Nice looks and decent performance. Bought this TV without much survey, but it seems to be a decent buy. A good deal I believe, for Rs. 25, 500/-, and with a free AirTel DTH set and 5 months connection pack. Though it is too early to comment (bought it less than 24hrs ago), initial thoughts are, a decent TV with good brightness and contrast. This 26inch TV supports 1366 x 768 resolution, way below the High Definition, but still it is worth the price. I did not like the enhanced black levels in earlier Samsung models, which is not there at least in the normal settings for this set.
The enhanced black drastically cuts down on the grey shades and turn them black! The other thing that I like in this set is that, unlike previous models, this one does not have the blue light spread at the bottom of the screen. This light usually is a distraction. With regular cable TV/’set top box’ connection, this set gives slightly fuzzy picture if you view it from a close distance, but with a properly set DVD player, the picture turns out to be pretty good. Am planning to get the S-Video cable to enhance the DVD viewing effect.
The ’sound’ is awful!! Loud enough to hear the ladies creaking in the Hindi soaps (no offence intended) but terrible for movies like Star Wars. I will have to go for another speaker set in near future. Connectors are convenient to reach and give variety of options. Headphone jack (truly required) is a good addition, which many LCD TVs don’t have. [I gave my wireless headphones to my wife and I am happy about it too ;) ]
Probably a good addition would have been a USB port to plug in the thumb drives. This is missing in probably most of the LCDs available in the market here.
I would recommend this product if you have a tight budget. Bought it at Pai Electronics, 100ft Road Indiranagar, Bangalore, and they have this offer going till 4th of Jan 2009. I registered the product at the Samsung Web site and will post the registration mail to avail the warranty and support, and would insist all of you to do the same, for any product you buy. Believe me, this will turn out to be useful sometime.
Will post more once I get to know the LCD TV little better. Also can’t comment on the service and support at the moment. Therefore, am neutral here!
Cheers
Indrajit
*An Update!
*3rd Feb, 2009
It is about a month since I bought this TV. Now I have some more comments to add to my review. Initially I was using the Hathway set top box with the TV and the picture quality was acceptable. After I got the Airtel DTH installed, the picture quality seemed to have improved slightly. As for any LCD of this range, viewing should be from atleast 10ft distance. Overall, the picture quality is crisp. Black and grey shades look fine in standard settings. The difference showed up when my Onida DVD player/recorder was connected to the TV using ordinary RCA cable. The picture was better when played from a DVD player. But still I wanted to try out a better option and bought a good quality Component video cable (RGB) and connected my DVD system to the TV with it. This gave a great result and the picture certainly improved significantly. But it should be noted, this TV panel has 8ms response time. Which means, there will be a little ghosting effect when you are watching a fast moving object on the TV. I have a 22inch computer monitor which has a panel with 2ms response time. The difference shows up pretty well. But considering the price, the Samsung TV panel is good enough. A lower response time panel costs significantly more. 15, 000:1 contrast ratio... huh! Just as PMPO of an audio system is not a good way to measure the audio output, dynamic contrast ratio is not a scale to be used to judge anything. Usually the TV manufacturers do not give the Static contrast ratio of the panel, which is rather a better scale to judge a TV picture quality. Anyway, the picture is good enough on this TV.
So much for the Video, Sound part, as I mentioned, is not good. I find that Samsung has invested minimally on the sound part for this TV. 2 x 5W RMS speakers are just there to deliver the sound.
The connector options availavle are pretty elaborate.
Back panel:
2 component video connector sets
2 HDMI inputs
1 composite video connector set
1 stereo audio in
1 stereo audio out
1 regular RF input
1 D-Sub connector for PC
1 monitor out
1 service port
Side panel
1 HDMI input
1 S-Video connector
1 composite video connector set
1 headphone jack
Only connectors missing are 5.1 channel audio out. So a 5.1 channel surround system can not be connected to this TV.
The TV remote is nice and long, with a piano black finish and has normal sized buttons This is also a composite remote controller which may be used with few samsung DVD players. There are direct buttons for almost all the functions.
The TV menu is pretty elaborate too and interestingly enough has surround sound and multi band equalizer options!!! The picture can be viewed in 16:9 or 4:3 formats. It also has a zoom setup which fills in the screen as you want (appropriate for movie viewing). There are few picture presets and I like the Movie preset when watching a movie. Apart from these there are lot of options to set the picture quality. Single tuner Picture in picture option is available too which is useful when watching a DVD and checking if a TV program has started.
The TV base is wide and sits firmly on the table. It only allows the TV to swivel, The TV also comes with a wall mount option, which is usually delivered by the Samsung personnel who comes to give the demo. But if you plan to go for the wall mount, be careful of the connections as most of the connectors are at the back and there is no cable management facility to bunch all the cables through.
For peace of my mind I bought a voltage stabilizer and it seems there are voltage stabilizers especially made for LCDs! Normal stabilizers cost Rs. 1000/- but for this unique voltage stabilizer I shelled out Rs. 1600/-.
To conclude, this TV is an average TV and is worth the money spent since it is cheaper among the lot. So if you are planning to buy one, I recommend this set and get it soon!!! LED LCD TVs are coming up soon to take on these normal LCDs. Further OLED TVs are also expected to be in the market once the technology matures and the price drops.
Cheers and Happy Viewing
Indrajit