Customer Reviews

Samsung UE40B7020W 40-inch Widescreen Ultra Slim Full HD 1080P Crystal LED TV with Media 2.0 and Freeview

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Best looking TV around, best panel technology. The platinum black TV is a stunner - slim TV is neat, not the most important feature in my book, but when looking at this TV edge on while an image is being displayed, its stands out as an amazing piece of consumer design.
The other reviews here say this TV is the best. Those reviews are right, the 7-series LED panel is the best.

For blu-ray, I have it twinned with the BD-P4600 player, these two together are stunning.
I put 'The Golden Compass' blu-ray in and the TV image knocked me for six - way better than I imagined. I've played many more movies since, but this one was gob-smackingly good.
I cant complain about the sound as it is effectively a flat speaker design. Plug the A/V out to a decent speaker and you can address the sound issues that are noted in other reviews.

Features;
USB connectivity is very, very good, 320GB USB HD worked first time. No issue with any USB drive that I have used. Playing photos, movies and music is great, and photos are fab on this TV.
Music playback is not like an MP3 player, if it created music libraries based on artist, album etc it would be better as it only provides for folder based browsing of music at present. Playback of DivX 3.1 encoded AVI is spot on.
YouTube playback over Internet is great, keyword search, find a video, play - simple. Good playback even on a 1MB Internet link.
The other Internet (Internet@TV) items are less useful, but I'd hope that Samsung will improve that aspect with more time.
Firmware update is a doddle - TV will auto-update 45 mins after TV goes to standby mode plus some other options.
The mini-remote control is a lovely item VOL+- and CH+- on a tiny remote - class design too.
The main remote is good, button lighting on/off is good when room is darkened. All the other buttons you'd expect.
PIP is great, allowing picture-side-by-side is a bonus - every TV should have this.
Std def TV playback is better than I expected, most large TVs display a grainy/blocky std def image, but this TV is very good.
I've no HD source other than the blu-ray so far, must get Sky+HD now.
Composite (EDTV) video from the Wii is better than the normal Wii display mode.
DVD upscaling on this TV gives a very, very good image.
Styling and design - 11/10 - this TV is that good.
Blu-ray video - 10/10
DVD video (via Blu-ray player) - 10/10
USB features - 10/10
Internet@TV features - 5/10
Install - 8/10
Networking setup - 8/10
DLNA - untested - other reviews suggest its v good.
Teletext - very speedy as it stores all the pages, and sub-pages - twin teletext with side-by-side picture and its neat.

If I manage to make one thing clear in this review, it's that this TV is brilliant. The 1080p is so clear that it's practically like looking through an empty frame.

The picture quality is superlative; the blacks are deeper than ever and the colours are as vibrant as a bolt of lightning. Compared to previous LCD TV's I have owned in the past, the samsung led TV's are a cut above the rest. I'm not sure on the Sony 200Hz motionflow against this TV but the picture looks very smooth indeed. When I say flat screen, I really mean flat! There is literally no room wasted when hooking the thing to the wall and blends into its surroundings seamlessly.

Thoroughly recommended for anyone who seeks exceptional quality from their television!

This tv is the slimmest tv I have ever seen, it weighs lesss than half the weight of my last tv too but this isn't hard to believe given its size. The picture quality is one of the best i've seen, colours are vivid and areas that should be black are actually black (My last tv had a problem handling dark scenes). The connections are more than enough although I have alreay filled the 4 HDMI ports, one thing I found particularly usefull, was the inclusion of an Optical output. With a descent surround sound system you can have almost 5.1 sound whatever you're watching, it is capable of outputting 5.1 but no aired tv stations support it yet. The menus are easy to navigate through and this gives you a lot of tweaking to fine tune to your desired settings. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a new tv, the mix of stunning picture quality and beautiful design make it the perfect piece to have at the centre of any home theatre system.

One final note,
I had one problem with the tv early on, it would randomly turn off into standby and then come back on instantly for no apparent reason. This happend quite often and was really annoying especially during the Champions League final. I sorted the problem out with little hassle by downloading the firmware update form Samsung's website. I have had no problems with it since.

This TV has superb picture quality and some novel features.
The picture quality in HD is absolutly Stunning.
The internet features are novel, but are very slow and quite limited in use.
If you are like me, you will have a play for an hour or two and than realise that the apps are far too slow and fiddly to be of any practical use.
I love this TV but there is one MAJOR disappointment... the Sound quality from the on board speakers is appauling.
My radio alarm clock has a better tone than this tv. However, I was aware of this issue and decided I could overcome this simply by hooking up my surround sound system (it's about time I got some use out of it) GREAT I thought... BUT.. Oh no, The sound comes out the sound system a fraction of a second before the persons lips on the tv have (the technical term for this is Lip sync delay). This is very annoying. It happens because the tv takes longer to process the picture than the sound,so therefore the picture and sound are not syncronised. I would have thought a tv in this price range (£1000+) would have had a syncronised audio output.
This has really annoyed me.
You can correct this problem by buying an additional piece of kit that will delay the sound to your sound system and allow you to syncronise sound/picture, but you will pay anthing from £80.00 unless of course, your AV receiver has this feature built in. If you are not bothered about the sound issue I can certainly recommend this tv for a truly amazing Picture. Good Hunting!

Okay so had a few problems at first, out of the box colour/picture settings for standard tv and even HD TV input (SkyHD Box) are simply awful. Why Samsung do this is a mystery to me. It got to the point that I almost took the thing back after a week I thought it was so bad (noise in the picture, jaggies due to upscaling, over the top colour enhancement etc). Only a last minute visit from a professional AV installation mate I have turned the tide. Once he'd had 5mins adjusting the settings normal TV looked pretty darn good, HDMI crystal clear to the point it's like looking through the window on the scene and the contrast ratio, well you have to see it "tuned" to believe it. You truly notice the difference from other high end TV's (e.g. Sony Z5500 series).
Thankfully you can verify the screen quality in the showroom by checking out a blu-ray input as the TV has a BDWISE setting that pre-selects the colour and picture settings, meaning that you can see what standard TV and HD Input will look like in your home (once tweaked).

As regards the lack of 200Hz, I have to say that you won't notice the difference between 100 and 200Hz. I've watched lots of sport on this thing (in HD of course) and there's no bluring at all. Personally I think manufacturers are playing a numbers game here. The eye cannot distiguish refresh rates higher than around 85Hz, so make of the higher numbers what you will.

The speakers are a bit simple, okay for normal tv but if your buying this thing or it's bigger bethren to watch movies on then a dedicated surround system is a must.

All in, once tweaked, knocks the competition out of the ring.

The way this TV upscales standard Freeview TV and standard DVDs is hugely impressive (provided you've got a strong off-air signal and a decent DVD player). It's such a relief to realise that I don't have to throw away my (large) DVD collection, and can enjoy them all over again with near BluRay quality. It's also the first TV I've ever owned which gave me perfect pictures staight out of the box, with no "tweaking" needed. It has literally transformed my viewing experience. But be warned - it gives poor quality digital TV signals (notably standard Sky boxes) and "budget" BluRay players very short shrift - you'd be far better off sticking with a high-quality DVD player than switching to a low-quality BluRay player. The other faults all relate to its super-thin dimensions. Whilst its thinness will draw gasps from your friends and make it perfect for wall-mounting, its tiny speakers are next to worthless, the absence of SCART sockets is a pain (just one mini SCART socket), and the rim-mounted LEDs mean that contrast is low on very dark scenes (the end credits on many films and TV programmes - white letters on a black background - look more like light grey on a black background). But I can live with that, given its plasma-like blacks, low power consumption, and excellent contrast in all but the darkest scenes.

Even though my old Sony CRT occupied about half my front room, I resisted its replacement until an LCD produced a better picture than it at standard definition. This panel finally succeeds.
As expected, 1080 sources result in an utterly fabulous picture; deep blacks, full but realistic colours and crisp detail, but it's the upscaling of SD that most impresses. The built in freeview (which works very well for me in a good signal area), my old cable STB and DVD from my PC, all give startling good quality video.

On top of the other, "traditional", sources, the DLNA facility offers to play video files from a PC server. Not only does this seem to work well (although the bundled server software is a bit opaque in use), the wicked internal signal processing again shows as the result is better than playing directly the same file on the PC (connected by HDMI).

Drawback one is that the sound quality is pretty weak - that must be expected with an inch think cabinet! But it's perfectly acceptable for casual viewing and hooking it up to external systems is a cinch with the SPDIF/TOSLink audio out.

Drawback two, is the *horrible* default set up. To set it up roughly I just turned off noise reduction and sharpness, cranked up the backlight to max and used the colour/contrast/brightness settings to get to a reasonable picture. Then there's a bunch of other stuff to play with to further refine. Endless amusement for the geek at heart.

I'm so impressed in fact, that I'm buying another two sets, the 55 inch versions, for the office.

What can I say, it is so good its criminal. I have never seen a picture like it. Surely only 3D projections will make it any better. Like it says on the box everything is 'Crystal' clear. The screen is bright, the colours are vibrant and the resolution is awesome. I could not be happier. The only reason why its not a 5 is the sound which I have to say is shockingly bad. The fact the TV is so thin means the internal speakers must be tiny. This gives a seriously poor sound quality at any level. Be warned as well is there only an optical digital output to plug external speakers in. Whilst this then gives the same awesome experiance the picture does it is another couple of hundred pounds if you do not already have one. Overall the sound quality only drags the experiance down from a 100% to a 95%. I am now trying to justify to my other half swaping the other telly in the house for another smaller version of this one. Buy One - You will love it !

I saw this TV in a shop and was amazed by the clarity of the picture, but knew that I was viewing a HD picture, and wondered how it would fare with ordinary `Sky' input. Since purchasing it, I have continually been amazed by the picture quality, both with HD and non-HD. The speakers are poor- not surprising, considering how thin and light this TV is- but I also purchased surround sound, so this has not been a problem. I would recommend this to anyone.

Stunning in every way!!

A few people have mentioned that the sound on this model is bad and dissapointing. Speech is an issue and certain voice audio can have a bad 'tinny' sound and distortion. But I have found it to be ok as long as you don't turn the volume up above the 40 mark and switch the sound setting to 'voice'. This is the only flaw to this tv's performance and looks. Linking external speakers to the tv resolves this minor issue straight away. With a panel this thin what do you expect from the sound?

The picture quality is fantastic. There is a distinct difference between an LCD 1080p picture and this LED 1080p one. Blacks are black and the contrast is staggering. You won't see a better picture than this. True, the set needed some calibration 'out of the box' due to Samsungs poor factory default settings, but a quick tweek in the picture menu of colour, contrast, backlight etc.. and I had a much improved picture. Adding skin tone and black levels and other advanced picture settings further enhanced the image displayed. You can calibrate the picture set up for hours due to the vast array of options to play about with. Great fun.

Bluray's look amazing!! My Sony DSP350 player produces images that are staggering and rich in both colour and detail. DVD upscaling also looks the buisiness. The internet features are a novel addition but i have a PC for these things.

If, like me, you are looking for a 1080p set for purely picture quality then invest in this. Some will argue that you can get the same spec in a cheaper LCD set. But they clearly need to get their eyes tested!! LED is far superior to LCD technology when it comes to piture clarity and colour. Buy one of these, you won't regret it.