Pros : The Samsung UNF8000 LED LCD TV delivers excellent picture quality with deep black levels, accurate color, effective video processing and a uniform screen; stunning minimalist design with hairline bezel and low-profile stealth stand; mind-boggling feature list with touch-pad remote, IR blaster with cable box control, four pairs of 3D glasses, motion and voice command, and the industry’s most capable Smart TV platform.
Cons : Extremely expensive; wide stand; cable box control scheme still inadequate for heavy DVR users.
| Models in series |
| Samsung UN46F8000 |
46 inches |
| Samsung UN55F8000 |
55 inches |
| Samsung UN60F8000 |
60 inches |
| Samsung UN65F8000 |
65 inches |
| Samsung UN75F8000 |
75 inches |
Design
Except perhaps for ultrathin OLEDs, I’ve never seen a TV more stunningly minimalist than the Samsung UNF8000. I keep wondering when the company’s intrepid TV designs will simply vanish except for the picture. The hairline bezel of the F8000 is so narrow it somehow makes last year’s ES8000 — a TV I called “one of the most beautiful TV designs you can buy” The bezel is not only thinner now, it’s mostly black instead of silver adjacent to the screen, and the shape is no longer rounded off. A ribbon of silver runs along the edge, widening on the bottom to accommodate the admirably tiny, albeit very well lit, Samsung logo.
Part of the magic of the F8000′s design is also its biggest weakness: the stand. Depending on the height of your tabletop it can disappear, leaving the TV to levitate above. And not far above — the TV measures just 1.5 inches between the bottom of its frame and the tabletop, the lowest profile of any TV I can remember (it has the Sony W802/900A beat by 1/8 inch). Only a pair of curved feet peek out at the extreme edges to either side; they’re actually the ends of the base, most of which arcs behind the set.
It also requires a table as wide as the TV itself. As long as you follow the manual’s grave instructions to not let those little feet protrude over the edges of your tabletop, it’s plenty stable. But try placing it on a narrower stand, like I did, and you risk the thing toppling ignominiously over. Like mine did. I got lucky; there was no damage, but take that as a warning. The remote is even more remarkable than the stand. Samsung‘s recent flagship TVs included daring if disappointing clickers, from the chunky QWERTY flipper of the D8000 to the unresponsive touch pad of the E8000. The company totally redesigned the touch pad this year, and it’s a massive improvement.
It’s small, with just a few buttons above and below a spacious pad, but it fit perfectly in my hand. The remote uses Bluetooth to work without needing to be aimed at the TV. Responsiveness was superb and I found myself merrily swiping along large menus and rarely missing my selection. Convenient slider bars above and on either side of the pad worked perfectly to scroll past pages at a time. The whole pad depressed with a satisfying click when I made a selection, although (nitpick alert) a laptop touch-pad-style tap-to-click, like Panasonic’s touch-pad remote uses, would be even better. In total navigation was faster, almost as accurate and, I gotta admit, much more fun than with a standard remote.
The main flaw of Samsung’s clever clicker comes with its lack of buttons. The few that are included have raised, uniquely tactile shapes and useful backlighting, but to improve the remote’s size, design and perceived simplicity, plenty of common keys go missing. To enter numbers, for example, you have to hit the More button, which calls up a numeric keypad (below) that requires tedious swiping around to select each digit.
Most traditional remotes have dedicated keys for these functions, and how much you’ll miss them depends on how you typically use your TV remote. Like most Smart TVs, Samsung has two distinct menu systems, one for the TV’s settings and one for the Smart functionality. The former are exactly the same as last year: opaque blue layers logically arranged and featuring helpful explanations, a nifty preview pane, and very quick navigation, thanks in no small part to the remote.
Features
The UNF8000 series is Samsung’s highest-end LED-based LCD TV for 2013 that doesn’t cost $40,000 or have a 4K (UHD) resolution screen. Samsung, in turn, seems to have apathological need to “outfeature” the competition. So you won’t be surprised to learn that this TV has more features than pretty much any other on the market. First, let’s look at what I actually consider important: features that affect picture quality. The main advantage over the step-down UNF7500 series is a feature Samsung is calling “Micro Dimming Ultimate with Precision Black Local Dimming,” as opposed to mere Micro Dimming Pro on the UNF7500. The difference, according to Samsung, is that the UNF8000 actually dims different areas of the backlight, while the dimming of the 7500 and lesser Samsung TVs (down to the UNF6400 series) is strictly video-processing-based. The company claims there are hundreds of different dimming zones on the UNF8000 — down from “thousands” touted at CES, if you’re keeping track. Like the F7500, the F8000 has a panel with a 240Hz refresh rate, even though the former has a “Clear Motion Rate” of 960 compared with 1,200 on the F8000. According to Samsung, the difference is because the F8000 has superior backlight scanning, by virtue of its local dimming scheme. Otherwise the two TVs have nearly identical picture-related feature sets. The two Samsungs share much of the same nonpicture feature set otherwise, including the pop-up camera, quad-core processor, the full Smart TV suite described below, the same remote, and voice control.
The F8000 continues Samsung’s tradition of including four pairs of active 3D glasses in the box.
Smart TV
Samsung’s Smart Hub offers the usual array of apps, social media hooks and access to local content, but that stuff is presented as secondary to an ambitious “On TV” section. Available from no other TV maker I’ve tested yet (although LG has something similar this year), it basically attempts to replace your cable or satellite box with the TV’s own interface — and when it can’t do that, at least control the box via Samsung’s own remote. The Hub’s new design is reminiscent of an Android smartphone, with five different home pages you can flip through by swiping the remote touch pad’s scroll bar. Navigation and the slick animations were superquick on the quad-core F8000, although I wouldn’t be surprised if step-down Samsungs moved a bit more sluggishly. Overall the design is refreshing, colorful, and relatively simple, a welcome change from the cluttered feel of the company’s previous Smart TV suite.[/show-hide]
On TV and Recommendation engine:
The default Smart Hub home page, On TV, consists of a grid of TV show thumbnails along with a large window showing live TV. Below each thumbnail is a progress bar showing time remaining. You can also switch to a “timeline view,” which displays a list of five shows for every hour. On TV’s default view replaces that staid grid guide of hundreds of channels with a few cozy images of your favorite TV stars. As you use the system to select shows, Samsung’s “recommendation engine” kicks in to surface more shows it thinks you’ll want to watch. I also wouldn’t normally use On TV to select my shows, because most of the TV I watch is stored on my DVR’s hard drive. That list of recordings isn’t incorporated into On TV at all, so On TV has no idea which of them I watch and can’t make suggestions based upon them. For people like me, who almost never watch live TV, Samsung’s attempt to replace the cable box simply doesn’t work. Even someone who watches a lot of live TV and doesn’t know what they want to see will experience some hiccups with the system. One issue is that the On TV page shows just six shows each under Now Playing and Coming Up; If you want to browse more than that, you have to turn to the Guide view or, more likely, your cable box’s trusty EPG (electronic program guide). I’m happy to see Samsung seems to have fixed another I experienced on the F8500: the TV now tunes to the HD channel by default, not the standard-def one (this issue may vary too, depending on your cable provider).
Cable box control
The fine folks at Samsung made a few improvements to their cable box control scheme since I reviewed the PNF8500. They added a bunch of codes and button associations to make the system more usable with my FioS DVR box from Motorola. I have no idea whether they’ve also improved usage with other brands of DVR though, and while the changes are welcome, the basic problem still remains: Samsung’s remote is still too inconvenient for my DVR-heavy use case. I’ll stick with my favorite standard universal clicker. Samsung’s system uses a single, old-school wired IR blaster (above) to send commands from the TV to the cable box, and response times were very quick for such a system. Samsung’s remote navigated my DVR’s menus and EPG nicely, entered channel numbers as expected (complete with a handy channel history list) and items like a swipe-to-fast-forward were nice. Unlike when I first tested the system with the F8500, all of the cable box commands from the virtual remote — chiefly transport controls like Forward Skip and Play, as well as the remote’s formerly unresponsive “DVR” key — now appear to work properly. Unfortunately the Guide key on the remote calls up Samsung’s simplistic grid guide, not the superior EPG on my DVR. Keep in mind that getting it right is simply a matter of Samsung putting the correct remote control codes in its database and associating them with the correct physical or virtual buttons. Since the system (unlike, say, a Harmony universal remote) doesn’t have learning capability, you need to depend on Samsung to do it. Your results may vary from mine if Samsung hasn’t yet added or corrected the codes for your DVR or cable/satellite box.
Media and Social:
The fourth page accesses music, photo and video content, whether from an attached USB thumb or hard drive, DLNA device (NAS drive or PC) or smartphone, or the cloud. Naturally the TV is compatible with Samsung’s AllShare system, and it can also access cloud storage from DropBox, SkyDrive, and SugarSynch, as well as work with MHL and Miracast to screen mirror-compatible smartphones. The fifth page is called “Social,” and it’s filled by default with YouTube clips. You can link it to Facebook, Twitter, and Skype accounts, which seems mildly interesting. When I did so, however, the only things that surfaced were “Friends’ Pick” on Facebook, and there was no easy access to tweet or post status updates
Apps and Web browser:
Samsung’s selection, available on the fifth page, is second to none, and it’s still the only TV maker with HBO Go. Other notable apps among the hundreds available include Spotify, Fios TV, Amazon Cloud Player, a Camera app, and Samsung’s Explore 3D app. There’s a cool Fitness VOD app that you can use in conjunction with the camera to put yourself alongside a workout coach on screen, a robust multigame/activity Kids app, and many, many more. The page design, which is basically a bunch of small icons again reminiscent of a smartphone screen, is much cleaner than before. “Recommended” apps appear above a large editable grid of “My Apps” in the bottom area. Most of the important apps come preinstalled, and the chaff is all happily hidden inside the Samsung Apps section one layer down. The Web browser is the best I’ve used on any TV, thanks in large part to the touch pad remote. The scrollbars work as they should, the Return key is a handy shortcut for Back, and the virtual keyboard makes entering URLs and search terms as easy as possible with its smart suggestions for letters, terms and sites. CNET.com loaded quickly enough, including comments, and the browser passed this Flash support test.
Picture quality :
If you’re allergic to plasma, an LED-based LCD that performs as well as the Samsung UNF8000 isn’t a bad consolation prize. No, it can’t reach the lofty heights of plasmas like the Panasonic VT60 or Samsung’s own F8500, but it’s still an excellent all-around performer, and the second-best LED LCD we’ve tested this year. The key is deep black levels, thanks to local dimming, combined with color as accurate and video processing as versatile as any TV on the market. It’s not quite as good as its 55-inch rival from Sony, the KDL-W900A, but I’d be surprised if any other LED, with the possible exception of Sony’s exorbitant 4K models, matched the UNF8000′s picture this year. Click the image at the right to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV’s picture controls worked during calibration.
Black level:
The UNF8000 delivers the best performance in this category of any edge-lit Samsung LED TV yet, surpassing last year’s ES8000 and its predecessors by a wide margin. That said it’s still not quite as good as Sony’s best edge-lit sets, namely the HX850 and W900A. The numerous nighttime cityscapes in “Skyfall” provided plenty of good fodder. Shanghai in the beginning of Chapter 11 showed that letterbox bars of the F8000 were a touch darker (better) than those of the two Sonys — largely thanks to the Cinema Black feature, which is specifically designed to dim the bars — and that increased its apparent “pop” and contrast. But between the bars, where black levels matter even more, the Sonys consistently got a bit darker, for better overall impact and picture quality. The black areas of the Shanghai buildings, and later the silhouette of Bond fighting the sniper (49:27), appeared just slightly more realistic on the Sonys, although the F8000 was quite close, and the difference would be tough to discern outside a side-by-side comparison. Meanwhile the ES8000 was the lightest overall, and vied for the Panasonic WT60 for worst in the lineup. The latter actually got darker than any other set, including the plasmas, but its aggressive dimming crushed shadow detail severely. Of course the two plasmas, in particular the VT60, delivered the best combination of deep blacks and detailed shadows. Speaking of shadows, the F8000 was also excellent at maintaining detail therein, from the face and jacket of the doomed sniper (49:45) to Bond’s shadowy stroll the dim Macau bar (56:29). Shadows looked a bit more natural on the Sonys, but that’s mainly due to their black level advantage. Blooming, where a white section of screen artificially brightens up an adjacent dark section, wasn’t a major issue on either the Sonys or the Samsungs, and mainly cropped up with graphical elements, such as the PS3′s Play icon in the letterbox bar. The WT60 showed significantly more blooming, and also dimmed the highlights way too much — the latter also wasn’t an issue on the Sonys or the F8000. In case you’re curious, turning Smart LED (dimming) off on the F8000 isn’t advisable. In addition to the much worse black levels, the TV exhibited significant dark-field uniformityerrors in that mode (see below). A setting of Low or better eliminated those problems; I chose Standard for its combination of flat gamma and excellent black levels, but all three (Low, Standard, and High) performed very well, unlike the various settings on most other dimming-capable sets.
Color accuracy:
The F8000 showed the most accurate color of the year according to my charts, and in person its color was likewise superb. Skin tones, from M and Gareth’s well-lit office discussion (18:14) to Bond and Severine’s sultry shower scene (1:06:34) maintained a natural look without the slightly oversaturated appearance of the ES800 or the opposite, slightly paler look of the WT60 and HX850. The plasmas and the Sony W900A did have a slight advantage in richness and punch, however, and the Sony was particularly strong in the blue-lit sniper fight in Chapter 11, as well as the highly saturated colors of the fruit, awnings and other bright colors in the market from Chapter 1. Again the F8000 was extremely good, though, and it would be tough to find any fault in its color outside of a side-by-side comparison. Thanks to its local dimming, it also manages to avoid the bluish shadows and blacks that plague so many lighter LED-based LCDs.
Video processing:
The F8000 had another strong performance in this category. First and foremost it’s capable of delivering true 1080p24 film cadence, as expected from any TV at this level. Unlike most of the other such LED LCD TVs, however, it can also deliver full motion resolution (1200 lines) at the same time — you don’t have to engage the oversmooth Soap Opera Effect to get optimum motion resolution. On the Sony W900 and Panasonic WT60, no mode offers true film cadence with zero smoothing and full motion resolution. The former’s Cinema Smooth: Clear mode comes closest, with the same excellent motion resolution score, but it has a touch of smoothing. The same goes for Motion smoother: Weak on the WT60, although at 900 lines, its motion resolution score is a bit worse than on the other two. Granted the differences are slight, and both of those competitors come close to the F8000′s ideal, but neither quite matches it. Of course if you’re a fan of smoothing you might also appreciate the F8000′s 10-point dejudder control under Custom for Auto Motion Plus, which enables you to dial in as much Soap Opera Effect as you like — from “Downton Abbey” to “Days of Our Lives.” There’s also a new LED Clear Motion setting under the Auto Motion Plus menu. Engaging it reduces light output very slightly, but has a positive effect on motion resolution, improving it from about 1080 lines on our test to the maximum 1200. I noticed no detrimental effects, so I kept it on. As usual with Samsung, you’ll need to select the Auto1 setting under Film Mode if you want correct 1080i deinterlacing of film-based sources; the default Auto 2 failed our test. In Game mode the Samsung showed a relatively poor input lag measurement of 81ms. But there’s a “trick” that allows it to achieve a much more respectable lag score of 50.9ms. To use it you must be connected to either HDMI 3 or 4 (it won’t work on the other two). After selecting the input, go to the Options menu in the upper-right and rename the input “PC.” Doing so allows it to achieve a better lag score.
Uniformity:
As long as you keep local dimming engaged, the F8000′s dark-field uniformity is very good, if not quite at the same level as the Sony. Turning it Off, however, reveals a large cross-shaped dark area smack in the middle of the screen, quartering four large cloudy balls. In very the darkest content, for example, the black screen as the “Skyfall” credits start to roll or as the white Bond ball crosses the screen (Chapter 32), the artifact is very slightly visible even with local dimming engaged, but it’s not distracting and you have to look hard to see it. There were no other notable uniformity issues in bright or dark fields. From off-angle the F8000 and the Sonys lost fidelity (mainly black depth and color purity) at about the same rate — much faster than the WT60, which was among the best LCDs I’ve ever seen in this department. Of course, the plasmas didn’t lose any fidelity from the side, and maintained perfect uniformity across the screen.
Bright lighting:
Like any glossy LED-based LCD, the F8000′s main issue in bright rooms is reflections. Bright objects caught in its screen, for example a lamp, a white couch or even a white shirt work by a viewer, reflect from the mirrorlike screen finish all too well and can prove quite distracting. Reflections appeared dimmer (better) in the plasmas and in the two 2012 LCDs, about the same as the W800, and slightly brighter (worst) on the WT60. The F8000 is still a better performer in bright rooms than the plasmas, however, due to its superior light output and its ability to preserve black levels under the lights. Blacks looked slightly punchier on it (and the W900A) than on any of the other sets, although the plasmas were the worst of the bunch in this regard. As expected the plasmas were also the dimmest in terms of “torch mode,” or maximum light output. In its Dynamic picture mode the F8000 produces a searing 127 fL, the best of the 2013 models in my lineup — the WT60 got to 123 and the Sony to 107 — and much brighter than even the F8500 plasma at 83 fL. The LEDs also maintain that light output with full-screen white (think hockey or a browser screen), while the plasmas attenuate. To put the numbers in some perspective, however, 83fL is still plenty bright for even the brightest rooms, and the VT60′s maximum of 49 is bright enough for the vast majority of normal living rooms. But as usual, if you can’t control ambient light and have a very bright room, or just prefer a witheringly bright TV image, an LED like the F8000 is a better bet than plasma.
Sound quality:
Aside from the VT60, the F8000 was the best-sounding TV in my lineup. No, it didn’t sound good compared to even the cheapest sound bar or other dedicated audio system, but it was more than competent for a TV, especially one with this sliver-like form factor. Watching the concussive explosions of “Mission: Impossible 3,” the F8000 delivered more impact and visceral feel than the chronically thin-sounding W900A and WT60, but couldn’t compete with the much fuller-sounding, powerful VT60 plasma. With music, the other two LEDs sounded less distinct, like they were further down a well, than the F8000. Meanwhile the F8500 plasma also sounded considerably muddier and worse than the F8000 LED with both sources, again suffering more from the “well” effect.
3D:
My reference for active 3D picture quality is the 2012 UNES8000, and while the F8000 is also very good at 3D, it doesn’t quite match its predecessor in this department. The main difference is in reduction of crosstalk, that artifact where onscreen objects show a faint, ghostly outline. I compared the F8000 to the lineup using “Hugo,” my favorite 3D torture test. Compared to the ES8000, the F8000 showed a slightly more noticeable outline around certain onscreen objects, for example Hugo’s hand (5:01), the tuning pegs on the guitar and head of the guitarist (7:49), and the outlines of Hugo and Isabelle as they talk at night under the snow (17:01). The difference was subtle, however, and the F8000 was still second-best in the group followed closely by the plasmas. Meanwhile, the Sony was significantly worse in terms of crosstalk. As expected, the passive 3D WT60 was the best in this area, with no visible crosstalk. The brighter image of 3D also made the F8000′s uniformity issues noted above very slightly more visible. For example I saw some clouds in the shadows of the dark bulkhead (10:04) as well as slightly brighter corners. On the other hand uniformity wasn’t as bad as the ES8000 with its even brighter corners. The Sony W900A showed no major uniformity problems in 3D. Black levels were OK; worse than the F8500 but about the same as the Sony or the ES8000, while shadow detail was good. The WT60 and VT60 meanwhile produced a slightly deeper black but shadow detail was obscured on both. The F8000′s color looked quite accurate in flowers face of vendor (25:43) and seemed more accurate than the F8500 and VT60, albeit similar to the other LEDs.
The main flaw of Samsung’s clever clicker comes with its lack of buttons. The few that are included have raised, uniquely tactile shapes and useful backlighting, but to improve the remote’s size, design and perceived simplicity, plenty of common keys go missing. To enter numbers, for example, you have to hit the More button, which calls up a numeric keypad (below) that requires tedious swiping around to select each digit.Most traditional remotes have dedicated keys for these functions, and how much you’ll miss them depends on how you typically use your TV remote. Like most Smart TVs, Samsung has two distinct menu systems, one for the TV’s settings and one for the Smart functionality. The former are exactly the same as last year: opaque blue layers logically arranged and featuring helpful explanations, a nifty preview pane, and very quick navigation, thanks in no small part to the remote.
Features
The UNF8000 series is Samsung’s highest-end LED-based LCD TV for 2013 that doesn’t cost $40,000 or have a 4K (UHD) resolution screen. Samsung, in turn, seems to have apathological need to “outfeature” the competition. So you won’t be surprised to learn that this TV has more features than pretty much any other on the market. First, let’s look at what I actually consider important: features that affect picture quality. The main advantage over the step-down UNF7500 series is a feature Samsung is calling “Micro Dimming Ultimate with Precision Black Local Dimming,” as opposed to mere Micro Dimming Pro on the UNF7500. The difference, according to Samsung, is that the UNF8000 actually dims different areas of the backlight, while the dimming of the 7500 and lesser Samsung TVs (down to the UNF6400 series) is strictly video-processing-based. The company claims there are hundreds of different dimming zones on the UNF8000 — down from “thousands” touted at CES, if you’re keeping track. Like the F7500, the F8000 has a panel with a 240Hz refresh rate, even though the former has a “Clear Motion Rate” of 960 compared with 1,200 on the F8000. According to Samsung, the difference is because the F8000 has superior backlight scanning, by virtue of its local dimming scheme. Otherwise the two TVs have nearly identical picture-related feature sets. The two Samsungs share much of the same nonpicture feature set otherwise, including the pop-up camera, quad-core processor, the full Smart TV suite described below, the same remote, and voice control.The F8000 continues Samsung’s tradition of including four pairs of active 3D glasses in the box.
Smart TV
Samsung’s Smart Hub offers the usual array of apps, social media hooks and access to local content, but that stuff is presented as secondary to an ambitious “On TV” section. Available from no other TV maker I’ve tested yet (although LG has something similar this year), it basically attempts to replace your cable or satellite box with the TV’s own interface — and when it can’t do that, at least control the box via Samsung’s own remote. The Hub’s new design is reminiscent of an Android smartphone, with five different home pages you can flip through by swiping the remote touch pad’s scroll bar. Navigation and the slick animations were superquick on the quad-core F8000, although I wouldn’t be surprised if step-down Samsungs moved a bit more sluggishly. Overall the design is refreshing, colorful, and relatively simple, a welcome change from the cluttered feel of the company’s previous Smart TV suite.[/show-hide]
On TV and Recommendation engine:
The default Smart Hub home page, On TV, consists of a grid of TV show thumbnails along with a large window showing live TV. Below each thumbnail is a progress bar showing time remaining. You can also switch to a “timeline view,” which displays a list of five shows for every hour. On TV’s default view replaces that staid grid guide of hundreds of channels with a few cozy images of your favorite TV stars. As you use the system to select shows, Samsung’s “recommendation engine” kicks in to surface more shows it thinks you’ll want to watch. I also wouldn’t normally use On TV to select my shows, because most of the TV I watch is stored on my DVR’s hard drive. That list of recordings isn’t incorporated into On TV at all, so On TV has no idea which of them I watch and can’t make suggestions based upon them. For people like me, who almost never watch live TV, Samsung’s attempt to replace the cable box simply doesn’t work. Even someone who watches a lot of live TV and doesn’t know what they want to see will experience some hiccups with the system. One issue is that the On TV page shows just six shows each under Now Playing and Coming Up; If you want to browse more than that, you have to turn to the Guide view or, more likely, your cable box’s trusty EPG (electronic program guide). I’m happy to see Samsung seems to have fixed another I experienced on the F8500: the TV now tunes to the HD channel by default, not the standard-def one (this issue may vary too, depending on your cable provider).
Cable box control
The fine folks at Samsung made a few improvements to their cable box control scheme since I reviewed the PNF8500. They added a bunch of codes and button associations to make the system more usable with my FioS DVR box from Motorola. I have no idea whether they’ve also improved usage with other brands of DVR though, and while the changes are welcome, the basic problem still remains: Samsung’s remote is still too inconvenient for my DVR-heavy use case. I’ll stick with my favorite standard universal clicker. Samsung’s system uses a single, old-school wired IR blaster (above) to send commands from the TV to the cable box, and response times were very quick for such a system. Samsung’s remote navigated my DVR’s menus and EPG nicely, entered channel numbers as expected (complete with a handy channel history list) and items like a swipe-to-fast-forward were nice. Unlike when I first tested the system with the F8500, all of the cable box commands from the virtual remote — chiefly transport controls like Forward Skip and Play, as well as the remote’s formerly unresponsive “DVR” key — now appear to work properly. Unfortunately the Guide key on the remote calls up Samsung’s simplistic grid guide, not the superior EPG on my DVR. Keep in mind that getting it right is simply a matter of Samsung putting the correct remote control codes in its database and associating them with the correct physical or virtual buttons. Since the system (unlike, say, a Harmony universal remote) doesn’t have learning capability, you need to depend on Samsung to do it. Your results may vary from mine if Samsung hasn’t yet added or corrected the codes for your DVR or cable/satellite box.
Media and Social:
The fourth page accesses music, photo and video content, whether from an attached USB thumb or hard drive, DLNA device (NAS drive or PC) or smartphone, or the cloud. Naturally the TV is compatible with Samsung’s AllShare system, and it can also access cloud storage from DropBox, SkyDrive, and SugarSynch, as well as work with MHL and Miracast to screen mirror-compatible smartphones. The fifth page is called “Social,” and it’s filled by default with YouTube clips. You can link it to Facebook, Twitter, and Skype accounts, which seems mildly interesting. When I did so, however, the only things that surfaced were “Friends’ Pick” on Facebook, and there was no easy access to tweet or post status updates
Apps and Web browser:
Samsung’s selection, available on the fifth page, is second to none, and it’s still the only TV maker with HBO Go. Other notable apps among the hundreds available include Spotify, Fios TV, Amazon Cloud Player, a Camera app, and Samsung’s Explore 3D app. There’s a cool Fitness VOD app that you can use in conjunction with the camera to put yourself alongside a workout coach on screen, a robust multigame/activity Kids app, and many, many more. The page design, which is basically a bunch of small icons again reminiscent of a smartphone screen, is much cleaner than before. “Recommended” apps appear above a large editable grid of “My Apps” in the bottom area. Most of the important apps come preinstalled, and the chaff is all happily hidden inside the Samsung Apps section one layer down. The Web browser is the best I’ve used on any TV, thanks in large part to the touch pad remote. The scrollbars work as they should, the Return key is a handy shortcut for Back, and the virtual keyboard makes entering URLs and search terms as easy as possible with its smart suggestions for letters, terms and sites. CNET.com loaded quickly enough, including comments, and the browser passed this Flash support test.
Picture quality :
If you’re allergic to plasma, an LED-based LCD that performs as well as the Samsung UNF8000 isn’t a bad consolation prize. No, it can’t reach the lofty heights of plasmas like the Panasonic VT60 or Samsung’s own F8500, but it’s still an excellent all-around performer, and the second-best LED LCD we’ve tested this year. The key is deep black levels, thanks to local dimming, combined with color as accurate and video processing as versatile as any TV on the market. It’s not quite as good as its 55-inch rival from Sony, the KDL-W900A, but I’d be surprised if any other LED, with the possible exception of Sony’s exorbitant 4K models, matched the UNF8000′s picture this year. Click the image at the right to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV’s picture controls worked during calibration.
Black level:
The UNF8000 delivers the best performance in this category of any edge-lit Samsung LED TV yet, surpassing last year’s ES8000 and its predecessors by a wide margin. That said it’s still not quite as good as Sony’s best edge-lit sets, namely the HX850 and W900A. The numerous nighttime cityscapes in “Skyfall” provided plenty of good fodder. Shanghai in the beginning of Chapter 11 showed that letterbox bars of the F8000 were a touch darker (better) than those of the two Sonys — largely thanks to the Cinema Black feature, which is specifically designed to dim the bars — and that increased its apparent “pop” and contrast. But between the bars, where black levels matter even more, the Sonys consistently got a bit darker, for better overall impact and picture quality. The black areas of the Shanghai buildings, and later the silhouette of Bond fighting the sniper (49:27), appeared just slightly more realistic on the Sonys, although the F8000 was quite close, and the difference would be tough to discern outside a side-by-side comparison. Meanwhile the ES8000 was the lightest overall, and vied for the Panasonic WT60 for worst in the lineup. The latter actually got darker than any other set, including the plasmas, but its aggressive dimming crushed shadow detail severely. Of course the two plasmas, in particular the VT60, delivered the best combination of deep blacks and detailed shadows. Speaking of shadows, the F8000 was also excellent at maintaining detail therein, from the face and jacket of the doomed sniper (49:45) to Bond’s shadowy stroll the dim Macau bar (56:29). Shadows looked a bit more natural on the Sonys, but that’s mainly due to their black level advantage. Blooming, where a white section of screen artificially brightens up an adjacent dark section, wasn’t a major issue on either the Sonys or the Samsungs, and mainly cropped up with graphical elements, such as the PS3′s Play icon in the letterbox bar. The WT60 showed significantly more blooming, and also dimmed the highlights way too much — the latter also wasn’t an issue on the Sonys or the F8000. In case you’re curious, turning Smart LED (dimming) off on the F8000 isn’t advisable. In addition to the much worse black levels, the TV exhibited significant dark-field uniformityerrors in that mode (see below). A setting of Low or better eliminated those problems; I chose Standard for its combination of flat gamma and excellent black levels, but all three (Low, Standard, and High) performed very well, unlike the various settings on most other dimming-capable sets.
Color accuracy:
The F8000 showed the most accurate color of the year according to my charts, and in person its color was likewise superb. Skin tones, from M and Gareth’s well-lit office discussion (18:14) to Bond and Severine’s sultry shower scene (1:06:34) maintained a natural look without the slightly oversaturated appearance of the ES800 or the opposite, slightly paler look of the WT60 and HX850. The plasmas and the Sony W900A did have a slight advantage in richness and punch, however, and the Sony was particularly strong in the blue-lit sniper fight in Chapter 11, as well as the highly saturated colors of the fruit, awnings and other bright colors in the market from Chapter 1. Again the F8000 was extremely good, though, and it would be tough to find any fault in its color outside of a side-by-side comparison. Thanks to its local dimming, it also manages to avoid the bluish shadows and blacks that plague so many lighter LED-based LCDs.
Video processing:
The F8000 had another strong performance in this category. First and foremost it’s capable of delivering true 1080p24 film cadence, as expected from any TV at this level. Unlike most of the other such LED LCD TVs, however, it can also deliver full motion resolution (1200 lines) at the same time — you don’t have to engage the oversmooth Soap Opera Effect to get optimum motion resolution. On the Sony W900 and Panasonic WT60, no mode offers true film cadence with zero smoothing and full motion resolution. The former’s Cinema Smooth: Clear mode comes closest, with the same excellent motion resolution score, but it has a touch of smoothing. The same goes for Motion smoother: Weak on the WT60, although at 900 lines, its motion resolution score is a bit worse than on the other two. Granted the differences are slight, and both of those competitors come close to the F8000′s ideal, but neither quite matches it. Of course if you’re a fan of smoothing you might also appreciate the F8000′s 10-point dejudder control under Custom for Auto Motion Plus, which enables you to dial in as much Soap Opera Effect as you like — from “Downton Abbey” to “Days of Our Lives.” There’s also a new LED Clear Motion setting under the Auto Motion Plus menu. Engaging it reduces light output very slightly, but has a positive effect on motion resolution, improving it from about 1080 lines on our test to the maximum 1200. I noticed no detrimental effects, so I kept it on. As usual with Samsung, you’ll need to select the Auto1 setting under Film Mode if you want correct 1080i deinterlacing of film-based sources; the default Auto 2 failed our test. In Game mode the Samsung showed a relatively poor input lag measurement of 81ms. But there’s a “trick” that allows it to achieve a much more respectable lag score of 50.9ms. To use it you must be connected to either HDMI 3 or 4 (it won’t work on the other two). After selecting the input, go to the Options menu in the upper-right and rename the input “PC.” Doing so allows it to achieve a better lag score.
Uniformity:
As long as you keep local dimming engaged, the F8000′s dark-field uniformity is very good, if not quite at the same level as the Sony. Turning it Off, however, reveals a large cross-shaped dark area smack in the middle of the screen, quartering four large cloudy balls. In very the darkest content, for example, the black screen as the “Skyfall” credits start to roll or as the white Bond ball crosses the screen (Chapter 32), the artifact is very slightly visible even with local dimming engaged, but it’s not distracting and you have to look hard to see it. There were no other notable uniformity issues in bright or dark fields. From off-angle the F8000 and the Sonys lost fidelity (mainly black depth and color purity) at about the same rate — much faster than the WT60, which was among the best LCDs I’ve ever seen in this department. Of course, the plasmas didn’t lose any fidelity from the side, and maintained perfect uniformity across the screen.
Bright lighting:
Like any glossy LED-based LCD, the F8000′s main issue in bright rooms is reflections. Bright objects caught in its screen, for example a lamp, a white couch or even a white shirt work by a viewer, reflect from the mirrorlike screen finish all too well and can prove quite distracting. Reflections appeared dimmer (better) in the plasmas and in the two 2012 LCDs, about the same as the W800, and slightly brighter (worst) on the WT60. The F8000 is still a better performer in bright rooms than the plasmas, however, due to its superior light output and its ability to preserve black levels under the lights. Blacks looked slightly punchier on it (and the W900A) than on any of the other sets, although the plasmas were the worst of the bunch in this regard. As expected the plasmas were also the dimmest in terms of “torch mode,” or maximum light output. In its Dynamic picture mode the F8000 produces a searing 127 fL, the best of the 2013 models in my lineup — the WT60 got to 123 and the Sony to 107 — and much brighter than even the F8500 plasma at 83 fL. The LEDs also maintain that light output with full-screen white (think hockey or a browser screen), while the plasmas attenuate. To put the numbers in some perspective, however, 83fL is still plenty bright for even the brightest rooms, and the VT60′s maximum of 49 is bright enough for the vast majority of normal living rooms. But as usual, if you can’t control ambient light and have a very bright room, or just prefer a witheringly bright TV image, an LED like the F8000 is a better bet than plasma.
Sound quality:
Aside from the VT60, the F8000 was the best-sounding TV in my lineup. No, it didn’t sound good compared to even the cheapest sound bar or other dedicated audio system, but it was more than competent for a TV, especially one with this sliver-like form factor. Watching the concussive explosions of “Mission: Impossible 3,” the F8000 delivered more impact and visceral feel than the chronically thin-sounding W900A and WT60, but couldn’t compete with the much fuller-sounding, powerful VT60 plasma. With music, the other two LEDs sounded less distinct, like they were further down a well, than the F8000. Meanwhile the F8500 plasma also sounded considerably muddier and worse than the F8000 LED with both sources, again suffering more from the “well” effect.
3D:
My reference for active 3D picture quality is the 2012 UNES8000, and while the F8000 is also very good at 3D, it doesn’t quite match its predecessor in this department. The main difference is in reduction of crosstalk, that artifact where onscreen objects show a faint, ghostly outline. I compared the F8000 to the lineup using “Hugo,” my favorite 3D torture test. Compared to the ES8000, the F8000 showed a slightly more noticeable outline around certain onscreen objects, for example Hugo’s hand (5:01), the tuning pegs on the guitar and head of the guitarist (7:49), and the outlines of Hugo and Isabelle as they talk at night under the snow (17:01). The difference was subtle, however, and the F8000 was still second-best in the group followed closely by the plasmas. Meanwhile, the Sony was significantly worse in terms of crosstalk. As expected, the passive 3D WT60 was the best in this area, with no visible crosstalk. The brighter image of 3D also made the F8000′s uniformity issues noted above very slightly more visible. For example I saw some clouds in the shadows of the dark bulkhead (10:04) as well as slightly brighter corners. On the other hand uniformity wasn’t as bad as the ES8000 with its even brighter corners. The Sony W900A showed no major uniformity problems in 3D. Black levels were OK; worse than the F8500 but about the same as the Sony or the ES8000, while shadow detail was good. The WT60 and VT60 meanwhile produced a slightly deeper black but shadow detail was obscured on both. The F8000′s color looked quite accurate in flowers face of vendor (25:43) and seemed more accurate than the F8500 and VT60, albeit similar to the other LEDs.
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