Great colors and black levels for cheap!

Everybody wants an HDTV these days, especially with the DTV transition coming up soon. There are so many TVs today, with different types, a wide range of prices -- it's enough to make anybody confused!

Features
This is a mid-level 2008 model LCD from Samsung. It has a semi-matte screen, 60Hz, 3 HDMI ports, 2 composite, 2 component, 1 s-video, a VGA port, a USB port for music and pictures, and RCA and optical audio output. It comes mounted on a swivel stand.

The TV supports 24p, commonly used by Blu-ray players, though it doesn't do anything special that I can tell to eliminate judder.

Picture Quality
When buying an LCD, picture quality is paramount. What you're looking for in an LCD is how well it can do black, and how accurate the colors are. There's other things to consider as well, but those are the easiest to determine by most people. This set excels in both; the blacks are among the blackest I've seen from an LCD -- most LCDs, like my PC monitor, have a lighter color of black. You can see this by looking at any LCD monitor in the dark.

Color accuracy is very good out of the box and even better with some adjustments to the settings. I watched Planet Earth on blu-ray, and it was like I was there! I have no problems with the colors, and professional reviews will bear this out (see CNET for one example).

A common problem with LCDs is screen uniformity issues, where if you look at a dark screen, the black level will look uneven. This is somewhat dependent on your particular TV, but mine looks very even.

Viewing angles on LCDs aren't very good generally. This TV is good about 15 degrees off-axis either way, acceptable up to about 40 degrees off-axis, and not so good past that. I've seen better, and worse, so this TV is probably average in that respect.

The TV has a semi-matte panel, so it's between completely matte TVs and glossy TVs. If the TV is off, you can see some reflections if you have a lamp directly in front of the TV, but other than that, it's not bad at all.

Sound
Sound is the weakest point on this TV. Samsung placed form over function for the sound; in an attempt to keep the bezel looking sleek, Samsung designed the TV with downward facing speakers. Now if you have speakers, try pointing them at the floor and see how they sound. That's basically what you get here -- the sound is a bit muffled and tinny. Adjusting the equalizer helps, but the sound is still pretty mediocre. Now, that's not to say it's unusable -- it's fine for watching the news and most prime-time TV, but if you want to watch a movie, it probably won't cut it.

Controls
The controls are pretty intuitive. There are only the basic controls for volume, menu, channel changing, and power on the side of the TV; the remote is a universal remote capable of controlling a DVD player. Buttons are large and backlit. Most functions are only a button press away -- changing the picture size, turning on closed captioning, etc.

The menu system looks nice, though maybe not as fancy as some Sony sets. The menu is responsive and organized logically. Some esoteric settings require a bit of digging, but most of the things you'd normally use are in the top level of the menu.

The TV has dynamic, standard, and movie settings. These settings are custom for each input, meaning you can have separate settings for TV and your Blu-ray player, for example.

USB
The TV has a USB port for pictures and music. The interface looks nice, but it's a little slow. I don't have much to say, other than it works -- I use my PS3 for this sort of stuff.

Summary
The picture quality offered by this TV is nearly unrivaled in its size and price class. The equivalent Sony (V4100 series) is usually a few hundred more, and the next model up in Samsung's lineup, the 630/650, are also a couple hundred more. The sound on the set is mediocre, but if you have a big TV, you'll probably want a surround sound system to go with it. The TV lacks 120Hz, but most people wouldn't tell a difference anyway. I'd say this is a great value in LCDs today.