Samsung PS51F5500 review

IMAGE QUALITY

So far the F5500 has all the makings of a great TV, but it revealed its more budget leanings when we started adjusting the picture. There are just three picture modes available (standard, dynamic and cinema) and its contrast and black levels left quite a lot to be desired when we watched our Blu-Ray test footage with the lights were on. Blacks were positively yellow and we could barely see anything at all during our reference night scene unless we switched the lights off. Even setting its black optimiser setting to bright room and black tone to darkest failed to make any significant changes to deepen the black levels.

As a result, we’d definitely recommend watching films in the dark, as colours appeared much richer here and the contrast and black levels reaped the benefits from the lack of ambient light. There are lots of options for tweaking the picture as well. In addition to the regular brightness, contrast, sharpness, colour and tint settings, there’s dynamic contrast, black tone, flesh tone, colour space, white balance, gamma and colour tone features.

One feature that was sorely missing, though, was any kind of frame interpolation. This was particularly disappointing, as this meant fast-paced action sequences often stuttered quite badly as the camera panned across the screen. Even slow pans were quite jerky at times, which puts the F5500 at a significant disadvantage compared to other £700 TVs that do have this feature.

Luckily, this wasn’t an issue with standard definition content. Colours looked good and upscaled well to 1,080p well, but there was still a noticeable amount of noise and artefacts present, particularly in lower quality Freeview HD channels like BBC News. We set both the MPEG Noise Filter and Digital Clean View options to High to help reduce noise and flickering, but they made very little difference to the overall picture. This was a shame, as other TVs in this price range have much stronger noise reduction settings, but other channels were still perfectly watchable as long as you don’t mind a fuzzy lack of detail.

3D QUALITY

The F5500 also plays 3D content. It uses active shutter technology and comes with two pairs of glasses. We had to turn the lights off to achieve the best picture quality. We didn’t feel the lack of frame interpolation so keenly here, but there was still a noticeable amount of dithering when scenes were motion. The glasses also dimmed the screen quite heavily, but adjusting the cell brightness helped. The depth of field was also a little shallow at first, but the 3D menu options let you change the 3D perspective so images can sink further back into the screen.

The integrated speakers were good, with a good level of bass and plenty of volume, but you’ll probably want to connect a sound bar or surround sound system to get the best out of your films.

CONCLUSION

The Samsung PS51F5500 would have been an award winner had we been able to replicate the same image quality regardless of whether the lights were on, but as it’s really only suitable for dark room viewing, the F5500 falls short. Its lack of frame interpolation is also quite disappointing, but this could have been forgiven if it produced a consistent picture. Unless you’re set on having the very best smart TV content, the LG 42LA690V is a better buy at this price and if you can stretch your budget a bit further, you can buy the 47in version, the 47LA690V instead.