by Dennis Burger at January 31, 2012 10:38 am
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I feel like I need to apologize. Perhaps to all the friends who’ve come to me asking for TV-buying advice over the past few years. Perhaps to the consumer electronics industry as a whole. Perhaps just to Samsung, I dunno. But my mantra when asked for flat-panel buying advice has consistently been, “Buy a plasma.”
“But I love how the pictures look so much better on the LEDs at Best Buy!” they always say.
Nope. Buy a plasma.
“But LEDs are so much thinner! And sexier!”
Nuh uh. Plasma.
“But…”
Plasma.
Why? Mostly the better black levels of plasma displays. There’s also the fact that the motion of any LCD-based TV (LED-lit or otherwise) has always bugged the snot out of me. But I have to admit, the plasma that usually hangs in my bedroom goes unused most of the time. Because, quite frankly, while my media room is all light controlled and curtained up and wonderfully, deliciously, manfully cave-like (the sort of environment in which plasmas truly shine), the missus has this annoying habit of letting sunlight into the rest of the house. The horror, I know, but that’s one battle I just don’t have the energy to fight anymore.
So when Samsung asked to send me one of its LED LCDs — a UN46D7000, to be precise — to test out in the south-facing solarium that serves as my boudoir, I figured what the heck. At least a jerky, uneven, unsatisfying image is better than no image at all during the day, right?
I’m joking.
Mostly.
Honestly, I really wanted to take a closer look at why, although we tech-advice-giving gurus almost universally prefer (and more favorably review) plasma displays, LCDs universally outsell their superiorly stygian counterparts. And there has to be something to that beyond mere notions of slimmer footprints and sexier designs. I wanted to see how the other half lives.
And apparently they live with the curtains open. Because that’s really the first thing that stands out about the UN46D7000. I knew that, of course, going in. In theory, at least. Brightness is the first thing about an LED LCD that anyone mentions. But until you’ve actually sat in a sun-flooded room and seen just how vibrant an image the UN46D7000 still manages to pump out, it’s hard to wrap your head around.
And it isn’t just a bright image that the set manages to display in such difficult conditions — it’s a really incredibly watchable one, at that. After hooking up the UN46D7000, I connected my trusty Sencore analyzer, fully expecting to walk away with the sort of results that require a “yeah, but…”
No buts about it, the UN46D7000’s color rendering, in Movie mode at least, can only be described as nearly dead-on balls accurate. The set also includes a number of surprisingly advanced calibration screens and tools for color and brightness adjustment, in the event that someone fiddles with your settings and you need to get them back. Or if you want to tweak to absolute perfection. Seriously, though, set it to Movie mode and you’re off to an incredibly accurate start.
Blacks are a little harder to measure, given that the set’s LED edge lights turn off in the presence of a fully black test pattern, but I think fussing about that is sort of missing the point: the average consumer probably doesn’t even know what I mean by “measuring blacks,” and the UN46D7000 is made to cater to consumers, not tweaky reviewers. So with that in mind I popped in some Blu-rays and started fiddling with picture settings. Because, really, 99% of shoppers aren’t going to crack open the manual, so why should I?
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