- 7.5Wx2 audio output
- Wide Color Enhancer Plus
- ConnectShare Movie
- 4 HDMI (ver 1.3), HDMI-CEC
Samsung LED HDTVs combine breakthrough picture quality and advanced connectivity options that will keep you entertained 24/7. This UN32C5000 LED HDTV also makes it easy to be green, and will save you some green, by being ENERGY STAR compliant…. More >>
Okay first off let me say that I think Samsung does make some of THE best TVs out there. But this isn’t one of them. I have been looking for a high quality TV to play games on and for movies for a while now. I got an e-mail from Amazon stating that the new 2010 models from Samsung were now available. I thought great timing since I just got some back-pay owed to me. I wanted a 32″ TV since the room this was going into is not very big. I looked around the internet but there were no reviews yet, just the manufacture description. So I took the gamble and bought this one. I received the TV three days ago, and have been bummed since. Okay for the review. First impressions: Beautiful TV, I really like the styling and glossy finish. I actually laughed at how skinny the box was. Set up was not hard at all and they provide cable management to hide the cables from the back. THEN I turned it on. QUICK NOTE* It states that it “absorbs ambient light and virtually eliminates reflections”, I say BS! It has the worse amount of reflection on any TV I have ever seen. My computer monitor sits on the opposite wall (about 14′ away) and I can easily read text from it. When trying to watch the news, I couldn’t see half the screen because of the reflection, it is that bad. If you know anything about HDTV, then you know that the Black Level is the number one factor in picture depth and quality. The black on this set is not black, though you’ll probably only achieve that on a plasma, here it is a semi dark grey even after adjustment. Again disappointing since I saw a deeper black on their own 32″ 360 series at Walmart that was about $500 cheaper too. Now for the biggest complaint, yes there’s more, it is the amount of back-light bleed. The top corners have a grey fan shaped bleed that extend about 5″ inwards, in the middle on the left half of the screen there are four large bleed throughs about 7″ square each, and a 6″ bleed in the middle of the right half of the screen. These bleed throughs or clouding is visible even in bright images. It makes the image wavy like. Also of note for you gamers out there, the Game Mode is ONLY available with HDMI. I have the older XBOX 360 so I use the Component cables which means no Game Mode for me. I also have the 360’s PC VGA cable, but again no Game Mode and you with those you cannot adjust sharpness, color, or black level. I did find another review here on Amazon for the 55″ model, same series, and it looks to have the same problems. As you can probably already guess, I will be returning this.
***Updated 3/24 — Okay I decided to change the ranking from 2 stars to 4 stars in that I have since calmed down and knowing that it was just a bad panel. So for anyone interested in this set, please take the review with a grain of salt (I also decided to leave it up, instead of deleting it). Overlooking the bad panel part, here is a few impressions of the set. For one, it is a beautiful set, very dark and glossy. Though just know that the screen is very glossy, black mirror like, but in a light-controlled room it shouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t get a chance to view any blu-rays on this so I don’t know its potential. I did watch a DVD through an XBOX 360 (Kung Fu Panda) using component cables and it looked fantastic, honestly the best I’ve seen it. Didn’t get a chance to go online with XBOX Live, but I didn’t see any lag in the games I did play. I also didn’t get to calibrate the set (since I was returning it), but out of the box, colors were good, blacks were not ink black still, but fairly dark with good shadow detail. I also found that this IS edge-lit, but all of the literature kept saying LED Backlighting, If I known that I wouldn’t have bought it since I personally don’t really like edge-lit displays since they typically have uniformity issues and flash-lighting (looks like spot lights from the edges), though not all edge-lit displays have this. Hopefully If you decide to give it a try, you will get a better panel.
Rating: 4 / 5