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  • Tour & Design

  • Performance Features

  • Connectivity & Media

  • Controls, Menu & Remote

  • Conclusion

  • Tour & Design
  • Performance Features
  • Connectivity & Media
  • Controls, Menu & Remote
  • Conclusion

Tour & Design

The front of the UN55B8000 is a statement in minimalism; apart from a series of barely distinguishable touch controls on the bottom left corner and a rather demure Samsung logo at the bottom, there is nothing on the matte black bezel to distract from the image on the screen. In fact, the controls in the bottom left are very easy to miss, so Samsung is no doubt assuming that this will be mostly controlled from the remote.

Caption

**Back**

The back of the UN55B8000 is a similarly minimalist statement as the front; only a handful of ports are on the right side of the back. The cable in the middle is a security cable that won't be present on the actual shipping units; it is there to stop people like us walking off with the TV from the CES show. The 4 screws are for the VESA mounting points, which allows the TV to be mounted on any standard wall mount. At the bottom, you can see the rotating stand.

The back of the UN55B8000

**Sides**

Because this TV is so thin, there isn't much room for any features on the sides. So, there aren't any; the sides are merely there to stop the front and back from bumping into each other.

The UN55B8000is extremely thin

 

**Stand/Mount**

The stand of the UN55B8000 is built around a simple pivot, where the TV rotates around a piece of transparent plastic. This adds to the stylish look; at first glance, it looks a bit like the display is hovering above the surface. For the wall mount solution, Samsung has a new wall mount that they claim reduces the gap between the wall and the TV to a paltry 0.6 inches, which will further enhance the stylish look of the TV. 

*The stand for the UN55B8000 is a simple, elegant affair made of transparent plastic

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*Samsung's new wall mount has a gap of just 0.6 inches between the wall and the TV
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**Aesthetics**

Overall, the Series 8 8000 is a very stylish display, with a clean, elegant design that is extremely appealing, in a subtle, understated way. 

Performance Features

Display Size & Technology

The Series 8 8000 is built around an LCD panel with full HD resolution, meaning that it can display every pixel of a 1080P signal in glorious detail. The flagship model (the UN55B8000) that we looked at is built around a 55-inch panel, but there is also a 46-inch model. But the real innovation in the UN55B8000 is behind the screen, where a series of LED lights replace the CCFL (Cold Cathode Florescent Lights) that are used on most televisions. There are two benefits to this; they use less electricity, and they don't contain Mercury, which has an annoying habit of leaking out and killing things when the TV is thrown out and recycled. So not only are you saving power, you are saving small, fluffy animals as well. 

The UN55B8000is built around a 55-inch LCD panel

Format & Resolution

As befits the king of the hill in Samsung's 2009 lineup, the UN55B8000supports every format and resolution that your home media center is capable of throwing at it: it will be able to handle 1080p, 1080i, 720p and standard definition video with barely a shrug. 

Brightness, Blacks & Contrast Ratio

because the UN55B8000 is still under development, Samsung has not revealed many details on the specifics of the more technical aspects of the UN55B8000. They did not release any details of the black level that the UN55B8000is likely to be able to achieve, beyond saying that the LED backlights allow it to achieve 'darker blacks that appear endlessly deep to the eye'. However, they did not define what endlessly deep on the eye means in terms of measurements, or what sort of contrast ratio the display will be able to achieve. Samsung executives declined to give us any specifics here, though; we'll have to wait to get one of the models in for review before we can get any more specific. 

Refresh Rate & Motion

One of the major enhancements for the UN55B8000is the addition of 240Hz motion processing, which means that the display takes the 60Hz video signal that your device outputs, and does some fancy processing to create intermediary frames that create smoother movement. We've seen plenty of displays that offer 120Hz processing, but the UN55B8000 doubles this to 240Hz. We haven't tested any 240Hz displays yet, but the demos that Samsung were running certainly looked impressive, with smooth motion that didn't have any detectable jitters or jumpiness.

Viewing Angle

Again, Samsung declined to give us a specific figure for the viewing angle that the UN55B8000 offers, but the pre-production model that we looked at seemed to have a decent viewing angle; even from a wide angle, the images on screen remained bright and had decent contrast. However, it is worth remembering that Samsung aren't going to roll out a dodgey unit for a show like CES: they will only show the pre-production unit that shows the model at its best.

Color

We weren't able to to do any testing of the UN55B8000 at the CES show, but the color on the screen looked very vivid and clean. One thing that Samsung did talk about was the Wide Color Enhancer Pro feature, which widens the color gamut to allow for a wider range of colors on screen. However, features like this only work if the display device actually creates the wider range of colors; they don't make any difference if you are watching a standard HDTV over the air signal, or a Standard DVD. Some Blu-ray players are offering a wider color gamut, though, so this feature might be attractive if you have a Blu-ray player that supports it. 

Connectivity & Media

Audio & Video Ports

There are a good selection of ports on the UN55B8000 on the bottom right corner of the back, with some vertically located and others horizontally from the top, the vertical ports are a headphone socket, a USB port, audio input, optical digital audio input and 4 HDMI ports (with one plug in the bottom socket on our photo. The horizontal ports are (from the left) an Ethernet port for connecting the display to the Internet, an antenna port, analog video inputs, component video inputs and a VGA port for connecting a computer to the display. One omission here is a DVI port for connecting a computer, but you can buy an adapter for converting a DVI port into a HDMI one for a couple of dollars, so that's not a big problem.

The ports on the UN55B8000are located behind the bottom left corner of the screen

Media & Other Connectivity

Like most of the manufacturers this year, Samsung is making a big deal of the ability to get content on the TV from the Internet; a feature they refer to as Internet@TV. They are doing this by working with Yahoo, allowing the user to download and run small programs called Widgets that can do things like show stock prices, weather, Fickr photos and RSS feeds. We'll reserve judgment on these features until we can try them out and see how useful they really are. For other forms of media, the UN55B8000has two USB ports that allow the user to connect digital camera, hard drives and other devices and to display their contents on the screen. There is no mention, however, of some of the streaming media features that we are seeing on other displays, such as LG's announcement of the ability to display Netflix content on their latest models. The UN55B8000can display YouTube videos through a Widget, though, so you can watch videos of skateboarding bulldogs to your heart's content instead of movies.

Placement

The ports are somewhat awkwardly located if you frequently swap devices around; to get access, you will have to rotate the TV around, or climb behind it because the ports are recessed in the back. Whetehr this will be an issue depends on if you regualrly swap out devices. If you don't you will probably like the recessed appraoch, as it keeps the cables out of the way. If you do, it will be a pain. Other manufacturers get aroudn this by piutting some portys on the bottom or side of teh display, but the thin design of the UN55B8000 precludes this.

Audio

We were not able to test the speakers built into the LNXX BX8000, but they are apparently located in teh bottom of the display and proejct the sound down and out into the room. Samsung has added a subwoofer, but we'll have to wait to get a review unit in before we can judge if this gives us the teeth-shattering bass that we like.

Controls, Menu & Remote

Remote

The remote that will ship with the UN55B8000 was not available for us to review at the show. 

Controls

Samsung seems to have decided that the controls on the screen are something of an afterthought; they put 6 touch controls on the bottom right corner of the front of the screen, but they are barely visible. They are obviously assuming that most people are going to use the remote control for most of the time, and that's a fair assumption to make. 

The small touch controls are located on the bottom right corner of the screen*

Menu

We were unable to access the on-screen menus of the UN55B8000, so we can't comment on this at present. However, we have found the menu systems of previous Samsung models that we looked at (such as the LN46A750) to be simple and straightforward to use. Hopefully, Samsung will continue this trend with the LNXX BX8000. 

 

Conclusion

From our limited hands-on testing of the UN55B8000 at the CES show in Las Vegas, we were impressed with the display; so far, it looks to be a wrth flagship model for Samsung with a number of innovative features and an beautiful, simple , clean design. However, the big question is price; how much will the premium be for this innovation? That remains to be seen, as Samsung has not released price information yet. They did say that the UN55B8000 is scheduled for release in the first half of this year, though, so we will look forward to reviewing one then.

Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

@@rbaguley

Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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