Samsung UNF9000 4K TV review: Extra money for little extra detail

Hi, there. David Katzmaier here from CNET, and next to me is Samsung's F9000. This is the company's first 4K TV that doesn't cost $40,000. This thing is still extremely expensive; it's a 65-inch size. The F9000 is available in a 55-inch size. We'll get to all that 4K goodness in a little bit, but first let me start by telling you this TV is pretty much identical to the F8000 that we really liked earlier this year, except for that extra resolution of 4k. It's got the same really cool design; kind of a little strip around the edge of the picture that makes the entire TV seem almost all picture. It's also got that really cool, almost disappearing stand along the bottom. The flipside is you'll need to have a stand or a tabletop that's wide enough to encompass the entire stand or else the TV's gonna fall over. Of course, you could wall mount this expensive television and not be too shabby, the feature said. And this TV is great, up to Samsung's normal standards. You'd get its excellent Smart TV suite, the ability to control the cable box, umpteen apps , and of course the ability to adjust the picture 6 ways from Sunday. One of the things that make this TV different from the F800, however, is that the jack pack. The TV has a separate connector box where all the HDMI inputs are connected. There's also USB ports and pretty much every other port on the separate box. The idea is, once a new format standard comes around for connecting into this TV, otherwise known as HDMI 2.0, Samsung says you can discard the current connector box, grab a new connector box for an undisclosed sum, and plug it into the back here and get pretty much future-proof upgradability. That future connector box will also allow the TV to have the Smart evolution upgrade which will enable new processor and new software. So, all told, a pretty sleek way to keep this TV up with the times in the future. Another standout feature shared with the F8000 is Samsung's touchpad remote. Unlike that TV, this also comes with a separate standard remote with a bunch of buttons on it so you get your choice, in this case. Unlike other high-end Samsung TVs, this one is 3d compatible; it comes with 4 pairs of 3D glasses. And now for 4K. What a lot of people have been wondering and what we've been wondering ourselves, until we got our hands on this TV to test it, is how much of a difference 4K really makes. Well, I'll tell you; 65 inches, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. We compared this TV side-by-side with a 10 EDP 65-inch television, and unless you look extremely close, it's really hard to tell the difference. In fact, with 10 EDP sources, the 10 EDP TV actually looked a tiny bit sharper than this one in some cases. So, if you're looking at today's 10 EDP sources displayed on this TV, expecting a really big increase in detail, you're not gonna find it. In terms of 4K sources, the couple of things that I was able to test include some video from Red, which looked very good, as well as a 4K game off of a PC. That's really the main thing you're gonna be using this TV for right now is the 4K video game aspect, and it really does look really good as long as you have a high enough PC to take full advantage of it. Of course, beyond this mere resolution, the F9000 is an excellent performer. It has the same deep black bubbles as the F8000, so it does have really nice contrast for an LED LCD, although still not as good as a lot of the plasma TVs we've tested. It also has extremely accurate color, and I appreciated the screen uniformity. So, again, an excellent performer, even beyond its 4K resolution. On the other hand, the Samsung is extremely expensive and its still early days among 4K TVs. In a couple of months, we expect some new 4K TVs to be announced and they'll probably have better specs, and at least have that HDMI 2.0 that this one lacks out of the box. So unless you're really early adopter and don't mind spending $5,000 on a high-end, first generation 4K TV, we recommend you wait. That's a quick look at Samsung's F9000 4K television. I'm David Katzmaier from CNET.