Gadgetory

hi I'm David Katz Meyer from CNET and this is the samsung pn e 550 series i'm standing next to the 51 inch version this TV also comes in a 60 and a 64 inch size this review will apply to all three this is Samsung's least expensive plasma TV for 2012 to feature Smart TV and 3d features talk about those in a little bit but first I'll talk about something else that distinguishes this TV from its higher-end brethren that's the bezel around the edge it's glossy black and a little bit thicker than seen on some of the higher-end Samsung plasmas not too bad-looking however there's also this nice transparent edge and the transparent stock that supports the TV and allows this TV to swivel of course it's a glass top stand to complete the look which is pretty slick in my opinion Samsung Smart TV suite is probably the most capable on the market unless you count Google TV this TV has hundreds of apps available in the app market of course the video ones the ones you care about and the most important video one is actually HBO Go which is an exclusive to this television so HBO subscribers can use the HBO Go app to stream pretty much anything in the HBO catalog the app really works very well and I appreciated the navigation the search which is an improvement on Roku zap all told it's a really nice app to use but again limited to HBO subscribers the set is missing Amazon Instant but it does have all the other major apps including Netflix Vudu and YouTube which are all you know again pretty well integrated into the set Samsung Smart TV interface is a little bit crowded and you can customize it but one of these you can't do is get rid of these proprietary apps here which include family story and a few other relatively content-heavy but again Samsung proprietary apps TV also has a built-in web browser which if you use the standard remote control is really painful to use Samsung does sell a $99 optional keyboard however that does make web browsing a little bit easier like all the Samsung 3d TVs this year it includes two sets of 3d glasses that's a step up from most the other major manufacturers that don't include any 3d glasses with our active TVs other glasses don't fit all that well however especially if you're using prescription lenses but again they're free you can buy additional pairs for a twenty bucks apiece Samsung connectivity is standard there's three HDMI inputs two USB inputs and a component video input there's no PC input but I don't consider that a major omission Samsung's picture settings on this set include two point grayscale it doesn't have the ten point or the color management system found on higher in Samsung TVs it's also has a cinema smooth setting but we really didn't find that to do anything unlike the step-up TVs where it does improve film cadance that takes us to picture quality which on this TV was very good the black levels are nice and deep but not quite as deep as we've seen on some competing similarly priced Panasonic plasmas so that's actually a point against me if you're comparing between the two color is also very good on the set and we appreciated the off angle and uniformity characteristics which as we'd expect from plasma were pretty much perfect on the downside the bright room picture quality this set is again less than some of the other higher-end Samsung TVs and Panasonic TVs we've seen it really doesn't reject that ambient light as well as a lot of screen finishes so you end up with a little more washed out appearance to the picture and brighter lighting 3d picture quality was also a little bit disappointing there was too much crosstalk compared to a lot of the competitors that's a quick look at Samsung's a PNG 550 plasma TV I'm David Katz my