The UE55B7020WW eats high-definition pictures for breakfast, reproducing them with excellent detail and clarity. The detail even extends into dark areas of the picture, except where the distracting light pools get in the way. Also, although there's slightly more judder than we'd ideally have hoped for, motion still looks adequate with the 100Hz mode set to its 'clean' level. We wouldn't recommend using any more potent 100Hz setting, though -- otherwise you run the risk of a few processing side effects creeping into the picture.
The UE55B7020WW is even quite accomplished with standard-definition material, as Samsung's new rescaling engine maps low-definition footage to the screen's 1080p resolution, so that it looks sharp, reasonably free of noise, and naturally coloured.
While the UE55B7020WW's extreme skinniness might boost its aesthetic appeal, it seems to have caused Samsung considerable problems when it comes to getting respectable audio performance out of the set. While the audio is sufficient for ordinary TV shows, and markedly better than that of smaller Samsung TVs, it lacks the dynamic range and power to rise fully to the challenges of decent action sequences, leaving them sounding rather thin.
Conclusion
The Samsung UE55B7020WW is one of the most frustrating TVs we've ever seen. It looks beautiful and is capable of delivering some heroic pictures. Unfortunately, its backlight flaw also makes it almost unwatchable at times. It's lucky for Samsung that its smaller LED-edge-lit models, like the previously reviewed UE46B8000, don't suffer from the same problem.
Edited by Charles Kloet
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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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