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Key Features: 65-inch LCD TV with edge LED lighting

Manufacturer: Samsung

 

What is the Samsung UE65HU7500?

The UE65HU7500 is a 65-inch TV with a native 4K/UHD resolution. It’s a couple of steps down from Samsung’s 2014 flagship UHD TVs, but with a price tag of £3300 it represents a potential value ‘sweet spot’ in the range. Especially as it still benefits from Samsung’s full Smart TV system and, until 24 December 2014, comes with a free UHD Video Pack containing three Hollywood movies.

Samsung UE65HU7500 – Design and Features

By Samsung's standards the UE65HU7500 is a rather straightforward-looking TV. A fairly unremarkable, though well-built, black frame runs around the screen, offset attractively by a metallic silver trim.



The centrally attached angular desktop stand (if you use it) is a bit more distinctive, although it’s certainly not as eye-catching as the ‘boomerang’ version you get with Samsung’s curved TVs.

Yes, the UE65HU7500 is not curved. It’s resolutely flat, meaning we don’t need to get into the whole debate over the pros and cons of curved screens. Phew.

The UE65HU7500’s connections are excellent. While you don’t get the built-in camera found on Samsung’s HU8500 flagship TV series, the four provided HDMIs offer support for UHD playback at 60fps and the new UHD-focused HDCP 2.2 copy-protection system.

There are also three USBs for playback of video, photo and music files from USB keys, or for recording to USB hard drives from the TV’s Freeview HD and Freesat HD tuners. Plus you’ll use one of the USBs to attach the free Samsung UHD Video Pack you’re entitled to if you buy a 65HU7500 before Christmas 2014. 

We’ve tested this Video Pack recently, so we’ll just say here that it delivers three 4K Hollywood movies: World War Z, The Counselor, and The Life of Pi.

The UE65HU7500 can also, of course, be added to your home network either wirelessly or via LAN cable, enabling you to stream content to it from DLNA-enabled source devices or go online with Samsung’s Smart TV service.

This service is outstanding from a content perspective, especially in the way it supports Netflix’s UHD streams, and the catch-up TV apps of all the UK’s key terrestrial broadcasters: The BBC iPlayer, The ITV Payer, 4OD and Demand 5. What’s more, Samsung is also soon to become the first TV manufacturer to support Amazon’s imminent UHD streams.

See our separate review for more detail on Samsung’s Smart TV platform for 2014.

SEE ALSO: Best TVs Round-up

The UE65HU7500 doesn’t benefit from Samsung’s absolute top-level picture technology. You don’t get the wide colour gamut panel used in the HU8500 models, for instance, and the HU8500s’ LED dimming controls are more sophisticated. The HU7500’s motion processing isn’t as powerful, either.

Also, the UE65HU7500’s image processing – including the upscaling of HD and standard-def content to the TV’s 3840 x 2160 resolution – doesn’t benefit from the ultra-fast, ultra-powerful Quad Core Plus chipset sported by the HU8500 series.

However, the UE65HU7500 still enjoys a 1000Hz-emulating motion engine and a Quad Core processor, and we’ve seen enough from previous 7-series models over recent years to know that even its slightly less sophisticated Micro Dimming system can still deliver very tasty results.

One last thing on the UE65HU7500’s feature list is its 3D playback. This is of the active type, with two pairs of glasses included.

Samsung UE65HU7500 – Setup

As usual with Samsung TVs the UE65HU7500 requires some effort to get the best from its pictures, with none of its provided picture presets doing a great job.

The main problem is that Samsung’s tastes are too aggressive, leading to pictures that push brightness and sharpness too hard – at least when you’re trying to watch something ‘seriously’, with the lights dimmed.

The backlight is set so high out of the box, for instance, that the TV’s black-level response only looks average, and there’s evidence of backlight clouding. So if you’re watching a film or drama – which tend to use extended contrast ranges –we’d recommend reducing the backlight setting to its 8 or 7 level.

Contrast should be reduced from the Max level Samsung is prone to favour, too. We’d suggest its 80-83 setting if you want the best balance between image dynamism and noise.

We’d also recommend that you nudge down the set’s sharpness for most viewing. Even native UHD playback can look a bit ‘gritty’ and forced if you stick with the default sharpness values.

Make sure you turn off all noise-reduction systems for UHD and, we’d argue, HD source viewing. Finally, use the provided motion processing on its Clear setting for upscaled content or, potentially, its Standard setting for UHD.

Samsung UE65HU7500 – Picture Quality

So long as you follow our fairly straightforward setup advice, the UE65HU7500 rewards you with superb picture quality.

Samsung is uncannily good at revealing the extra sharpness and detail we’ve already come to love from the 4K/UHD picture format, and this talent is especially obvious on a TV as relatively big-screened as this 65-inch one. Native UHD sources look phenomenally rich in texture and are so densely populated with pixels that you see no trace of pixel or line structure. In fact, decent UHD sources look pretty much like reality, rather than just pictures on a TV.



The clarity holds up pretty well when there’s motion in the frame, too, even if you only use the lower reaches of Samsung’s motion processing engine. So you don’t have to worry much about your TV’s lovely UHDness getting turned into a blurry mess when you’re watching action scenes.

The extreme sharpness of the UE65HU7500 means the set can deliver particularly well on UHD's enhanced image depth, which is due to its higher resolution enabling details to extend further into the distance. The impact of this isn’t quite as pronounced as it is on Samsung’s curved TVs, but it’s still a palpable UHD benefit.

Similarly, while the UE65HU7500 may not have the wide colour gamut panel and ‘PurColour’ high-end processing engine of the HU8500 series, it’s still capable of revealing how UHD's subtler colour blends further enhance the sense of realism.


The UE65HU7500’s colours also benefit from the set’s ability to produce a startlingly convincing black colour. For us good picture quality almost always begins with a good black-level response, so it’s great to see that the UE65HU7500’s core SPVA-type panel avoids the alarming greyness in dark scenes that we've witnessed on an alarming number of TVs this year – almost every model that uses an IPS panel, in fact.

To get the best out of the UE65HU7500’s black-level response we’d recommend using the provided dynamic contrast system on its Low setting. But so long as you reduce the backlight as suggested earlier, even if you elect not to use this system you'll still enjoy dark scenes with deep, credible black colours that make them natural to watch.

The lack of heavy grey misting over the UE65HU7500’s dark scenes also means that the set is good at reproducing the sort of shadow detail that dark scenes need in order to look realistic and to balance against bright scenes. Good shadow detailing also means, of course, that dark scenes retain the image’s UHD look.

It’s worth adding while discussing the UE65HU7500’s contrast performance that dark scenes don’t suffer with distracting light ‘blocks’ around bright objects as happens with some rival TVs.

Superb though the UE65HU7500 looks with native UHD content, there isn’t much of it around yet. Even if you’ve got your hands on your complementary Samsung UHD Video Pack. So we need to look at how the set handles the tough job of upscaling HD and standard-definition sources.


Happily it does very well. Particularly handy is its ability to see the difference between noise and ‘proper’ picture information in a non-UHD source, since this means it’s able to do a better job of calculating the nature of the huge quantities of extra pixels it needs to add to make a UHD image.

Certainly with HD sources the UE65HU7500 manages to produce pictures that look more detailed and dense than HD without exaggerating source noise, which is already a great result. But the set also shows a deft touch at calculating the colour of extra pixels, so that you don’t start to see colour striping or blocking. Even better, the increase in motion blur with upscaled HD material is only marginal, underlining the power of Samsung’s processing engine, as it’s able to keep up with rapidly changing images on the fly.

Standard-definition pictures look much less sharp and less deftly coloured. But they’re certainly no horror show, and anyway, is anyone really going to feed a UHD TV with standard-definition content unless they absolutely have to?

Aside from the correctable problems created by Samsung’s penchant for aggressive picture presets, there are only a couple of other issues. Dark scenes lack a little punch versus those of Samsung’s significantly more expensive HU8500 series and Sony’s similarly priced 65X9005B, and that the colour range looks a little limited versus those same rivals.