Bradman's Full Review: Samsung Touch of Color LN52A850 52 in. HDTV TV
We recently upgraded out aging Sony 53 inch rear projection TV with this new Samsung unit. What a difference! The frame around the display is a shiny black with a touch of red accent. The unit comes with a nice stand that had a pretty large rectangular base. It looks very crystal like. When the TV is on there is a faint red light on the bottom and the surrounding frame has just a hint of red, Samsung calls it "Touch of Color".
The TV has 4 HDMI inputs which are becoming the preferred way to send digital audio/video signals from high definition sources. There is also a component input set (which allows HD signals over an analog connection), s-video (best standard definition analog signal), composite (OK standard definition analog signal), RF antenna and PC connector. Most of the connectors are in the back and face backward (which is not the best for wall mounting the TV) but there is a set of connectors on the side for easy access from a camera or camcorder.
The sound is OK. If you watch really good video then the sound doesn’t seem to do it justice. Regular TV seems to be fine. There isn’t much bass but with no subwoofer you aren’t going to get much earth shaking rumbling.
The remote is fairly traditional will all the expected buttons. One unusual feature is an iPod like wheel to select things in the menu. I think it is more of a gimmick and I heard that they got rid of it on next year’s model. One nice thing is that if you have other Samsung components (like a Blue Ray player) they work seamlessly with the remote.
This Samsung unit is a “traditional” LCD in that is does not have LED’s as a backlight source, but it is probably one of the thinnest (if not the thinnest) non-LED LCD TV’s. LCD TV’s have red green and blue LCD filters in front of each pixel, by varying the voltage on the filter they can increase the amount of red, green or blue light that is blocked from the pixel. So the pixel starts out as white (lit usually by a white fluorescent backlight) and then gets color “removed” to get the final color you see. To get black, all the light needs to be blocked. That is actually easier said than done because there is usually another pixel right next door that may be showing some light, heck it could even be pure white. This is why LCD TV’s can have issues with black. Plasma TV’s on the other hand, generate their light in each pixel so they can go really black if they need to. Some of the newer LCD TV’s have started using white Light Emitting Diodes to provide the white backlight. Some big advantages of LED’s are the small size, low power usage, and rapid control capability. Small size and low power usage lets you build extremely thin displays. Rapid control allows you to turn off (or dim) some LED’s so the blacks in the picture can be blacker. I compared the LED Samsung TV to this one in the store and I couldn’t tell the difference in the picture, of course the LED version was much slimmer and lighter.
The picture is just amazing with a proper source. We also purchased a Samsung Blue Ray player, and with the HDMI connection the picture is just razor sharp. It is hard to describe how crisp everything is. We also watched a pretty old standard DVD and it also looked pretty good. This says a lot about the video engine in the unit since it has to convert everything to display at the native resolution of the LCD. The Blue Ray Pirates of the Caribbean movie had absolutely no issues with motion or color. The blacks were very dark and the whites were clean and crisp (sounds like a laundry commercial - Ha). One complaint is that the unit has the ability to connect to a wireless network and get some gadget type info (stocks, weather, etc) off the internet but the adapter is not included. You can buy it from Samsung for ~$40. When you spend about $2,000 on a TV you would think they would include all the cool accessories. I may not get the adapter since the Samsung Blue Ray player that we got at the same time has a very similar feature and included the adapter (but it doesn’t work on the TV).
Touch of Color, Samsung's unique manufacturing process accents the surrounding bezel with a stylish red tone HD-Grade pixel resolution: High-resolutio...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.