Samsung Series 5 PS51E531A6M

Price is reasonable – At $450 this tv is incredible value and amazing picture quality. Screen goes right to the edges. Sound is fine. It has a large range of input options but only two are hdmi inputs. I would prefer at least four ( Tbox, ps3, Apple TV, surround sound amp). However this is an issue that I can live with at such a cheap price. Price. Screen size. Picture It only has two hdmi inputs

Great tv great price – At $450 this tv is incredible value and amazing picture quality. Screen goes right to the edges. Sound is fine. It has a large range of input options but only two are hdmi inputs. I would prefer at least four ( Tbox, ps3, Apple TV, surround sound amp). However this is an issue that I can live with at such a cheap price. Price. Screen size. Picture It only has two hdmi inputs

Cheap faulty capacitor! – Avoid Samsung TV please. They have cheap faulty capacitors which would fail after warranty and you need to pay hundreds of dollars to repair. I took the best possible care of my 51inch plasma but it broke before two years without a reason. To believe what I just said google "my samsung TV won't turn on" or "stand by light flashes", then you will see how many people around the world is dealing with this issue. Next time I'll definitely avoid samsung brand for TV.

A leap of faith that was justified – I delayed purchasing a full HD TV for years because we're quite committed to DVDs and lesser quality AVI conversions of pre-recorded content. It made no sense to get something *capable* of 1080 vertical lines when viewing 576, 480 or 352 vertical lines. I still believe this, however our 4 year old cheapie plasma (852x480 resolution) started giving us issues.

We were cross-shopping this Samsung with the closest equivalent from LG (xxx6500 I know the full HD ends in 6500, the lesser LG model number ends with 4500). Given the minimal price difference between HD and full HD it was a no-brainer.

So I ordered the LG, but after a slight hassle with an online merchant requiring additional photo ID, we ended up buying the Samsung from a different online retailer, Bigbrownbox.com. The "smart" version of this TV was listed at just $10 more but was on back-order. I wasn't interested in that anyway.

The leap of faith referred to in the title was this: I had never seen this Samsung model in operation. I had seen the LG though, and figured the Samsung would have to be close in picture quality and features. I still haven't done a side-by-side comparison and will just comment on the subject of this review.

Setting Up and First Impressions:

You'll need help from another person to safely lift this out of the box and possibly to attach the stand. You could stand the TV upright on a suitably large couch (as we did) with the screen supported by the backrest. We just found it easier to line up the screw holes for the stand this way.

In use, the stand is adequate. If you lightly bump the panel it will wobble back and forth, but the stand remains firmly planted, no doubt due to the ~30kg weight of the unit.

I was surprised by how slim (for a plasma) this TV is. The bezel is also very thin compared to most other brands available right now, but downright chunky when viewed alongside the current 3D smart offerings from LG, Samsung, Sharp etc. My view on this is nothing but pragmatism -- I watch the lit part with moving stuff on it, not the border! Often it's in a dark room so you can barely see it anyway.

The HD tuner was extremely easy to get the scanning underway and stored. What's trickier is re-numbering the channels -- it's not covered in the manual. I forget how I did it now as it was a 4 months ago, but you can also rename the channels and add descriptive names to other input sources if you like.

Whilst on the manual, it's not so great. Supplied with the unit is just a quick setup guide which is very light on detail. The manual itself is built into the TV. Although the remote has a dedicated button to call it up, I'd prefer a paper one so I can refer to it *while doing the tweak*.

Thankfully the manual is available in PDF format from the Samsung website.

I'm not impressed with the supplied remote control either. It works fine and most of the buttons are reasonably sized. It just feels cheap. To be honest I haven't used it much (it's at Her side, not mine) as I prefer the feel of my universal remote.

The screen is quite reflective. Something to keep in mind if you can't effectively block out or reposition light sources in your room.

Picture Quality, Performance and Features:

As we still don't have a Blueray player, the best picture available to us are the HD broadcasts. 720P and 1080i look great on this display, bearing in mind our viewing distance of roughly 3 metres. From a metre away you'll see compression artifacts which isn't a reflection of the hardware, but rather the cost saving measures used by the TV stations and production companies, especially the cheap local TV ads.

Based on the clarity and sharpness of free to air HD broadcasts, I'd say this is more than enough TV for most people. I'd go further to assume it's even better when viewing Blueray, which I may get around to one day. Even an old XBOX looks good on this (480P) but using decent cables is a must. Most people know this but that's my caveat to serve as a reminder. For the record, my judgement on this TV is based on clean signal transfer with the shortest possible cables for my setup (all 1.5 metres).

I'm using one HDMI input for DVD, component for an old XBOX1 and TOSlink (digital audio) output for TV sound to an AV receiver. No problems with input or output from any of these.

One thing that bugged me initially is the contrast isn't as good as our older panel. I can only assume this is because in 2006 (when our older plasma TV was manufactured) they didn't include a "Store Mode" and "Home Mode". Of course, when first setting up the Samsung I did the sensible thing and chose Home Mode. If you select Store Mode it asks for confirmation with a warning that the picture settings will be reset to factory default every hour. It does have a Dynamic contrast setting and it provided the contrast boost I was seeking, but there are visible fluctuations as the TV compensates, especially following jump-cuts. So I switched it off.

Another observation was that in Home Mode using the factory default settings, the picture looked "crushed". In my opinion there just wasn't enough light (brightness) emitted by a screen of this size.

However, there are enough picture tweaks to suit your room lighting and personal preferences, such as cell light, gamma, skin level, white and black level adjustments. In addition, each of the RGB colours can be balanced as you like.

Another nice feature is the power saving mode. "Off" is my default, then you have Low, Medium, High (which increasingly reduce cell light and brightness) and Picture Off. This is handy if you leave the room for a while but still want to hear what's going on.

The tuner itself is quite stable. If you channel up or down, there's a pause before the new image appears. If you press [UP/DOWN] followed by Enter, it's quicker.

It has the Freeview EPG. I don't know much about this as we disabled it after a few hours and reverted to the built-in EPG which loads *much* faster.

There's a USB port and most TVs have them now, but of greater importance is the ability to play the format you need. This handles everything I've tried thus far including AVI, MP4, WMV and even raw MPEG2 recordings from my PC.

As expected from a plasma display, there's no motion blurring when watching fast action. Indeed, this is why I stuck with this type of panel despite the proliferation of LED LCDs which have greater energy efficiency.

But remember that old saying: you gotta pay to play. Nice picture, easy set up, handles most media formats Built in manual, cheap feel of remote and Dynamic Contrast setting