Samsung 55" TU8000 HDR Smart 4K TV with Tizen OS Black

Product Information

Samsung has long offered one of the most comprehensive smart TV systems through its Tizen platform. It’s had some small design tweaks since last year, but navigation is pretty much identical and is still just as simple as before. Apart from Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and Colour, there aren’t many settings to worry about on this TV, however a couple of them are particularly significant. The other two palpable hits about the 55D8000’s 3D performance are the richness of colours and the striking brightness level that remain even after you’ve donned Samsung’s active shutter glasses – glasses which, incidentally, have shifted to Bluetooth syncing with the TV rather than the old infra-red system.

Samsung Series 8 UE55D8000 TV 139.7 cm (55 - Icecat Specs Samsung Series 8 UE55D8000 TV 139.7 cm (55 - Icecat

Closer in on the action, there’s still plenty of intensity to the colors, if not quite the same subtlety as we saw at 4K. There are plenty of layers to the blue of Electro’s pulsing form, the yellow of the New York taxis is as we’d expect and the bright red and blue of Spidey’s outfit looks great against the night-time streets. We uploaded the brightness measurements and uniformity photos after running the TV for two months in our Accelerated Longevity Test.With [Game Mode] engaged, we measured the UE55D8000 as lagging by about 33ms. This is one of the better figures we’ve measured from a Samsung LCD-based television, and will probably prove to be workable for the majority of users. We’re personally used to faster displays, meaning that, although we could still win online games of Halo: Reach, the residual input lag on the D8000 did make us feel slightly more like spectators, rather than participants, in the game world. Smart Hub What really matters about the 55D8000’s 3D capabilities, though, is that they deliver the 3D goods much more successfully than those of Samsung’s first-generation of 3D TVs. If you're looking for an even more affordable option, take a look at the step down: the TU7100. The TU8000 is the better TV, but the 7100 is terrific value, especially if you can find it reduced during one of the sale seasons. We think it'd make a great second screen and also comes in 43-inch sizes, so it's a solid option for smaller spaces. But there's more to be had. The TU8500 is Dolby Atmos enabled, and comes into its own when connected to a Dolby Atmos system. We hooked up an Atmos soundbar, which persuaded the Netflix app to stream Dolby Atmos across ARC to the soundbar no problem.

Samsung TU8500 review (UE50TU8500): an excellent cheap - T3 Samsung TU8500 review (UE50TU8500): an excellent cheap -T3

There's a TU8500 model that sits between it and the company's QLEDs, and perhaps that will be even better, but it's rather hard to imagine it - or any other TV for that matter - proving to be a bigger bargain this year than the excellent, affordable TU8000. We did not undertake full 3D Colour calibration with the Samsung UE55D8000. As with the 2010 models, there is only one “Custom” Colour Space memory per input, meaning that if we wanted to get perfect colour performance (relative to the HDTV Rec.709 specification) out of the D8000 in its 3D mode, then we would have to sacrifice accuracy in 2D. Instead, we adjusted the remaining controls that ARE saved independently for 2D and 3D ([Colour Space] and [Colour]) as a next-best alternative:

HDMI cables

That said, the 55D8000 hasn’t got rid of crosstalk completely. There are still minor traces of it to be seen here and there – more, still, than we saw on Panasonic’s 2010 plasmas, in fact. But let’s be quite clear, here: the 55D8000 is definitely a true advance for the 3D cause, and sets the bar high for the rest of 2011’s TVs.

Samsung UE55TU8000 Review (UE55TU8000KXXU) - Personal Reviews Samsung UE55TU8000 Review (UE55TU8000KXXU) - Personal Reviews

With HD content in SDR, the TU8500’s image has a bright overall picture level, with a satisfying level of pop. It’s a great match for regular Blu-ray. Step it up with native 4K, and the screen snaps into clearer focus. Moving on to the 55D8000’s 3D features, the most notable addition is auto-detection of incoming side-by-side 3D formats of the sort delivered by Sky’s 3D channel, saving you the bother of manually activating side-by-side mode in the TV’s menus. You can also adjust the image’s depth and focus via a 3D ‘optimisation’ slider. Search Bar: This powerful feature lets users search for a specific title among all the content available to the Smart TV (e.g. YouTube videos, PVR hard disc drive storage, and connected DLNA devices), which can come in very handy if one is unsure about which icon/app to choose to enjoy a particular content. The only real issue worth pointing out is the Samsung UE55D8000?s inability to fully saturate Blue. This is not really obvious without intimate knowledge of the content being viewed, or without a perfect comparison display. All of the other colours were as visibly perfect as we could hope for in terms of both chromaticity and luminance, meaning that colour appeared realistic and not overblown. We’re happy to see that an improvement has been made on the 2010 models, which also had difficulty in producing a fully saturated Red. 3D Calibration 3D Mode Greyscale Recommended: Here users can conveniently access some of the more popular Smart Hub services – such as BBC iPlayer, LoveFilm and Skype – without needing to navigate deeper.

Picture Performance

Closer in on the action, there’s still plenty of intensity to the colours, if not quite the same subtlety as we saw at 4K. There are plenty of layers to the blue of Electro’s pulsing form, the yellow of the New York taxis is as we’d expect and the bright red and blue of Spidey’s outfit looks great against the night-time streets.