Samsung LN32B360 LCD HDTV Review - Blacks & Whites

Blacks & Whites Summary
• Deep, dark blacks • Bright, clean whites • Wide contrast range • The screen has some blotches on dark images • Does a decent job of displaying different resolution signals
	Calibration	Page 4 of 18	Color Accuracy

Black Level (8.23)

The LN32B360 had a pretty decent result in this test, where we look at how deep the blacks are. We measured the deepest black at 0.09 cd/m², which means that the blacks on the screen are pretty dark, so dark scenes will look more dramatic. The LN32B360 had darker blacks that most of the other TVs we've reviewed; the blacks on this screen are darker than both the LG 32LG40 and the JVC LT-42P300. It's no prizewinner, though; the Samsung LN40B650 had slightly deeper blacks. 

Black Level

However, given that the LN32B360 is about a third of the price of the LN46B650, this is a very strong result.

Peak Brightness (9.32)

At the other end of the scale from the blacks is peak brightness: the brightst white that this HDTV can acheive. For the LN32B360, we measured this at 400.32 cd/m², which again is a very strong result. What this means is that the screen of the LN32B360 is pretty bright, and could be clearly seen in everything but direct sunlight. This is also significantly brighter than our comparison TVs, which ranged from a lackluster 212 cd/m² (for the LV 32LG40) 260 cd/m² (for the Samsung LN40B650. We do expect smaller TVs to be slightly brigher (the other Samsung is a 40-inch model), but this is a very strong result for a low-cost TV like this. 

Peak Brightness

Contrast (8.89)

The range between the deepest black and the britest white is the contrast, and the bigger this number, the better the pictures on the screen will look. The LN32B360 had a very wide contrast ration: we measured it at 4453:1. Out of our comparison TVs, only the LN40B650 did better; the others had significantly lower contrast ratios. 

Contrast Ratio

Tunnel Contrast (9.88)

Having dark blacks and bright whites is important, but a good HDTV has to be able to display both on the screen at once. Think of a documentary on polar bears; a good HDTV should be able to show you their bight white coats and their coal-black eyes at once. On some HDTVs, having an area of white next to one of black leads to the black becoming weak and muddy, but that wasn't a problem on this HDTV: when we measured the depth of the black with an increasing amount of white on the screen, the black stayed at the same deep, dark level all through this test. 

Tunnel Contrast

White Falloff (9.98)

The flip side of this coin is what happens when there is a small area of white surrounded by black; does the level of the white stay constant as it is surrounded by more and more black? Again the LN3B360 had no major issues here: with everything from a small splotch of white to nearly the entire screen being white, the brightness of the whites remained constant. This is in contrast to the JVC LT42P360, where the white changed significantly as the amount of white altered. 

White Falloff

Uniformity (7.13)

The LN32B360 had a few minor issues in screen uniformity; on both black and white screens, we saw some patchiness on the screen, with the light level on the white screen falling off quite significantly at the corners. On a black screen, we also saw some patchiness, with blotchy areas that were slightly lighter than the rest of the screen. These didn't show up so much in normal use, though; the dark blotchiness and the slight corner falloff didn't detract much from the image itself.

Greyscale Gamma (7.97)

Gamma describes how the HDTV deals with greys; as the image on the screen goes from black to white, it should smoothly display this increasing brightness on the screen. The rate at which it goes from black to white is called the gamama, and an ideal TV should have a gamma of between 2.2 and 2.4. The LN32B360 fell a little outside of this, with a gamma that's a touch on the high side at 2.45. That's not a huge problem, but it is a little steep. The other problem is that the curve is not smooth; on the graph below, a perfect TV should have a flat curve, but the LN32B360 has a significant dip at the darker end of the slope. This means that it doesn't quite ramp up quickly enough, so some of the particularly dark greys will be slightly darker than we like to see, which could lead to some subtler details getting a bit lost in the dark parts of your movies. 

Greyscale Gamma

Resolution Scaling (8.33)

The LN32B360 is a 720p screen, which means it can natively disp[lay an image of 720 horizontal lines and  1280 pixels wide. However, devices often supply a signal that's at a different resolution, so we also test how well a display can cope with these signals. Overall, the LN32B360 did a decent job, as it was able to input a wide range of digital signals and do a decent job of showing them, even if they were at a higher resolution than the screen itself can show. One odd thing that we did notice was that the LCD looked like it was set at a slight angle to the bezel; when showing a 1080i or a 1080p signal, the last line was partially cropped at the bottom left corner. The fit screen picture size mode does allow you to move the image around, but if you moved it up to deal with this, the top line was cropped off. This wasn't a big problem when watching TV, but it was rather annoying when using the display with a computer, as it crops off the bottom edge of windows. 

480p (8.4)
Devices such as standard definition DVDs with digital outputs send out a 480p signal, and the LN32B360 had no problem in processing and displaying this signal; it was. We did see about 3% overscan (where the edges of the image are off the edge of the screen) which could not be removed, but that's pretty standard; most HDTVs apply a small amount of overscan with a 480p signal.

1080i (6.5)
1080i signals are produced by most cable and set-top box devices, and it's also the format that most over the air digital TV is sent in. So, it's good that the LN32B360 was able to do a decent job of displaying signals in this format; our test images were rendered cleanly, although we did see some evidence of moire patterns on a grey cross hatch pattern. There was no overscan when the display was in screen fit mode, but there was about 2% overscan when it was in the standard 16:9 mode.

1080p (5.75)
The LN32B360 was obviously straining when we fed it a 1080p signal, such as one produced by a Blu-ray disc player. Working with this image, we saw some distinct moire patterning, and text and sharp edges looked very soft. But this isn't unexpected; if you want the best quality from a device that can output 1080p signals, you'll need to spend more to get a display that runs at a native 1080p resolution. 

Compare the Samsung LN32B360 to other HDTVs
LG 32LG40 32"	JVC LT-42P300 42"	Samsung LN40B650 40"