Samsung UN55ES8000 LED LCD HDTV Review

3D

So far, 2012 is looking to be a great year for 3D. We were pleasantly surprised by the 3D effects of LG's LM6700 back in March, and from the looks of the ES8000's 3D showing, Samsung is throwing their hat in the ring as a competitor for the best commercial 3D available.

The UN55ES8000 handles 3D in the same way as its other 3D-enabled 2012 models. The TV comes with 4 pairs of active-shutter 3D glasses, which must be assembled and have their batteries installed before they'll link to the TV via Bluetooth. Pressing the "3D" button on the remote will shift the TV from 2D to 3D mode, which can then be viewed through an "activated" pair of 3D glasses.

The 3D we saw on the UN55ES8000 was quite good. Background settings were given depth, subjects in the middle area of the depth field seemed to inhabit their own plane between the background and the 3D effects that really pop out. Best of all, the aforementioned pop-out effects had very little crosstalk. Typically, the extreme foreground 3D effects tend to suffer the most from blurring and bad rendering, but the UN55ES8000 handled these very well. Grays, whites, and blacks during a starry setting managed to stay crisp and easy to differentiate, which is another common problem within the realm of 3D.

While the contrast ratio suffers heavily during 3D viewing, all of the other aspects of using the ES8000 in 3D mode are positive ones. Its color gamut and temperature were a little skewed, but that's to be expected. All in all, the subtler 3D aspects we witnessed were just as impressive as LG's earlier this year, but there was even more credence given over to pop-out effects, which helped remind us we were watching 3D--but in a good way.