Excellent Picture Quality (Unless you need a matte screen), April 30, 2009

By 

M. Joachim “Matt” (Hoboken, NJ 07030) – See all my reviews

  

**May 1, 2009 Updates at the bottom

**May 8, 2009 Updates at the bottom

**May 14, 2009 — I’ve updated my final calibration

I just received my LN46B650 today so I may update this review in time. Feel free to comment with questions and I’ll try to respond to them in later updates.

UNBOXING

The box for the LN46B650 comes is not too much larger than the TV dimensions itself. Sometimes you’ll see a 32″ TV come in a box that could easily fit one much larger. I wouldn’t exactly call it environmentally friendly, but the box easily fit through doorways and into the elevator of my apartment building. The box is fitted with Styrofoam at the corners to keep the TV in its place and inflated plastic bags filling in all the empty space. There is the typical screen protective plastic in place and I found that the TV came in excellent condition with no noticeable shipping damage. I did not use Amazon.com’s shipping company, the handling of other shippers may vary.

In the box is the stand (which comes with assembly instructions, though mine was already assembled), remote, 2 x AA batteries, a USB flash drive containing multimedia content and the TV instruction manual, a cover for the bottom of the TV in case you wish to mount it on a wall, a cleaning cover,screws for securing the stand to the TV, a power cord and a software CD for connecting the TV to a Windows Vista or XP computer via ethernet connections.

Moving the box by myself was a bit difficult as it is still quite larger, once I got it out of the box though, the TV is very light for a 23 year old male and getting it on the stand was very easy. Once on the stand it snaps in place, you can (optionally) insert screws to keep it locked into the stand.

Inserting the power cord and connecting my components to the TV was easy, but the cable management system for the TV is pretty much non existent — cables pretty much dangle behind the TV.

DESIGN

There is a lot of debate about whether the Touch of Color Red Design is a good thing or bad thing. Also, you’ll see on last year’s models that some people claim it’s barely noticeable while some people claim it’s a major game changer. My TV sits on a black TV stand in a spot in the room that sits in the shade — I can barely see the red color. However, I feel that if you were to shine a lot of light on it, it would quickly become very noticeable.

The bezel is not quite as thick as I thought it looked in the Amazon.com pictures (which are Samsung’s official PR shots). There is a somewhat “fat” pointed chin which I don’t think looks too terrible. If you look at the pictures you’ll notice that the glass of the bezel extends about half an inch beyond the actual TV bezel, I kind of like it. The neck of the stand is a glass pillar and very nice looking. The stand itself is surprisingly deep compared to the TV stand, but, again, not a bad thing, it’s just hard to see in the pictures.

The built in TV controls sit on the bottom right hand corner of the bezel and are impossible to see from more than a foot away. It’s a good thing for watching movies, but when I told somebody how to lower the volume on the TV, they couldn’t find the buttons. I should also note that the buttons are touch sensitive there’s no tactile way to find them or get feedback when pressing them. To the right of the buttons is a red light that turns on when the remote is pressed or the TV controls are pressed. It is otherwise always off unless the TV is in standby.

I should point out that the TV is very glossy and during very dark scenes it is absolutely necessary to shade your windows. Even when the not in dark scenes, I found that the bezel reflects what the screen does not. When I closed my blinds, the TV looks absolutely superb. The bezel is no longer noticeable, dark scenes are fantastic.

The remote is fairly straight forward. The design is just a tiny bit red like the TV bezel, buttons are nice and large and easy to memorize. The backlight button for the remote sits in the top right corner of it and when pressed illuminates the keys fairly well.

There are a good number of connectivity options which are thoroughly explained on the Amazon.com specs or on Samsung’s website.

MENUS/SETTINGS

Turning the TV sent me through a few welcome menus that I didn’t particularly want. The first thing the TV did was begin scanning for channels — but I have my cable box connected via HDMI so there was nothing to scan. Stopping the channel scan process was easy, though, and when I got out of the welcome menus and switched to the HDMI 1 source, the TV was easy to use.

The menu layout is not atypical of other HDTVs you may have had the chance to use. Pushing the menu button brings up a series of menus indicated by pictograms for picture, audio,…

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Unbelievable Picture Quality, April 5, 2009

By 

James M. Lane “JML” (Wilton, CT USA) – See all my reviews

  

I purchased this item last week 3-27-09 without the luxury of any reviews posted.. Just the picture I saw at B.B… I also purchased the Blue Ray player… The picture on this TV is Awesome… Better than I expected. Get the Blue Ray… I watched a movie on it the other night… Never knew what I was missing! This TV has all the bells & whistles as the 46A850 model with the upgrade to 100,000 : 1 contrast ratio. Sound is great. Picture is great… Easy to set up… Delivery from Amazon better than expected. Had people over to watch the final 4 NCAA last night… One gentleman kept walking up to the TV & asking his wife why his new SONY didn’t look even close to this… Swivel stand is also Key to me… Red touch of color is not noticeable unless you look very close… Then you appreciate it! Hope this helps… Happy shopping

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Samsung makes great TVs… 5 stars for this model!, April 12, 2009

There are lots of in-depth reviews of this TV on the web, so I won’t go in to too much detail here. I will say that the picture quality is awesome on this model, and that I’m very happy with my purchase. The red touch of color isn’t too obvious (I still wish Samsung would abandon the TOC though). The swivel base is nice, too.

The “auto-motion plus” (AMP) feature is improved over the 2008 model by allowing you to fine-tune the settings more. AMP is the technology that fills in extra frames (120Hz) so video doesn’t look so “jerky”. Owners of the 2008 model sometimes had complaints that they could not adjust the AMP setting enough to their liking. The 2009 model allows greater customization.

“Game mode” helps eliminate the lag when playing games. Once I turned this mode on, there was no lag when playing “Rock Band” and other games on the PS3.

I am using HDMI v1.3b cables that only cost a dollar from BargainCell. Images are awesome. Don’t spend more than that for HDMI cables!!! Research the web or look at the reviews for HDMI cables on Amazon to find out why. You will not notice any difference in image quality no matter how expensive an HDMI cable is.

The sound on the TV is a little flat, and doesn’t have much bass. But I am hooking my PS3 and DirecTV sound to an Onkyo receiver and Energy speakers (which sound great!), so it didn’t matter to me.

Keep in mind that the 650 models (like this one) have a gloss panel. This causes reflections to show from windows and lights. If you’re looking for the semi-matte screens that help cut down on this, you’ll want to check out the 630 models.

My TV was shipped via Pilot freight services. They made a courtesy call to me stating that because of where I live, that one of their partners (a moving company) would be making the delivery. As a result, it tacked on a few extra days for the product to arrive, but it arrived in perfect condition and the moving company set up the TV and made sure it worked and that I was happy with it before they left.

All-in-all, I’m definitely pleased with this TV.

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