Why You Can Trust CNET Samsung UA55C7000 review: Samsung UA55C7000
While 3D is probably one of the weakest aspects of this television, the 55-inch Samsung UA55C7000's abilities in other areas almost make up for it.
- 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 wouldn't want to be TV designers, particularly for televisions such as LG's LX9500, which has virtually nothing to design. Samsung's designers had a bit more clay to play with when they were planning the C7000 television, and the result is a glossy black TV with a silver accent at the bottom. It's a slim TV too, and some might say too slim as it needs adapters for everything as it's not thick enough to support full-sized connectors at the rear. It's an anorexic 26.5mm, from front to back — which is probably more important if you hang it on a wall, but most people won't.
Samsung UA55C7000
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The most striking thing about this TV isn't the panel itself though, but the stand. It's delightfully 60's sci-fi kitsch and helps extricate it from the army of black plastic blobs out there in stand land. But despite its chrome looks it's actually made of plastic — hard-wearing plastic obviously — but we would have preferred actual metal.
Another way the TV differentiates itself is with the remote control. While it's not as cool as the model that will ship with the C9000 later in the year it's still pretty natty. In fact, we think it's the best TV remote we've seen up until this point. While in all honesty we'd probably still junk it and get a Harmony One, it's got a luxurious metal finish and laser-etched keys for use in the dark. It's also much easier to use than the Sony NX700 remote we looked at previously.
Features
What did you want to know? Yes, this is a 3D television built from an edge-lit LED design. While 3D free-to-air is coming, the majority of the content you'll probably watch initially will be 3D Blu-ray movies. Well, not so many titles. Would you believe a single title? The beauty of the 3D Blu-ray specification is that you can use any player, and while we used the accompanying Samsung BD-C6900 for our testing you could use any player. The C7000 ships with two pairs of coin-battery-operated glasses, with additional glasses worth AU$99 and rechargeable models costing AU$129.
If you look beyond 3D, the next and probably more important feature is media streaming and internet connectivity. Like the Blu-ray player, the TV ships with a program called Internet@TV, which is a combination of net applications and catch-up TV in the form of services such as BigPond TV. The company also offers a feature called AllShare, which is a DLNA client that enables you to slurp files across your network to watch on your TV.
The device has two USB ports, one of which accepts the optional wireless dongle and the other accepts hard drives. These drives can be used to playback media if you don't have a network attached or can be used for timeshifting or to record shows via the TV's single tuner.
Yes, this TV does have an embarrassment of features. To prove it, in the coming months you can also bung on an optional AU$150 Skype camera and use the TV to "phone home".
If you want to plug stuff in then there are plenty of avenues available to you. The first is four HDMI 1.4 ports, which include a return audio channel and potentially Ethernet in the one cable as well. But as there is very little 1.4 spec equipment available and even fewer cables this is something we couldn't test. Unfortunately, all of the other ports require proprietary adapters — which are included — which is a shame as these are something you could quite easily lose. The ports include a component connector, two AV ins, Ethernet, and a D-Sub for PC connection.
Performance
At the recent unveiling of its 3D TV we were almost impressed by the TV's capabilities, but what we saw then and afterwards in our studio didn't correlate, unfortunately. Yes, we're a little cynical about 3D, but we think that with some effort it can be done exceptionally well as in the case of Avatar and a decent cinema. Regrettably, everything else we've seen has been mildly disappointing or just plain wrong. The Samsung fits somewhere between the last two descriptions.
Yes, the problem is crosstalk. This is something you should acquaint yourself with, as it's a ghosting problem that can lead to eye strain and even nausea. This TV had it, and it's not something you can fix without sitting so far away from the screen that you don't see a 3D effect any more. Samsung recommended sitting a metre away for the best effect, but at this distance it looks like the televisual equivalent of crossing your eyes — everything's doubled. Having seen a plasma TV from another manufacturer next to its own LCD, we believe that the problem's related to LCD when used in concert with a 3D Blu-ray. The effect wasn't as bad when viewing content that was converted from 2D to 3D, but as the TV was trying to guess the depth of a shot in real time it came up with some quite strange effects — backgrounds inverted so that they become part of the foreground and other mind-warping. While 3D was watchable and not as horrific as we've probably made it sound, we'd definitely wait till the next generation of equipment comes out, or look at a plasma instead.
This is a shame, as this is actually a high quality television. It's capable of bright, detailed images and while we have seen better from its rival Sony, Samsung's TV offers plenty of punch for the money. With Blu-rays it shone particularly well, even if it's a little less successful with DVDs showing a tendency for softness. We also saw a tendency for noise and pink fleshtones even on the movie settings. Also, the screen's high brightness means that if you turn the backlight up too high you'll get backlight clouding, but after a careful calibration you'll get a juicy picture. As with the Blu-ray player, 24p support was a little lacking though perfectly watchable.
Sound quality was OK, if a bit muffled due to its down-firing speakers, but speech was clear and movie soundtracks had most of the needed bombast to give you a thrilling experience.
We played around with some of the applications available and while it was fun, we found Google Maps was especially frivolous as you can't export your maps and text input was fiddly. The AllShare feature was also a bit hit-and-miss as we only encountered a couple of movie files that the set would actually play. While the company is forthcoming about the file types the Blu-ray player supports, we couldn't find what the TV played without trial and error.
The Internet@TV function worked quite well; we enjoyed browsing through YouTube and we especially liked the picture-in-picture function. We would have appreciated if the Internet@TV was a selectable input rather than having to press the Content button.
The TV has a 200Hz mode, but it's still not quite there, causing movie content to lose its sense of scale and creating haloing artefacts to boot. Best left alone.
The set's PVR function was a little fiddly to set up and use, but if you don't already have a recorder then the ability to timeshift — to pause live TV, for example — will come in particular handy.
Conclusion
If you want to buy a 3D TV then do not buy this one. It may be first to market but the 3D implementation isn't the best we'll see this year. Also, there's so little content available that it makes sense to wait anyway. However, if you're looking for a fully-featured, stylish television with impressive image quality, then the C7000 is worth an audition.