Samsung UN46ES8000

Samsung UN46ES8000 Reviews

The good: The beautifully thin Samsung UNES8000 LED TV seems to have come from a year or two in the future. Its massive feature set includes a touch-pad remote, IR blaster, four pairs of 3D glasses, motion and voice command, and the industry’s most capable Smart TV platform. Its picture quality boasts superb color accuracy along with industry-leading video processing and 3D performance.

The bad: Lighter black levels and imperfect screen uniformity hamper its picture significantly, especially for such an expensive TV. Samsung charges too much for extra features that are largely unnecessary and poorly implemented.

The bottom line: Although it hits plenty of high points, the Samsung UNES8000 LED TV cannot ultimately justify its high price.

The Samsung UNES8000 LED TV boasts stunning design and more features than any TV on the market. For that you’ll pay dearly, but if you can afford it and want the cutting edge of TV technology in your living room — pre-OLED, at least — then stop reading now and buy an ES8000.

But maybe you’re wondering about how its picture stacks up against the competition, or about how much further your TV experience will be taken by spending the extra dough. OK, fine, keep reading. The Samsung UNES8000 isn’t a bad performer by any means, but it’s not much better than many LCDs and plasmas, and worse than you might expect from Samsung’s highest-end LED TV. It’s also more expensive than just about any TV available today, with the exception of a few models with full-array local dimming. Finally its standout feature, which allows you to control the TV with a wave or a word, just doesn’t work all that well. Few TVs can approach the Samsung UNES8000’s “wow” factor, but few also come with such significant caveats.

Features
With Smart Interaction (see below) the UNES8000 has more features than any other LED TV on the market, earning it a 10 in this category — the same score I gave to the similarly featured PNE8000 plasma.

You might be wondering, however, why the chart above omits mention of local dimming under “LED backlight” when Samsung touts Micro Dimmimg Ultimate among the UNES8000’s features. That’s because, according to Samsung, Micro Dimming doesn’t actually dim the LEDs along the edge of the panel — so, according to my definition of local dimming, this TV doesn’t qualify. Samsung claims Micro Dimming employs video processing that “scans zones across the image and adjusts brightness to deliver deeper dark tones and brighter whites.” It also says the UNES8000’s Ultimate version provides “2x the number of zones” of the UNES7500 (with Micro Dimming Pro) and an unspecified number more than the UNES7100 (with standard Micro Dimming), but declined to specify an actual number.

Samsung doesn’t include mention of the panel refresh rate in its specifications, but I asked and was told it has a 240Hz panel. The company’s Clear Motion Rate specification, new for this year, supposedly includes refresh rate among its calculations, along with video processing and backlight scanning. For what it’s worth — not much, as far as I’m concerned — the ES8000’s CMR is said to be 960.

Smart TV: With the exception of Google TV, Samsung’s Smart TV platform is the most content-rich and capable on the market. Its big Achilles’ heel, aside from its cluttered interface, is lack of Amazon Instant, a service found on Panasonic, Sony, and Vizio TVs, but not LG this year.

Otherwise the available content is superb. The big standout is HBO Go, available on no other TV so far. Unfortunately it’s still not available on the 2012 models; Samsung confirmed it would be, but couldn’t specify a time frame. It joins just about every other mainstream non-Amazon video service, as well as numerous niche video options and 3D-specific app. We’re also happy to see the newly-added vTuner Internet radio app join Pandora and subscription music via Mog

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