Samsung UN46B6000 LCD HDTV Review - Color Accuracy

Color Accuracy Summary
• Very little variation in color temperature • RGB curves indicated accurate colors • Color Gamut is off • Calibration done using DisplayMate Software
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Color Temperature (8.96)

Like anything that emits light your HDTV puts off a certain temperature of light. The industry standard for color temperature is 6500 Kelvin (K) and we adjust calibration on HDTVs to get as close to this number as possible. It's extremely important that color temperature stay stable whatever a television is displaying. This is because variations in color temperature can cause blue or yellow casts to the content on your HDTV. Below you can see a graph of the Samsung UN46B6000's color temperature across the greyscale, from black to white.

The Samsung UN46B6000 did a good job in this test, with some variation from the mean, but not enough to cause serious problems. This can be seen more clearly in the graph below. Here we plot the same data as above in a color space. The red circle on the graph indicates the area within which the human eye is incapable of perceiving changes in color temperature. You can see that the vast majority of points fall within this circle, indicating that the UN46B6000's variation in color temperature will have little impact on your viewing experience.

RGB Curves (8.55)

All of the colors that an HDTV produces are created by  mixing red, blue and green lights. In this test we look at the accuracy of those three colors. Below you can see each of the colors graphed against intensity, so this tells us what the curve of color looks like as they go from very dark to very bright.

What we're looking for here is a smooth, concave curve with no plateuing at the end. This is exactly what we see from the Samsung UN46B6000,  which is excellent. We also look at a range of photographs searching for artifacts, which are things that appear on the display that shouldn't be there. With the Samsung UN46B6000 we noticed some minor false contouring. This happens when the HDTV should display a smooth gradient of light, for example the light from a sunset, but actually creates noticeable contours. The effect on the UN46B6000 was much less noticeable than we've seen on other HDTVs, but it was there.

Overall the Samsung UN46B6000's color performance was above average. The false contouring is not uncommon and was minor enough that we only deducted half a point for it.

Color Gamut (4.32)

All HDTVs must display colors in the same way, matching an international standard known as Rec.709. This is done to ensure that the colors you see on your television are the same as the colors the creator of the content wanted you to see. Below you can see a graph of the Samsung UN46B6000's measured color gamut against Rec.709.

The Samsung UN46B6000 did not perform particularly well in this test. You can see from the graph that there was significant error across the board and especially in the blue to red range. This means that you can expect the colors on the UN46B6000 to be slightly off from the colors the content produce actually wanted you to see. Few HDTVs actually do well in this test, but the UN46B6000 was poor enough to fall below our average score of 5.31. For those geeky enough to be interested the exact color coordinates defining the UN46B6000's color gamut are listed below.