Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black) for Too low to display : Electronics & Computers Store

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Little background:
currently have two Plasmas in the household. I am a big fan of their picture quality, black levels, motion handling, and input lag (PS3 games).

Began around three months ago searching for a larger TV, as my 50" plasma just wasn't cutting it for me in terms of size b/c we sit 14' away from the screen. Unfortunately, my built-in entertainment center width was a major constraint. No plasma larger than 50" could fit (the 54" G25 Panasonic was 0.5" too wide!!). I began to look at LEDs as they were built with thinner bezels and could thus squeeze into my entertainment center and still have a diagonal of 55".

I was very concerned with a few items when i purchased this TV:

1. Picture Quality (potential) Problems

a) Flashlighting - read anywhere on Edge-lit LEDs and this is probably the #1 problem that comes up. Please note that with this TV i do NOT watch in complete darkness. Watching in complete darkness tends to exacerbate any flashlighting or clouding problems you may see in an edge-lit set. As for my set, I can definitely see some flashlighting from the corners on letterbox stuff or very dark scenes. I am looking for it though. If I had not read about flashlighting onine I probably would have never noticed. My wife thinks I am crazy. The flashlighting may go away once I get a chance to calibrate the set (I only tinkered with the settings a little) but I think either way I can live with it (and probably will forget about it in a few months)

b) Black Levels - the reason i bought the 6800 instead of the 6500. The 6800 has "Precision Dimming", Samsung's edge-lit workaround to true full array local dimming sets. Did I buy into marketing hype or was the extra money worth the precision dimming? I can't say for sure since I never owned the 6500, but I am happy (but NOT at all wowed) with the black levels of the 6800. I felt my old Plasma black levels were better. 4:3 content or letterbox content sometimes has "glowing" black bars instead of inky blacks. For the most part the black levels are sufficient, but I did see one case that made me cringe: flipped over to Larry King Live and the back of his set was cloudy and had really bad uniformity. This is definitely not the case on my plasmas. Could be a calibration issue though.

The 6800 definitely has better colors and depth to it though. Certain shows look drop dead gorgeous on this TV that i never felt that way with my old TV, most likely due to the color reproduction and brighter display of this LED compared to plasma.

2. Input lag for gaming - I am a HEAVY online FPS gamer (PS3). That's all I do on my PS3. COD, Killzone, etc. you name the FPS and I am playing the online multiplayer, and playing it a LOT. The "twitchier" the better. I've never played games on an LCD/LED TV before and have always read that LCDs/LEDs can have terrible input lag compared to Plasmas. I was extremely worried about how my gaming would be on this LED tv. I think I lost countless hours of sleep over this one, with Black Ops and Killzone 3 on the near horizon ;). Well I am very pleased to say that with Game Mode ON, I do not notice any input lag difference from this LED from my Plasma. Modern Warfare 2 plays very snappy and fast like I am accustomed to. This was a great relief!!! With Game Mode OFF and AMP set to Clear, I could tell a little input lag but it was not anything that would get in the way of any non-FPS/Music games (i.e. any RPG players out there probably would be ok with AMP on). With Game Mode ON I did not notice any abnormal blurring or skipping of the picture...I felt everything about the game playing experience was on par with my old plasma.

3. Motion Handling - read online about the Samsung LEDs and you will find many people complaining about skipping/stuttering in the picture w/ this year's version of AMP. I wont get into all the details since if you are considering this TV you probably have already read some complaints online. Watched hours of football this weekend and all the plays and scrolling ticker I could not see any skipping or stuttering. I have AMP set to "Clear". For movies, I have AMP set to OFF and noticed a handful of times where it skipped a frame. If I had not been looking for it I probably would have not even noticed. Motion gets an A in my book and I don't see any discernable difference from my plasmas. Blu-ray playback on my PS3 @ 24hz looks good! (AMP turned off)

4. Off-Angle Viewing - i didnt think i would have an issue with this, but i surprisingly kind of do. Our kitchen and family room are kind of one huge room (open) so often when we are cooking/cleaning dishes we watch TV too. Granted, the viewing angle from the kitchen is pretty extreme (I'd put it at 20/30 degrees if 0 degrees was directly parallel to TV) but my old plasma (like all plasmas) did not lose any quality from the kitchen. This set washes out pretty badly. We obviously dont watch anything "important" while in the kitchen so i can live with this gripe.

Conclusion:
When you feed this set good material and are sitting directly in front (which for me and my wife would be 95% of the time) the picture is very good in my opinion.

Aside from being 55" (which a huge plus) and being more energy efficient, I am not sure this LED TV can top anything that Plasmas can offer (cheaper, better blacks, better uniformity, same or better PQ, etc). If my entertainment center magically widened by 2"-3" there is no doubt in my mind I would pack up this LED and return it immediately for a Panasonic 54" G25, 54" VT25, or 58" Samsung C7000 plasma. No doubt (and I would save a lot of money too!). But given my constraints and my want for a >50" TV, I am happy with the purchase. As more and more time passes by I am growing more and more fond of the set. It is really good looking and the picture quality most of the time is great. I hope the build quality is good and this set lasts me a while, but just in case I will get an extended warranty as well.

Delivery Notes:
Frequent shopper here on Amazon but I've never bought anything so large or expensive online before. When I got the notice that the TV shipped using CEVA I was kind of worried, since there seems to be a lot of posts online about frustration with CEVA. First tip I kept seeing over and over is to call them right away to schedule a delivery. Very true. I ordered on a Sunday, got shipping confirmation from Amazon on Monday. Monday night CEVA's tracking system was up with the tracking number provided by Amazon. I called them first thing Tuesday morning and set up delivery for Wednesday. Very helpful and nice staff over there at CEVA. Delivery window was 9AM-1PM, however they came well after 1PM. Luckily my wife was home all day, but if I had taken time off to wait for them I would have been pretty upset that they didn't come during the window. No harm done though. My wife said the delivery men were extremely nice. I did not want them to set it up even though they offered to my wife. TV box was in pristine condition. CEVA gets an A from me.

Note to TV shoppers: AVS forums are a great place to look for helpful tips. Wonderful community over there. However...I will advise that you do not spend TOO much time there, as it may make you second-guess any decision you end up making. Every TV has its ups and downs...you just have to pick your poison. In my opinion, plasmas have less "poison" to pick, but that's just me. Order from Amazon and you'll have a nice return window in case you dont like something. Remember, just because someone on the internet likes/dislikes something about a TV says nothing about that same thing will affect you.

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"Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)" Feature

Mega Dynamic Contrast
4 HDMI (ver 1.3), HDMI-CEC
Component & PC input, BD Wise
2 ConnectShare Movie

"Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)" Overview

Samsung LED HDTVs combine breakthrough picture quality and advanced connectivity options that will keep you entertained 24/7. This UN55C6800 LED HDTV also makes it easy to be green, and will save you some green, by being ENERGY STAR compliant.

Customer Reviews

Best of the non 3D LCD/LED TVs! - Michael J. Wilhelm -
I have owned this TV for about one week now and I am very well pleased! Just like many other reviewers I did lots of research and read many reviews on many brands of LCD/LED TVs. I narrowed my research to rule out both 3D and Plasma displays. There is not enough 3D content to warrant the purchase of the equipment and I wear glasses so I don't like wearing glasses over glasses. In addition I have read that LCD/LED TVs are projected to have a longer lifespan than Plasma displays.

Of course not everything is so cut and dry. Every display technology has it's advantages and disadvantages. Plasma displays have an excellent reputation and you would not go wrong if you did your research and chose the best Plasma that you could afford.

I chose the Samsung 55" UN55C6800 because it seemed to be the best of the best non 3D LCD/LED TVs with local dimming. Many of the top of the line 3D TVs have local dimming but not so much with non 3D TVs. This one does.

The picture quality is outstanding! Absolutely jaw dropping!! This TV is second to none! I have it connected to Verizon Fios, a Roku HD box for streaming Netflix, a Sony STR-DA2400ES A/V receiver and an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-Ray player. Everything is connected via HDMI cables.

Samsung support has been excellent! I had to call them for a few of the settings. I was to talking to tech support within 3 minutes after I made the call.

Regarding the settings: I immediately changed two of the settings:
1. Auto Motion Plus - I turned to OFF
2. ECO Sensor - I turned to OFF

I had read so many negative reviews regarding "Auto Motion Plus" that it was the first change that I made. The reviews stated that with it on the display image looked cheezey, amateurish, and video like when there was motion. This was the consensus of many of the major reviewers on websites like Home Theater magazine, ZDNet, etc.

With "ECO Sensor" switched to "ON" the display brightness changes depending on the surrounding light intensity. In other words when you dim the lights or turn out the lights in the room where your TV is located, the display image dims as well. This is a power saving feature. This feature may indeed decrease the power and save money on the electric bill but IMHO it also decreases the picture quality and too no small degree.

All things considered I rate this TV 5 stars!

Nice Looking TV...Has some issues... - 4Pla-in -
It looks great and for the most part has worked ok. The picture settings are tough to get right so that blacks are optimized. It has also powered off several times. Still looking for optimum settings but haven't had luck. The screen sometimes doesn't adjust and volume also goes up and down. Haven't had time to call Samsung to review these issues.

Beautiful LED Tv - Alexander Jimenez -
This is an amazing Tv. After months of research on which LED 55" I brought it down to a few choices that I was considering. It was between the Samsung Un55C7000/Un55C8000/un55c6800 & Sony HX800. I decided against the 7000 Samsung due to a lot of negative reviews highlighting the "clouding" and light peaking out of the corners of the tv. Both the 6800 and 8000 Samsungs took care of this by Precision Dimming which the 7000 did not have. Both of them also offered a higher contrast ratio to give you deeper blacks. So the options were whether I wanted a 3D tv (Samsung un558000 or Sony hx800)or a similar quality non 3D LED. Ultimately, I decided against 3D as there are less than a handful of 3D DVDs available now and the additional equipment needed was very pricey. Better to wait some time until more options are available and price goes down. This Samsung 6800 has been beautiful to watch, I mounted it on the wall using the Samsung Slim wall mount (9 Amazon vs. 0 at the B store). It looks amazing, just like a painting hanging on the wall...I would definitely recommend it to anyone if you are buying this tv with it's 1 inch thick frame you should keep highlighting it. The wall mount only adds an extra .6 inches to it.
I was concerned that Samsungs had a glossy screen as I had a very bright room and the Sony's were Matte so less reflective. This has been a non issue as once the tv is on there are no issues with reflecting lights, and the picture is dynamic with beautiful colors. Blu Ray looks unbelievable on this tv. The sound from the speakers are pretty impressive too. To give you an idea, I usually listen to it on a 16-20 volume level and I am in a hall type room with high ceilings of 20 feet. The max is 100 so it is more than adequate. If you are looking at your buying options, the B store does not sell this model, instead they offer the 6900 series which is similar except an exclusive of theirs (extra apps) but really not worth the extra $ they charge, plus taxes and delivery. Amazon had the best deal.

So all in all, I have been very happy with this Tv, it is an amazing high end LED with vivid colors and beatiful appeal. Hope this helps for those evaluating similar options.

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Saturday 23 October 2010