Samsung UN46EH6000

Samsung UN46EH6000 Reviews

The good: The Samsung UNEH6000 series costs less than some other TVs that use LED backlights. Its color accuracy, video processing, and bright-room picture are very good, and it has better screen uniformity than many edge-lit LED models. I liked the thin frame around the screen, and didn’t mind the cabinet’s extra thickness.

The bad: Lighter black levels hamper the EH6000’s picture quality compared with many TVs, including less expensive models. Its connectivity suite is anemic with just two HDMI inputs, and at this price numerous TVs offer apps and Smart TV functions that this Samsung doesn’t.

The bottom line: Although it’s cheaper than Samsung’s ultrathin edge-lit models, the EH6000 series’s value proposition is hurt by mediocre picture quality.

Since Samsung itself widely introduced edge-lit LED TVs in 2009, the phrase “LED TV” has meant “thinner” to the majority of TV shoppers. This year Samsung and other TV makers are marketing LED TVs that are just as chunky as the non-LED-based LCD TVs of yore, and cheaper than their edge-lit counterparts — which Samsung is now calling “Slim LED TV.”

Confused customers will probably be scratching their heads at the 3.7-inch-thick profile of the EH6000 series, wondering how it deserves to be called an LED TV. The salesman will explain that it uses LEDs arranged in a full array behind the screen, as opposed to crammed along the edge. That’s true. At that point he might even try to tell the customer that since it’s LED, it has a better picture than a standard LCD TV. That’s not necessarily true, and never was.

The Samsung EH6000 does have a thinner frame around the picture than any non-LED TV, lending it a nice minimalist look, but its picture quality is just decent — no better than the company’s non-LED TVs from last year, and worse in some areas. It is a lot cheaper than its edge-lit Samsung brethren, however, so it might appeal to value-conscious buyers, especially in smaller screen sizes where plasma and better LED TVs like the Sharp LC-LE640U series don’t compete.

Features
Samsung’s full-array backlight system uses fewer LEDs than full-array systems on higher-end local-dimming TVs, and fewer even than edge-lit models. The paucity of actual LEDs allows Samsung and other makers of new full-array sets like the EH6000 to charge less than for other kinds of LED TVs. Check out my primer on LED backlights for more and Samsung’s full 2012 TV lineup to see which model uses which technology.

The UNEH6000’s biggest step-up feature over the UNEH5000 series is a 120Hz refresh rate, which joins backlight scanning to earn the company’s “Clear Motion Rate” of 240. Don’t be misled, though: this is a 120Hz panel, not 240Hz. As a 120Hz set, the EH600 also gets Samsung’s dejudder processing.

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