully bright. Testing the TV with Serenity proved how good the LED backlight can be. We were quite simply blown away by how deep and black the space shots looked and how much detail we could see.

Upscaled performance from our Oppo DVD player proved to be very pleasant indeed. We viewed one of the remastered James Bond DVDs and were amazed by the picture quality and the strong pleasing colours.

Freeview on a 52-inch TV is sub-optimal. If you're buying a large screen and want to watch Eastenders on it, you'll have to sit a long way away from it to be able to stand the compression artefacts and soft, mushy picture. This isn't especially the fault of the set, however, but we are aware that much of what people use TVs for is, well, watching TV. We've also seen large plasma TVs do a more convincing job with Freeview than this set manages.

The Samsung has a great range of rear inputs and plenty of them

One of the gripes we have about the 52F96 is the abysmal remote control response. We had a particular problem on Freeview where we pressed the 'next channel' button, but the TV did nothing. The light on the screen that indicates a received signal flashed away, but it seemed like the TV just ignored it.

During our testing we found that the TV has a reasonably small viewing angle, far more so than other LCD televisions we've tested. The LED backlight clearly affects the viewable angle to some extent. We were able to reduce this problem by turning down the brightness of the backlight. Samsung defaults to quite a bright light by default. We knocked it down to the minimum possible setting and were easily able to see the picture detail.

Conclusion
For high definition material we found the 52F96 to be a solid performer. Motion was smooth and the picture quality was excellent. Upscaled DVDs looked great, too, which is encouraging for people with large movie collections. Freeview picture quality was distinctly lacking. We accept that standard definition doesn't scale well to 52-inch screens, but we've seen decent performance from Samsung's own 50-inch plasma.

If Freeview is important, you may need to look at the Samsung PS50 or one of Panasonic's excellent plasma TVs as a strong alternative.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Jon Squire