Great picture quality and all the TV apps you'll ever need
The UE40H5500 looks far more unassuming than the rest of Samsung’s TVs due to its plain, unadorned stand. But while it isn’t as glitzy looking as Samsung’s more expensive TVs, its picture quality is impressive.
Both brightness and contrast were excellent in our test, so we could easily make out details in dark scenes in films and TV shows. The only flaws we could see in its colour accuracy were overly strong blues and magentas. We managed to compensate for this, though, by fiddling with the picture-quality settings. The only setting we’d recommend you avoid using is ‘motion lighting’. This attempts to save energy by automatically adjusting the brightness depending on what’s on screen, but this negatively affected contrast levels, making it more difficult to see what was going on in dark scenes.
There’s no 3D support, which is unusual, but we don’t miss this gimmicky feature. You do get plenty of ports, including three HDMI ports as well as SCART, component and composite connectors. There are also two USB ports, an Ethernet connector and an optical audio jack. The built-in speakers were surprisingly good. Dialogue was crystal clear, although sound effects and music lacked punch. Dedicated film and music fans will want to buy a sound bar or other external speakers. Samsung’s smart TV interface feels smooth, thanks to the TV’s quad-core processor.
Samsung’s smart TVs are the only ones that come with apps for every major terrestrial TV catch-up service (at least until Sony’s YouView models arrive this summer). There are also apps for Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Blinkbox, Spotify and YouTube, so there’s no shortage of entertainment.
If you’d rather watch your own videos, switch to the Multimedia panel in the smart TV interface. From here you can play videos and music stored on a USB stick, or from a PC, smartphone, tablet or NAS on your home network. We do wish the interface here was better designed, though. The icons for USB sticks and other connected devices are crowded out by panels for content from YouTube and other online video services - an odd and annoying design decision. In any case, we didn’t have trouble playing any of our video and audio files.
Overall, the UE40H5500 is an excellent TV. You’ll have to tweak the settings to get the best picture, but its image quality is better than other, more expensive TVs we’ve tested. While its smart TV interface could be better designed, it nonetheless has an unrivalled selection of online video content.
VERDICT: Great picture quality and good smart-TV features make Samsung's UE40H5500 a bargain.
SPECIFICATIONS
40in LED TV • 1920x1080 pixel resolution • 4x HDMI • 2x USB2 • 1x component • 1x composite • 1x SCART• 1x Ethernet • WI-FI • Freeview HD • 578x907x196mm • 9kg • One-year warranty