Samsung UN55B7100 55" 120Hz LED HDTV Review

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Viewing Conditions & Calibrated Settings

Viewing Conditions

Before we get to the calibrated settings, it should be mentioned that my viewing environment isn’t exactly what you would call optimal for TV watching. During the day, we get a ton of light coming in from our monstrous second story window while at night there is a street light directly opposite the viewing room. If anything, this emphasizes that even though I have included my somewhat finalized settings below, everyone’s viewing conditions will be different and as such you should take these as a starting point rather than an end-all of calibrations.

Calibrated Settings

Mode: Movie
Backlight: 5
Contrast: 94
Brightness: 50
Sharpness: 10
Color: 50
Tint: Default

Advanced Settings
Black Tone: Off
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Gamma: +2
Color Space: Auto
White Balance: Default
Flesh Tone: 0
Edge Enhancement: Off
xvYCC : On

Picture Options
Color Tone: Warm1
Size: Screen Fit
Digital NR: Off
HDMI Black Level: Normal
Film Mode: Auto1
Blue Only Mode: Off
Auto Motion Plus:
Custom: Blur Reduction = 10
Judder Reduction = 2

Game Mode: Off
Energy Savings: Off


The following changes were made when gaming:

Brightness: 60
Sharpness: 30
xvYCC: Off
Game Mode: Off

 

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Picture Quality: Blu Ray & HD

Picture Quality: Blu Ray & HD

All subjective testing was done with the settings mentioned on the last page in addition to a Sony Playstation 3 being used as the primary Blu Ray player. In this example, the screen captures you see are from Batman: The Dark Knight, hockey broadcasts and Transformers.

Please remember that no digital camera (Digital SLR or otherwise) is capable of accurately reproducing an image from a HDTV as the human eye would see it. As such, the pictures below are for illustration purposes only.

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I had some seriously high expectations for this TV and once it was calibrated, it rewarded me with simply stunning picture quality. Color reproduction seemed for the most part to be spot on but I couldn’t confirm this due to a lack of professional measuring equipment. While it isn’t in the same price range, the overall saturation and overall “feel” of the UN55B7100’s picture outstrips that of the last set we reviewed: the Samsung LN55AB650. Considering I basically did cartwheels over the B650’s picture quality, my comments here are very high praise indeed for the B7100.

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One of the best aspects of this TV is the near lack of motion blur and judder it exhibits when calibrated properly. The operative word here is “calibrated” since in its stock form, the B7100’s performance in high speed scenes is a bit of a train wreck. However, with Auto Motion Plus’ ability to customize individual settings really goes a long way in overcoming the limitations of today’s TVs.

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Honestly, at first I was not too impressed with the overall black level performance this TV exhibited. The blacks looked to be absolutely perfect but after seeing the UN55B7100 next to the LN55AB650, the LED’s blacks were still deep but tended to shift slightly towards the bluish end of the spectrum. It isn’t noticeable when viewed alone but the difference is striking apparent when direct comparisons are made.

Another small issue I encountered was the fact that without extensive tweaking, contrast on this particular HDTV is extremely poor. I like deep blacks as much as the next guy but when a scene becomes an inky mess or overly bright I would start having doubts about my purchase. This TV actually displays both characteristics since the edge-lit panel uniformly adjusts its light output depending on the scene instead of being a bit choosey like the local-dimming LED LCDs. There was however a way around this: increase the Gamma setting to +2 which is something I haven’t needed to do on any other product. This actually acts as a double-edged sword since increasing the gamma will can also wash out brighter scenes as well. Basically, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

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While there may be some minor issues with the overall high-definition picture quality of the B7100, I have yet to find an LCD that didn’t come up a bit short in some areas. I would have to say that when it comes to HD content, this set is one of the better ones I have had the pleasure of watching especially considering the fact that I really had to strain to find anything to really critique about its performance. That pretty much wraps up HD movie performance, so let’s get on to gaming.

 

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Picture Quality: Gaming

Picture Quality: Gaming

All subjective testing was done with the settings mentioned on the calibration page in addition to a Sony Playstation 3 being used as the primary gaming platform. In this example, the screen captures you see are from the Killzone 2, Resistance 2 and Tom Clancy’s HawX. All games are rendered at 720P resolution.

Please remember that no digital camera (Digital SLR or otherwise) is capable of accurately reproducing an image from a HDTV as the human eye would see it. As such, the pictures below are for illustration purposes only.

Click on image to enlarge​

In the past, I found it hard to sing the praises of LCD TVs when it comes to gaming since in most cases there has been a distinct lack of performance. Either there was ghosting, faint halos around moving objects or a general breakdown of picture quality. Well, the B7100 exhibits none of those things once it is properly calibrated and it actually provides one of the better gaming experiences I have had on an LCD in a very long time.

To me, Killzone 2 is the true litmus test of any TV since it makes use of scenes where high contrast is a must and TVs with a supposedly high refresh rate are routinely brought to their knees due to fast movements. The B7100 allowed me to play through most of the game without drawing my eyes to even a single flaw in its rendering abilities other than a few missteps when it came to some over-saturated colors.

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Unlike the first game in the Resistance series, Resistance 2 uses a much darker color pallet and as suck provides a perfect test for a TV’s ability to distinguish between different contrast zones. Here Samsung’s LED-based LCD had a bit of a harder time of things with some sections getting washed out in a sea of black. Adjusting the contrast, gamma and other settings alleviated this issue somewhat but in the few brighter scenes within the game this adjustment also led to some brighter colors being washed out. And before you ask; no, I didn’t find a happy medium.

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With so many moving objects on the screen, it is easy for things to go wrong even though HawX’s pacing and need for twitch-like reflexes isn’t as advanced as the other two games used in testing. That being said, I was stunned at the picture quality this TV was able to display in this game. Colors looked spot on, there wasn’t any ghosting and the whole atmosphere was able to draw the player right into the game.

Gaming seems to really be one area where the UN55B7100 is able to shine. Other than a few missteps within Resistance 2, there weren’t any areas where I can honestly say I found glaring problems with its ability to keep a player hooked on the action. It should also be mentioned that not once did I experience any discernable input lag.

Even though this may sound like a ringing endorsement, here is a word to the wise: do NOT use the Game Mode unless you want a serious degradation in overall image quality. It really does make the image look like someone beat it with an ugly stick.

 

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Picture Quality: SD Upscaling

Picture Quality: SD Upscaling

Like it or not, the vast majority of satellite, OTA or cable television shows are broadcast via standard definition signals. This means for many of us the ability of HDTVs to upscale a standard definition image is paramount to our viewing enjoyment.

Our testing was done with a Bell 9242 HD PVR hooked up to the TV set via a DVI to HDMI adaptor.

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Upscaling is anything but an exact science since the quality of standard definition (and HD) broadcasts widely varies from channel to channel. Overall, the B7100 upscales SD signals extremely well but there are some problems that mostly revolve around the source signal. Samsung has given this TV some tools which can actually help out with low quality broadcasts like the Digital Noise Reduction that removes some of the grain that sometimes appears. The DNR as it is referred to gets rid of the distracting graininess that sometimes pops up when watching some channels but it can also introduce image artifacts as well. Once again, we have a double-edged sword on our hands.

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When using the Wide Fit option there is also some tendency for the image to be overly stretched which is one of my pet peeves when watching SD content on a TV such as this. On-screen menus from your set-top box will also be stretched far towards the outsides of the screen when using Wide Fit mode but I didn’t find this too much of an issue since none of the critical information was cut off.

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The overall picture quality is actually quite good considering the source material I have been watching. Granted, there is a faintly unfocused look about the picture but to be honest with you, I have seen a lot worse, namely with the LN55B650 which made an upscaled image look like someone had rubbed it with a healthy helping of lube. What I will recommend against is watching high speed sports like hockey or auto racing on an upscaled picture due to a massive amount of ghosting. Seriously though, if you have the money for the B7100, you are probably able to afford all the HD sports channels you could ever want.

 

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Uniformity / Viewing Angle / Power Consumption

Uniformity

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Unfortunately, panel uniformity when viewed on a black screen was a complete disaster with the sample sent to us. So much so that I actually high-tailed it down to my local Best Buy to see if other Samsung LED TV’s suffered from the same clouding problem and lo and behold, every Samsung-branded edge-lit panel exhibited the same issue. After irking an untold number of salespeople, I am now convinced that this is an issue that affects a large number of Samsung’s B7000 / B6000 sets and complains on various forums back this up. Some have attributed the clouding to the nature of the thin, edge-lit panels so it will be interesting to see if the local dimming versions will behave any differently.

There are also a few other things to remember about the clouding: it can be very distracting when watching a particularly dark movie and it doesn’t affect overall color uniformity. In addition, Samsung launched their 1013 firmware update earlier in October which actually eliminated part of the problem but as you can see in the picture above (taken after a firmware update), there are still some significant steps to be taken. Hopefully, they will have this fixed soon.

Viewing Angles

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Viewing angles on the B7100 are very good when compared to other TVs I have seen in the past. Even at eight feet off center, there is actually very little contrast or color shift so you won’t have to worry about your guests having a less than optimal viewing experience.

Power Consumption

I had been told time and again that the backlight setting on an LCD TV can have a significant impact on power consumption but what no one was able to tell me was just how much. So, in order to find out, I pulled out my trusty UPM power meter and Tripp Lite 1800W line conditioner. Basically, the line conditioner was plugged into the wall in ensure the input voltage to the TV was regulated at a constant 121V so any fluctuations would not impact the results. The UPM power meter was then plugged into the line conditioner and the TV was finally attached to the meter. In order to keep these results constant, the opening 15 minutes of I Am Legend were played to get a good cross-section of power consumption figures. Only the peak rates were recorded.

In addition, I measured the Standby and Absolute Max power consumption as well. The Standby value you see is a constant reading instead of a Peak as all of the others. On the other hand, the Absolute Max figure you see is the result of a weekend of regular TV and movie watching while the power meter logged the maximum power consumption. It represents the highest peak power consumption this HDTV pulled from the wall with the blacklight set to 10 after about 8 hours of viewing. For all these tests, the Energy Saver was disabled.

On average, the UN55B7100 is easily the most efficient TV I have tested. It is amazing to see the difference between it and the LN52A850 which was released a little over 18 months ago. What is particularly interesting to see is the LED-based TV running neck and neck against the CCFL-based B650 in the majority of the tests. If you are looking for efficiency, there is no doubting that this new generation of LED displays is the way to go.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Samsung is one of those companies that very rarely miss the mark with their high-end TVs and their expertise in pushing out high quality products is nearly unmatched in my eyes. Naturally, there is a sudden drop in performance as you go into the lower price ranges but if you are a discerning customer, a Samsung TV is usually a safe bet. In the past I have looked at the LN52A850 which in my eyes remains one of the best 52” sets on the market even though it met with an untimely end. The LN55B650 also passed through my waiting arms and I was pleasantly surprised by its overall performance. Now, after a month of putting the UN55B7100 through its paces, my confidence in Samsung hasn’t diminished one bit.

Let’s face it; a review such as this one would be as boring as listening to a complete reading of War and Peace if it wasn’t for the glaring flaws that HDTVs usually exhibit. Indeed, many an LCD review has come out with a virtually litany of issues highlighting the shortcomings of today’s offerings. With the B7100 however I found myself really searching high and low in an effort to find anything that struck me as a shortcoming that would diminish this set’s price. I did find a major one (more on that a bit later) but Samsung has gone a come a long way in correcting it. Considering how harshly I usually judge a near-$4000 product, that’s saying something.

The real beauty of the UN55B7100 comes with the realization that such a thin TV can put out such a stunning combination of high-end picture quality and solid performance. It really is a technological marvel that will make you the envy of your friends, relatives and even the passerby who stops to watch through your open window. Movies were displayed with an amazingly wide contrast range and colors were really able to pop off the screen which gave the picture a great three dimensionality. The customized judder and blur reduction controls also work towards a near-complete elimination of the halos, ghosting and motion judder that have plagued so many other LCDs.

Even though movies came to life when viewed on this set, it was the gaming performance that really stole my heart. My PS3 pulls most of its duty as a Blu-Ray player but I have experienced the absolute train-wreck that comes about when trying to play fast-paced games on lesser LCDs. The UN55B7100 didn’t exhibit any of the problems I have come to associate with playing first person shooters on an LCD and it continued to shine in every other game I threw at it. There were some contrast issues in Resistance 2 but I am starting to believe the blame lies with the game and not the display.

Unfortunately, there were a few points where the B7100 tends to stumble. Contrast and color uniformity are generally excellent but no matter how much tweaking I did, there were still some movie and game scenes that took on an overexposed look. Then there was the general lack of black uniformity caused by excessive clouding / flashlighting. Samsung released a firmware that was supposed to take care of issue but it wasn’t able to completely eliminate it. I also find that this set is a bit too glossy to be used in anything but low-light conditions but that is a matter of personal preference rather than anything else.

The Samsung UN55B7100 is one hell of a TV but even after using it for weeks; I have come to the realization that I still haven’t found the holy grail of HDTVs. With a great picture, high efficiency and relatively good contrast, it’s pretty darn close to being one best but there is one thing holding me back from recommending it: the horrible uniformity in dark scenes. That however doesn’t stop it from being a technological marvel and as such, it gets a well-deserved Dam Innovative Award.


Pros:

- Blue Only mode allows for calibration
- Custom blur / judder reduction options
- Great picture quality
- Extremely high efficiency
- Good contrast


Cons:

- Some black level shifts
- Black uniformity is atrocious
- Eye-wateringly expensive

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