Introduction
There's a danger that any high-end 'merely' HD TV this year might struggle to find an audience given that such sets are now getting squeezed by the dropping prices and the growing numbers of UHD sets in the marketplace. But this danger seems particularly acute for the UE55H8000 given that it costs a somewhat eye-watering £2,200.
Samsung sets about its task of justifying such a cost with gusto, though. As soon as you've got the UE55H8000 out of its box it hits you with a truly distinctive, highly stylised design based around a screen with a gentle curve.
Curve Driver
This isn't the first curved TV we've tested, of course. That honour went to the LG 55EA980W OLED followed by Samsung's own UE65HU8500 UHD set. But the curve remains a source of interest and controversy - though if it makes you feel better to stick a 'first for' label on it, then the UE55H8000 is actually the first curved screen full HD edge LED TV we've tested.
The curve plays its part in what really is an attractive design, backed up by a strikingly slim bezel around the screen. The only issue aesthetically with the curve is that it doesn't work so well if you wall hang it. But research suggests that precious few of us actually do that, however much we might intend to!
Connections on the UE55H8000's rear (you don't get an external connections box like you do with the HU8500 series) are prodigious. They include: four HDMIs, three USBs, a LAN port, built-in Wi-Fi, both Freesat and Freeview HD tuner inputs, and a large bay where you could add a future Samsung Evolution Kit.
Theory of Evolution
These Evolution Kits rather brilliantly enable you to upgrade the functionality of your TV with future Samsung operating systems. And we're not just talking about a few software tweaks here; the Evolution Kits replace your TV's entire chipsets to create an almost completely different TV to the one you first bought.
In other words, the UE55H8000 is truly upgradable to an extent that no other brand of TV currently is. Which, given the fast-paced changes of the TV tech world, can only be a good thing.
The UE55H8000's multimedia support is huge. It almost goes without saying that it can stream photos, music and pictures from networked PCs and smart devices. But it also supports Bluetooth connections, screen mirroring with smart devices, and access to Samsung's latest online Smart TV platform.
The apps available on this online platform number are prodigious in number, and include a host of the video streaming services that represent the most important smart TV content. All the favourites are there, including Netflix, Blinkbox and Amazon Instant.
The only glaring omission at the time of writing is the BBC iPlayer. Samsung assures us the iPlayer will become available, but can't specify an actual date at the moment.
The 2014 Samsung smart hub is surprisingly similar to 2013's system, right down to the provision of five separate content 'hubs'. There are a few differences if you look closely though. First, the previous social media hub has now been mixed in with the multimedia hub where you can access your own stored content from USBs and connected computers, while the hub that used to be dedicated to social media is now given over to games.
The hub arrangement is better, even if the system still feels a bit inscrutable at first. But it has to be said that by only advancing a little from last year's model Samsung has potentially opened itself up to having its smart TV dominance challenged.
Smart thinking
Samsung's latest smart phone/tablet app is a big improvement on last year's version. It now integrates all its functions, including second-screen viewing of what's showing on the TV's multiple tuners, onto a single app, rather than requiring you to use multiple apps.
The Samsung smart services also still include Samsung's sophisticated S-Recommendations system, which can learn the sort of programmes you like and start to make suggestions accordingly.
Samsung has introduced some new control innovations for 2014 too, including a gesture control system that supports finger rather than hand-level recognition. There's also a new smart remote that adds point and click functionality to Samsung's control options. We'll look at these innovations in more detail in the Usability section later.
Picture technology
In terms of the picture technology inside the UE55H8000, it doesn't benefit from quite the same spec level as that lavished on the UHD HU8500 series. In particular its edge LED lighting system doesn't benefit from a full local dimming system like the UHD model.
It does, though, get the highest version of Samsung's micro dimming system – micro dimming ultimate. This breaks the image down into hundreds of constituent parts for analysis so that it can deliver more accurate adjustments to its settings. Sets lower down Samsung's range break the image down into a small number of processing 'zones', and thus deliver less accurate results.
Panel talk
The UE55H8000 also uses one of Samsung's latest generation of panels (as you might have guessed from its curved nature) which bodes well for its performance based on our experience of the stellar UE65HU8500.
Though before we get too carried away, as well as only having a quarter as many pixels and no local dimming, the UE55H8000 also lacks the brilliant PurColour engine that helped its UHD sibling deliver such a huge improvement in colour resolution over Samsung's previous TV generations.
Samsung's high-end TVs usually deliver a huge array of picture calibration tools, and the UE55H8000 is no different.
Colour management, gamma management, white balance management, detail management, black level management… basically, if an element of picture quality can be managed, the UE55H8000 lets you manage it!
Among the most important features to familiarise yourself with if you want to optimise the set's picture quality are the processing elements associated with noise reduction, motion reproduction and contrast. But actually I'd say it's worth familiarising yourself with as many of the provided picture tools as possible. As is often the case with Samsung TVs, the four provided picture presets you get on the UE55H8000 aren't especially helpful.
Picture Quality
While the UE55H8000 understandably doesn't hit the extraordinary picture heights of the UE65HU8500, it's quickly apparent that it's still a seriously excellent TV. It's as good a performer as the HD world has delivered to date in many ways.
The star of the show is its impeccable black level response. Dark scenes look exceptionally natural and involving thanks to the TV's ability to produce a black colour that actually looks black, rather than some shade of grey like we still see on other LCD TVs.
So long as you reduce the set's backlight to around its 7-9 level you can enjoy black levels from the UE55H8000 that can be considered state of the art by LCD TV standards. It's an achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that the UE55H8000 doesn't employ a full local dimming system.
Backlight Consistency
It's great to see, too, that the gorgeous black level response is consistent from corner to corner, displaying no problems with backlight clouding. This is a real relief given that we'd had concerns over what problems the UE55H8000's curve might present to an edge LED lighting system.
It's impressive to see that the deep black colours are delivered on the UE55H8000 without sacrificing much brightness from dark images. A fact that means precious little shadow detail gets squeezed out of the picture.
This shows that the panel's native contrast performance is very strong, as the black level response isn't purely a function of the TV's dynamic contrast light manipulation circuit. It also makes sure that, unusually for LCD technology, dark scenes contain as much of a sense of depth as bright ones.
Colour prowess
I usually find that good black levels lead to lots of other good picture traits too, and that's even more obvious on the UE55H8000. Colours, for starters, are excellent. Saturations are rich and bold but – so long as you avoid the dynamic preset – they never tip over into unrealistic, cartoonish territory.
There's also plenty of finesse in the set's handling of colour blends, which enhances the sense of solidity of objects in the image and removes all trace of the colour blocking and striping artefacts that can leave lesser HD images looking rough and ready.
Admittedly I did feel acutely aware of the step down in colour resolution and range from the UE65HU8500 caused by the UE55H8000's lack of PurColour technology. But it's not really fair to compare too closely TVs separated in price by £1800. By high-end HD TV market standards, the UE55H8000's colour handling is outstanding.
Sharpness
When using the set's out of the box settings the sharpness is a bit too exaggerated, to the point where grain starts to look overstated and edges start to look over-stressed. Reduce the TV's sharpness setting by around 10-15 steps, though, and you still get a very detailed image (albeit not one that gets even close to the resolution of a UHD image) but one that looks much more natural and 'polished'.
What about the curve? Does that bring anything to the picture quality table? Maybe. If you sit reasonably close to the TV and as near its centre as you can, then yes, the image does seem both deeper and more immersive thanks to the way the image seems to wrap ever so slightly around your peripheral vision.
It's worth saying, too, that the curve doesn't limit viewing angles as much as you might have expected. In fact, the curve actually helps with off-axis viewing to some extent, as it prevents the usual reduction in contrast and colour you get with flat LCD TVs.
Viewing angles issues
However, if you get beyond around 35 degrees off axis with your viewing angle the image does start to look uncomfortable thanks to the way the nearside of the picture looks narrower than the far side. Crucially the area of living room acceptable to sit in to avoid this effect is smaller than it was on the UE65HU8500, due simply to the HD model's smaller screen size.
The smaller screen size also means you need to sit closer to get the immersive benefits of the curve than you do with the larger 65-inch set. All of which underlines my long-held belief that the usefulness of a curved TV screen increases as screen sizes increase, making its appearance on a relatively small 55-inch TV of debatable merit.
One other point I should make about the curve is that it can distort reflections in your room so that they stretch across more of the screen than they would with a flat panel. So try and watch in dark conditions and make sure you don't have a wall-mounted light source directly opposite the screen.
We've got two more picture areas to cover off: motion and 3D. Regarding the former, the UE55H8000 does a good job – a better job by far, in fact, than previous Samsung TV generations have. This is because, presumably, its new Quad Core Plus processing engine's extra horsepower is able to deliver better/cleaner results on the fly.
3D Motion
This improved motion processing is particularly helpful with 3D. You can use it on its lowest power setting to reduce the judder issue Samsung TVs commonly suffer with when showing 3D.
In other respects the UE55H8000's 3D pictures are excellent. Detail levels are extremely high, providing a potent reminder of why the full HD active 3D format was created. In fact, Samsung's 3D preset pushes sharpness too hard, leaving details looking unnaturally over-wrought. But a moment's work reducing the sharpness setting is all that's required to correct this.
The sense of depth in the UE55H8000's 3D images is outstanding too. This is partly thanks to the image's sharpness and the remarkable brightness of 3D images, despite the dimming effect of the active shutter glasses (two of which you get free with the TV). It's also because of the set's superb contrast performance, which makes it easier – even during dark scenes - for your eye to pick out the key depth markers that help delineate a sense of 3D space.
The curved screen slightly enhances the sense of depth in the image too, though this is a pretty marginal point.
The rather over-aggressive nature of Samsung's 3D preset means that, as well as the over-egged sharpness, there's a little backlight clouding until you reduce the backlight level.
There's also some slight crosstalk ghosting noise over distant objects that you can't completely eradicate via the TV's settings. But while we certainly wish active 3D LCD panels had figured out a way to eradicate crosstalk by now, its appearance on the UE55H8000 is in truth quite subdued, and so doesn't stop you enjoying 3D overall.
Usability, Sound and Value
Usability
Last year Samsung faced criticism for not working hard enough to guide new users through the many intricacies of its new Smart TV system. This year has certainly seen an improvement by shipping the UE55H8000 with built-in tutorial videos, an illustrated contextual onscreen instructions manual, and a more detailed and well-explained initial installation system.
Samsung has also worked hard to improve the interface options available to you. First, instead of the previous gesture control system's fatiguing dependence on waving your hands around, you are now able to simply wave your fingers, making it much less tiring.
Though I still only ever felt inclined to let my fingers do the talking on the rare occasions where I couldn't put my hands on either of the two physical remote controls you get with the UE55H8000.
These remotes comprise a standard and smart one, with the smart one likely being the one most people will use most (once they've got used to its foibles).
Smarter remote
The smart remote carries a wealth of different control options. First, there's a small track pad at its centre that lets you move the onscreen cursor around via small sliding movements of your thumb. Second, around the touch pad there are four straightforward navigation buttons for moving up, down, left or right. And third, for the first time with a Samsung remote there's a point and click system similar to that used by the Nintendo Wiimote – or LG's 'Magic' TV Remotes.
We've always found point and click systems to feel very intuitive, and to some extent this is borne out by Samsung's implementation too. However, there is one niggle, namely that the onscreen cursor bizarrely doesn't necessarily correspond exactly to the place on the screen where you're pointing the remote.
This is because the cursor always reappears in the same place on the screen it was when you last used it, rather than in the place on the screen where you're actually pointing.
I'd also say there's still room for improvement when it comes to making the onscreen menus more intuitive. Though I did like the new feature whereby when you first hit the Smart Hub button you now get a list of the past 15 sources you've used – irrespective of whether they were TV shows, AV inputs or content apps.
Sound
Well hallelujah. Samsung has finally managed to partner the excellent picture quality that has characterised its top-end LCD TVs with some seriously decent audio.
The UE55H8000 uses a ducting system to greatly boost the range of sound it can produce. A decent amount of reasonably well-rounded bass at the bottom end of the audio spectrum; a strikingly open mid-range that's roomy enough to shift up a gear or two to handle action scenes and keeps voices sounding clear and credible; and trebles that sound clear and detailed without appearing harsh or dislocated from the rest of the soundstage.
It's hard to see how a TV with a downfiring speaker system could sound much better, really.
Value
This is potentially the UE55H8000's Achilles' heel. £2,200 might not have looked too out of the way for a flagship full HD TV last year, but with the prices of UHD sets plummeting this year I do wonder if £2,200 might be too close to the price of some 55-inch UHD TVs.
It's also striking that Sony's new flagship 55-inch HD TV, the 55W955B (look out for a review soon), is only £1550.
Still, there's no doubt that the UE55H8000 is feature packed, gorgeously designed and a brilliant performer. If rival HD models like the Sony end up falling short then the UE55H8000 could well end up looking like a classic case of 'if you want the best, you have to pay for it'.
Verdict
The 55-inch UE55H8000 jumps off crowded store shelves at you thanks to its curved screen design – and its rather eye-watering price for a full HD TV.
It works hard to justify this price with its feature count, though, which includes a sophisticated smart TV system with an effective content recommendation engine, more control options than any other brand of TV can offer and some potent picture technology in that new curved screen.
By far the best justification for its price, though, comes from its performance. For while the curve is less persuasive on this 55-inch TV than it was on the bigger, 65-inch Samsung UE65HU8500, its picture quality is supremely good, while its sound is startlingly powerful.
We liked
The curve looks cool, the set ticks all of my flagship HD TV connection and feature boxes, picture quality is stellar, and sound quality is one of the best I've heard.
We disliked
The picture presets are too aggressive, the curved screen exaggerates the reflections of any light sources you may have opposite it, the complexity of the operating systems present a stiff learning curve and it looks expensive for a non-UHD TV.
Verdict
The UE55H8000 is a stunning performer that shows there's plenty of life in HD yet. It's also flexible with its control options, and accompanies its stellar pictures with startlingly robust sonics.
It's a couple of hundred pounds dearer than I'd ideally like, but if there's a better 55-inch full HD TV around this year I'd love to see it!
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