Last week I decided to ignore the advice of having a television free bedroom and purchased a Samsung 19" LCD HDTV. Yes, yes I know that having a television in the bedroom can aggravate sleep disorders and can potentially subdue sexual desire, but please don't ever doubt the Toyman's sexual magnetism. Okay, stop laughing.
Now that you've got that out of your system, the Samsung television isn't just pretty, it's sexy. The super glossy framing comes in either black or white, I chose the black, and has nice rounded edge. On the bottom of the frame there's a clear plastic bevel which is reminiscent of the iMac from a few years back. The speakers are cleverly hidden on the bottom and the clear plastic bevel helps to direct the sound forward. Like I said, sexy.
After plugging it in, the television greeted me with a nice welcome screen and asked if I wanted to run the auto-setup. This process reminded me of setting up a new Mac computer. The user experience has been well thought out and the setup process was painless. When the initial setup was complete, I went through the process of setting up channel names for all of my non-digital channels, as well as creating my favorites list. So far everything just worked.
However, when I sat back to start watching some programs, the beauty of this television turned out to be only skin deep. I became distracted by the backlight spill-over on the top and bottom of the screen. LCD screens that aren't properly insulated from the backlight can sometimes have light leak through onto the screen. This washes out areas of the screen and appears pronounced during dark scenes. The Samsung had a uniform amount of spillover on the top and bottom inch of the screen. At first I thought I may have had a defective unit, but some digging online revealed that I was not alone in noticing this problem.
Not only was I distracted by the backlight spillover, but I wasn't able to adjust the color settings to my liking. Colors seemed to be either too red or too green and I couldn't find a happy medium. The black level was also disappointing, appearing to be a dark shade of gray.
It didn't take long to make the decision to return the television. In fact, when I did take it back I looked at the floor model and saw all of the same issues I had with my model. The Samsung 19" LCD HDTV sure is pretty, but the quality doesn't extend more than the surface.
Toyman's Take: Not Recommended.
