Samsung HT-D5500 review

Samsung’s HT-D5000 all-in-one system is all about style. From the slot-loading disc tray, pulsing white activity LED and touch-sensitive buttons to the satellite speakers finished in glossy black plastic and brushed metal, there’s very little not to like about its design.

Unusually, the satellite speakers don’t include any speaker grilles. Keeping the driver cones on display certainly adds to the smart design but they will be more susceptible to damage. It might be a good idea to use the wall-mounting holes, as this will keep them out of the way of small children who are most likely to cause accidental damage.

The HT D5500 is also unusual in that it uses different sized speakers for the front and rear satellites. While the front pair use both mid-range drivers and high-frequency tweeters, the rear pair only have mid-range drivers. The centre speaker has two mid-range drivers, albeit slightly smaller than the satellites, and a single tweeter. This should make speech slightly clearer and easier to hear over background audio.

Although the main unit has proprietary speaker connections, the cables provided connect to each speaker using regular spring terminals, allowing for easy extensions. Besides, the 10m rear satellite cables should be long enough for most living rooms.

The main unit also has plenty of other ports, including two HDMI inputs, a component out and optical S/P-DIF input, as well as an FM radio antenna, Ethernet port, single USB port and a proprietary iPod connector for the included dock. All the HDMI ports support version 1.4, so you can connect a games console and play 3D content.

We had no trouble playing multimedia files from a USB memory stick and over the network using DLNA. It played every video file we threw its way, including DivX HD, Xvid and MKV, but music and picture support is limited to MP3 and JPEG respectively.

There are lots of online features, including Facebook, Twitter, BBC iPlayer and film rentals from both AceTrax and LoveFilm. There’s also a host of other free channels available to download through Samsung’s own storefront. The on-screen display is attractive enough, although it looked a little pixelated at 1080p. The menu interface is straightforward and easy to navigate, but we often struggled to find the button we wanted on the confusingly laid-out remote control.

Blu-ray movies took a leisurely 44 seconds to load from standby, but our patience was rewarded with impressive sound quality. Speech sounded clear and positional audio was accurate. Bass was slightly lacking at the default settings, but a quick trip to the settings menu soon rectified the issue. Explosions and gunshots were then powerful enough to make us feel it in our seat, although it was no match for systems comprising a dedicated AV amp and speakers. Music sounded equally impressive. Acoustic tracks sounded best, as the finer details weren’t drowned out by the subwoofer, while rock and electronic songs carried weight.

Costing just a few pounds less than the excellent Sony BDV-E380, it could be a difficult decision as to which one you would pick. Both look and sound excellent, have plenty of connectivity options and online content. Purely for its ease of use and slightly wider variety of catch-up channels, we would recommend the Sony, but Samsung’s system is an excellent alternative.