Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) LED television

This thin, stylish LED television has great picture quality and good contrast

Good Gear Guide

The Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) 46in LED television is an impressive model in almost all respects. Great picture quality, its design and its integrated features combine to make a TV we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.

Pros

  • Crisp and detailed panel, deep blacks, great design, accurate colours

Cons

  • Some backlight bleeding visible in dark scenes, no integrated DLNA wireless

Bottom Line

Apart from a few small niggles, the Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) LED television is a very impressive unit. Pictures are consistently impressive no matter what content is used, while the stylish design and great feature set make this television one of the best complete packages we’ve seen.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 4,699.00 (AUD)

The long-running battle between LCD and plasma has taken another step with the introduction of LED televisions, such as the Sony KDL40ZX1, which tackle LCD TVs' colour and contrast shortcomings. The Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) is one of the newest LED-backlit LCD televisions, and it offers exceptional picture quality.

The Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) sports a chassis that is 29.9mm thick and has a sheer glass front. The design is brilliant, with a bright red accent in the bezel that draws the eye. Even the base is well designed, with clear moulded plastic and a thin neck. Thought has gone into the remote controls as well, with a secondary simple remote shaped like a pebble with a red inlay.

We got straight to it and tested the LED-backlit Series 7 television’s picture quality with a Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player and a Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite at the screen’s native 1080p resolution. Samsung quotes a 3,000,000:1 contrast ratio — count it, that’s 3 million — which sits significantly ahead of the competition.

Meaningless as such large numbers may be, the image quality of the Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) is almost unparalleled. Our Transformers test movie had great ‘pop’ and vibrancy to it, with good definition of detail in high-contrast scenes. The television’s black level performance was also great: after a small amount of calibration we were only able to notice a small amount of the backlight bleed that plagues super-thin edge-lit LED models.

Sharpness levels were too high by default in our opinion, but there’s plenty of scope to smooth the picture to your liking. The adjustable backlight means that the Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) is equally capable when displaying video in a sunlit room or a dark home cinema.

Colour reproduction is an area where the Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) really shines. We could not notice any bias in the colours displayed by this television, with every scene we watched very natural and accurate.

This panel upscales 720p and 480p images smoothly. Our The Matrix test DVD showed no artefacts or distortion during the difficult-to-render lobby scene; the Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) gets top marks in this area. Motion is also well handled, with a 100Hz mode that capably removes jittering without making images unnaturally smooth.

The TV's integrated features are also among the best, with Samsung’s USB media playback — dubbed Media@2.0 — working smoothly with pictures, audio and downloaded video content. An Ethernet port allows the Internet@TV experience, with widgets for weather, news and RSS feeds an additional bonus for enthusiastic couch potatoes. DLNA wireless streaming is available, but is not integrated into the television by default — an additional adapter from Samsung is necessary.

The Samsung Series 7 (UA46B7100) is a great television. Good picture quality, a great design and plenty of features make this LED television an easy choice; its only flaws are minor ones.

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