It's not often that we're rendered speechless, but we have to admit that, when we saw Samsung's UE55B7020WW, we were struck dumb. After all, it's not every day you see a 55-inch screen that's only 30mm thick. But can this £2,050, 1080p, LED-backlit LCD TV's pictures match its outer beauty?
Entrancingly slender
The extreme slenderness of the UE55B7020WW immediately hints at the screen's single most important feature: its LED edge lights. LED light sources are ranged around the screen's edges, behind the TV's bezel, firing light across the back of the screen, with this light then being deflected out through the screen by an array of tiny mirrors.
This approach to LED lighting denies the UE55B7020WW the contrast-boosting local-dimming technology enjoyed by sets with LEDs located directly behind the screen. But it does allow the UE55B7020WW to be entrancingly thin.
Copious connections
Fittingly for a screen that looks so cutting-edge and makes such extravagant use of a relatively new technology, the UE55B7020WW is stuffed with connections and features. Four HDMI ports get the ball rolling, aided by, among other connections, two USB sockets for playback of all manner of multimedia file types, and an Ethernet port that allows access to a DLNA-certified PC or Samsung's online Media 2.0 service.
You can also get online wirelessly via an optional Wi-Fi USB dongle. But whichever way you access Media 2.0, instead of full Internet access, you'll get the same Yahoo Widgets-driven, ring-fenced content, including YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Yahoo news, weather and finance reports.
If Media 2.0's online content and the USB ports don't satisfy your multimedia cravings, the UE55B7020WW also offers Samsung's unique Content Library feature, a collection of multimedia content stored on flash memory inside the TV, including everything from artwork and photo galleries to recipes, games, and even fitness regimes. Unsurprisingly, most of this content is pretty basic and probably won't draw you back for more very often. But it's an intriguing concept that has plenty of space to develop.
The UE55B7020WW's high-end status is further confirmed by a striking quantity of picture options within its on-screen menus, including, most notably, a 100Hz engine that allows you to adjust how heavily it goes to work on whatever you're watching.
Backlight balls-up
A single aggravating flaw mars the UE55B7020WW, though: pronounced backlight inconsistency. It manifests itself the moment you watch any dark scene. Some parts of the picture -- most notably the corners -- look markedly brighter than others. That can really distract you from what you're watching. You can reduce the impact of the light leakage if you ramp down the image's brightness, but we couldn't completely get rid of it, at least while retaining an image that was still bright and dynamic enough to be enjoyable.
Making this flaw all the more irksome is the fact that, in most other respects, the UE55B7020WW's pictures are outstanding. Where not blighted by the light pools, the screen's blacks are intensely deep, leaving those of most normal LCD TVs for dead. Its colours are bright and richly saturated too -- not to the same extent as those of Sharp's recent LED-backlit TVs, but much more than we might have expected from an LED-edge-lit TV. They're also very natural.
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Simon deeBee 29 October 2009
Good: The picture when the screen isn't dark, simply outstanding
Bad: the picture when the screen IS dark, simply unwatchable because of the pools
Comment: To be fair the offical CNET review sums it up perfectly. Amazing engineering, brilliant HD pictures either via Blu-Ray, Sky+ or networked content, some SD content is very poor, yes ITV footy broadcasts I'm looking at you pal. 2 major niggles that made me send my set back to my etailer:
1) A major purchase point was being able to stream content through the LAN connection including the blessed .mkv format. Unfortunately you can only play .mkv material through the USB...NOT THROUGH THE LAN CONNECTION. I emailed Samsung about this and they said that this is because the mkv decoder is built into the USB port and they have no plans to intriduce this into the LAN conneciton which may well be a deal-breaker once this is widely known as the manual makes NO mention of this factoid. Because of this you then have to use a separate non-networked USB drive to play your mkv files and this is simply idiotic. Maybe the enterntainment industries had something to do with this decision, maybe not but I cannot think of a sound logical technical reason why they have restricted this to the USB port only.
2) The aforementioned light pools....What a pain in the bum and an absolute deal-breaker if the mkv restriction alone isn't enough to put you off. There was some light bleeding in from the corners on my model but I also suffered from these pools of light, in the top left hand quarter of my screen, and once noticed they cannot be un-noticed when things go dark on screen. The best way I can describe it is like having diffuse moonlit clouds in the corner of the screen. Very prominent in a lot of The Dark Knight and also I saw it on the rooftop scenes towards the very end of Clint's oldie 'Escape From Alcatraz' (I thought it was the moon diffusing through the clouds in the sky hence my original description).
I can only echo the summation of the official review by saying it would have been a sublime purchase for the long term with respect to to its size/weight/picture quality and importantly its relatively small energy consumption (about 120W I think, compared to a 50" Kuro that sucks down about 400W) but these 2 faults have really exposed the Achilles Heels of this TV.
To poorly paraphrase Marlon Brando's "On the Waterfront".....It coulda had class. It coulda been a contender. It coulda been something, instead of a bum, which is what it is.
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