[Updated on 12/29/2014 - see bottom of this review for recent updates]
I bought this from HHGREGG. It replaces a 2013 Vizio 1080p set that was professionally calibrated. Let me first state that I had the Vizio professionally calibrated late last year and have received praise from visitors on the clarity and black level on the Vizio.
Last Friday, I came home after work and picked up the mail. In there was a flyer from hhgregg. I typically pause near the trash can to junk all these kinds of flyers ... but this one caught my attention - a 55-inch Samsung 4K for $899. Apparently, they were celebrating Black Friday one week early.
As my wife will vouch ... we really had no need for a new TV. The 55-inch Vizio was absolutely fabulous. Our sources were Over-the-Air network channels, Apple TV, Roku 3, PS3, Panasonic Blu-Ray. You will notice that I don't subscribe to cable. Instead I have connected an antenna to my Tivo Premiere and get superior quality network recordings than through cable. Cable tends to drop the bitrate causing compression artifacts that I tend to notice.
So why go looking for a 4K? Well, here is my reason - I am a nature photographer. Last year I bought the 24MP Sony DSLT camera and been thrilled with the pictures. I often show off my pictures to friends through the 1080p Vizio. It looks good but not great. You tend to lose a lot of detail when you drop the resolution from 24MP to 2MP (=1920x1080). So I figured a 4K set with its 3840x2160 resolution (8MP) would show more detail. Well thats my excuse for upgrading from a TV that is less than a year old.
In any case, after seeing the flyer ... I jumped back in the car and headed to HHGREGG. They were gracious enough to let me insert my USB drive (containing some of my pictures downconverted to 3840x2160) into any TV I wanted to try out. I compared the details between a 55-inch 2014 model Samsung 1080p set and this 4K set (the 6840). I was sold within the first 500 milliseconds. I was happy when I got home ... my wife was not since she had no idea where I had been.
So here were are on day 6 (today) and I am completely blown away by the upscaling quality of this TV. Every HD show on CBS, ABS, NBC, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime looking absolutely stunning. I never realized that upscaling would make things look so good. I typically don't watch sports - but last weekend I was hooked to an NFL game ... the jerseys and the helmets looked like liquid metal. The shocking thing is I was watching the 55-set from a distance of 9 feet or so. Even from 14-15 feet the 1080p source had a silky smooth feel when upscaled to 4K. Also, my photos never looked so gorgeous. I could walk up to the 10 inches from the screen and still see all the details without the distracting lines. I also played a bunch of 4K material that I downloaded from the internet and it took the detail to yet another extreme level. Some of those GOPRO videos are addictive to watch. But you should not buy this set to watch only 4K. There is not much of 4K out there right now .. you should get it for the superb ability of this set to upscale regular 1080p to gorgeous-looking 4K.
The version of the panel I received is KS02. Its a A-MVA panel and has really good black and contrast detail. Apparently, its the same panel thats used in the newer Sony 4K sets. But it takes several hours of burn-in for the set to settle down to displaying the best blacks. In my case it took 3 days for the set to improve in contrast and black details.
The only CON in my book - the slideshow needs to have an option to manually set the interval. I wish it had an interval of several minutes.
Here is a very brief video that demonstrates the lack of blooming / flashlight on this set (dark room) -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzHGpWhuqEA
Here are my settings. These are for a dark room. For a brighter room ... the backlight needs to be bumped up.
Here is my settings:
Mode Movie
Backlight 4 (dark room)
Contrast 95
Brightness 46
Sharpness 0
Color 50
Tint 50/50
Picture Size: Fit
Dynamic contrast off
Black tone off
Flesh tone 0
RGB only off
Color space Auto
Gamma 0
Motion lighting off
White Balance: Default (don't have any devices to measure)
Color Tone Warm1 (Warm 2 has some color quirks for me)
Digital clean view off
MPEG noise filter off
HDMI black level low
HDMI UDH Color OFF
If anyone has this set - please reply with the Version number of the panel. Its right below the serial number that's located in the rear (top right side).
[UPDATE 12/2/2014]
I have this set now for about ten days and have it playing something or the other playing on it every day for about 2 hours. I have noticed the screen contrast getting better and better. The black level is also a notch better. The viewing angles have improved as well. Not sure if this is due to burn-in but I definitely remember the first day when I turned it on the backlight would cast a haze when viewing the set from extreme angles. That is now hardly noticeable.
Here is a video that shows the viewing angle range. Shot with an iPhone (so ignore picture quality).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKtAhFNgUrA
A lot of folks have asked if this TV is 120Hz. One of the ways to verify is to feed a 24p source (e.g. Bluray playback) and look for judder due to 3:2 pulldown. A true 120Hz capable TV would not have any judder when playing back a 24p source. The following video shows 24p playback on this TV. Tru-Motion is OFF and so are all the other gimmicky settings. Game mode is off as well. The video was shot using an iPhone and no enhancement was done to the video. Hope this helps answer the burning 120Hz question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0v-jYVxzOM
[UPDATE 12/7/2014]
The black levels have improved over time. I still see slight cloudiness in one corner during pitch dark scenes. Not noticeable at all otherwise. As I have already indicated, upscaled 1080i/p looks incredible. 720p not so much. Sports on NBC and CBS (both 1080i) look awesome but ABC or ESPN (720p) don't look as good. I wonder what the 720p broadcasters plan to do as folks migrate to 4K. Please note - I watch network content via Over-The-Air Antenna since bitrates are significantly higher than watching the same over cable or satellite.
I also decided to try out Netflix 4K. Apart from the fact that 4K content is very limited, their upscaled movies look no better than 1080p. For instance, I compared the streaming experience with the Will Smith movie 'Hitch'. Netflix has this in 4K. Amazon Prime has this in 1080p. I could not see much difference. This could also be a credit to the excellent upscalar on this set. Moreover, since Comcast has a monthly cap of 300GB, I will opt to stream in 1080 and upscale locally. So for now, I have decided to remove the 4K option from Netflix.
Talking about upscalar - while several here seem to agree that this set does an excellent job of upscaling 1080 signal to 4K - there is a growing camp of deniers who believe its impossible for upscaling to make a difference. The AVS forum debate can be found here:
www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/1774249-am-i-crazy-get-4k-8.html
Finally, I tried the Pandora app for several hours one evening and was delighted to find no commercials between songs even though I have a free account.
I have bought a 5 year warranty from Costco for $59.00. That's a no-brainer.
[UPDATE 12/14/2014]
As you may have noticed I could not do the 10 pt WB calibration when I initially set this up ... since I did not own any hardware and getting a calibration guy to come would eat into my investment.
Well, last week I decided to get the Spyder S4TV100 calibrator from Amazon. After everyone went to bed last night, I decided to try it out. The software that comes with it is awfully basic and does not allow you do the 10 pt white balance I needed. So I scrounged the web and found a tool called HFCR. You can find more about it here:
Link 1
[url]http://www.avsforum.com/forum/139-display-calibration/1264236-my-workflow-samsung-lcd-dtp94-hcfr.html[/url]
and the calibration video files in MP4
Link 2
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FgjTtNzSy0dTZwZ3p1eGVnTG8/edit?usp=sharing[/url]
The HFCR program contains the spyder 4 replacement driver to make it work with HFCR (this will remove the driver that the Spyder software installs). Its located under
c:\program files\HCFR Calibration\Tools (Just do a 'Update Driver' under windows)
HFCR allows you view the RGB values read by the calibrator in continuous mode. What this means is that you can go through all 10 of the grayscale videos (see Link 1 for instructions). I tweaked the RGB values on my Samsung and quite thrilled with the result. I did not bother to use the calibrator for other stuff.
Also, my focus was to do the white balance directly on the Samsung (rather than induce variation when going through HDMI). So I installed the MP4 files (link 2) onto a USB and played the MP4 files for the various grayscales and measured the white balance. Since my Samsung has a quad processor, its very fast when accessing Netflix /4K, Amazon /4K, Hulu Plus etc. So this is the input (i.e. direct) I use the most and it made sense to white balance for that mode.
Just for kicks, I uploaded the MP4 files to my private Youtube account so I could play the files from various inputs - native Youtube app, via Apple TV, via Roku, via Tivo Premiere. I confirmed that the white balance I did in the native input still held true (more or less) for all HDMI inputs as well. So overall very happy.
Total capital investment - $124.00
Very happy.
[UPDATE 12/20/2014]
Took a picture during a NCAA Basketball game to show black level
http://s16.postimg.org/cmjw9x1tv/Samsung
[UPDATE 12/29/2014]
Having stared (pixel-peeped?) at my 4K set for about a month now using various sources ... here is my rating of content experience (ranked best to worst) -
- Original 4K content (high bitrate videos played from USB drive)
- Original 4K content streamed from Youtube / Vimeo / Amazon Prime / Netflix etc.)
- Blu-Ray mastered in 4K/8K (i.e. 1080p blurays that are encoded at much higher bitrate)
- Regular Blu-Rays
- Over The Air high bitrate 1080i broadcast
- Upscaled 4K content streamed from Netflix / Amazon Prime etc.
- Regular 1080p content streamed from Netflix / Amazon Prime etc.
- Over The Air high bitrate 720p broadcast
- Everything else
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