Samsung UA55ES8000 Review

The Samsung Smart Hub

HD Playback
We tested the HD playback performance of the TV by letting it render content directly off an external storage drive, a 500GB hard drive in this case. Playback is good and there are few complaints on this front. The TV lists files immediately and the movies and content loads up instantaneously. Fast-forwarding and skipping isn't too sluggish either. As far as the rendition quality is concerned, it does an incredible job at colours and detail, but it also does upscaling really well. An average quality 720p Blu-ray video clip scales up well for example. Unlike some other TVs that take a lot of time to load the list, this one has no such issues.

As far as quality goes, the only problem we had with it was that the black levels were not the best and while watching dark scenes in videos, we could not get the true effect of the scene like we had experienced with televisions with better backlighting. There is also a slight issue noticed at the extreme ends of the screen where colours appear a bit faded in comparison to the rest of the display. This issue may not be witnessed by most people as it is a very minute issue.

Blu-ray Playback
The Blu-ray playback of the television is really good and the true capabilities of the television can be witnessed while we are watching this Full HD content. Action scenes are great to watch and you can get really immersed in a video that is playing on the TV as details are crisp and so are the colours. Generally, colours appear either vibrant or dull but with this television, colours rendered perfectly. The black levels are the same as those noticed while running HD content and there are some slight backlighting issues seen where patches appear on the screen. Other than these issues, the 2D Full HD 1080p performance is flawless.

3D Explore feature found in the Smart Hub

3D Playback
When we reviewed Samsung's last year's model, we found the 3D performance to be average. Like the older UA55D8000, this model too lets you to convert 2D-to-3D and we found that 3D performance improved quite a bit. Still, active glasses are a bit annoying to use with flickering issues. Those used to it, might be able to view content with few complaints. The 3D image quality is really good, but the TV still does not match up to the performance and comfort of 3D TVs using passive glasses. The black levels in the 3D playback are really good and this is much better than that of the 2D video playback found on this television. All colours appear natural and there was no issue with it whatsoever. As compared to other TVs with active 3D glass technology, this one is less strenuous.

Audio quality
The audio quality of the television is average. The sound is pretty well detailed but the thin profile of the TV means that you won't find the largest of speakers on it. It's evident from the lack of bass in the sound. This is a minor issue for those buying such a high-end TV. For the best home theatre experience, an equally impressive sound system is also worth investing it. 

The menu is very in depth

DisplayMate Test
In the DisplayMate test, we noticed that after calibrating the television using the settings above the greys rendered accurately and no brightness settings needed to be adjusted. In the intensity range check we noticed that both the white and grey bands were properly reproduced and there were no green or pink tinges noticed. While checking the black level in the DisplayMate test we observed that most of the dark grey blocks were visible showing us that the black levels are good. In the reverse video contrast check we saw that the light greens and Cyan appeared very vibrant and there was no detail at all in it.

All other colours were very detailed and there were no issues observed whatsoever. While checking the backlighting of the TV we observed that there were patches spread across the screen and the most noticeable of them were at the top left hand corner and at the bottom right. While checking the primary colours we observed that the reds and greens appeared a bit more vibrant than expected but other than these all the colours rendered well. In the colour scales test we observed that there was no bleeding across most of the bars except blue where there was some noticed.