Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)

Review by SJWNYC for Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)
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I have researched every brand of TV via internet and store visit in the last 6 months and narrowed it down to Samsung. After deciding I wasn’t interested in 3D, I looked for the best 2D TV with the best Picture. With out a question, this is the best 2D TV on the market today. First, the out of the box plug and play was super easy. I was expecting to calibrate the settings and had CNETs suggestions ready. To my amazement the factory picture settings were almost spot on. The main take away from this review is that the picture quality is really the best I’ve seen. If there is only one con to this unit, like other LEDs, the picture’s colors do get slightly washed out at very extreme angles. Other than that no other issues (no corner ghosting). Even the sound I really believe is better than average, but I will upgrade to a sound bar for that theater/sports volume needed. Again, picture picture picture quality is amazing and you should buy this TV.

Review by Journey Svelt for Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)
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Like many other people, I purchased this TV after an extensive research on the net in addition to side-by-side comparison at Best Buy and Costco warehouse. Costco doesn’t have exactly same model but it was same line with lower number, UN55C6300. This Samsung LED TV simply blew away the competition by big margin. The other LCD and LED models looked simply pale and pallid in color.

I ordered this TV on July 5, 2010 and received it on July 8, 2010, just 3 days after I clicked ‘Place Order.’ There’s no need to say it was a very prompt and fast delivery. The picture quality is just as many other people said who purchased Samsung LED TV. It’s stunningly clear and so life-like. My wife and I were watching a Boston RedSox game on New England Sports Network the other day, and she commented that the game looked like being played right in front her. My living room is rather small for 55-inch TV, but I wanted a big TV as this is going to be my main TV replacing 40-inch LCD I had last couple of years. I tweaked the TV settings a little bit before I went back to factory setting, which should satisfy most of the people. I tested this TV with Avatar Blu Ray using PlayStation 3. Boy… You should see the clarity and crispiness to believe it. It was jaw-dropping experience for my whole family. After I closed my jaw, I took the Avatar Blu Ray upstairs to see it on 46-inch Samsung LCD, curious to feel the difference between LCD and LED. The difference was rather obvious. I thought LCD was clear enough. The color on LED was much brighter, more vibrant, and richer. Deep-richer… This is not 3-D, but it looked as if we were watching 3-D because of its richness in color and clarity.

The sound from the TV is very impressive as well. Some people mentioned about their dissatisfaction with TV speakers, but I thought it was more than adequate and loud enough. Many times I have to turn down the volume because my daughter watches her Nickelodeon programs too loud. The only thing I am not quite happy about this TV is the remote control. It does its job but it looks a little cheap.

By the way, your cable provider makes a whole lot of difference in picture quality. I have DirecTV as my satellite service. I received a number of calls from AT&T U-verse asking me to switch to their service, and decided to check their picture quality at one of their stores in Southern California. I have to tell you, it’s not quite the same. DirecTV service costs more but when it comes to picture quality there’s no comparison. No matter how superb your TV is, if the source of the program is not up there, your costly investment won’t quite satisfy you. Even the most expensive LED TV is not a magic box which can turn fuzzy 480p into clear 1080p.

So, in conclusion, it’s quite a premium to pay another $1,000 to buy this LED TV over comparable LCD model (LN55C6500), but I am glad I decided on LED purely based on its unequivocal picture quality. At least, I could pay off $2,400 over 24 months without paying a cent of interest.

Review by J. Hodges for Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)
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(The replies to this review might not make sense as I have edited it.)

I only gave this TV three stars at first because movies were unwatchable on it. I had tried the suggestions to no avail. Today, after switching the “auto motion plus” feature off on the correct (blu ray player) input (not the LED motion plus – you can turn that one on if you like), the movies look like movies again and they look great.

So now I no longer have any complaints about this TV and I am a very satisfied customer.

Great blacks, no bleeding, great picture (some adjustment may be needed), internet@tv is neat, sleek looking, I could go on and on.

5 stars now. Good job Samsung.

Review by Alexander Jimenez for Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)
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This is an amazing Tv. After months of research on which LED 55″ I brought it down to a few choices that I was considering. It was between the Samsung Un55C7000/Un55C8000/un55c6800 & Sony HX800. I decided against the 7000 Samsung due to a lot of negative reviews highlighting the “clouding” and light peaking out of the corners of the tv. Both the 6800 and 8000 Samsungs took care of this by Precision Dimming which the 7000 did not have. Both of them also offered a higher contrast ratio to give you deeper blacks. So the options were whether I wanted a 3D tv (Samsung un558000 or Sony hx800)or a similar quality non 3D LED. Ultimately, I decided against 3D as there are less than a handful of 3D DVDs available now and the additional equipment needed was very pricey. Better to wait some time until more options are available and price goes down. This Samsung 6800 has been beautiful to watch, I mounted it on the wall using the Samsung Slim wall mount ($139 Amazon vs. $250 at the B store). It looks amazing, just like a painting hanging on the wall…I would definitely recommend it to anyone if you are buying this tv with it’s 1 inch thick frame you should keep highlighting it. The wall mount only adds an extra .6 inches to it.

I was concerned that Samsungs had a glossy screen as I had a very bright room and the Sony’s were Matte so less reflective. This has been a non issue as once the tv is on there are no issues with reflecting lights, and the picture is dynamic with beautiful colors. Blu Ray looks unbelievable on this tv. The sound from the speakers are pretty impressive too. To give you an idea, I usually listen to it on a 16-20 volume level and I am in a hall type room with high ceilings of 20 feet. The max is 100 so it is more than adequate. If you are looking at your buying options, the B store does not sell this model, instead they offer the 6900 series which is similar except an exclusive of theirs (extra apps) but really not worth the extra $ they charge, plus taxes and delivery. Amazon had the best deal.

So all in all, I have been very happy with this Tv, it is an amazing high end LED with vivid colors and beatiful appeal. Hope this helps for those evaluating similar options.

Review by JC for Samsung UN55C6800 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV (Black)
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Little background:

currently have two Plasmas in the household. I am a big fan of their picture quality, black levels, motion handling, and input lag (PS3 games).

Began around three months ago searching for a larger TV, as my 50″ plasma just wasn’t cutting it for me in terms of size b/c we sit 14′ away from the screen. Unfortunately, my built-in entertainment center width was a major constraint. No plasma larger than 50″ could fit (the 54″ G25 Panasonic was 0.5″ too wide!!). I began to look at LEDs as they were built with thinner bezels and could thus squeeze into my entertainment center and still have a diagonal of 55″.

I was very concerned with a few items when i purchased this TV:

1. Picture Quality (potential) Problems

a) Flashlighting – read anywhere on Edge-lit LEDs and this is probably the #1 problem that comes up. Please note that with this TV i do NOT watch in complete darkness. Watching in complete darkness tends to exacerbate any flashlighting or clouding problems you may see in an edge-lit set. As for my set, I can definitely see some flashlighting from the corners on letterbox stuff or very dark scenes. I am looking for it though. If I had not read about flashlighting onine I probably would have never noticed. My wife thinks I am crazy. The flashlighting may go away once I get a chance to calibrate the set (I only tinkered with the settings a little) but I think either way I can live with it (and probably will forget about it in a few months)

b) Black Levels – the reason i bought the 6800 instead of the 6500. The 6800 has “Precision Dimming”, Samsung’s edge-lit workaround to true full array local dimming sets. Did I buy into marketing hype or was the extra money worth the precision dimming? I can’t say for sure since I never owned the 6500, but I am happy (but NOT at all wowed) with the black levels of the 6800. I felt my old Plasma black levels were better. 4:3 content or letterbox content sometimes has “glowing” black bars instead of inky blacks. For the most part the black levels are sufficient, but I did see one case that made me cringe: flipped over to Larry King Live and the back of his set was cloudy and had really bad uniformity. This is definitely not the case on my plasmas. Could be a calibration issue though.

The 6800 definitely has better colors and depth to it though. Certain shows look drop dead gorgeous on this TV that i never felt that way with my old TV, most likely due to the color reproduction and brighter display of this LED compared to plasma.

2. Input lag for gaming – I am a HEAVY online FPS gamer (PS3). That’s all I do on my PS3. COD, Killzone, etc. you name the FPS and I am playing the online multiplayer, and playing it a LOT. The “twitchier” the better. I’ve never played games on an LCD/LED TV before and have always read that LCDs/LEDs can have terrible input lag compared to Plasmas. I was extremely worried about how my gaming would be on this LED tv. I think I lost countless hours of sleep over this one, with Black Ops and Killzone 3 on the near horizon ;). Well I am very pleased to say that with Game Mode ON, I do not notice any input lag difference from this LED from my Plasma. Modern Warfare 2 plays very snappy and fast like I am accustomed to. This was a great relief!!! With Game Mode OFF and AMP set to Clear, I could tell a little input lag but it was not anything that would get in the way of any non-FPS/Music games (i.e. any RPG players out there probably would be ok with AMP on). With Game Mode ON I did not notice any abnormal blurring or skipping of the picture…I felt everything about the game playing experience was on par with my old plasma.

3. Motion Handling – read online about the Samsung LEDs and you will find many people complaining about skipping/stuttering in the picture w/ this year’s version of AMP. I wont get into all the details since if you are considering this TV you probably have already read some complaints online. Watched hours of football this weekend and all the plays and scrolling ticker I could not see any skipping or stuttering. I have AMP set to “Clear”. For movies, I have AMP set to OFF and noticed a handful of times where it skipped a frame. If I had not been looking for it I probably would have not even noticed. Motion gets an A in my book and I don’t see any discernable difference from my plasmas. Blu-ray playback on my PS3 @ 24hz looks good! (AMP turned off)

4. Off-Angle Viewing – i didnt think i would have an issue with this, but i surprisingly kind of do. Our kitchen and family room are kind of one huge room (open) so often when we are cooking/cleaning dishes we watch TV too. Granted, the viewing angle from the kitchen is pretty extreme (I’d put it at 20/30 degrees if 0 degrees was directly parallel to TV) but my old plasma (like all plasmas) did not lose any quality from the kitchen. This set washes out pretty badly. We obviously dont watch anything “important” while in the kitchen so i can live with this gripe.

Conclusion:

When you feed this set good material and are sitting directly in front (which for me and my wife would be 95% of the time) the picture is very good in my opinion.

Aside from being 55″ (which a huge plus) and being more energy efficient, I am not sure this LED TV can top anything that Plasmas can offer (cheaper, better blacks, better uniformity, same or better PQ, etc). If my entertainment center magically widened by 2″-3″ there is no doubt in my mind I would pack up this LED and return it immediately for a Panasonic 54″ G25, 54″ VT25, or 58″ Samsung C7000 plasma. No doubt (and I would save a lot of money too!). But given my constraints and my want for a >50″ TV, I am happy with the purchase. As more and more time passes by I am growing more and more fond of the set. It is really good looking and the picture quality most of the time is great. I hope the build quality is good and this set lasts me a while, but just in case I will get an extended warranty as well.

Delivery Notes:

Frequent shopper here on Amazon but I’ve never bought anything so large or expensive online before. When I got the notice that the TV shipped using CEVA I was kind of worried, since there seems to be a lot of posts online about frustration with CEVA. First tip I kept seeing over and over is to call them right away to schedule a delivery. Very true. I ordered on a Sunday, got shipping confirmation from Amazon on Monday. Monday night CEVA’s tracking system was up with the tracking number provided by Amazon. I called them first thing Tuesday morning and set up delivery for Wednesday. Very helpful and nice staff over there at CEVA. Delivery window was 9AM-1PM, however they came well after 1PM. Luckily my wife was home all day, but if I had taken time off to wait for them I would have been pretty upset that they didn’t come during the window. No harm done though. My wife said the delivery men were extremely nice. I did not want them to set it up even though they offered to my wife. TV box was in pristine condition. CEVA gets an A from me.

Note to TV shoppers: AVS forums are a great place to look for helpful tips. Wonderful community over there. However…I will advise that you do not spend TOO much time there, as it may make you second-guess any decision you end up making. Every TV has its ups and downs…you just have to pick your poison. In my opinion, plasmas have less “poison” to pick, but that’s just me. Order from Amazon and you’ll have a nice return window in case you dont like something. Remember, just because someone on the internet likes/dislikes something about a TV says nothing about that same thing will affect you.