Samsung LA32D550 Review

Performance

The screen looks too shabby without any calibration. The sharpness level set by default makes text unreadable. Apart from that, few changes are required. We ran Displaymate to test how good the TV would handle basic patterns and colours. The first thing you notice in the gradient test, with blocks arranged in order of intensity, is that there’s some colouration. There’s a visible green tint seen in the image. The glossy screen helps with the contrast of the display though.

When it comes to complex patterns, the pixel tracking test showed visible flickering across the screen. Text colours against most backgrounds is fine, but there’s some amount of edge enhancement that tends to take place. This happens even after we turned off the sharpness levels of the screen. Backlighting isn’t even either. The screen showed up darker patches in the left bottom corner of the screen in our review sample. However, these issues are not visible on images and movies, especially with the lights turned on.

Plenty of features and connectivity options

There are some other issues though, such as screen flickering when the screen goes from a really dark image to a really bright one. In the basic colour gradient tests, we noticed that the brighter shades of red, blue, pink and green appeared to be blended together as one block. 

As far as video playback is concerned, using the internal media playback feature, the TV couldn’t load our 1080p 60fps TS video clip. We tried the 1080p sample clip and faced no such issues.

MKV files at 1280 x 720 resolution played without any problems. Quality was decent. When it comes to audio formats, the only problem area was with FLAC files, which are basically lossless media formats used by audio enthusiasts using PCs. Skipping, fast-forwarding and switching between files doesn’t take too long either. The user interface lets the user jump from one position to another. 

Not exactly the slimmest TV out there

Image playback is smooth and with large images spanning several megabytes, the image loading takes a second or two. It happens from top to bottom. Audio quality of the TV is decent – speakers are positioned pointing downwards but are fairly loud. They sound better than some of the ultraslim LED-backlit TVs.

Video quality is great overall and there’s no clear sign of any odd tints and shades on the screen. Videos appear detailed as well. Text looks fine as long as you turn off the sharpness on the TV. Input lag is minimal, so the TV would be ideal even for gaming using a PC or a gaming console

Verdict and price in India

A solid overall performer

The Samsung LA32D550 has a ton of features, including the ability to stream content over the network. When it comes to performance, apart from a few issues in video quality, it’s actually a very solid performer. It’s slightly old and it’s slightly bulky, but if you’re willing to ignore those issues, this is a TV worth considering for a price tag of Rs. 35,000. 

Product sourced from 

Krishna Electronics

Phone: 022-2577 5107