A more technical way to analyze picture quality, but not as fun as sitting in front of the TV for hours upon hours to come up with a qualitative value is to use a quantitative program to judge against a benchmark. In this instance I used X-Rite: iDisplay 2. Originally designed for monitors (CRT and LCD), I’m using it configured for LCD displays. I’ve configured the TV to take the input signal from my laptop and will adjust the backlight, contrast and brightness on the TV to see how far off the TV settings are away from the iDisplay 2 ideals. The software takes about 10 minutes to run and I was amazed how little modifications were required to meet what iDisplay 2 says is calibrated.

Setting up X-Rite

Based on the settings of X-Rite, I found the TV colors worked best with the LED backlight slightly reduced followed by making minor changes to the brightness to meet the optimized values. Your settings will change a bit depending on your room situation however; overall the TV colors are very good right out of the box. I left the contrast ratio the same, decreased the backlight and brightness a touch. The before and after photos don’t show too much of a difference – it’s hard to see in the pictures below.

Calibrated

Power consumption is something I consider when purchasing any new consumer electronics. The last thing I really want is to purchase a TV that continually drains my wallet with a power guzzling 600W usage. I want my TV’s to be reasonable with power draw, the lower the better but I won’t sacrifice picture quality to reduce power consumption. To test the power draw on the UN55D8000 I will consider the case of the TV being powered off to monitor the phantom load and watching the trailer of I Am Legend under Standard and Entertainment modes. I opted to skip out on the Eco Solution modes, Eco Solution was introduced last year as an Energy Saving solution by controlling the brightness of the display. This then affects the power draw. While this is a great feature for budget minded folks, I would find it hard to believe many people will actually use this day in and day out on a 55″ TV. As I mentioned before when setting up the TV, you will adjust the quality to suit your needs and leave it.

Here is the power draw:

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