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4. Samsung LED TV in India – Review 2020

Samsung LED TV in India – Review 2020

Reliability, versatility and after sales service is what makes Samsung as one of the strongest contender for TV market leader in India. Latest line up of Samsung has brought incremental changes in its features to cater the needs of its customers in the evolving world of technology.

Key Samsung TV Technologies

What are QLEDs?

At the the recently concluded CES (Consumer Electronic Show) tradeshow, Samsung unveiled the upgraded QLED TVs, featuring quantum dot display. Taking cues from rapidly expanding field of quantum computing, Samsung has started to roll out quantum dot powered displays in its latest high end offering. Quantum dots are nano-sized crystals (one billionth of a meter or 1/10,000 of hair strand size!) made of semiconductor materials, which has a very good light absorbing and emitting capacity making it apt for brilliant display quality and energy efficiency. As opposed to conventional display which tends to get mix up with adjacent colors, quantum display provides 100% color volume thus making visuals on the screen sharp and life-like. With over a billion precise colors, Samsung TVs provide rich and perfect colors that continues to stay true even while displaying brightest scenes that would otherwise wash out on other TVs.

With Quantum Dots, Samsung has improved upon their existing color technologies like Active Crystal Color and PurColor which were introduced in Series 7 and Series 6 respectively in the past. Quantum Dots competes directly with Sony’s Triluminous Display and LG’s OLED technology in terms of picture quality and variety (range) of colors.

What is HyperReal Engine?

Picture engine is the heart of any TV and Samsung’s HyperReal engine drives the picture quality on Samsung TVs. A picture engine is best described as a “smart processor” that retouches the images by adding missing colors, lustre, vibrancy, texture and details to the picture. For premium range TVs it is complimented with 3D chip for immersive viewing experience. It would make users feel as if they are not just watching a movie but experiencing it!

This is the real piece that differentiates one brand from another because hardware of two brands can be the same, but this software piece makes a brand stand apart from others. Samsung’s HyperReal engine propels Samsung to one of the premium brands on TVs. This picture engine stacks very well against those from the competitors like Sony’s X Reality Pro, LG’s Triple XD Engine and Panasonic’s Fine Remaster Engine. However, in general in terms of picture quality Sony’s X Reality Pro and Samsung’s HyperReal Engine would lead the group.

8K Resolution

Frame TV

The Frame TV launched by Samsung is a masterpiece for art afficianados. It delivers vivid pictures on QLED screen when on and soothing artwork when TV is off. So TV will not only entertain but also resonate with your artistic styling of home. Frame TV comes with thousands of artistic pictures  from renowned institution which would serve as frame art when TV is off.

In fact, Frame TV is a confluence of art and technology. It comes with a motion sensor that detects the presence of human inside the room and turns TV display into an artwork. Similarly, when no one is in the room it turns itself off avoiding wastage of energy. Frame TV has an ambient light sensor as well which automatically adjusts screen brightness based on the ambient light conditions just like a high-end smartphone.

HDR, Wide Color Enhancer Plus and Clean View

High Dynamic Range or HDR, as it is best known, simply means more dynamic contrast, better brightness and a wider color palette that brings your TV viewing experience to a more life-like one. So the whites are brighter, blacks are darker and other colors more natural. HDR enhances image quality and details that are usually lost in translation in older TVs with standard display models.

Latest Samsung TVs in the premium category comes with HDR 10+, which harnesses the power of HDR in the optimal manner. It delivers elite contrast–which means even while watching TV during the day in a brightly lit room, Samsung TVs cut through with peak brightness only on the parts that need it. It also gives expanded color details which makes it possible to reveal subtle details, which are lost otherwise, on a challenging white on white color pallets or black on black color pallets. Good thing is premium models like Q900 supports HLG (hybrid log gamma) HDR, which is HDR standard for viewing live HDR content unlike other HDRs which applied post production of the video. You can read more about HDR here.

If you are looking for great picture quality, try to find models with HDR10+ in Samsung.

Additionally new models from Samsung smart TVs come with Wide Color Enhancer Plus technology which produces wide spectrum of colors on LED display. In other words color range is more wide and you’ll experience rich, vivid and diverse color reproduction on your television screen.

To compliment Wide Color Enhancer Plus technology here is also Clean View feature which filters out unwanted noise which impairs the picture quality using advance visual noise removal algorithms.

Smart Hub OS from Samsung

Samsung latest generation smart TVs host the ‘Smart Hub’ OS, which saw a major upgrade in 2015, wherein the Korean manufacturer decided to revamp its TV OS around its proprietary Tizen OS.

Samsung has managed to turn Smart Hub into a miniature entertainment hub, capable of giving easy access to cloud gaming, high-quality HDR movies, music, all in single streamlined package.

Latest technological innovation by Samsung in smart remote technology is ‘One Remote’ which can be connected to any device even if they are hidden or tucked out-of-sight, owing to their ‘Invisible Connection’ technology powered by optical cable. On ergonomics front, it is very comfortable to hold and features craftsmanship unlike anything else currently on the market with controls being simple and intuitive.

Now to navigate manually through the menu can be daunting sometimes. But blissfully premium Samsung TVs are now coming with Bixby voice assistant support built n to smoothly navigate the settings menu, adjust volume or search for specific content. In fact models launch this year come with Voice Wakeup feature which allows user to use Bixby assistant even if he/she is not near the remote. And if you are a patron of other assistant like Alexa or Google then you can use these assistants too with Samsung’s new QLED TVs if you have Google Home or Amazon Alexa.

The OS is pretty impressive when compared to the competition. It offers better performance as compared to Android OS in Sony and Firefox in Panasonic. But LG’s WebOS still performs better than Samsung’s SmartHub in terms of speed and usability.

Personal Computer, Home Cloud and Live Cast

Most of the new Samsung smart TVs including the budget Samsung 7 in 1 TV comes with Personal Computer mode that allows the user to transform their TV into a giant PC. Using Personal Computer mode you can do your computational work from cloud, mirror your laptop onto the giant screen and even access your office computer remotely, There is also Home Cloud mode which allows to automatically save important files on TV itself. Not just computers you can even cast your mobile on the TV using Live Cast functionality.

Clear Motion Rate (CMR) in Samsung TVs

TVs are marketed using different specs and one of the lesser known parameters is refresh rate. Refresh rate is how frequently a TV switches the image (alternatively called, “frame”) on screen. With traditional televisions, this was 60 Hz or in layman’s lexicon—60 times each second. Samsung has rechristened refresh rate as Clear Motion Rate (whose number is roughly the double the refresh rate in hertz). The CMR (Clear Motion Rate) option in Samsung TV helps in providing a smooth frame transition when watching fast action program like an action-packed live sports event or a fast action thriller movie. Main advantage of CMR is that it corrects two noticeable picture problems, blur and judder. If you want to compare Samsung’s CMRs with native refresh rate then here is the data:

Curved TVs in Samsung

Samsung is one of the pioneers of curved televisions and presently the only provider of curved TVs in India. The gently carved curves round the Samsung’s television helps the viewers to be at the epicentre of the action, providing them with apparently wider view field and make their viewing experience more uniform. High ends curved TV models also are armed with auto depth enhancer, a technology developed to provide viewers with noticeable depth of the scene which is otherwise missed in the standard television. Though curved TVs are eccentric by design, giving users with more immersive experience of depth, sharpness and contrast but the downside is they are slightly more vulnerable to onscreen reflection of the incident light.

Triple Protection to suit Indian Conditions

Many Samsung models, especially the budget ones offer Triple Protection which is quite well suited for Indian conditions. This feature provides protection for the TV from Voltage Fluctuations, Power Surges (lightning) and Humidity. It helps improve the durability of the TV and get you the max out of your investment.

Samsung: Hits and Misses

Samsung, name itself instills the faith in the product—that’s the brand image Samsung has managed to create over time. No doubt Samsung makes very good TVs but their pricing has sprouted unreasonably over time with value for money parameter going for the toss. Despite of this, most people still trust Samsung when it comes to buying a TV suiting their needs and budget. Another plus point is that even in HDR, Samsung TVs maintain a low input lag which is great for gaming. With 4k TVs gaining popularity, resolution for other media devices is still on lower side specially when smartphones are to be considered. This is where Samsung excels by enabling even the lower quality content such as broadcast TV or DVDs to scale up to the 4k resolution so that viewing experience is not ruined due to resolution mismatch.

Despite of this abundant takeaways, there are areas where Samsung don’t hold up to its reputation. Build quality is one of them. Samsung TVs, in general, will not have outstanding build quality with lot of plastic being used in the making, and it isn’t unusual for some parts of the TV to come off after some use. Also, audio quality of the Samsung televisions is fares below what the Sony and Panasonic premium TV offer. Barring this few shortcomings, Samsung still dominates the TV market and ranks higher on reliability meter.

Some Popular Samsung Models: