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Date de création : 09.12.2014
Dernière mise à jour :
19.07.2015
13 articles
Samsung UE55HU8500 Review - 3D, Sound and Conclusions
Publié le 09/12/2014 à 17:04 par trustedreviews
Pros
- Superb contrast-rich picture quality
- Content-rich smart TV platform
- There can be benefits to the curve
Cons
- There can be issues with the curve!
- Slightly high input lag
- It's not cheap
Review Price £2,600.00
Key Features: 55-inch LCD TV with edge LED lighting; Native 4K/UHD resolution; ACTIVE 3D playback (2 pairs of glasses included); Wide Colour Gamut display; Netflix 4K, Amazon Instant 4K support
Manufacturer: Samsung
What is the Samsung UE55HU8500?
The UE55HU8500 is Samsung’s flagship 55-inch TV for 2014. Which means it both enjoys a UHD/4K native resolution and a curved screen, as well as Samsung’s most powerful imaging system, complete with ‘PurColour’ technology. As usual this comes to a large chunk of money, but if you like the idea of a curved TV then this as good as any.
Samsung UE55HU8500: Design and Features
The UE55HU8500’s curved screen makes an instant aesthetic impact, raising a defiant and voluptuous two fingers to all those ‘boring’ pancake-flat TVs we’ve lived with for so many years now. Especially as Samsung uses a more severe curve than the ones seen recently on the upcoming Sony S90 TVs and LG’s inbound 4K OLED sets.
SEE ALSO: Best TVs Roundup
The curve is tastefully tracked by the beautifully built silver metallic desktop stand too, and it’s nice to see that Samsung has managed to deliver a super-slim bezel despite the potential structural issues associated with trying to bend an LCD TV. (LCD TVs are, after all, made up of many different layers, all of which have to be curved without losing alignment or causing light leakage.)
We’ll talk about the impact the curved design has on the viewing experience later.
Connectivity on the UE55HU8500 comes courtesy of an external ‘One Connect’ box that sports as its highlights four (v2.0 for 60p UHD playback) HDMIs, a LAN, integrated Wi-Fi, tuner inputs and a proprietary output connection for piping your various sources on to the TV.
Naturally this external connections box approach radically reduces the cable spaghetti going into the TV. Much more importantly, though, since the TV’s ‘brains’ are all in this external box you can swap it for future One Connects carrying Samsung’s next-generation features and technologies. In fact, using an external connections box means you could even upgrade the TV’s connections – something that’s very reassuring in these days of potentially ever-involving 4K-friendly HDMI and even DisplayPort connections.
The panel at the UE55HU8500’s heart is Samsung’s most advanced one to date, promising seriously impressive levels of contrast and colour quality. Especially as the high-grade, wide gamut panel is backed up by Samsung’s new PurColour technology, which delivers far more colour adjustment points than Samsung’s normal sets for a more refined, subtle and thus expressive colour palette.
The PurColour system is only possible because the UE55HU8500 employs a Quad Core Plus 1.8GHz processing engine that’s by far the most powerful processor Samsung has ever used.
SEE ALSO: Best 4K / UHD TVs Roundup
So powerful is this system, in fact, that it should also lead to refinements in the quality of Samsung’s upscaling to UHD from HD and standard definition sources, as well as the set’s 1200Hz-emulating motion processing. It additionally powers a local dimming system that enables independent control of different parts of the screen’s edge LED lighting array to boost contrast, and we’re hopeful too that it will pay dividends with the TV’s 3D playback given that the UE55HU8500’s active 3D system requires our HD 3D Blu-rays to be upscaled to UHD.
The processing power shouldn’t only help picture performance, either. We’d also expect it to play a useful role in keeping Samsung’s extensive, attractively designed and sophisticated smart features zipping along.
We won’t go into these Smart features in detail here as we’ve already covered them in a separate article. We'll just sum things up by saying Samsung offers the widest selection of apps in the Smart TV world, dominated by an impressive suite of catch-up and on-demand video services that include all the key UK broadcast platforms, plus Netflix, and Amazon. In fact, you get the UHD version of Netflix, and will – initially exclusively – also get the 4K versions of Amazon when those services launch (supposedly later this month).
It’s worth adding on the 4K content front that Samsung is also just launching its UHD Movie Pack, a 500GB HDD containing eight films and a whole host of documentaries.
Overall, with its combination of an external, upgradable connections/processing unit, up to the minute connectivity options and uniquely expansive UHD content options, it’s fair to say this Samsung TV tries harder than any other TV in the UK right now to offer a full UHD/4K story.
SEE ALSO: Best TVs Roundup
The curve is tastefully tracked by the beautifully built silver metallic desktop stand too, and it’s nice to see that Samsung has managed to deliver a super-slim bezel despite the potential structural issues associated with trying to bend an LCD TV. (LCD TVs are, after all, made up of many different layers, all of which have to be curved without losing alignment or causing light leakage.)
We’ll talk about the impact the curved design has on the viewing experience later.
Connectivity on the UE55HU8500 comes courtesy of an external ‘One Connect’ box that sports as its highlights four (v2.0 for 60p UHD playback) HDMIs, a LAN, integrated Wi-Fi, tuner inputs and a proprietary output connection for piping your various sources on to the TV.
Naturally this external connections box approach radically reduces the cable spaghetti going into the TV. Much more importantly, though, since the TV’s ‘brains’ are all in this external box you can swap it for future One Connects carrying Samsung’s next-generation features and technologies. In fact, using an external connections box means you could even upgrade the TV’s connections – something that’s very reassuring in these days of potentially ever-involving 4K-friendly HDMI and even DisplayPort connections.
The panel at the UE55HU8500’s heart is Samsung’s most advanced one to date, promising seriously impressive levels of contrast and colour quality. Especially as the high-grade, wide gamut panel is backed up by Samsung’s new PurColour technology, which delivers far more colour adjustment points than Samsung’s normal sets for a more refined, subtle and thus expressive colour palette.
The PurColour system is only possible because the UE55HU8500 employs a Quad Core Plus 1.8GHz processing engine that’s by far the most powerful processor Samsung has ever used.
SEE ALSO: Best 4K / UHD TVs Roundup
So powerful is this system, in fact, that it should also lead to refinements in the quality of Samsung’s upscaling to UHD from HD and standard definition sources, as well as the set’s 1200Hz-emulating motion processing. It additionally powers a local dimming system that enables independent control of different parts of the screen’s edge LED lighting array to boost contrast, and we’re hopeful too that it will pay dividends with the TV’s 3D playback given that the UE55HU8500’s active 3D system requires our HD 3D Blu-rays to be upscaled to UHD.
The processing power shouldn’t only help picture performance, either. We’d also expect it to play a useful role in keeping Samsung’s extensive, attractively designed and sophisticated smart features zipping along.
We won’t go into these Smart features in detail here as we’ve already covered them in a separate article. We'll just sum things up by saying Samsung offers the widest selection of apps in the Smart TV world, dominated by an impressive suite of catch-up and on-demand video services that include all the key UK broadcast platforms, plus Netflix, and Amazon. In fact, you get the UHD version of Netflix, and will – initially exclusively – also get the 4K versions of Amazon when those services launch (supposedly later this month).
It’s worth adding on the 4K content front that Samsung is also just launching its UHD Movie Pack, a 500GB HDD containing eight films and a whole host of documentaries.
Overall, with its combination of an external, upgradable connections/processing unit, up to the minute connectivity options and uniquely expansive UHD content options, it’s fair to say this Samsung TV tries harder than any other TV in the UK right now to offer a full UHD/4K story.
Samsung UE55HU8500: Set Up
We’ve long maintained that Samsung’s picture presets aren’t very useful, and this feeling continues even with this new flagship set. There aren’t as many presets as we’d like, and the ones you do get tend to push backlight, sharpness and contrast too high, resulting in issues like backlight clouding and excessive picture noise that are clearly visible during dark room viewing, at least.
SEE ALSO: New TV Buying Guide
Fortunately, though, the UE55HU8500 carries a huge array of picture adjustments. You can tweak pretty much every aspect of the 55HU8500’s pictures, from its noise reduction, motion, contrast and sharpness processing elements through to its colour, white balance and gamma subtleties.
It’s perhaps a shame you don’t get any specific tools for fine-tuning the way the UHD upscaling engine works like you do with the UHD TVs of Sony, Philips and Panasonic. In truth, though, the ordinary picture adjustments seem to work fairly effectively. The sharpness setting is particularly useful, we found, for nudging this down from its default levels greatly reduces the amount of noise visible in upscaled pictures.
Otherwise our main words of advice would be to: greatly reduce the backlight setting – to around its 8 or 9 setting – when watching in a dark room to minimise backlight clouding; turn off all noise reduction for native UHD viewing; choose the Custom motion processing setting and set the judder and blur elements to their three level; and leave both the local dimming and dynamic contrast options to their Low (not off) settings.
One other thing we highly recommend is that you use the TV’s Cinema Black feature on its low or likely Mid setting. This does a great job of getting rid of any residual light ‘jets’ that might still be sneaking into the black bars you get above and below ultra-widescreen pictures.
SEE ALSO: New TV Buying Guide
Fortunately, though, the UE55HU8500 carries a huge array of picture adjustments. You can tweak pretty much every aspect of the 55HU8500’s pictures, from its noise reduction, motion, contrast and sharpness processing elements through to its colour, white balance and gamma subtleties.
It’s perhaps a shame you don’t get any specific tools for fine-tuning the way the UHD upscaling engine works like you do with the UHD TVs of Sony, Philips and Panasonic. In truth, though, the ordinary picture adjustments seem to work fairly effectively. The sharpness setting is particularly useful, we found, for nudging this down from its default levels greatly reduces the amount of noise visible in upscaled pictures.
Otherwise our main words of advice would be to: greatly reduce the backlight setting – to around its 8 or 9 setting – when watching in a dark room to minimise backlight clouding; turn off all noise reduction for native UHD viewing; choose the Custom motion processing setting and set the judder and blur elements to their three level; and leave both the local dimming and dynamic contrast options to their Low (not off) settings.
One other thing we highly recommend is that you use the TV’s Cinema Black feature on its low or likely Mid setting. This does a great job of getting rid of any residual light ‘jets’ that might still be sneaking into the black bars you get above and below ultra-widescreen pictures.
Samsung UE55HU8500: Picture Quality
For the most part the UE55HU8500’s pictures are glorious. They’re incredibly dynamic for a start, thanks to a superb combination of deep, believable black colours (if you follow the set-up tips in the previous section) and ultra-rich colours that clearly enjoy an extra ‘kick’ over cheaper Samsung TVs from the PurColour system and wide colour gamut panel. Saturations look richer and there’s markedly more tonal subtlety on offer.
This subtlety proves especially helpful with native UHD sources, as it joins with the 4x HD pixel count in bringing out every last tiny detail and nuance of UHD’s stunningly dense images. In this respect Samsung can now pretty much match the gorgeous 4K/UHD efforts of Sony, which uses Triluminos technology to deliver a similarly rich, 4K-friendly colourscape.
As with any high-quality UHD image, it’s not just more detail you notice. Images also have an enhanced sense of depth, and the lack of any visible pixel structure or colour ‘blocking’ means that watching good UHD images feels more like looking through a window than just watching TV.
Samsung’s default picture settings render native UHD with slightly more sharpness than most rivals (with the possible exception of Philips). This may suit some tastes, we guess, but to us the sharpness looks just a little forced at times. So it’s handy that this issue is easily fixed via the simple sharpness setting in the TV’s menus.
The UE55HU8500’s motion handling is first rate. LCD screens’ tendency to lose resolution over moving objects is particularly unwelcome when you’re enjoying images as otherwise sharp as those you get with UHD, so it’s great to find the UE55HU8000’s natively fast response time and powerful motion processing working together superbly to keep even the fastest motion looking crisp, clean and almost as ‘UHD’ as static material.
It’s worth noting, too, that you can run the UE55HU8500’s motion processing on a higher level of power without it causing unwanted digital side effects like flickering and haloing than you can with Samsung’s cheaper TVs. This is a sure sign of the benefits of that enormously fast processor at the UE55HU8500’s heart.
The processing power also reaps great rewards when it comes to upscaling. At first you’ll find upscaled images looking a bit artificial thanks to the appearance of some distracting shimmering noise over areas of very fine detail or very contrasty edges – especially during camera pans. But this is easily dealt with simply by reducing the TV’s sharpness setting – something you can do without making the upscaled images look soft or fuzzy. In fact, with this single issue with the upscaling sorted the set does a stunning job of quadrupling the pixel count of normal HD sources without causing the image to look noisy or processed.
Upscaled images aren’t as pristine and completely life-like as native UHD ones, but we’d definitely say they look better than they would on a Full HD set. Which is a big deal given the relative dearth of native UHD content right now.
Even standard definition pictures can look good on the 55HU8500 so long as they’re of a decent standard – ie, DVD – in the first place. Heavily compressed digital broadcasts don’t look too hot, but nor do they on any UHD TV, and frankly if you’ve gone to the trouble of buying a UHD TV already you’re probably also pretty well geared up to feed it at least HD for the majority of the time.
It’s high time now that we explore whether the 55HU8500’s curved screen harms or boosts the viewing experience.
If you’re sat in a fairly central position opposite the screen and quite close to it, the curve gives you a slightly enhanced sense of immersion as the edges of the image wrap round into your peripheral vision. However, as we’ve noted in previous reviews, the curve can be problematic to the image’s geometry if you have to watch from an angle of more than around 35 degrees, causing the near side to look foreshortened.
The relatively small (by curved TV standards) size of the 55HU8500’s screen means that the potential viewing position area from which you can watch the 55HU8500 without suffering geometry problems is smaller than it would be with a bigger screen. The sense of extra immersion the curve can deliver is also reduced by the relatively small screen unless you sit unusually close to it.
Even the impact of the native UHD pixel count is slightly less potent than it is on larger screens (though having said that you can still clearly tell from a perfectly normal viewing distance that the 55HU8500 is a UHD TV not a mere HD one).
It’s as a result of these factors that we only feel we can give the UE55HU8500 a score of 9 rather than the 10 we awarded its 65-inch UE65HU8500 sibling.
For more details on the pros and cons of the curved TV experience, check out our in-depth feature.
This subtlety proves especially helpful with native UHD sources, as it joins with the 4x HD pixel count in bringing out every last tiny detail and nuance of UHD’s stunningly dense images. In this respect Samsung can now pretty much match the gorgeous 4K/UHD efforts of Sony, which uses Triluminos technology to deliver a similarly rich, 4K-friendly colourscape.
As with any high-quality UHD image, it’s not just more detail you notice. Images also have an enhanced sense of depth, and the lack of any visible pixel structure or colour ‘blocking’ means that watching good UHD images feels more like looking through a window than just watching TV.
Samsung’s default picture settings render native UHD with slightly more sharpness than most rivals (with the possible exception of Philips). This may suit some tastes, we guess, but to us the sharpness looks just a little forced at times. So it’s handy that this issue is easily fixed via the simple sharpness setting in the TV’s menus.
The UE55HU8500’s motion handling is first rate. LCD screens’ tendency to lose resolution over moving objects is particularly unwelcome when you’re enjoying images as otherwise sharp as those you get with UHD, so it’s great to find the UE55HU8000’s natively fast response time and powerful motion processing working together superbly to keep even the fastest motion looking crisp, clean and almost as ‘UHD’ as static material.
It’s worth noting, too, that you can run the UE55HU8500’s motion processing on a higher level of power without it causing unwanted digital side effects like flickering and haloing than you can with Samsung’s cheaper TVs. This is a sure sign of the benefits of that enormously fast processor at the UE55HU8500’s heart.
The processing power also reaps great rewards when it comes to upscaling. At first you’ll find upscaled images looking a bit artificial thanks to the appearance of some distracting shimmering noise over areas of very fine detail or very contrasty edges – especially during camera pans. But this is easily dealt with simply by reducing the TV’s sharpness setting – something you can do without making the upscaled images look soft or fuzzy. In fact, with this single issue with the upscaling sorted the set does a stunning job of quadrupling the pixel count of normal HD sources without causing the image to look noisy or processed.
Upscaled images aren’t as pristine and completely life-like as native UHD ones, but we’d definitely say they look better than they would on a Full HD set. Which is a big deal given the relative dearth of native UHD content right now.
Even standard definition pictures can look good on the 55HU8500 so long as they’re of a decent standard – ie, DVD – in the first place. Heavily compressed digital broadcasts don’t look too hot, but nor do they on any UHD TV, and frankly if you’ve gone to the trouble of buying a UHD TV already you’re probably also pretty well geared up to feed it at least HD for the majority of the time.
It’s high time now that we explore whether the 55HU8500’s curved screen harms or boosts the viewing experience.
If you’re sat in a fairly central position opposite the screen and quite close to it, the curve gives you a slightly enhanced sense of immersion as the edges of the image wrap round into your peripheral vision. However, as we’ve noted in previous reviews, the curve can be problematic to the image’s geometry if you have to watch from an angle of more than around 35 degrees, causing the near side to look foreshortened.
The relatively small (by curved TV standards) size of the 55HU8500’s screen means that the potential viewing position area from which you can watch the 55HU8500 without suffering geometry problems is smaller than it would be with a bigger screen. The sense of extra immersion the curve can deliver is also reduced by the relatively small screen unless you sit unusually close to it.
Even the impact of the native UHD pixel count is slightly less potent than it is on larger screens (though having said that you can still clearly tell from a perfectly normal viewing distance that the 55HU8500 is a UHD TV not a mere HD one).
It’s as a result of these factors that we only feel we can give the UE55HU8500 a score of 9 rather than the 10 we awarded its 65-inch UE65HU8500 sibling.
For more details on the pros and cons of the curved TV experience, check out our in-depth feature.
Samsung UE55HU8500: 3D Picture Quality
In their ‘out of the box’ state the UE55HU8500’s 3D pictures suffer a little from the same Samsung ‘over-enthusiasm’ as its 2D ones. Samsung pushes the panel so bright that you can often see backlight clouding problems during dark 3D shots, and areas of detail or thin lines tend to glow with a distracting bluish tinge.
Fortunately, again, both problems can be greatly reduced simply by lowering the backlight output and reducing the sharpness settings. Once you’ve done this you’ll also find that 3D pictures lose the slightly gritty, over-sharpened look they display using the initial 3D preset.
Now you’re left enjoying one of the best active 3D pictures we’ve seen. Images still look bright despite reducing the backlight output, colours are vibrant enough to enhance the sense of depth and solidity in the image, and detail levels are outstanding, thanks to the way the active 3D format requires our HD Blu-rays to be upscaled to UHD.
Coming to the UE55HU8500 directly after the deliriously good passive 3D performance of LG’s 65UB980V, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the Samsung set suffers with a little crosstalk ghosting noise over bright or dark objects in the mid to far distance. But aside from the over-eagerness of the 3D preset image values this is the only issue we’ve got with the UE55HU8500’s 3D pictures. Overall they’re never less than impressive.
Fortunately, again, both problems can be greatly reduced simply by lowering the backlight output and reducing the sharpness settings. Once you’ve done this you’ll also find that 3D pictures lose the slightly gritty, over-sharpened look they display using the initial 3D preset.
Now you’re left enjoying one of the best active 3D pictures we’ve seen. Images still look bright despite reducing the backlight output, colours are vibrant enough to enhance the sense of depth and solidity in the image, and detail levels are outstanding, thanks to the way the active 3D format requires our HD Blu-rays to be upscaled to UHD.
Coming to the UE55HU8500 directly after the deliriously good passive 3D performance of LG’s 65UB980V, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the Samsung set suffers with a little crosstalk ghosting noise over bright or dark objects in the mid to far distance. But aside from the over-eagerness of the 3D preset image values this is the only issue we’ve got with the UE55HU8500’s 3D pictures. Overall they’re never less than impressive.
Samsung UE55HU8500: Sound Quality
Considered against previous Samsung TV generations, the UE55HU8500’s sound quality is very strong. Thanks to the introduction of a long-duct speaker design, there’s way more bass than we’re accustomed to hearing from Samsung’s thin LCD panels, and the speakers are also powerful enough to support fairly high volumes without succumbing to distortions or ‘boxiness’.
The set casts out a surprisingly wide soundstage too considering that the speakers are down firing, and it does this without any element of the soundstage sounding dislocated or uneven.
Also impressive is how well-rounded dialogue and the mid-range sound, and the way treble detail is delivered strongly without causing harshness.
The only problem for the UE55HU8500’s engaging sonics is that the audio benchmark has been shifted some distance by the massively potent audio systems delivered by Sony’s X9005B 4K TVs and the recently tested LG 65UB980V.
The set casts out a surprisingly wide soundstage too considering that the speakers are down firing, and it does this without any element of the soundstage sounding dislocated or uneven.
Also impressive is how well-rounded dialogue and the mid-range sound, and the way treble detail is delivered strongly without causing harshness.
The only problem for the UE55HU8500’s engaging sonics is that the audio benchmark has been shifted some distance by the massively potent audio systems delivered by Sony’s X9005B 4K TVs and the recently tested LG 65UB980V.
Other Things To Consider
The UE55HU8500 ships with two remote controls: a fairly straightforward and bland ‘normal’ one, and a much more interesting Smart one, complete with touch pad navigation, point and click support, and a greatly reduced button count. Samsung has perhaps tried to cram too many control options into too small a space on the remote; certainly it’s equally easy during your first few hours using it to accidentally make a wrong selection from the onscreen menus. The more you stick with it, though, the more intuitive it starts to become.
If you’re up for some high-resolution gaming on the UE55HU8500, you’ll be pretty excited by the sharpness, colour richness and contrast of its pictures. A touch disappointing, though, is the 60ms of input lag we measured. This is around twice as high as we’d ideally like to see, and could reduce your performance with games based on reactions and timing.
If you’re up for some high-resolution gaming on the UE55HU8500, you’ll be pretty excited by the sharpness, colour richness and contrast of its pictures. A touch disappointing, though, is the 60ms of input lag we measured. This is around twice as high as we’d ideally like to see, and could reduce your performance with games based on reactions and timing.
Should I buy a Samsung UE55HU8500?
If you’re in the market for a high quality UHD TV, then you simply have to consider the UE55HU8500. Its picture quality is brilliant, its smart features are extensive, and it even manages to sound good despite its slender frame. The fact that you can update its connections and processing brain is also a potentially killer feature given the current uncertain times.
You should perhaps try and audition the UE55HU8500 before you buy, though, to see how you get on with its curved design, since to our minds it isn’t as persuasive at this 55-inch screen size as it can be on larger screens.
It’s also impossible to think of quality 4K TVs without thinking of the outstanding Sony X9005B series, which aren’t quite as ‘smart’ but offer at least as capable pictures as well as superior audio for less money.
You should perhaps try and audition the UE55HU8500 before you buy, though, to see how you get on with its curved design, since to our minds it isn’t as persuasive at this 55-inch screen size as it can be on larger screens.
It’s also impossible to think of quality 4K TVs without thinking of the outstanding Sony X9005B series, which aren’t quite as ‘smart’ but offer at least as capable pictures as well as superior audio for less money.
Verdict
Samsung’s UE55HU8500 is every inch a flagship TV, combining a ground-breaking design with stellar picture quality and a rich, sophisticated feature count. We’d recommend going for a bigger screen size, if you can though, to reduce the potential issues raised by the curved design.