Samsung UE40F6400 Review - Picture Quality Review

Samsung UE40F6400 – Screen Spec

The Samsung UE40F6400 uses an edge
LED lighting system to illuminate a full HD TV. There’s no local
dimming, as Samsung prefers its Micro Dimming system that breaks the
image down into small ‘sections’ for analysis so that the TV can deliver
a more accurate selection of automatic picture settings.

But you do get
Samsung’s 200Hz-like ‘200 Clear Motion Rate’ system, along with a
pleasingly expansive setof picture calibration tools that include
colour and gamma management, as well as reasonable control over most
aspects of the TV’s processing options.

Samsung UE40F6400 – Picture Quality

After feeling rather underwhelmed with many of the mid-range TVs we’ve seen so far this year, the Samsung UE40F6400 is a breath of fresh air.

The main reason is that it delivers a vastly more satisfactory contrast performance than the majority of its mid-range peers, mixing its predictably bold, punchy bright colours and whites with a pleasingly convincing black level response that makes dark scenes look believable, consistent and stable in a way most rivals – specifically those, intriguingly, that use passive 3D panels rather than active ones – do not.

We should be clear here and stress that the Samsung UE40F6400 doesn’t deliver the same levels of black level richness and image dynamism as the Samsung UE46F7000 and especially the Samsung UE40F8000.

The lack of local dimming also means that the brightness of light parts of predominantly dark scenes takes a bit of a hit versus how they might look on a screen with local dimming. But where the first point is concerned, it’s entirely reasonable given that the UE40F6400 is much more affordable than either of its siblings.

Contrast

As for the second point, many people will find the slight lack of brightness of dark scenes vs locally dimmed screens offset handily by the more stable, consistent look to the UE40F6400’s images – especially if they’re able to keep light levels in their rooms low when watching films. Certainly you don’t have to worry about the obvious light ‘blocking’ around bright objects witnessed on the vast majority of locally dimmed TVs.

Being able to deliver an excellent black level response by mid-range TV standards also helps the Samsung UE40F6400 produce an impressively natural colour performance. After only a small amount of tweaking we were extremely happy with the subtlety, balance and naturalism of the colour palette on offer, with skin tones proving particularly well defined for such an affordable set.

Motion Handling

Clearly the motion processing inside the Samsung UE40F6400 is an order of magnitude below that carried by Samsung’s high-end LCD TVs. Because of this we felt rather dissatisfied with all the motion processing options on offer.

For instance, even the relatively low-powered ‘Clear’ setting we might usually opt for results on the Samsung 40F6400 in some pretty unpleasant juddering and stuttering. However, the good news is that the panel’s innate response time is good enough to mean you don’t suffer much resolution loss over moving objects even if you deactivate the set’s motion processing altogether.

Detail and Standard Definition

The UE40F6400‘s HD pictures are crisp, clean and detailed too, and this is achieved without images looking too noisy so long as you nudge the TV’s sharpness setting down below the 50 start point employed by most of the TV’s presets.

Standard definition isn’t upscaled to the panel’s full HD resolution
quite as immaculately as it is on Samsung’s F7000 and F8000; the
resulting images look a little noisier and less subtly coloured. But
again, they still look superior overall to those of most other TVs we’ve
seen this year in the same sort of price area.