Samsung UN46B8000 Review

 

The Samsung UN46B8000

Currently, Samsung is one of the leading manufacturers of LED-based HDTVs. The Samsung UN46B8000 is one of its finest models, with edge-lit LED technology, excellent picture quality and a bunch of other features tossed in to compensate for its high price.

Design

The UN46B8000 offers a striking appearance, whether it is hanging on its special thin wall mount or perched atop its swiveling transparent stalk. This is because it measures only 1.2 inches thick at most while its frame, which has a transparent edge, is purely glossy black with only a blue indicator light to interrupt it - a good thing for those who don’t particularly like the reddish touch of color present in many Samsung models.

Its main clicker is also deserving of praise, since it is the first to offer RF capability. This means you don’t need to point it at the HDTV for it to work. You can even be in the next room and still turn it off. While its rotating scroll wheel is not very responsive, it remains user-friendly with large, backlit buttons while the secondary clicker looks cool and easily fits in one’s hand.

The on-screen menu of Samsung continues to be the best one out there with large text across nearly the entire screen and set against a transparent background for more readability. There’s helpful explanatory text available, too.

Screen/Picture Clarity

The effects of LED technology can best be seen in the picture quality of the UN46B8000. Indeed, as an LED-based HDTV, the UN46B8000 offers inky blacks, a brighter screen and colors that are both saturated and accurate enough, resulting in breathtaking images. It doesn’t even suffer from the backlight fluctuations that plague the 6000 and 7000 series, although its screen is relatively shiny, reflecting more than its fair share.

Note that its picture quality can be improved further with a firmware update which you can download directly to the HDTV. However, it is observed that this can also make the blacks slightly lighter so if you want absolute black levels, you might want to skip the update.

For handling fast-moving images, the UN46B8000 comes with a 240Hz refresh rate. Its Custom setting also allows the separation of the dejudder processing and the anti-blur mechanism, providing more options in enhancing motion resolution. Resolving and de-interlacing various sources is not a problem.

Features

The usual numerous picture controls can be found on the Samsung UN46B8000, which include four picture modes, four aspect ratio selections and full gamma controls. It also offers three power-saving modes, picture-in-picture capability, a built-in content library, DLNA compliance and plenty of interactive features. Connectivity is pretty good, too, as long as you don’t have a lot of analog devices.

The fact that the Samsung UN46B8000 is an LED-based HDTV alone should be enough to warrant a second look for this model. And once you do, you will find more reasons to buy it. You’ll have to shell out a lot of cash for this model, though, but consider it a worthy investment.

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