Picture Quality
The Samsung HU7250 65-inch curved 4K smart LED TV has a resolution of 2160 x 3840 which makes for some great viewing pleasure. Well…at least when you can find content that’s in the 4K Resolution which isn’t very easy. There are only a few cable companies that offer 4K content and only on their on-demand service.
Here in Las Vegas with Cox Communications there is no 4K content so my testing of 4K is using Netflix only. I first streamed the 2005 Romantic Comedy Hitch with Will Smith and Eva Mendes. That movie was made 10 years ago–way before 4K came out–so it wasn’t shot natively in 4K. Netflix must have upscaled it. While it was amazing and better than 1080P you can definitely tell it’s not in true 4K resolution.
Next I watched a few episodes of House of Cards—a Netflix Original Series that is shot natively in 4K. It just looks stunning.
Audio
The audio is disappointing. This television at its $3,000 price tag is only equipped with 10 watt x 2 channel audio speaker system and it doesn’t have a built-in sub-woofer. With that price tag I would expect higher quality audio.
Going from watching TV on cable to streaming a Netflix movie or a movie on Apple TV I had to up the volume to 50 which is over halfway on the TV scale before I could really hear anything. I was forced to use my surround sound system for watching just TV.
Remote
It has a smart touch remote–which I for one hate. It has no numbered buttons for changing channel so you have to bring up an on-screen keyboard. With my TiVo box it was virtually unusable. In an attempt to change to channel 1054 it would change to channel 10 before I could even get to entering the “5” because it took too long to input the channel.
The remote has a built in mic and you can use voice control so you are able to tell it “channel 1054” and that works well if you don’t have much noise going on around you. But don’t go thinking this will be your one remote and you can throw others away or file in a box in your garage. You will need to keep your other remotes handy as I was unable to access the TiVo DVR menu from either the virtual keyboard or voice control.
It has codes to enable it to work with my surround sound system–a Harman Kardon AVR 254. I programmed it using those codes but I couldn’t get it to work. Pressing the volume up or down buttons didn’t affect the surround sound system volume. It still just controls the volume on the TV itself.
Smart TV Features
This TV is loaded with tons of smart TV features from Netflix, VuDu and many other streaming apps to a Smart Home app that allows you to control a connected Samsung refrigerator, washer/dryer, or thermostat.
There are even games as well. Some cost money and some are free but it’s no Google Play so selection is limited. Some of the games require a controller which obviously has to be purchased separately but I have been unable to find.
The TV only has 1GB of flash storage so you’re going to get maybe one game on there. I downloaded the game Monopoly, which took a little over 700MB of storage not leaving much left.
Some of the apps appear to have no obvious or intuitive way to exit them. I tried the “Social TV” app which allows you to select the channel you are on and then shows you Twitter feeds for that show but I was unable to exit the app. I chose Hide, which moves the window out of way but when a new post came in it would re-appear on screen.
Verdict
If you’re in the market for a TV anyway and you’re budget can handle spending $3,000 for a TV then this is a great choice. If you don’t really need a new TV or your budget is less then $3,000, though, don’t bother getting a loan or putting this TV on your credit card. There are other more affordable TVs with the same features minus the 4K resolution that would be better suited for you–especially considering the sparse selection of 4K content available right now.
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I wonder what the advantage of the curved screen is.
supposedly it helps eliminate glare and its suppose to also make it so can watch tv from any angle…
The angle issue oh it does you can pretty much watch tv from anywhere but glare thats debatable
It’s actually worse in many instances, in regards to reflections. Reflections (even from light bleed, which I will get to) have a tendency to “ride” the curve. So, while the intensity of the “glare” or reflection is sometimes perceptibly lessened, it now takes up a greater portion of the screen. Instead of seeing glare at a singular point, it is diffused, sometimes along the entire curve of the screen. If it is even a moderately bright light source causing the reflection, you get an annoying reflection of it across the entire screen in a linear fashion. As for the angle, contrast is significantly reduced outside of the primary viewing angles. The only real appeal for a curved screen (& I have the 65″ UHD HU9000) is esthetics & an alleged emersion in content. Esthetically speaking, it is a gorgeous work of art. As to emersion, well it is negligible in most instances, first person shooters being the exception I have found so far.
As to the light bleed I mentioned, while I found a panel without bleed, my first two panels had slight to moderate bleed & just as from external sources, it “rode” the curve of the screen, making it appear that clouding was present, which wasn’t the case.