Customer Reviews
Worth every penny
After months of trying to decide between the Panasonic plasma sets and the LN46A650, I decided on this set despite it being a little more expensive. After a week of watching this unit, I have no regrets. The picture is excellent especially for MLB games and TNT NBA games. I cannot wait for football season to arrive.
The set up is simple and idiot-proof. I would definitely recommend this set to anyone looking for an LCD.
Great Product
Great picture quality. I use this connected to a PC to stream video, and it works great - way better than the sharp HD I have. It adjusts resolution automatically. It also looks great in the living room - very clean cut - my wife even likes it.
Awesomeness!
I bought this TV about an year ago. Its one of the best thing I spent my money on. Everything everyone wrote on here is true. The picture quality is the best. Even turned off, the tv looks like a work of art with its red hints. Its not the kind of retro red that would embarace you with your friends over at home. Its very mild hint of red, which you wont notice unless you look for it. I love the glass frame. Makes the tv looks soo smooth. I do recall, I had to download a latest driver and update it because someone on the site had recommended.
FOr the picture quality, I think this tv has one of the best black display or something like that, and you could literally see it. I didnt know what that really meant when I read the reviews, but once I got to see the pictures myself, I got it.
I think Anything lesser to a HDTV on this tv isnt doing justice to the picture quality on this tv. so if you are tryign this tv for the first time, check out a HDTV. BluRay rocks.
I got one of those panasonic home theater sound system (thought the claim is that this tv has the best sound, I felt the sound isnt matching to the amazing picture quality, so I had to get the surround sound.). It does make a great difference.
I also added the PS3 (just for the Blu Ray and I also got a good deal on sony.com with a 100$back, with which I coudlnt go wrong!). I think now I feel like I really have a good media system. I am happy with it.
Few things I learnt while having the TV - for the surround system, use optical cable, if you care for surround system. If you are watching BluRay or your own local Cable box, get the Optical cable from these devices directly into your surround system rather than getting the optical out from tv to surround. I think the TV doesnt send out real surround system, even if u use the optical out from TV. I dont know how these things work, but that is much of what I learnt myself. THis might come in handy, if you are playing with these components.
If at all I could pick on something, it would be this. I wish the tv could take in multiple optical input, and send it out via one optical out, so I dont have to keep switching the optical cables myself every time i go from cable to bluray.
I almost forgot, the remote that comes with the Tv, lights up in the dark which is sooo cool!..
I think with all this , if you think I shouldnt give this product a 5 star, you better have a whole lot of real reasons :)
Go with this or even its big brother 52 inch, you wont regret the purchase!
Great product
I purchased the Samsung LN46B650 HDTV through Amazon on March 29, soon after it was first advertised, and after reading lots of reviews of the 2008 "A" model; and comparing the picture with the Sony Bravia with similar features at Best Buy. I have HD service from Cox and have it all hooked up to a surround sound system and a Sony blu-ray player.
After having watched it for a month, I am very satisfied with my purchase. The picture is terrific; Blu-rays look fabulous; the remote is pretty user-friendly ( I don't know why all the complaints on the LN46A model from last year, unless they've changed the remote); and the glare isn't that bad, even in a room that has lots of natural light. Without the stereo system sound, the TV speakers are decent, much better than on the 7-yr. old Hitachi I previously used. Even my wife, who is not big on TV, was astonished at the clarity of the picture. And the price I got was only about 0 more than Amazon's price on the 2008 "A" model at the time(of course, now the A model has been reduced a couple of hundred$ more) and about 0 less than the Best Buy price on the new "B" model.
The only less than satisfying part of the process was the delivery - they just took it out of the box and plugged it in to see that it worked - nothing special.
So far, it's been a great TV and I recommend it highly.
Excellent Picture Quality (Unless you need a matte screen)
**May 1, 2009 Updates at the Bottom
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, antenna setup, general TV setup, input setup, Application (media/internet functions) and Help. One thing I don't like, is that one feature that I like to be able to adjust on the fly, automotion plus (or refresh rate), is buried in menu -> picture -> picture options -> Auto Motion Plus. It's a pain to get to if you're just trying to adjust the setting for one channel.
The menu gives you very simple descriptions for each setting that you're adjusting. Sometimes they're fairly obvious but I imagine for some people it clears up some ambiguity. For an example, when I highlight "color" the bottom of the menu reads, "Adjusts the color saturation of the picture using the bar on the screen. The closer to 100, the more saturated the color."
I connected my TV directly to my computer network via ethernet cable. I had absolutely no issue in setting this up, the TV detected my network settings without any problems.
One nice feature is that you can rename the sources on your TV to pre-designated alternates. For an example, I named HDMI1 "Cable Set Top Box" and HDMI2 "Game" and Component1 "DVD." It makes things easier for non-technical people. Picture settings are always retained based on the source, if you keep your HDMI source on "movie" mode and adjust the picture settings, every time you watch HDMI these settings will be restored.
FEATURES
I need to start out with my favorite feature on the TV: Customized Auto-Motion Plus. For those of you not familiar with the feature, it's what Samsung calls their 120hz capabilities. If you look at older LCD TV screens you might find that the picture tends to look blurry or judders in fast motion sequences. This technology, found in most middle and high-end LCD HDTVs in 2009, adds in extra frames to smooth out the motion.
On my old XBR4, I could adjust the 120hz to either off, standard or high. On the LN46B650, I can adjust the blur from 0-10 and the judder from 0-10. It's a great feature, I'm still toying around to figure out what I like most for which content.
Other unique features not in other brands is the Internet Content which includes a series of Yahoo Widgets. I must point out that these features are VERY slow regardless of your internet connection. It takes about 20-30 seconds to start them up initially after you turn your TV on and then take about 5 seconds to load from that point on. There is a significant lag when switching through the widgets content. The built in widgets include weather, news, flickr and finance. I've heard there are more widgets coming out soon -- possibly a Netflix widget? -- but as of April 30, 2009, there are none available. I'm praying that future firmware updates to the TV fix some of the slow speed. cnet.com provides a more thorough review of these features.
The TV also comes with a fair amount of material stored in its internal memory and Samsung also includes it on a flashdrive which you can tweak on your personal computer. Pushing the content button on the remote closes whatever your watching and offers you a photo gallery which has pictures of art in slide show form (accompanied by adjustable music), a few recipes (why? Do people actually want to read recipes off of their TV screen? Is somebody putting a 46 inch LCD HDTV in their kitchen? I must say, though, the pictures of the food looks good), games (haven't tried these yet, I don't know if I ever will), children (a bunch of stories that look like flash cartoons with subtitles for kids to read along with), and wellness (a bunch of nature audio tracks and a few piano pieces). There is a total of 189 MB on the TV set aside for this content, you can download more of it off the internet or load it on via USB flashdrive or hard drive. It's really nothing too exciting, I have no intention to use it. But, I will point out, that it's far easier to use and faster than the Yahoo Internet Widgets.
The TV hooks up to an external hard drive or flash drive. I connected my 4 GB flashdrive with a bunch of movies formatted for my iPod on it. The TV played them without any problems, but the stretched content did not look too good -- that's no surprise considering the iPod screen is less than 3 inches in size. Eventually I might try to move some saved HD content to my flash drive.
The Help section of the menu is fantastic for those who are not familiar with HDTV settings.
There is a "product guide" which pretty much explains how to use most of the TV's internet and content features, an explanation of how HD picture quality varies and works -- pretty much a powerpoint presentation -- and how you can use the TV's settings to get the most out of basic features and an explanation of how to save energy with TV settings.
A self-diagnosis section brings up a sample HD picture or audio track to test to see if there is a problem with your TV. I imagine if you start seeing artifacts on your TV or quality problems it might be a good way to see if it's the TV or a component you have connected to it.
This section also gives you contact info for samsung and is where you go to upgrade the TV firmware. Your TV is not usable when upgrading its firmware (or internal software). There has been a software upgrade issued since this TV reached the market. It takes less than 2 minutes to download and install over cable internet.
You'll find that there is a myriad of picture adjustments you can make. As I mentioned, the 120Hz refresh rate and dejudder modes, also called automotion, is superb. There are five color temperature presets, I like the warm2 the best with the naked eye but you can make custom adjustments to the white balance and colorspace settings. There's a film mode to use 2:3 pull-down -- including on 1080i sources -- gamma adjustment, dynamic contrast control, black tone controls and a flesh tone setting which I haven't toyed with at all. You can adjust the aspect ratio to turn overscan on and off or to stretch the picture, etc. These are typical on most mid-high end HDTVs for 2009. There is also picture-in-picture via different sources available if you use features like that.
There are also some energy saver features, which will adjust the brightness and other power consuming functions as you wish, but you'll probably see a decrease in picture quality the more these are turned on.
PERFORMANCE
I haven't had a chance to get out any calibration equipment and do anything serious to see how the TV looks at it's best. Out of the box, my first impression is that the picture quality is superb. I made some quick tweaks based on my personal preferences, but the colors seem to be very deep and accurate to my eye. Blacks are very very dark. I saw an early review of this TV that complained of clouding on the TV at the corners, I haven't seen any evidence of that no matter how dark I try to make the room. The screen appears to be very uniform from what I can tell with the naked eye. I might do some tests later, but I think some people have already done so on avsforum.com.
I can't imagine the typical viewer being disappointed with any aspect of the picture. It's probably the best HD picture I've ever seen, though I haven't seen most of the 2009 models, I'm gauging this based on 2008 models. But in sum: great contrast, accurate colors, great customizable processing, deep blacks, uniform screen.
I know there is some confusion about whether this is 10-bit or 8-bit unit, and I can't be positive (is there a good way to check?). I will say that there is no noticeable color banding at all that you might see in an 8-bit unit.
I took a look at SD content from both a DVD (via component cables with no upscaling) and cable TV. Obviously, it's no where near as good as HD content. I will say that if you want a TV at this size, regardless of what TV you get, you should shell out the bucks for HD broadcasting or at least a blu-ray player. With that said, the SD quality is pretty good. The picture still looks detailed with good noise reduction and gets rid of most of the moire issues you might encounter on other sets.
The sound quality is fine. Nothing great. The speakers of the TV fire downwards, so sometimes it sounds like that the voices of people on the TV are coming from the TV stand rather than the screen. I use my own speakers for most content and I suggest you consider doing the same if you're an audiophile. I won't go into sound quality much more than that because if you really expect a flat panel TV to have mind blowing sound, you need to reassess your expectations.
If you're a gamer, and I mean a *serious* gamer, and need a very fast response rate, then you might want to consider a different TV. Even when game mode on this TV is turned on, you won't be 100% pleased. If you're a more typical gamer or don't play games, this should NOT affect your opinion of this TV. I've played my xbox 360 and it is more than apt for the typical gamer. I can't imagine casual gamers running into issues especially since gaming where timing is crucial -- like guitar hero or rock band -- allow you to calibrate the game to compensate for any delay. I've tried playing with my xbox 360 a little bit on it and I haven't had any problems. I also should point out that I watched the Netflix live streaming HD content via xbox 360 connected over HDMI and the content looks superb.
As I mentioned before, the automotion features of this TV are superb. I love being able to adjust it to my preferences exactly. If you get this TV, you won't be disappointed with that feature.
WRAP UP...
The Picture quality of this TV is absolutely superb compared to all the 2008 LCDs I've seen and I imagine it is one of the best of the 2009 models. The features are expansive but you'll probably not end up using the internet or media content built in unless Samsung improves it. The screen is glossy so beware of bright rooms! Don't forget that -- I mentioned it early in the review. Otherwise, I can't imagine a better picture from an LCD.
Feel free to ask questions in the comment and I'll try to update again soon.
--UPDATE: May 1, 2009 -- CLARIFICATION ON GAMING
So there was a question as to what the problem is for gamers. Let me be clear, the graphics quality with games is still excellent on my xbox 360. I have played with 120hz at full with the games and the processing is very good. I've also played with game mode turned on which exchanges some of the picture quality for better latency.
Before I continue, let me note, once again, that this is NOT a problem for a large majority of gamers.
So then what's the problem? When comparing this TV to a high end computer monitor there is a bit more input lag. For most people, this is completely undetectable, but it is there despite that this TV has far superior picture quality to pretty much every other LCD out there in the price range.
For those of you not familiar with input lag, what it basically means is that when you use a video game, there is a slight delay (and I'm talking nano or miliseconds) between when you press a button on the controller/mouse/keyboard and when the change is registered on the screen. There is ABSOLUTELY no TV or computer screen out there that has 0 lag and there are other factors that play in here (such as the speed of the computer or game console).
I did a few homemade tests and I estimate that the input latency is about 30-35 ms on average with game mode turned on or about 100-120 ms with game mode turned off. That score is actually pretty good compared to most LCD TV screens in this price range, but doesn't keep up with some of the high end Panasonics which are renowned for their low latency. For most people, anything less than 150-200 ms is usually perfectly fine. For others who play a lot of online games with their PC hooked up to their computers and need maximum efficiency, they might want to look at some Panasonic models.
Please be careful, the response rate on the TV is rated at 4 ms. That is true. The pixels on this TV should average a 4 ms response rate which is excellent. What I'm talking about here is the lag it takes for the TV to register a change made in a game controller, through the game console or computer and through the TV video processing. The input lag has nothing to do with picture quality -- in fact, it's likely that less input lag also means less picture quality -- or audio quality. It will not be noticeable to most gamers.
--UPDATE: May 1, 2009-- SD Picture Quality
I've had a chance to watch a lot more SD quality broadcast on SD channels and have to say that after tweaking some settings, I'm really thoroughly impressed. This is some of the best SD rendering I've seen on an HD set. Colors pop very well and the AMP cleans up a lot of the blur well when you get it to just the right settings. I spent some time last night watching baseball games switching between HD and SD feeds and found that I could get the movement of the ball and swing of the bat to look pretty good on an SD feed and when in HD, the AMP handles it very well in 1080i. 720p actually looks a bit better when following balls hit into the field, but this is to be expected with progressive rather than interlaced video (there's a long explanation I could go into for this, but, for simplicity sake: 720p/1080p will show most motion better but is especially good when the entire picture is moving -- like camera pans -- 1080i is actually pretty good when the camera is steady and there is one object moving on the screen, but terrible when the camera pans or there are a lot of objects in motion).
--UPDATE May 1, 2009 -- EARLY CALIBRATION
So I ran through a very quick calibration but did not do much to get the room lighting the way I usually have it, so I will probably fine tune these numbers later. Here are the numbers I got with my calibration (NOTE: ALL TVs ARE DIFFERENT, EVEN WITH THIS MODEL, THESE MAY NOT BE YOUR IDEAL SETTINGS)
Mode: Movie
Backlight: 9
Contrast: 88
Brightness: 47
Sharpness: 0
Color: 46
Tint (G/R): G48/R52
Black tone: Off
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Gamma: -1
Color Space: Auto
White Balance:
R-Off: 24
G-Off: 23
B-Off: 22
R-Gain: 14
G-Gain: 25
B-Gain: 46
Flesh Tone: 0
Edge Enhancement: Off
Color Tone: Warm 3
Size: Screen Fit
Digital NR: Auto
HDMI Black Level: Low
Film Mode: Auto1
Blue Only Mode: Off
AMP 120Hz: Custom -- I change this based on what I'm watching
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