Samsung LN46A550 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

Fantastic TV With Fantastic Options
Review by Michael K. Zupan (Albany, NY USA)

I was replacing my old Sony 42A10 Grand Wega Rear Projection LCD. That's an older set and the black levels were notoriously bad. After some calibration, I was able to get a decent picture out of it. Apparantly this line had been lemons though, as optical engine after optical engine being replaced had failed. Time for a new TV.

I was honestly going to go for a Panasonic Plasma originally. Plasmas are known for great contrast levels. I've seen 30,000:1 for some plasma contrast levels, but LCD's are catching up and Samsung this year brings out an affordable set that's below the popular $2000 budget, and makes it a breeze to use.

Out of the box the color levels aren't bad at all. Grey scale is actually not too far off from being accurate with the 'movie mode' setting, which takes off most artificial effects to the picture which would really make colors pop un-naturally and crush darker shades of black so you lose some minor detail. Of course, I did a calibration for this set based on some calibrations done in the AVSForum online and this set at that point blew me away even more. Samsungs over months and months of figuring out what I should buy between plasma or LCD, or what brand even, have come out on top in picture quality and color reproduction.

So there's the praise on the picture, but we all know that if you're serious about an HDTV you need to consider everything else. The 5ms response time is nice and works just fine with time sensitive games... forget wasting your money on the more expensive sets that give you 4ms response time. Hundreds of dollars for this and a 50,000:1 contrast ratio alone aren't worth it. This TV doesn't have 120hz but there's really nothing to say negative about any kind of motion blur, this set holds up extremely well with very very little or no blur at all.

How about the ease of use? The menus are very easy to navigate. I mentioned I did some calibrating, which usually means you have to go into a service menu that has to be accessed by punching a secret code in a remote. Then, you're staring at menus that you have no idea what anything means, so if you change the wrong values, you could potentially turn your TV into a large paperweight. Don't like the new service menu settings, and forgot to write down what the old ones were? Well, you're screwed. Especially since service menu tinkering voids your warranty!

Not so with this set, and this is my favorite part of the TV's settings since I love to tweak my set:

All of the color and white balance options are accessible via the normal user menu. Change your color mode to custom, and you can change all of your gains and off-sets... and if you don't like what you've done or if you messed up... there's a option in each color menu that says 'Reset'. Tell me that's not convenient. If you never wanted to shell out $200-$400 for a professional calibration, and you've always been a little weary of tweaking your service menu... fear no more.

The only downside to this set, is that the speakers sound pretty bad. Most people like myself, already have a surround sound system so this may not be a deal breaker... but the options for the sound can be calibrated to sound decent enough as long as you're patient.

Last but not least, Samsung has given us a much larger viewing angle for this LCD than we'd get with normal LCD panels. Samsung is ahead of the game with LCD's and if you're thinking about LCD (which I did because I game a lot and didn't want to even risk image retention with plasma), Samsung is the way to go. When Sony is using Samsung parts now-a-days, you know that's gotta mean good things, right? Great contrast, good black levels, good viewing angle, lots of HDMI and component inputs, can't ask for much more than that.

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