Samsung UE40H5500 review

AUDIO

The 20W speakers are decent enough, but they don’t compare to a dedicated sound system. We were impressed with the various different sound modes available, though, as Movie really opened up the soundstage compared to Standard and made smaller sound effects more pronounced. Even better, dialogue was crystal clear in all cases.

SMART TV

As with all of Samsung’s 2014 smart TVs, the H5500’s Smart Hub comes with the full gamut of on-demand and catch-up services, including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Demand 5, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Wuaki.tv, Blinkbox, Spotify, YouTube and even a few niche ones such as Digital Theatre, BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema. This is by far the best range of apps you’ll find across all the major TV manufacturers and all of them are laid out clearly in the main app panel.

This sits just to the left of the central On TV panel, which shows what you’re currently watching onscreen as well as other programmes currently on and coming up next. These will change based on your viewing habits, so eventually the H5500 should start recommending your favourite programmes rather than the random selection you see when you first set it up. The quad-core processor makes flicking through the different icons and menu panels very quick and easy, too, as we were hardly ever left waiting for panels to load.

^ Smart Hub has an enviable range of apps 

You probably won’t need to venture much further into Samsung’s Smart Hub, as the Games tab has no decent content and Samsung’s own on-demand film and TV panel is only any good if you have a Wuaki account. However, the Multimedia panel is particularly useful if you want to connect and watch content from a USB flash drive, your smartphone or a PC on your home network, as it’s here where you’ll be able to set up your various devices.

We wish the respective device icons were more prominent compared to the deluge of promoted content from TuneIn Radio, Viveo and YouTube on the Multimedia panel. On the whole though, file format support was good, as we were able to play MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, M4A and WMA audio files and MP4, MKV, WMV, AVI and DIVX video files.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the UE40H5500 is an excellent TV for the price. You’ll have to tweak the settings to get the best picture, but its overall image quality is better than other, more expensive mid-range TVs we’ve seen, and Samsung’s extensive range of smart TV content makes it much more flexible than the slightly cheaper Finlux 42FME242S-T. The plain design may not be quite front room material, but if you’re after a small TV for streaming Netflix in your bedroom, look no further.

Buy Now: Samsung UE40H5500