We are big fans of Samsung’s home entertainment line here at NJTechReviews, and in my personal opinion they offer one of the best televisions on the market. Back in 2014 I had the chance to see them unveil their curved UHD TV and see what is still the best picture I have ever seen on their 105-inch Curved UHD TV. But the general consumer is looking for something more affordable that can still deliver breathtaking images and a design that suits his or her home.
Our friends over at Samsung were kind enough to send us out one of the new affordable 2015 models, that being the 48-inch JU6500 Ultra High Definition 4K television. This is a flat screen ultra high-definition display and Samsung paired it with HW-J650 Soundbar and Wireless Subwoofer. I’ve had a few weeks to test it out and now it is time for my full thoughts, but to give you a hint it was quite hard to say goodbye to this TV.
The out of the box setup for a television is not rocket science, and Samsung makes it pretty darn easy. The JU6500 series comes in an array of sizes, from as small as 40-inches and all the way up too 75-inches. With that being said the box for the 48-inch was not nearly as large as the 75-inch and could be comfortably carried by two people. In the box you have a nice stand, as well as a remote, a few manuals, and a power cord. They have also cut down on the amount of styrofoam they use to pack it, which is nice as being eco-friendly is an excellent thing. You can be good to go in literally a matter of minutes, the stand is quite simple to install and the JU6500 series can be wall mounted as well.
The box containing the soundbar and wireless subwoofer was definitely the heavier of the too, but was a more carrying friendly box, in that one person could lift it. Like the 48-inch UHD TV setup, the sound system was a quick setup. As I mentioned the subwoofer is wireless, so all it needs is power. Luckily it comes pre-configured out of the box, so it really is plug and play. I choose to use the optical cable to connect the soundbar to the TV and it worked great. You can also use an HDMI to get the sound from the TV to play through it. After adding in the power cable, all you do is change the setting on the TV to audio out and you will be good to go.
Samsung showcases what 4K and Ultra High Definition mean right when you turn the TV on, the welcome screen and setup process is done with exhilarating colors and insane imagery. It shows you what you just spent a solid amount of money on, and immediately showcases the difference between regular 1080pHD and Ultra High Definition. I don’t say this often about TV’s, but when it comes to Samsung’s picture quality, seeing is truly 100% believing. The resolution of 4K is four times that of regular HD and the 48-inch JU6500 has a resolution of 3840 X 2160 with a motion rate of 120. And while the numbers are quite high, seeing it in person is the only way to really do it justice. I wasn’t a total believer of the true difference between 1080pHD and UHD, or that in normal content you could or would notice a difference, but there really is one.
And it’s not just myself who agrees with this, but my friends and family do as well. You will notice the difference in contrast and color, when you go back to a regular 1080pHD viewing experience. You have to be asking yourself, what about content that is presented in 4K or UHD. Well, content is limited right now to say the least, Netflix offers a few and it is great way to really showcase what the television can do. Amazon Prime, along with Instant Video, offers a little bit more content, but both services have a growing 4K library.
The key feature that Samsung offers, is content upscaling; plain and simple this helps to make any content look pretty darn good on the JU6500. With Samsung’s UHD Upscaling feature it will upscale any content to as close as UHD as possible. It works really well, presenting a Netflix stream or a TV show in a different way, and while it doesn’t look as good as 4K content, there is a noticeably difference with upscaling.
You can get content from an array of sources, as the 48-inch JU6500 has four HDMI ports, built-in WiFi, a component in, a composite in, an optical in, an audio out, and an ethernet port. Plus, it is a smart TV running Samsung’s latest Tizen smart operating system and it offers a fresh take on the smart TV ecosystem. For starters the experience is powered by a quad-core processor and while sometimes an application took a little while longer then it should have to open, my experience with the smart aspect of the television was nice. Samsung offers a very large application store, so much to the effect that you don’t need to buy a streaming player to access your favorite services. And an important note to make, would be that you can order Dominos right from the TV, this was a pretty neat feature. Tizen is card based operating system, it will open up in the bottom of left hand corner of the screen, when you command it too, and it will move out horizontally from there. Samsung really designed the smart experience to be simple and there is really no learning curve to it.
I choose to test out sound in the only way I know how, and that was of course watching a Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band concert. It was Live in Hyde Park on a Blu-Ray disc playing off an Xbox One and to say the least, it was like I have never seen the show before. The mix between the nature scenes from the open air venue, with the perfect level of sound from the soundbar and woofer made for an excellent viewing and listening experience. The sound quality was truly phenomenal and made the viewing experience better, I will say I did increase the amount of bass on the woofer. Finding the right balance between sound and bass wasn’t too hard, but you do control the sound portion via a separate remote and via a small white LED light screen on the front of the bar.
Samsung is still the best when it comes to picture quality, they truly are the king and queen in the home entertainment space; they are the one to beat. The area where it is hard to judge is pricing, because the 4K and UHD televisions are pricey, and Samsung is somewhere in the middle when it comes to affordability. But, I will say this while anyone buying an ultra high-definition television right now, might not have a ton of true 4K content to watch, you are future proofing yourself and with Samsung UHD televisions you are future proofing yourself with the best picture quality out there. While the JU6500 series is the most affordable, it still delivers a record high picture quality along with a great smart TV eco-system and some of the best content upscaling I have seen. And if you are looking for a solid sound system the HW-J650 Soundbar and Wireless Subwoofer is a nice package, but it comes in around $599. The 48-inch JU6500 series television has a manufacture suggested price of $1,249, but you can get for it a lot cheaper from Amazon for around $897 with Prime shipping. I highly recommend the Samsung JU6500 Ultra High Definition television series and the 48-inch model truly gets the job done.
We would like to thank Samsung for providing us with the UN48JU6500 television and the HW-J650 Soundbar and Wireless Subwoofer for us to review.
Pingback: 2015 Holiday Gift Guide - NJTechReviews()