Samsung BD-F6500 review

VIDEO QUALITY

As for Blu-ray playback, we were impressed with the BD-F6500’s speed. It loads 2D discs in around six seconds, which is far faster than many other players. However, the BD-F6500 took around 12 seconds to start our Avatar 3D disc.

Even at default settings, the BD-F6500 looks superb, with crisp visuals and plenty of contrast to reveal the shadow detail in darker scenes. Colours were accurate, if a little oversaturated at the default settings, but there are several presets for you to select. Beyond the Standard, Movie and dynamic presets, which make colours look neutral, subdued and overly vibrant respectively, a fourth user mode gives you control over sharpness, noise reduction, contrast, brightness, colour and tint.

If you have a Samsung TV that supports it, you can use the BD Wise setting to calibrate the picture automatically, but we found image quality looked worse than our own custom settings when paired to a 2011-model Samsung D8000 TV. It’s certainly worth experimenting with Blu-ray player and TV to get the best picture. Even though the BD-F6500 provides many image quality settings, its image quality is great at its default factory settings, so you may not even need to alter them.

The detail enhancement settings create a sharper image when playing standard definition DVDs, but we noticed that it also introduced slightly more noise to the picture. The noise is hardly noticeable in motion, however, so this feature’s worth turning on if you have a large DVD collection.

CONCLUSION

It might not have all the advanced image quality features found in either Panasonic or Sony’s Blu-ray decks, but the comprehensive smart TV services, integrated Wi-Fi and understated design more than make up for it, especially if you’re upgrading from a first-generation Blu-ray player. The Samsung BD-F6500 is exceptional value and a Best Buy winner.