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 HTPC 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.

I’ve done this test enough times in my past reviews that I’ll jump to the conclusion. Based on the settings of X-Rite, my room conditions were only okay. The conditions for the day were on the warm and dark side. However, I didn’t have to adjust the backlighting or brightness too much. Just a single point higher in the backlighting did the trick. This resulting in the color almost self-correcting itself.

Below, the image to the left is un-calibrated and the image to the right is 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 UN55ES8000 I will consider the case of the TV watching a movie. I also checked the power draws while watching TV and in the different display modes.

Here is the power draw:

With the UN55ES6500 and ES7100, I was impressed with how little power is drawn by the TV. When watching a movie the UN55ES8000 impressed me even more with a power draw in the low 80s. I did find that the power draw would increase to the low 100′s when I was watching regular TV or using the TV as a monitor. However, even at that level the consumption is impressive.

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