LCD TV Reviews

Samsung has been pushing hard to improve LCD flat panel televisions. Though the company still makes plasmas, its LCD R&D department, judging from the cutting edge technology demonstrated at last January's CES, must be busy. With 120Hz operation, segmented illumination of the image, and LED backlighting, LCD technology at Samsung is big priority.

Big things are happening with LCD flat panel televisions. New developments like LCD motion lag compensation and LED backlighting, manufacturers are attacking some of the well-known shortcomings of that technology.

Samsung has come a long way since the days when it was considered a second-tier bargain-basement brand. Thanks to steadily improving quality, the Korean megacorp is now one of the world's pre-eminent consumer-electronics manufacturers. I've reviewed several Samsung TVs over the years, and each one has been better than the one before.

Two of the LCD sets in this Face Off, including the Samsung, produce black levels that were unheard of in LCD flat panels until recently. Like the Sony in this group, the Samsung LN55A950 uses clusters of multicolored LEDs as a backlight, together with local dimming of the individual clusters as required by the program material. The LN55A950 is the larger of Samsung’s second generation of LED local-dimming sets.

By the time you read this, Samsung's claim that their 46-inch LTP468W is the largest LCD flat-panel TV with 1080p capability will surely have been broken, perhaps by Samsung themselves. In the frenetic flat-panel HDTV category, new models seemingly appear in stores on a monthly—nay, weekly—basis. Samsung is chasing the flat-panel crown with a slew of offerings, in both the LCD and plasma categories, wowing visitors to their CES 2005 booth with dozens of new models, including a 102-inch behemoth.

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent color rendition
Deep, detailed-looking blacks
Full-array backlight with local dimming
Minus
Potentially confusing screen GUI and remote
Unreliable voice command feature
No Dolby Vision

THE VERDICT
Quantum dots in Samsung’s near-top-of-line QLED TV allow it to deliver exceptionally rich color. Add in a full-array backlight with local dimming and the QN65Q8FN amounts to a winning proposition from a picture quality standpoint.

Samsung’s QLED—not to be confused with OLED—UHDTVs are the company’s top-of-the-line models. In case you’re wondering, that Q in QLED stands for quantum dot, a backlight technology that provides a more precise method to generate the red, green, and blue light that creates a video image than the process typically used for LCD displays. How does it happen? In a Samsung QLED TV, a blue LED backlight generates the blue component of the image and also stimulates a layer of nanocrystal dots sized to emit a specific wavelength of light —red and green in this case—when energized.

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
High brightness
Good off-center picture uniformity
Vivid HDR
Minus
No Dolby Vision support
Remote control ergonomics

THE VERDICT
There's little to criticize, and much to like, about Samsung's new flagship LCD UHDTV.

TVs are cheaper than ever. Really. When you see a set priced at $3,500 and your first reaction is a gag reflex, ponder this: a CRT color TV in 1970 might well have cost you $350. That would be a simple tabletop model offering glorious 480i standard definition on a 19-inch screen, and it would cost $2,400 in today's money. Current-day premium sets do command similarly high prices, but they now offer more features and better performance than ever before. The 65-inch Samsung Q90R reviewed here has a suggested retail price of $3,500, though it can be found online for significantly less. There are also 75- and 82-inch Q90R series models, the latter retailing for $6,500. One couldn't even dream of a 65-inch set in 1970, much less an 82-incher.