Samsung 46″ Series 5 LED TV 46C5000
Aug 3rd, 2010 | By SimonPicture quality is definitely the main reason why we would choose one brand over another. It doesn’t matter how much cheaper the competition may be, but if the picture looks terrible you couldn’t pay me to sit in front of the TV and actually stare at the tube!
Straight out of the box I put a picture up on the screen from my USB drive to check out the viewing angle. All of the viewing angles were of the original picture zoomed to twice the original size. I only did this to fill the screen and from all sides the picture quality was quite good. In any typical room you’d be able to see this TV from all sides. I stood about 4 feet to the right of the TV and when 1 foot back from the screen I had no issues seeing the far side of the TV. I would guess that the viewing angle was well over 80 degrees. When I leaned directly over the TV the picture quality was very good. There would be no need for anyone to be watching TV at the angles I was at!
Reading text off the monitor is no challenge at all. Individual pixels come up clearly and the large contrast ratio makes it easy to see.
The best way to really test a TV out is to sit in front of it. I was definitely more than happy to do that job. The video quality was definitely great. There were never any bright spots or backlight bleeding that would cause annoying glows around the monitor on dark scenes. The dynamic contrast ratio let me see detail even in the darkest scenes. I hate watching movies where people enter a dark room but what goes on is a blur because you can’t make out the fine details. With the C5000 you’re not going to see that problem unless you have issues with your video source. Just for fun, here are a couple captures of “The Mummy Returns” that I had lying around. The video was taken with a Canon 7D and simply uploaded to YouTube with no post-processing.
Standard Picture Setting
Dynamic Picture Setting
Natural Picture Setting
Movie Picture Setting
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 make sure the iDisplay 2 has the best possible picture. The software takes about 10 minutes to run and I was amazing how little modifications were required to meet what iDisplay 2 says is calibrated. Regardless of what Picture mode you set iDisplay 2 will still give you the same optimized configuration mode. It will then be up to you to fine-tune the settings if you want more darkness for your movies. The Standard Picture Mode has a backlight setting of 14, contrast of 100 and brightness of 45. The calibrated mode has a backlight of 6, contrast of 100 and brightness of 39. You can only see a small difference in the before and after picture.
I’ve got to say, I’m very happy with what the C5000 has to offer.