Samsung UE55KS7500 review – 4K, HDR and curves, this TV has it all

Remote control and connections

You have a choice of two included remote controls with the KS7500 – Samsung’s traditional standard remote and its new smart remote. Bizarrely, Samsung’s decided to remove its intuitive motion controls this time round, leaving you wholly reliant on its built-in microphone to provide its so-called smartness.

However, during testing, I found that voice commands rarely worked in practice. All too often the TV would give an infuriating “I failed to recognise what you’ve said” message even though it had clearly transcribed my voice command onscreen. It wasn’t a matter of not recognising, merely a failure to act upon it.

I also wasn’t fond of the smart remote’s clicky navigation buttons or the rocker-style channel and volume buttons, so I generally stuck to the traditional remote during the course of my testing.

As for connections, the KS7500 uses Samsung’s full-sized One Connect box. Rather than have all the ports on the back of the TV, the KS7500 puts them all on a separate set-top box which connects to the TV via a single cable. This drastically reduces the number of wires coming out of your TV and makes for a much neater cabling solution, especially if you intend to mount your TV on the wall.

The small black box has four HDMI 2.0 ports with HDCP 2.2 support (one of them also has ARC support), two USB ports, an optical S/PDIF output if you want to connect a soundbar, and there are also ports for your aerial or satellite connection.

Smart Hub

Of course, like all of Samsung’s smart TVs, the KS7500 comes equipped with dozens of apps and services to help you get even more use out of it. The smart system is once again powered by Samsung’s Tizen interface, and it remains as unobtrusive as ever. A horizontal menu pops up along the bottom of the screen so it doesn’t interrupt whatever you’re watching, and you’re able to quickly access your different input sources as well as any apps you pin to the main screen for easy access.

There’s a good selection of apps, too, with all of the terrestrial catch-up services present and correct as well as Amazon Instant Video and Netflix. There’s even cloud-based gaming options available through GameFly or PlayStation Now, although you’ll need to connect a Playstation Dualshock 4 game controller to take advantage of the latter service (GameFly supports nearly all modern controllers save the Xbox One pad) and both have their own separate costs involved. Naturally, you’ll need to connect the TV to your router to make use of the breadth of apps, but this can be done through the built-in Wi-Fi or a wired Ethernet port.

Conclusion

With the KS7500, Samsung has delivered another very competent SUHD TV that’s both attractive and well designed, and is equally suitable for 4K content as well as lower resolution sources. Panasonic’s DX902B still has the very best image quality I’ve seen on a 4K TV this year, but for those who’d rather not spend over £3,000 on a new TV, the KS7500 certainly won’t disappoint. Of course, if you’d rather save even more money, then the flat KS7000 is worth a look, too. Buy the Samsung UE55KS7500 now from John Lewis