Samsung UE65HU8500 review

For this review we tested the 65in model in the HU8500 range, but it’s also available in a 55in (UE55HU8500) screen size for £2,700. Both models have identical specifications except for their dimensions and power usage. We’re confident that image quality will be practically identical across the range.

Samsung’s curved Ultra HD TVs were the talk of CES this year, and with good reason. With a huge resolution of 3,840×2,160 and a 4.2m curvature radius, 4K has never felt so immersive. The curved edges not only make it feel like you’re right in the centre of the action, but it also makes the screen appear larger than it really is, which is quite a feat considering the HU8500, one of Samsung’s first 4K models this year, is already an imposing 65in across.

4K content is still very thin on the ground, so most of what you watch will still be Full HD for the forseeable future

4K content is still generally a bit thin on the ground, but with Netflix now streaming House of Cards in Ultra HD and more 4K content on the way, albeit mainly in the form of Samsung’s forthcoming UHD Video Pack (a 1TB USB hard drive that comes preloaded with five blockbuster films and three documentaries, price to be confirmed), there are a few more reasons to consider buying a 4K TV now than there were last year. Although the HU8500’s price of £3,999 is roughly in the same region as previous 4K sets we’ve seen, such as the Sony KD 65X9005A and the Philips 65PFL9708.

Samsung HU8500 Ports and Design

We’re big fans of the HU8500’s design as well. Its sleek, metallic stand curves in unison with the screen and its surprisingly slim, minimalist chassis looks far more elegant than the huge speakers attached to the sides of the Sony KD 65X9005A, although the hidden speakers here can’t live up to that TVs audio prowess. If you’re looking to use a separate surround sound system then the HU8500’s lesser speakers won’t be an issue, though.

The curved back of the TV looks great too, far more stylish than most, great if you have big open plan space and don’t want the TV pushed up against a wall. In respect of this, Samsung has minimised the number of ports on the TV itself, with just three ports on the back: one for power, one for Samsung’s proprietary audio output, and one for Samsung’s brand new One Connect box.

There’s plenty of extra stuff in the box, two remotes, the breakout box and two pairs of 3D glasses (only one pictured)

The One Connect box is essentially a dedicated set-top box which acts as a huge port hub, making it much easier to switch cables in and out and keep most of the messy wiring well away from your TV. Along with four HDMI 2.0 inputs, one of which supports MHL 3.0 so you can charge and use an MHL-compatible phone or tablet with the TV, you’ll find three USB ports (two USB2 and one USB3), an Ethernet port, a digital optical audio output, an IR output, a Common Interface slot, two satellite tuners, a TV tuner for terrestrial aerials, a component input and an EXT-RGB port for SCART.

There’s all the ports you’re likely to need on the breakout, One Connect, box

The cable that connects the box to the TV initially looks a bit like DisplayPort, but it’s not. The proprietary cable is 3m long, so you’ll need to keep the box within reasonable reach of the screen, as far as we know you can’t simply buy a longer cable.

Samsung UE65HU8500 4K, HD and SD

When we fired up House of Cards in 4K, the amount of detail on show was simply stunning. Tiny cars and trees in slow, wide landscape shots were all visible with razor sharp edges without the slightest hint of noise or blocking, while zoomed in close-ups really took advantage of the huge screen size to emphasise the smaller details you might not notice on a Full HD stream. We noticed a slight amount of judder when actors moved quickly across the screen, particularly toward the edges of the TV, but enabling Samsung’s Motion Plus setting soon helped to smooth this out.

However, we quickly ran into problems when we tried viewing anything less than 4K, and standard definition content fared particularly badly. Samsung’s upscaling technology certainly eliminates a lot of noise and artefacts, but the picture appeared so smooth and blurred round the edges that we lost all sense of detail. We expect this to some degree on large screens with high resolutions, but unlike 1,920×1,080 TVs, objects on the UE65HU8500 simply looked like solid lumps of colour while text in adverts and news channels was almost illegible. Setting the MPEG Noise Filter and Digital Clean View options to their highest settings did help to some extent, but you’ll definitely want to avoid watching SD channels as much as possible on the UE65HU8500.

Thankfully, Full HD content looked much better, but it didn’t quite blow us away as much as we were expecting. Upscaling remained relatively aggressive, as TV presenters still looked a little blurred and soft round the edges on HD TV channels, but landscapes and more static scenes still showed plenty of detail.

Switching to Blu-Ray produced better results. Everything upscaled beautifully and we rarely felt like we were losing out on resolution. However, one thing that was lacking in our Star Trek test footage was the film’s pronounced grain effect. This was almost completely wiped out unless we dramatically increased the sharpness settings, but raising it too far had the adverse effect of making everything else look far too harsh and brittle. This will be a blessing for some, but we were a little disappointed the UE65HU8500’s upscaling tech couldn’t quite capture the whole picture with complete precision.

4K content is gaining momentum with online streaming services, such as Netflix

We also had to spend a fair amount of time tweaking the picture settings and calibrating the TV with our X-Rite i1 DisplayPro colour calibrator before we found a pleasing level of image quality. Considering the price, we were hoping for perfection straight out of the box, but the default Standard picture mode was far too washed out for our liking and Dynamic and Natural were a little too oversaturated. Fortunately, Samsung has included a huge range of picture settings so you can tweak each profile to your liking.

We settled on the Movie picture mode, and then set the Dynamic Contrast setting to Medium, the Black Tone to Dark, increased the Gamma setting to +2 and changed the colour space to Native. With these settings, colours were almost as punchy as our reference TV, and our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 92.6 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. This is good, but we managed to increase this to a much more impressive 98.2 per cent once we’d calibrated the TV using the 2-point white balance settings. This helped colours look much more vibrant and vivid and we could barely tell the difference between the UE65HU8500 and our reference TV.

The UE65HU8500’s contrast levels were also excellent, as we were able to see a huge amount of fine shadow detail right from the outset. With a measured contrast ratio of 4,068:1 post-calibration, dark night scenes were extremely well-illuminated and the detail wasn’t lost in the TV’s extremely deep black levels of 0.05cd/m2. We were particularly impressed with the depth of the UE65HU8500’s Cinema Black setting, as this disables the backlight around the black bars in films to create a truly black border without the slightest hint of backlight bleeding.

Samsung HU8500 Motion Plus and 3D

We had to turn on the Motion Plus setting for fast-paced action sequences, though, as we noticed a fair amount of jerky camera movement in both Star Trek and our test footage of Avatar. The Standard and Smooth options were a little too pronounced for our liking as we saw evidence of tearing, but the default Custom setting was just right. Fast camera pans were smooth and characters in more sedate scenes still moved naturally. The Clear option, on the other hand, wasn’t really strong enough.

We’re not sure curved TVs are best suited to active 3D viewing, though, as we saw a greater amount of crosstalk on the HU8500 than we ever have on flat screens. This tended to occur with objects very near to the foreground around the edges of the screen, and lighter, brighter scenes also showed very small traces of flicker as well. We didn’t find it too uncomfortable to watch on the whole, but this isn’t something we’d normally expect from a £4,000 TV. We were also disappointed that the 3D picture settings were so thin on the ground. You can change the 3D perspective, but that’s about it. Depth was greyed out and the only other option available was switching the image from left to right and vice versa. The HU8500 only comes with two pairs of 3D glasses, too, while the Sony KD 65X9005A gives you four.

Samsung HU8500 Smart Hub

Luckily, Samsung’s smart content remains first class. The Smart Hub has actually changed very little since last year’s models, which is just as well since we were big fans of the 2013 interface. Samsung hasn’t been sitting on its laurels, though, as the few small tweaks it has made to the Smart Hub make it much more pleasant to use.

The On TV panel is now much more personalised. Like last year, there’s a large live feed of your current source on the left, but the rest of the screen now shows twelve big thumbnails of other programmes currently on air that are based on show popularity and your own personal viewing habits. It’s a great touch, but you can always switch it to the TV Guide or Timeline view if you prefer, or see what’s trending on social networks. There’s also a small refresh button at the top of the screen to change program recommendations to other categories such as Kids or Sport.

The TV has some powerful split-screen capabilities

The Films and TV Shows panel has also been improved, as you’ll now find six movies and six box-set recommendations based on your viewing history. This is much more versatile than last year’s recommendations, and the refresh button makes another appearance to help sort content into categories such as Newly Added and Most Popular if you can’t see anything you like. We would have liked to have seen a dedicated search function when browsing through the main movies and TV shows tabs, though, as sorting content via the genre options still required a fair bit of browsing. Luckily, you can add films and shows to your favourites tab, and we particularly liked the new trailers tab to see what was coming up at the cinema.

There are plenty of apps to choose from as well, with Samsung’s app store now completely integrated with the rest of Samsung’s smart content. There’s BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD, Demand 5, STV Player and Dailymotion for TV addicts, while Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, BFI Player and Digital Theatre apps cater well for film and theatre fans.

One of the biggest changes to the Smart Hub is the Multimedia panel, which combines last year’s Photos, Videos and Music and Social panel into one page. Here you’ll see recommendations from YouTube, DailyMotion, Flickr and TuneIn as well as any external devices that are connected to the One Connect box. You can also use this page to connect to a phone, PC or an online storage account, such as DropBox and play those files straight on your TV. You’ll need to manage your various devices and accounts using the Samsung Link service, but it’s relatively simple to set up.

The HU8500 supports a huge range of file formats as well. We were able to play OGG, MP3, FLAC, M4A, WAV, WMA, WMV, MP4, 3GP audio files and AVI, H.264 and MPEG4 MP4s, MOV, MKV and DIVX video files with no problem at all.

In place of the Social tab is Samsung’s brand new Games panel, which will have roughly ten Samsung-approved titles on launch with more to follow. While we can’t see this being a huge draw for potential buyers, we were pleased to see each game supports a wide variety of controllers, such as the bundled Smart Remote or your phone once you’ve downloaded the correct app.

The Smart Remote is a big improvement over last year’s model, making navigating the menus a breeze

The Smart Remote itself is another great improvement on last year’s model, as it now includes gyro sensors for full motion control. This makes switching between Smart Hub panels and typing in the TV’s web browser an absolute breeze, and thanks to the HU8500’s Quad-Core Plus processor, which Samsung claims is twice as fast as the standard quad-core processors found lower down the range, we only had to wait a couple of seconds for each page to load fully. It’s by far one of the most accurate smart remotes we’ve tested, but you can always use Samsung’s standard remote as well if you prefer.

Samsung HU8500 Conclusion

The Samsung UE65HU8500 is certainly an impressive TV to behold and its smart content remains second to none. Ultimately, though, we felt a little underwhelmed overall, both with its default picture settings and its 3D capabilities. We expect perfection at this price, and while the HU8500 is great for 4K and Blu-Ray, we feel the Sony KD 65X9005A (now £3,400 from www.currys.co.uk) is the slightly better buy.

That said, its surprising that neither TV uses a traditional design; and so many will make their choice based on whether they prefer the curved design of the Samsung or the speakers on the Sony, rather than on the small differences in image reproduction. If you are looking for a 4K TV with a more traditional design, then you’ll have to hold out for the Panasonic 4K, which we hope to review soon.