Samsung LE37B550A5 37-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p Crystal LCD TV with Freeview

As this was my first large HD LCD TV I spent more than three months researching the right choice for my budget (under £600) and am delighted with my purchase. The Samsung is exactly what it purports to be and Amazon's service was prompt and efficient.

Set-Up: The Samsung LE37B550A5 is truly a Plug & Play television, simply follow the onscreen set up instructions and it works straightaway. You will want to adjust some of the contrast and colour settings to suit your own preferences, but otherwise it's fast and easy.

Picture: You need to understand that older CRT televisions are better at handling analogue/digital television pictures that are recorded using simpler and less expensive quality cameras & film; as a result some programmes are of lesser quality than others (good example is the in-car footage used on the BBC's Top Gear). This result is a slightly jagged picture if you are too close to the television. The simple answer is to choose the screen size that fits the environment - there's plenty of advice on the web about the best distance for viewing various size LCD TVs so don't be lulled into thinking a bigger screen is better. The full HD programmes and films are simply amazing, as is playing HD games on my Xbox 360. I already own a smaller size Samsung LCD TV in another room and have always been disappointed by the lack of depth in the darker colours, especially black, but this model has no such problems and dark colours are perfectly clear even without HD. Many reviews refer to the picture lag and again, this model seems to have overcome many of it's predecessors' and peers' issues offering a great viewing experience.

Sound: This was the biggest surprise as I was expecting fairly low quality without an external speaker system, but am delighted to say that both the volume and depth of sound is very impressive. When you first set up the TV it does not have SRS True Sound activated, but I highly suggest you switch this on if not using an external source. Again, I am equally impressed when watching a DVD or playing my xbox.

Build Quality: No problems here, the unit is solid without being heavy and my only problem seems to be keeping it dust free!

Compatibility: I've had no problems connecting any of my DVD, BlueRay, Games console or other external device (admittedly I've not used a PC with it yet!). The Anynet solution is a great feature that will become more useful as I connect additional devices in coming months/years, especially as technology progresses.

Remote Control: Very snazzy and fairly large, but that makes it easy to use. The control and in-screen menus are intuitive and easy to navigate. In all honesty, since I've programmed the TV and set up my satellite remote control to work with the TV I hardly touch it except for any tweaks to detailed adjustments I want to make.

Pros: simple set-up, surprisingly good sound quality, HD is excellent, outperforms some of its peers for colour depth (i.e. black), easily compatible with Sky Remote, plenty of expansion and backward compatibility (4 x HDMI and 2 x SCART), likely to be `futureproof' for a number of years, easy to use and looks great.

Cons: lower quality programmes have a slightly poorer image than my old CRT television and the touch sensitive controls on the front of the TV are not easy to see making them effectively useless in all but bright daylight or with a torch in hand! In fairness, you should only need these if you can't find the remote.

Conclusion: I am extremely pleased with my choice having been quite nervous about ordering in light of the plethora of HDTV choices on the market. There are definitely more expensive TVs now on the market with LED technology and other picture quality improvement claims by the manufacturers, but I have yet to see difference between the Samsung LE37B550A5 and my friends' TVs that are more than double the price. I'm sure someone with a more trained eye or specific purpose for an LCD TV might be able to tell the difference, but I am a `normal' user and highly recommend this Television.

Like a million other folk I have been investigating TV's for some time regarding going through the whole LCD/LED, 100hz, big screen size etc. I am replacing a peach of a TV, a Panasonic 32inch 100hz with in-built 5.1 - but it's ten years old and I decided I had to finally remove the sandstone block and replace it with one of these funky flat screens.

Long story short - picked this TV finally and it is simply jaw-dropping - if you buy it for the right thing.

Type of Viewing
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I am predominantly a Standard Def viewer, from a Sky+ box, combined with a huge library of standard def DVD's. I have an LG standard def recordable DVD for capturing mainly movies off the Sky+ planner - or direct.

Distance
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For myself I discovered that the most important aspect of buying the TV is the screen size. As I expect the TV to do all the upscaling - thereby giving consistency, getting the screen size correct to remove visible artifacts was really important.

I would recommend this TV for someone who sits 12 feet away - yes that's right 12 feet - if you are watching SD inputs. Viewing from the DVD you can go to 9 feet, viewing from Sky or Freeview then 9-12 feet.

Sound
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The set comes with standard sound, and TruSurround HD. Having been used to the 5.1, then the sound without TruSurround is very tinny, and with TruSurround, you could live with, but you would always feel that was what you were doing. I would not downgrade the TV because of this - basically all of the LCD's seem to suffer from this aspect. However there is an analogue L/R channel output that I popped into my old Arcam analogue amp and played through the two standard speakers and bingo - great sound - so the limitation is the speaker output from the TV and not the sound processing.

Now for the overall review.

Colours to die for
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I have a Toshiba 32inch Regva with Resolution+ - the 635DB - and this Samsung blows it away with depth of colour. Viewing movies from Standard Def DVD have simply stunning depth of colour and brilliant upscaling - truly best-of-breed. You will sit spellbound watching old movies take on a new lease of life, with detail and clarity that just was not presented before. I cannot stress this enough - truly phenomenal colour depth - no need to get a LED to see the depth of colour - blacks truly are blacks.

Overall upscaling
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Again fantastic job done by Samsung. The image processing is spot on. The only weak spot, as always, is fast-moving sport - however the level of detail is still great and easy on the eye. I tried the next model up - the 650 with 100Hz - makes no difference. The 550 with 50Hz displays the same - at least to me. If you run HD sport through it - e.g. Sky Sports HD then the detail is stunning. Watched the Formula 1 yesterday - handled it superbly - lovely crisp clean images on standard BBC1 signal.

Connectivity
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I have connected all my bits and bobs with SCART - yes good old SCART - to get the above results. No need for HDMI - as I am not doing any fancy digital sound processing - just simply analogue feeds out to standard amp. The set has loads of HDMI and Optical Output for sound, so that when I do eventually move to full 5.1 or 7.1, with HD, then the TV has everything I need.

So in summary - superb and fantastic TV - delivers everything you want and then some. The key is buying the right size to match the type of TV you watch. I suspect the majority of purchasers are like me - built up a large amount of standard definition DVDs, watch a lot of standard definition TV - either Freeview or Sky, and sit about 9-12 feet away - usual size of living room. If that's you - buy this TV - do not waste your money on fancy gimmicky stuff like 100Hz, 200Hz, LEDs - this TV delivers what you need - not what the salesman wants to sell you - and it delivers it a price that is simply astounding.

If in doubt - go to a store - Currys, Richer Sounds etc. - get the salesman to put the Freeview digital channel on, measure the floor distance and stand and look at it for ten minutes. If after that time all you are left feeling is - wow - then buy it, if you are left feeling - picture not quite sharp, little artifacts appear, jaggy lines in sports - just think how you will feel watching it every night for five years. That's what led me to the 37 inch rather than the 40 inch, or even a Phillips 42 inch.

So in summary - pick the right size TV for what you predominantly watch - and if like me thats 9-12 feet with a need for high-quality standard definition - then at this price there is simply no other TV that comes close.

We got this TV after wanting to get the most out of our PS3 and it's blu-ray/ high def gaming capabilities. What a fantastic choice that turned out to be. The picture quality is outstanding, once you've got a blu ray playing on it with a decent hdmi cable the colours are rich and vibrant, with the tv coping really well between light and dark scenes. Sound quality is an issue, to be honest, the standard speakers are lousey, but we've hooked ours up to a pair of £20 computer speakers and it's great, so that's very easily solved, I imagine once hooked up to 5.1 surround the sound quality would be immense.

So to conclude, if you're considering dipping your toe into the world of high definition television, I'd say you could do a lot worse than this TV, it's a brilliant bit of tech, you won't regret it, for the price it's the stand out choice for me,