Samsung UN46B8500

Another LED offering from the lovely people at Samsung which has hit the shelves recently is the Samsung UN46B8500 which is certainly expensive and has been aimed at the higher end of the market, so what does it have that their 46 inch 8000 series has that means it can charge up to a grand more and still profess to be worth it and a serious player in the market place? To be honest, on first hearing that this one had been released we were a little confused as the 8000 series is really good and we had only just packed up their 46 inch 8000. What does the 8500 mean? Is there added technology and functionality? For this money we really hope so. Come with us as we peel back the packaging and find out.

Design

There is not a lot of difference here from many of their other sets, and as we have said before we love the design from Samsung so that will always count in their favor. They have a clean design that is beautiful, and again this is an ultra thin set at 1.6 inches deep which is just larger than the 1.4 inches of the 8000 series. However, it is still a very slim sleek unit that does look classy and again comes with the crystal clear stand that allows you to adjust the television angle in lots of ways. The set itself is framed with Samsung’s Touch of Color™ frame, which is ever so slightly gray and gives it a softer look that the glossy black. Again this is a wall mountable set, but the fixtures required are not sold as standard but are an extra that you will have to purchase separately. So far we love the television itself from an aesthetic point of view, so onto the technology to see if we can find that extra up to a grand’s worth of functionality.

Key Features

As far as Samsung are concerned you are paying for ‘breakthrough picture quality’ when you purchase the Samsung UN46B8500 or any others in the 8500 range. As we already know this is an LED screen, which means that there are fluorescent tubes inside the set, and we already know that this assists with the black depth and the over all color performance of the television so we certainly have no gripes there. We viewed our DVD choice all the way through as we were definitely enjoying the color performance. We found all the colors true to life and the black scaling lovely and crisp with no lack of detailing in things like shadows; however, it was not so much better than their 8000 range. By this point we were wishing we hadn’t sent the other set back so we could have ran them together to really see, but from memory whilst the picture is good it didn’t strike us as significantly better.

What Samsung have added to this television set is the huge 7,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, (the 8000 series is 5,000,00:1 so that’s definitely an improvement) and yeah ok, this does sound good and we are not arguing in anyway with the performance in terms of clarity and sharpness. However, this was not as good as some screens we have tested in terms of viewing angle, and certainly if you moved too far to either side the picture very quickly became difficult to see, which is not what you want in many cases as there isn’t enough room to have all the seats in the lounge directly in front of the television set. It is inevitable that some are off to the side. It was also disappointing that this was such a glossy screen as the reflection and glare from bright room tests wasn’t good. We have seen much better – even from Samsung. We were disappointed that we could see the reflection of Steve’s awful shirt and tie which was distracting as we watched Transformers.

Conclusion

This is another ‘green‘ television set from Samsung which is always good to see. That means that there is no mercury in this set and that in terms of power consumption it is 40% lower than other LCD televisions on offer, so that does count in favor of the Samsung UN46B8500. However, we just cannot quite get over the price. There just doesn’t seem to be enough in terms of functionality to make us want to shout ‘Hang the expense’ and rush out and buy one – especially with the fact we could pick up at least two negative points, with the screen reflection being particularly annoying in bright room conditions.

Click Here for Latest Offer on Samsung UN46B8500
Enjoy Free Shipping & Secure Shopping