Samsung B7000 Full-HD LED TV

Samsung Goes LED!

When deciding on high-definition televisions, consumers used to be torn between cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlit LCDs or plasma panels which are known for their deeper blacks. Well, those days are over, for TV makers have added another vital ingredient into the HDTV landscape to change that familiar equation we've come to know.

Smoking hot from Samsung's oven is three Full-HD LED TV series, branded as Series 6, 7 and 8. Not to be confused with their former CCFL based range, Samsung has incorporated an LED light-source (manufactured by Samsung Electronics themselves) in order to deliver a slimmer panel, deeper blacks and enhanced visual fidelity. However, Samsung's home-grown LED technology does differ from Sony's RGB LEDs which caters for local dimming.

Anyhow, if you wish to know more about the B7000 LED TV from Samsung's Series 7 suite, then get ready to dive in to our review, won't you?

Not Your Average Slim Shady

Measuring a mere 29.9mm in thickness, the 40-inch Samsung B7000 LED TV was definitely slim enough to impress our bevy of geeks here. But that's not all to its looks, for we noticed that Samsung has catered for swiveling options in the mix. The B7000 is furnished in a glossy black bezel with crimson trimmings, a Crystal Design color scheme recognizable on many of their flat panels of late.

Samsung's new wall-mount kit is worth of a mention here. In place of bulky brackets used by many conventional TVs, the B7000 LED TV is light enough that you may opt to hang the TV up via its metallic cables so as to minimize the space between panel and wall. Appreciably, Samsung has moved all four HDMI ports to the side. It's a clever thought, considering how you'd rather wall-mount the TV given the B7000's slender frame. All other inputs/outputs are available at the bottom of the unit, again making sure they are not interfering with the flush wall-mount capability of the panel. In our opinion, we would have preferred a mix of ports to be easily reached on the side and not just all the HDMI ports.

 The B7000 is big on features as well. Besides its built-in digital tuner and DLNA support, the Series 7 also boasts of networking capabilities such as an Internet@TV option. Take its YouTube widget for instance. It's an integrated service which allows you to sign in to the video site as well. The widget will take a moment to install initially then you're free to indulge in the service. It is largely easy to use, with no network drops encountered on our office's LAN connection.

Obviously different this time, we noticed that the Koreans have made some alterations to the TV's GUI (graphical user interface). The menu is now dressed in a similar red-and-black theme much like the TV's Crystal Design appearance. As expected with Samsung TVs, the panel is also highly customizable. We noticed that tweaks such as changing the color space, flesh tones, and backlight controls were made available under its Picture menu. As for the remote which is your gateway to configuring and using the TV, we didn't notice any major modifications, although its tail-end has been extended to give it a different appearance.

Strangely, Samsung has remained coy with the crucial specs. For example, there's no indication of the LED TV's response time, while contrast ratio numbers were generally publicized as "Mega" to keep up the guesswork. It's a rather odd move, if not wasteful, considering the LED TVs visual prowess as advocated by Samsung. On the following page, we find out how this Samsung B7000 LED TV fares in our assessment against some of the best LCD and Plasma TVs we've reviewed in the past on our sister HWM publication.

DisplayMate Tests

DisplayMate is a very thorough program designed to stress test TVs and monitors on various display capabilities as we ran it from our display testbed system and hooked up the Samsung B7000 LED TV via HDMI. All visual enhancements on the TV were disabled, with contrast levels, sharpness, and color temperatures fixed at 90%, 50% and "Standard" option respectively. We obtained varied results as we homed in on a handful of tougher tests and have jotted them here:-

Circular Geometry, Cross Hatch and Dot

Even linearity was observed on the crosshatch and circular geometrical shapes. Digital flat panels using digital inputs shouldn't have an issue with this test.

Screen Uniformity

The black background was consistent in most areas. However, brightness intensities towards the edge tend to change slightly when the viewing angle is varied.

Dark Gray Scale

This test is supposed to help you set the correct black levels, so we won't penalize any variations too much. However, there was a mismatch of tones between test block 16 and the one at the far right.

Color Scales

The blue band appeared slightly clumped at the brighter levels. Other than that, no major color tracking error was observed. Smooth gradients from zero to maximum brightness were achieved across the 25 steps.

256-Intensity Level Color Ramp

Uniform color gradations were observed across all four bands, with minor overlapping appearing towards the darker areas of the green and blue strips.

Silicon Optix HQV Tests

Silicon Optix HQV Tests come in very handy to assess image quality and handling of television displays, monitors and even the players through a variety of interlaced video signal processing tasks including decoding, de-interlacing, motion correction, noise reduction, film cadence detection, and detail enhancement. In our test assessment of the Samsung B7000 LED TV, we've programmed our Blu-ray set-top player as a 1080i source in order to stress the TV's video processor. This will force the processor to convert interlaced signals into progressive signals to accommodate the HDTV panel's native capability (or otherwise simply know as up-scaling). Here are the results we noted on two of the most crucial tests:-

Digital Noise Filtering

A sizable dose of noise was visible with when the TV's Digital Noise Reduction function was disabled. Once enabled, the TV's video processor managed to remove illegitimate noise by a good margin once we've set it to "High", and this was achieved without any visible loss in overall image detail. The B7000 also offers an "Auto" mode for automatic static noise removal, if any. The TV's temporal filtering looked good.

Video Reconstruction Tests

The Diagonal Filter test is used to determine the processor's ability in de-interlacing interlaced videos to progressive signals, especially where moving objects are concerned. The B7000 performed exceptionally well for this test, with hardly any feathering or 'jaggies' spotted on the rotating bar across all angles.

Video Tests

High Definition Tests

The Full-HD B7000 is powered by Samsung's latest LED Engine with a Wide Color Enhancer feature thrown in, possibly to offset its lack of local dimming. Limitations aside, the B7000 wasn't shy in producing rich colors and commendable blacks when dealing with Blu-ray discs playback.

On the movie Corpse Bride, the B7000's talent in delivering crisp images was apparent. Facial features on Victor Van Dort and the Corpse Bride appeared crystal sharp, almost 3D-like. The 100Hz MotionPlus feature didn't produce any apparent differences, but image transitions were definitely smooth in most instances. If you desire deeper blacks, we'd recommend toning down the LED backlights to level four while enabling the TV's "HDMI Black Level" option.

The same crispness was seen on Vantage Point. However, we'd like to highlight that the Samsung's "Natural" preset did produce a reddish overtone, and you might want to stick with the "Standard" option where possible. Oddly enough, turning on MotionPlus feature triggered a spiel of motion artifacts, and especially so with moving images in sporadic areas. Thankfully, this wasn't apparent on other Blu-ray movie titles.

The chase-scene we've selected from Batman Begins was shot at night, meaning that darker image details can easily be lost on less proficient panels. However, that wasn't the case with the B7000. Behaving more like a PDP than an LCD, details on the speeding Batmobile were still discernible with minimal backlight bleeding on the brighter areas.

While general video handling was above expectations, sadly the TV's built-in audio handling is rather weak and sounded a bit harsh. While this is generally expected of LCD TVs, we were hoping for better audio on a cutting-edge TV set with a big price tag. We guess the audio is more of basic functional usage and thus Samsung would rather have you get a home theater system for anything more (thus also limiting the cost of the TV itself).

Standard Definition Tests

With our Blu-ray player's output set to 480p, we flashed the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD on the B7000 to see how it managed up-scaling on standard definition materials. Surprisingly, the LED Engine did a wonderfully good job in scaling up the images. Skin tones remained accurate enough with little judders involved. Although a little feathering was spotted, the overall image quality was highly satisfactory.

The Slim Shall Prevail

In many ways, Samsung didn't spare any prisoners in engineering the B7000 TV. It's sensuously slim, packs power-efficient LED backlights and doesn't cut too many corners either when dealing with Full-HD or standard definition (SD) feeds.

They've added a whole slew of attractive features, although not all of them are useful right away like the BD Wise attribute. Its Internet@TV feature may still require some work but it's definitely one useful feature to toy with in this Web 2.0 age.

You may argue that the B7000's results on DisplayMate weren't perfect, or its audio delivery comes across as rather tinny. However, its real world performance in dealing with HD and SD video sources were praiseworthy in many aspects. Color accuracy, speed, clarity and efficient noise filtering are just some of the attributes the B7000 is capable of handling well.

Samsung is also well aware of the current economic decline. As such, pricing decisions have become a pivotal factor in deciding whether a product makes or breaks the deal. With an asking price of S$5,399, the 40-inch B7000 is looking to cause a further dent in the flat panel war for sure. Hell, it's even cheaper than their earlier Series 9 LED package for that matter. And from our overall assessment of the panel's performance and features, we think the Samsung B7000 LED-backlit TV is an excellent buy for its capabilities.

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