Samsung has got UK’s 3D ball rolling in a very solid fashion with its UE40C7000. For those keeping track of the 3D TV arena, it would obvious that the TV market is not really brimming at the moment. But looks like Samsung is undisturbed by this fact, which is evident from their wide range of 3D HDTV models on their shelves, even as they sit at the high-end of their product catalogue. We just hope that its more glamorous and larger sibling, the UE46C8000 3D TV would launch the brand into a similar type of stratosphere taken by Panasonic’s 3D debutant, the Panasonic TX-P50VT20. The UE46C8000, which is a part of the C8000 series, is just a rung below the priciest C9000 TVs. Make no mistake, it has an absolutely stunning design. In the following review, let us find out if its sleek display can look amazing even when it is switched on as well as off.
Design:
Slim Beauty:
As we have just mentioned, the Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV is a beauty. Its screen is enclosed in a thin silver brushed aluminium finished border. This border is in turn surrounded by an even thinner translucent acrylic border, which at the bottom sports the touch sensitive zones. The entire display itself is unfathomably thin, measuring just 2cm at its deepest point. This incredible sleekness has been achieved by locating the light sources, that is, the LEDs around the edges of the panel and also by scattering this luminance across the whole screen with light guide plates. Silver TVs have not really been in fashion since around 2005, and we will bet that there are enough consumers in the current market who will be more than happy to see the style making a come-back. Having said that, after 5 long years of seeing just black, we did find the bezel to be slightly distracting at first. To prevent the set from falling over, it is supplied with quite a large four-legged silver stand.
Remote Make-over:
Even the remote control seems to have gone through a make-over to match the TV design. Similar to the TV itself, it has been styled in brushed titanium with a glossy silver trim. All of the buttons have been hidden below the face, hence, even though they provide a little bit of feedback when they are pressed, operating takes a little bit of getting used to, as you can no longer run your fingers over the surface of the remote to find your way around. At least, it is not to the same degree as you were able to do before. The remote control does include a few raised lines and also a tactile dot for this purpose. We do appreciate the fact that, like some of Samsung’s other remotes, the UE46C8000’s control features backlighting which can be enabled by pressing a dedicated button at the top-right.
3D Glasses:
The Samsung UE46C8000 LED 3D TV supplies a pair of their active shutter glasses (SSG-2100SB), which arrives in a nifty triangle shaped box. In contrast to Panasonic’s idea of packing their 3D glasses in a sturdy-looking plastic case, guess Samsung decided to take a more trendy route and have packed the glasses in a soft pouch. These 3D glasses seem to be more comfortable to be put on than Panasonic’s glasses, which put pressure on top of the nose. Samsung’s active shutter glasses transfer most of the weight to around the ears, and are hence more comfortable, especially over long periods of time.
Disappointingly, unlike the Panasonic VT20, Samsung do not ship the 3D glasses together with the display, whilst Panasonic has given away 2 pairs with their 3D set. Now, this is pretty stingy, given that the UE46C8000 is usually selling for at least as much as Panasonic’s display. However, it is not all bad news with the glasses, as Samsung is doing a deal though where you would get two pairs is SSG-2100AB 3D glasses and a Monsters Vs Aliens 3D Blu-Ray disc free if you purchase the Samsung UE46C8000 along with a Samsung BD-C6900 3D Blu-ray player.
Slots and Connectivity:
Now, let us move on to connectivity. With the HDMI cables having the provision to be plugged directly into one of the telly’s four inputs, the remaining connectors like the SCART cables have to be plugged to the breakout adaptor cables as this LED LCD TV is extremely slick, which can then be plugged into the telly. This is also the case when it comes to the RF aerial input. Though this is not very inconvenient, it is just that it is a little unsightly; but of course, you are never going to look at the back of the TV or the sides either. Much to our expectations, all four HDMIs are 3D-compatible v1.4 standards, but then both the Ethernet and USB ports warrant additional attention owing to their multipurpose natures. The USBs come in handy with recording premium video, which includes HD from the digital tuners of the telly to a variety of USB HDD, as well as more predictably playing back a wide variety of video, music and photo multimedia files, and making the TV Wi-Fi via an optional dongle.
With the supplied breakout cables, the UE46C8000 46-inch 3D Television effectively consists of 2 SCART connections, a composite video and stereo audio input, a component video input, an Ethernet jack, a PC “VGA” input and an Optical audio output. Since the physical inputs are not located on the TV itself, we wonder if Samsung would be able to let users customise the connectivity options of their ultra-thin TVs in the future. For example, providing an alternative for swapping the SCART connectors out making way for some additional set of Component video connections will be appreciable, particularly with gamers.
User-interface and Set-up:
This Samsung C8000 LED 3D TV utilizes their very own user interface that looks and feels good. Details get stored in the per-input format akin to the LE40C650 LCD TV. As far as the display settings are concerned, we would have appreciated if Samsung had incorporated a “Copy all” function such that Colour settings and Greyscale input can be copied to all inputs and some minor adjustments made here and there as against writing down all our settings and re-entering them manually.
Samsung has also gone quite big with its picture adjustment options on the UE46C8000. Akin to their line-up of other high-end Samsung displays, the C8000 also features the Greyscale controls, a basic Gamma Control and a full-fledged 3D Colour Management System. In other words, almost everything we need to fine-tune the display and get the best possible picture from it. The most impressive highlight is with the fine-tuning point of view; having noise reduction routines, offset and gain adjustments for red, green and blue colour elements, a 10 point white balance adjustment, and even has an option for activating a local dimming too that is capable of activating separately different sections of the edge LED lighting. Well, we don’t really fancy this option, as it occasionally produces some evident squares of backlight irregularity. Then again, we would suggest that you give this option a try to see if you encounter the same squaring problem that we faced. The most disappointing stuff in the set-up of the UE46C8000 include its colour management tools that do not go a touch further and Samsung also has not followed the lead of its Korean rival LG in looking for endorsement from the Imaging Science Foundation.
Additionally, there are also a couple of other controls tucked away far inside the menus; however, a few of which we haven’t stumbled across before. The first of these is LED Motion Plus, which has three different settings, as well as a fourth “Off” switch. This control provides with options for black frame insertion and backlight scanning, which is supposed to enhance the alleged motion clarity by offsetting the conventional sample-and-hold results of LCD panels. There is also the Motion Plus menu. This is Samsung’s 200hz system, and it is our favourite out of all manufacturer’s attempts to improve LCD motion clarity. This takes care of setting the De-judder and De-blur controls in parallel thereby enhancing motion clarity without giving films the dreaded “soap-opera effect”. Finally, Smart LED combines a variety of processing features in an effort to improve contrast. The controls for the 3D mode are housed in the main Picture menu, and are easy enough to get to.
Features:
The looks of the C8000 is backed up furthermore with an awesome set of specs and features outside of the 3D headliner. With the UE46C8000?s compatibility to almost all new 3D formats being its prevailing feature, it also packs an alleged 3D HyperReal Engine that claims to deliver enhanced performance benefits over its rivals.
LED LCD:
The fact that the Samsung UE46C8000 sports a 1920 x 1080p LCD panel does not come in as a surprise. This panel is illuminated by the LEDs that are placed above and below the screen. As you can see, this type of placement is quite different from the usual set up of placing the light source behind the panel. This compliments the extremely thin chassis design that Samsung has been trying very hard to push lately. Of course, the UE46C8000 is 3D capable LCD based TV. As you can imagine, Samsung had to work quite hard with the C8000 in order to get its LED LCD technology up to handle some extremely fast frame rates that are associated with its HD 3D sources. To begin with, it sports a 200Hz display; thanks to the scanning backlight Samsung could have easily announced it as a 400Hz model, had it felt comfortable in following the same optimistic labelling system taken up by two of its major rival brands.
Crystal Address Technology:
Samsung also had to use its brains to develop a faster crystal address technology, which helps the screen to respond fast enough to keep up with the active shutter 3D system. It has also introduced blank frame technology to its 3D transmission system to try and make the display and glasses sync as effectively as possible.
Samsung’s Internet@TV:
The Ethernet port can be plugged in to a PC that is DLNA-enabled, access interactive services like future Freeview HD together with hooking up online with Internet@TV feature of Samsung. Internet@TV consists of YouTube, Twitter, rovi TV listings, Picasa the online photo album, Skype; provided an external camera is included in addition to a whole host of interesting and ultimate third party ‘Widget’ apps, remarkably from AccuWeather, the History Channel, and Getty Images.
There are even a few games on there, though anyone who has spent any time on an Xbox or PS3 will find these games laughably unfulfilling. Again, the online efforts of Samsung kind of looks to be lagging behind when compared to Philips and Sony for the moment, but then there is always the option of a constant update and Samsung is not the kind that would prefer being last in the line. So we guess a plethora of additional services can be expected in the coming months. Also, it has to be added that this C8000 packs the AllShare software that comes in handy if your are looking at getting your telly hooked up with your mobile or for that matter any portable devices that provides multimedia options.
Performance:
Colour:
As far as the performance is concerned, it is mostly terrific as with its 55” sibling. For instance, the colours radiate with startling intensity and strikes cross-screen consistency, to an extent that you might feel that it should not be really possible with an edge-LED technology. In addition to this, the consistency of lighting has been retained surprisingly well during the very dark scenes, with very faintest signs of the sort of pools of inconsistent brightness that stands out so much on 2009’s 55” Samsung LED models. You will be able to make the patches appear if you have chosen to leave the brightness or backlight settings too high. However, keep in mind that this also damages the contrast and general naturalism of the picture. Hence, just hope that you will not be tempted to do so.
Standard Definition:
While colours look intense on top of being credible, these are accompanied with believable tones of subtlety blending with small tonal differences. The picture is quite bright too, yet unusually the UE46C8000’s aggressive approach to pictures does not lead to the exaggeration of video noise. In fact, we would even say that its standard definition performance is probably the best we had ever seen. The TV is able to achieve this because, its up-scaling process adds heaps of detail making the images look sharp and at the same time being shrewd enough in detecting the source noise and trying to eliminate it.
High Definition:
It does not come in as a surprise that the Samsung UE46C8000 3D LCD TV is best with its HD performance. The HD images look blistering sharp, which is a fact that really rams home too, just how accomplished the motion handling circuitry is. Practically, you will not find any judder at all, if you make use of the motion processing carefully and LCD’s common motion blur issue is also more or less totally eradicated. These are factors that have a significant impact on the 3D playback too, helping it look crisp and fluid without giving a processed or unnatural feel.
3D:
The striking bright and colourful picture performance of the Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV does not stop with the standard definition and high definition pictures, it is great at 3D too. Some markedly less brightness is lost when you are wearing the active shutter 3D glasses than in the case of Panasonic’s 3D pictures. You get a great sense of vibrancy and depth to the tellys efforts at HD 3D. We should also mention here that the onboard 2D to 3D processor does an excellent task of converting regular 2D sources into 3D, than you can imagine. However, we cannot imagine many consumers using this feature too often, especially as the converted 3D pictures are simply no match for the real HD 3D deal. We feel that it may just tide a few folks over until more 3D sources come, in case they are seeking for an instant return on their hefty investment.
Crosstalk Noise:
While reviewing its 55” sibling, we tumbled across some significant issues with crosstalk noise while watching 3D, and this is sadly true in the case of UE46C8000 too. The crosstalk disturbance becomes apparent by ghosting around objects, with the object’s field depth affecting the extent to which the crosstalk noise is apparent. In some of the recent 3D movies, almost all of the fast moving scenes suffer very apparently with crosstalk, especially those in the distance. Similar signs of extreme ghosting, if anything less, get evident elsewhere too, that includes the Sky’s 3D channel and with same console games too. In fact, the crosstalk noise in the game makes your eyes feel tired after just a half an hour or so of playing. Lastly, with the upsets of 3D is the picture clarity that only reaches its best after the TV has warmed up for just an hour or so after switching it on. When we reviewed the Samsung UE55C8000 3D TV last year (Samsung UE55C8000 3D TV Review), it was the first 3D TV we had reviewed, so we were not quite sure on how much the crosstalk would be inherent to all the 3D TVs. But, now that we have reviewed Panasonic’s P50VT20 3D TV, we are sure that while this Panasonic model does not completely eradicate the crosstalk, it certainly suffers much lesser with it than any of the Samsung 3D models we have seen.
Viewing angle and Black level response:
Couple of other more general issues includes the viewing angle of the UE46C8000, which is rather limited and its black level response is less convincing than on Samsung’s previous edge LED generation. This might be a consequence of Samsung emphasising brightness more to compensate for the brightness that was lost while viewing 3D.
Gaming:
Gaming is a decent experience on the Samsung UE46C8000 Television. In the normal mode, the input lag is such that it makes games totally unplayable; well thanks to the “Game mode” the figure is brought down to a drastic 32ms. It sure is not an amazing figure, but is definitely a standard figure for an LCD display pleases majority of the users. As a good number of impending 3D games are prone to utilise the “Side by Side” method, we tried obtaining some input lag figures in this mode; which measured at 41ms. Note that both these numbers were calculated by sending 1080p/60 to the display and the input measurements for the 720p were on the higher side. Ensure that you set the video output of your console to 1080p.
Sound:
Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV’s acoustics are slightly better than on the company’s previous edge LED models. It has slightly more volume and punch. However, perhaps inevitably for such a slim TV, it still does not sound anything special, thanks to the lack of bass and rather under-powered mid-range. Actually, it sounds kind of less exciting when compared to the UE55C8000; which is probably owing to the fact, as you can imagine, the telly having 5W less power per channel as against its big brother. While the 46C8000 represents a vast improvement over Samsung’s previous flat TV generation when it comes to sonic ability, it is still short of bass and fails to deliver an expansive sound stage during action scenes.
Energy Consumption:
Samsung has followed suit with majority of the LCD manufacturers in the current market in promoting the so-called energy saving benefits with LED backlighting. Honestly, we don’t really find much of difference between a LED and a CCFL display. The UE46C8000 packs an Eco Solution control too, that is supposed to bring about some energy saving attribute via the display by moderating the display’s overall brightness based on the ambient light. But since this causes the image’s brightness to fluctuate your are better off leaving it alone. The same goes for the Dynamic Contrast control which if left on will adjust the brightness and contrast settings from scene to scene and thus cause the energy consumption to fluctuate. Again, the screen automatically turns Off with lack of signal, which we presume is another attempt at enhancing energy efficiency together with try to boost the contrast ratio figures. The energy consumption is less that 1W in the standby mode. By and large, the energy consumption looks to be on the higher side in comparison to few other LCD displays with LED lighting.
Warranty:
Samsung offers its UE46C8000 3D TV one year warranty for parts and labour.
Verdict:
The Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV stands unbeaten as a piece of hi-tech design in addition to being a stellar 2D performer. Guess the above two factors alone should suffice in making this Samsung UE46C8000 a crucial purchase for many. While colour vibrancy and brightness of 3D content sure does look impressive, one cannot deny the fact that Panasonic P50VT20 3D TV is also capable of the same in addition to massive reduction in crosstalk noise. This just strengthens the fact that anybody looking for some serious 3D, Panasonic is a model of choice. As a 2D TV, the C8000 is fairly decent. Even though, it features an excellent greyscale performance post calibration together with standard-def video processing, the package seems to still have a few glitches, to name a few – poor scaling in 3D mode, auto-dimming, issues with angle viewing and non-uniformity. A few of these look to be specific to the ultra-slim LED LCD of Samsung’s. While videophiles might not really be tolerable to such deficiencies just for the sake of chopping the chasis down to a few centimetres, the style-conscious spectators might beg to differ here. Viewers willing to compromise on the quality of picture in order to have an extremely thin chassis together with gaining access to the 3D world are likely to be in for a treat with this Samsung UE46C8000. That said, the price tag sure looks high given its overall performance.
Check Latest Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV Prices in our 3D TV Prices section.
Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | Samsung |
| Model Name | Samsung UE46C8000 3D LED TV |
| Model Number | UE46C8000 |
| Colour | Platinum Black |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 1090.8 x 723.8 x 303mm |
| Weight | With stand : 19.2kg Without stand : 17kg |
| Design type | Mystic Earth |
| Display Features | |
| Size | 46 inches |
| Slim type | Ultra slim |
| Technology | 3D LED |
| Panel | Ultra clear |
| Front colour | Brushed Titanium |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Swivel (left/right) | Yes |
| Light Effect (Deco) | Yes |
| 3D Glasses | |
| Glasses offered as standard | none |
| 3D glasses type | Active Shutter 3D Glasses |
| Picture Features | |
| Picture Engine | 3D HyperReal Engine |
| Wide Colour Enhancer Plus | Yes |
| Clear Motion Rate | 50 x 16 |
| Audio Features | |
| Dolby | Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Pulse |
| SRS | SRS TheaterSound |
| dts 2.0 + Digital Out | Yes |
| Sound Output (RMS) | 15W x 2 |
| Speaker Type | Down Firing |
| Woofer | Yes |
| Features | |
| Remote Controller Type | Wireless Remote Control |
| DTV | Built-in |
| OSD language | Europe 25 Language |
| Picture-in-Picture | 1 Tuner PIP |
| Other Features | Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC), Auto Channel Search, Auto Power Off, Auto Volume Leveler, BD Wise, Caption (Subtitle), Clock & On/Off timer, Allshare (Powerd by DLNA), EPG, Game mode, Internet@TV, Picture-in-Picture, 3D and ConnectShare™ Movie, Skype on Samsung TV, Sleep Timer, USB, WiFi Adaptor Support, Personal Video Recorder Ready, Time Shift, Channel List USB-Clone, Digital Noise Filter and Teletext (TTXT) |
| Eco friendly features | |
| Eco Mark | Planet First |
| Eco Sensor | Yes |
| Power Supply | AC220 – 240V 50 / 60Hz |
| Power Consumption | 250W |
| Peak Luminance Ratio | 65% |
| Input and Output | 1 x Audio Out L-R (Mini Jack) 1 x Component In (Y/Pb/Pr) 1 x Composite In (AV) 1 x Digital Audio Out (Optical) 1 x DVI Audio In (Mini Jack) 1 x Ethernet (LAN) 1 x Headphone 4 x HDMI (v1.4 with 3D, Audio Return Channel) 1 x PC Audio In (Mini Jack 1 x RF In 2 x USB 1 x CI Slot 2 x Scart |
| Accessories | Batteries, Instruction Book, Slim Gender Cable (COMP, Composite, Scart, RF, PC, SPDIF, LAN), Ultra Slim Wall Mount Support, Vesa Wall Mount Support and Floor Stand Support |
| Warranty | One year |
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
