Samsung LE52F96 review

Samsung LE52F96 Review

Reviewed by: Ian Morris

Reviewed on: 8 October 2007

Features
It would be wrong of us to start with any feature other than the LED backlight because it's the most important part of this TV. The backlight works by having an array of light emitting diodes behind the screen. These replace the more traditional cold cathode tube on regular LCD TVs which while nice and bright, can't be selectively dimmed in certain areas.

Side inputs make hooking up camcorders and games consoles very simple

As LEDs can be turned off when they aren't needed, this TV can generate much deeper blacks than most LCD TVs. Samsung even claim a dynamic contrast ratio of 500,000:1, which we'll treat with the appropriate sceptisism. Suffice to say, whatever the true figure, this screen does do a great job.

The selective dimming of the LED array isn't especially accurate, which means if you have a totally dark screen and a bright white object, you'll see light bleed around the edges. In real-world viewing this isn't really a problem, but it will show up from time to time as a mild halo around bright objects on a dark background. For example, when you adjust the volume while the screen is showing black, you'll be able to see what we mean.

The Samsung, like all its brothers and sisters, has an immensely customisable picture. There are controls that enable you to adjust every facet of the image, including all of the individual colour components. This is a great thing if you want to optimise the TV for your viewing tastes.

Performance
HD DVDs on the Samsung were stunning. The 1080p panel makes the most of high definition material and we saw stunning levels of detail and the picture was wonderfully bright. Testing the TV with Serenity proved how good the LED backlight can be. We were quite simply blown away by how deep and black the space shots looked and how much detail we could see.

Upscaled performance from our Oppo DVD player proved to be very pleasant indeed. We viewed one of the remastered James Bond DVDs and were amazed by the picture quality and the strong pleasing colours.