My Dream TV at last!!!, - samsung ln52a650 review

By S. Song (Rochester Hills, MI USA)

First I would like to mention the delivery service with CEVA was excellent! I ordered the TV through Amazon on 4/23/2008 (Wed) and received an email for delivey scheduling which was received on 04/25/2008 (Fri) 8am. If I had checked my email that morning I might have been able to schedule the delivery for that day and enjoyed the TV during the weekend. But I found the email late in the afternoon and scheduled a delivery for 04/28/2008 (Mon). Delivery was prompt and on time and even gave me a 1 hour notice phone call before they came by. They were curtious and very professional.

I have been waiting and waiting to buy a HD LCD TV and I am so glad I waited to buy the LN52A650. Like every one says this is an amazing TV! I cannot stress enough how great the picture looks. It is just breath taking when I watch HD broadcast (especially sports) and up convet DVD movies through PS3(did not have chance to watch Blu-ray yet). The default setting of the picture was a bit too bright for me so I played with the setting a bit and got the picture that I wanted. One thing that I notice is improvement in AMP feature when comparing to LNT5271FN. I have not seen any TBE in this one but I do remember seeing some TBE in LNT5271FN when I was in BB to compare the two. I've read that Samsung released a new firmware for LNT5271FN that minimize TBE but I was not able to compare.

I think Samsung's philosophy of thinking that a TV set is also a furniture when turned off really paid off. I just love the contemporary look of the Touch of Color design on the 650. Just having this TV set displayed in the living room makes the room so cool!!! The red is almost not noticable when the room is dark. But when the room is bright or if you have sun light coming through then the red becomes more noticable which i think is just fabulous.

I think quite a lot of people are comparing and deciding whether if they should buy LNT5271FN or LN52A650 just like i did. As most of you know both TVs do have issues. 5271 has the dead pixel issue and the 650 has the auto reset (turn on/off) issue. If you think about these issues, it made sense to me that the 650 issue is a minor one compared to the 5271. I have not seen any auto resets happening to mine yet. However, even if I do see one I can just make frimware update and the issue is solved. The dead pixel issue on the 5271 was more serious because you needed to exchange the LCD panel which is major change and very time consuming. Also, just by comparing the specs it made sense to buy the 650 because of the improvement in the picture quality (Dynamic contrast ratio, increased color range...etc) compared to 5271. The question is do I really notice the difference in this when I watch TV??? probably not since the human eye can only detect a limited quantity of colors. But, I still recommend the 650 because I do see an improvement in AMP which did bother me on 5271. Yes, the 650 does cost a bit more than the 5271 when I compare the price in Amazon (roughly $200~$300) but I think it is well worth the extra bucks.

I'm excited to watch my first Blu-ray movie tonight on my NEW DREAM TV!!! (Will post reviews or coments after watching Blu-ray)

Update:

I bought my first Blu-ray movie "300" and watched it last night. I have to say I am extremely satisfied with the picture quality, especially the movement with AMP turned on.

When I watched "Pirates: Dead Man's Chest" on 5271 in BB, I noticed a lot of TBE when AMP was set on High. On 5271 the TBE did reduce when AMP was turned off or on Low setting, but you lose the crisp edge cutting 120Hz picture effect (some call it "Soap Opera" effect) which is a main reason why you buy 120Hz LCD TVs. Of course since I did not watch the same movie with mine it's hard to say if TBE was gone in 650. However, in battle scenes in "300" when movment is pretty fast, I was not able to see any TBE issues even with AMP on High.

This is totally my personal opinion but I think Samsung weakened??? the AMP setting on 650 comapred to 5271 to get rid of the TBE issues or at least that is how I feel after watching blue-ray movies. For example I felt that the AMP High setting on 650 is more equivalant to Medium setting in 5271 and so on which explains why I have not seen TBE yet. This does not mean that the picture looks bad in 650. For me, the AMP High setting on 5271 was too strong and took away the cinema feel when watching movies and gave a feeling that peolple were floating and gliding around when moving because it was TOO smooth. In 650 you still see the AMP effect but it tends to be a bit less stronger(but strong enough to give the 120Hz feel) which is actually what I prefer.