Customer Reviews

Samsung LNS3241D 32-Inch LCD HDTV

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I went into my local Circuit City recently intending to look at the Sharp Aquos LC-32D40U. I had heard so much abou the Aquos TVs and how good they were. Since it was on sale I came close to buying it. But the Samsung LNS3241D was sitting right next to the Sharp on the rack and I immediately noticed that the Samsung's picture just looked a whole lot better. Compared to the Samsung, I couldn't believe how washed out the blacks were on the Sharp. I even played with the controls on the Sharp to make sure it's settings weren't messed up. It became very clear that the Samsung has a way better contrast ratio...in fact it pretty much looked the best out of all the other 32" TVs on display except for maybe the Sony XBR which is twice the price. So I picked up the Samsung and have loved it ever since. Mine didn't have a single burnt pixel out of the box. The built in speakers are pretty respectable. When having friends over to watch movies...they have asked if all that sound was coming from the TV's speakers. The picture quality is great with Comcast HD and with DVDs. It's awesome to have an LCD with such deep, rich blacks, but my only complaint is that sometimes the darks are a bit too dark. It may just be a setting issue. I haven't tried seriously to fix it because it doesn't bother me that much. I was also blown away by the quality I was able to get hooking up my laptop computer to the TV. since the PC connector is just VGA and not DVI, I thought "this is going to look like crap" but it looks great...extreamly crisp and clear. The TV. could very well be used as a computer monitor too. All in all, I'm a very happy camper...except for the fact that Amazon's price is now cheaper than Circuit City's sale price! aarrgh. Oh well. It's a great TV.

This is my first HDTV. I've been waiting a several years for prices to go down and my preferences were Sony, Sharp, or Samsung. Sonys are still too expensive. The Sharp Aquos' picture was poor in comparison to either the Sony or Samsung. I was surprised since Sharps have good buzz. I originally wanted last year's model--329D, but oddly that model was more expensive. Initial consumer reviews were good about the 324 and the price was right. There were cheaper prices on the Internet but the store names were not familar to me and I didn't want to lose my money. As I was checking out, a popup offered a free trial to Amazon Prime. I got it shipped overnight for $3--sweet. Arrived in perfect condition, beaucoup connection ports, great picture, and I don't even have HDTV yet. The pic tends to be dark but that can be changed in the settings. As someone mentioned, it's so minor it's not worth bothering with unless you're a perfectionist. Would definitely recommend to anyone.

Recieved this Samsung LCD two days ago and I have to say for the price, this TV is hard to beat. I knew I was buying a 32 inch LCD for about 2 months and researched the Sharp Aquos model, the Sony XBR, and this one. After much research and comparing of pictures I felt the Samsung was the best combination of price and picture. The Sony XBR will give you a better picture, no doubt, but it is not such a jump that is justifies spending the $900 more to buy it. I also thought the Sharp Aquos's picture looked a little washed out compared to this Samsung.

I've been told that seeing TV's on display at Best Buy and Circuit City is a bad way to go about this because store managers tend to turn up the contrast or brightness on the TV's. I never have understood this theory, I mean maybe they are trying to get rid of some inventory or something of that nature but has anyone tried playing with their brightness and/or contrast balance on thier TV's? It helps but it doesn't make a crappy picture brilliant or vice versa. Therefore when I went to Best Buy and saw the picture on the Samsung compared to the Sharp it was a no brainer for me which TV had the better picture.

Anyways back to the actual TV. I have Brighthouse Cable TV and run an HDMI cord from my Scientific Atlanta HD DVR to the TV and the picture is brilliant. The HD picture is amazing, the first thing I turned to was HBO HD and Spiderman 2 was playing. I watched the last half of it in amazment because the picture was that good. My father in law and my father both have the 32 inch Sony XBR and although I did not have them side to side I felt the Samsung's HD picture was just as colorful and vibrant as the Sony XBR.

The biggest differance I noticed between the XBR and this Samsung was how they handled SD TV. The Sony is in my opinion is significantly better at handling SD TV than this Samsung (although the Samsung is also good). Not only can it decode it better, it also has a screen streach called Wide Zoom (i think that's the name) that can actually put SD TV at 16:9 ratio and make it look very good. The Samsung cannot do that and either can my cable box. I can fill the screen but it becomes stretched beyond the border and look odd. So I just watch SD in regular 4:3, which looks good, and let the HD shine when I turn it to my HD channels.

I also ran my iBook G4 through the TV via the 15 pin VGA connector. Looks amazing. I've tried to run my iBook through other LCD before and it has never looked nearly as good as it does on this TV. A great bonus because it wasn't really a factor in my buying decision.

Last but not least I have my audio running from my cable box to my reciever so I have not really tested the speakers on this TV. Sorry!

Anyways in conclusion. Great HD picture. Two HDMI hookups which will give you a little bit of futureproof (Sony XBR only has 1)! Very lightweight (I was very, very surprised at how light the actually TV is, you could carry it with one hand!) Easy to put the stand on and very easy to get working. A great TV that is impossible to beat at the price Amazon is offering it for. Go for it!

PS I would give this TV 4.5 stars if possible for the simple fact that the Sony XBR plays SD better. However like I said earlier in my review it's not worth an extra $900.

This is a great HDTV. Around the same time that I got this, a friend of mine bought the Sceptre LCD from Costco. The Sceptre was about 400$ cheaper...and boy did it show. He was actually quite happy with his purchase, until he came to my house one day. He was stunned by the picture quality for both DVDs and HDTVs. He ended up returning the Sceptre and buying this.

I did a log of research before going for the Samsung. The three good ones were Sony, Panasonic and Samsung. Sony easily wins overall, especially because of sound quality. Panasonic is only slightly better than the Samsung as far as dark colors go. However with Price/Performance ratio in mind, this is by FAR the winner.

I was a little wary about the shipping from Amazon, based on what some of the other reviewers have said. Mine was shipped through someone called Eagle GL. They called me to setup a time to deliver, they also called me the day of the shipping to make sure I was around. I really did not have any trouble with them.

I was able to score a great deal on this TV - online, for $800 on Thanksgiving. It took me four weeks to actually have it show up at my house (note that this wasn't ordered from Amazon.com), but its been worth the wait. Out of the box, the TV is very sleek and attractive. I have it hooked up to my DVR Cable Box via HDMI, which looks fantastic. The HD channels are absolutely amazing to watch - I've watched NFL games, NBA, Dexter on Showtime, etc and they all look great. Non-HD channels vary in quality - some are pretty ugly. It helps to actually turn down the brightness / sharpness when watching regular TV. Unless you're very close to the TV, thoguh, its not like its unwatchable.

I also have a Sony Up-converting DVD Player hooked up through the second HDMI. So far, I've used this to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and Cars. I watch Pirates first - the menu screen was awfully ugly, as was the movie itself. For a few minutes, I was getting terribly disappointed - but its all a matter of playing around with settings. Once I had the TV and DVD player set up correctly (which took about 10 minutes of trial and error) I found the right settings, and WOW. Pirates looked absolutely INCREDIBLE. You'd never know it was a regular DVD and not HD programing. Ditto for Cars - so just a heads up, you DEFINITELY need to play with the settings on both the TV and whatever is outputting to the screen to make sure you have the right display settings. I hooked the DVD player to my Sony surround system using a Digital Optical cable - the sound is great.

Attached to the surround system are a PS2 and Nintendo Gamecube. The surround system is hooked up to the regular A/V on the TV. Playing videogames on this TV, even "last gen" games, is not a problem at all. The graphics still look great - really it depends on the game's resolution more than anything. A second digital optical cord runs from the TV to the Surround system, so any sound coming from the TV is muted and sent to the surround. This is great, as it means everything I have hooked up will always play out of my surround speakers (cable TV, videogames, DVDs, etc).

Finally, I have an Xbox 360 hooked up via the Component cables. One of the reasons I wanted this TV is that Gamestop uses Samsung LCD monitors in their stores, and the 360s running there looked fantastic. This TV has a "Game Mode" - and its awesome. I was already playing Gears of War every day - now I can hardly put it down. To say the graphics are incredible is an understatement. To anyone who felt the 360 wasn't really "next-gen" enough, you need to play the games on an HD screen to really appreciate it. The 360 also has a $199.99 HD-DVD add-on, which I couldn't pass up once I got the tv. It comes with King Kong, which I thought was so-so as a film. The HD-DVD itself is a great player, but I wasn't as "Wowed" by the video quality as I expected. I need to try it again with a movie I like more, I suppose - V for Vendetta, Batman Begins, Superman Returns, and Serenity are all available for HD-DVD and I expect they'll look awesome. I have to say though, if you pick up this TV, definitely pick up an up-converting HD-DVD player - I strongly recommend a Sony with HDMI capability, because it looks incredible and only set me back $100.

I couldn't be happier with this TV. In a few years, once 1080p TVs are cheaper, I'll upgrade and mount this one on a wall - this TV is very light by the way. As its LCD, its relatively hassle-free - no worrying about burn-out or break-in periods.

However, I have two small disappointments with this TV, both of which I expected due to the LCD format. The viewing angles on this TV, compared to my old 32" Flatscreen TV by Toshiba, are definitely not as good. Don't get me wrong - they're not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but just not as good as my old "regular" TV was. In addition, this TV definitely won't display dark, "rich" Black like a Plasma TV can. When watching a Widescreen DVD, the "black" bars aren't quite as Black as I'm used to. Its an issue with the LCD format, unfortunately - that's the price you pay for being able to leave your TV paused all day without concern.

All told, I'm VERY happy with this purchase. When doing my initial set-up, I had some issues getting the TV to detect my cable - just a heads-up, this TV can be a little cranky at times when it comes to detecting inputs if its already turned on. Just turn it off and turn it on again if you've plugged or unplugged anything, and it'll catch them. I called Samsung and didn't have to wait at all for customer service - they were great.

If you're looking to pick up a mid-size, quality LCD HD TV, I can't recommend this thing enough. Just be prepared to spend a little extra dough on HDMI cables and an up-converting DVD player.

This is the first TV I've bought in a long long time, and I really wanted something that was fairly close to the cutting edge of technology.

We (my wife and I) choose this model from a retailer storefront after deciding on LCD over plasma (don't need anything too big as we're in a 1 bedroom apartment) and over rear projection TVs (too fuzzy) and finding this price point acceptable. After this decision, we filtered out models to Sharp, Sony and Samsung based on looking at the pictures in-store. We looked not only at this model but at other size LCD TVs of the various brands and found as a general trend that we preferred the picture quality of these brands. I also liked the feature list although it's not quite as nice as it seems...

Anyway, the best things about this are
-The PICTURE! It does look great to my eyes and although of course this is subjective, I've really enjoyed watching HD programming and DVDs on this unit. I've never watched so much TV before.
-The black finish, so pictures appear clearer and with better contrast (I don't see why TVs are made with silver frames, who cares if the TV looks good if it distracts from the brightness of the picture).
-The built-in stereo speakers are decent.
-Finally, I haven't noted any broken pixels (my pet gripe).

The only problem of note we've had: With certain operations from our cable box there is a slight delay can confuse the TV and you pretty much have to do nothing for a couple secs before the TV stabilises. You get a large grey square on the screen during this time. I think its due to switching between channels/sources that are HD/SD (it think it autodetects the signal and adjusts the picture accordingly, and when you change too quickly the TV can't keep up).

Other gripes (all fairly minor):
Some features are not as full-featured as you might imagine, but you can't really tell without reading the manual. For example:
1. Picture-in-Picture only works with different sources. You can't watch two channels from the same source using PiP. This makes the PiP feature close to useless for general TV viewing. (Fortunately, your cable box may have this feature anyway - mine does.)
2. The computer input is limited to a standard VGA connector, not DVI. (There are HDMI inputs, yes, but these are different sources and the manual specifically states that these HDMI inputs can't be used for computers.)
3. There is only one component video input. This is a bit limiting because all of your a/v devices (e.g. DVD player) might not have HDMI connections yet. If you want this level of video quality from say, both your DVD player and cable box you'd have to get yourself a component video switch (or unplug/re-plug 3 cables each time). When I first checked the specs on this model I didn't expect to be limited with connections.

Overall, a very worthwhile purchase. I hope the lamp life is good so I can keep this TV for many years to come.

After much research into HD displays in our price range, I happily decided on the Samsung 32" 41 series for our first foray into high definition viewing. Amazon of course was much less expensive than any local electronics or reputable online retailer by far. It arrived last week and we're thrilled with it. Our living room isn't huge, so it's the perfect size. It's just big enough for a great home theater experience, but not too big that it dominates the room. If you're looking for a TV that fits that criteria, 32" is definitely the way to go.

Just to reiterate what others have said, the TV is a bit dark out of the box, but a quick adjustment of the brightness setting alleviates that. Once you have all the settings to your liking, the picture is fantastic - very bright and sharp, with extremely vibrant colors. There is noticable trailing on the DTV stations occasionally, but that's to be expected with an LCD display. We've watched four DVDs already, and I've played several Xbox 360 games, and I haven't noticed any display quirks on either (I didn't even use the "Game Mode" and experienced no lag on my games). I'm using a component connection for the 360, because it doesn't have HDMI output, and games and movies in progressive scan look amazing. They say HDMI is the best, but I don't know how it could get any better. It would have been nice to have more than one component input, so I don't have to use the 360 for movies, but oh well.

We pick up all the local stations in HD with a set of bunny ears, and they look great (besides the above mentioned trailing). Plus, there are a few stations we didn't even realize were broadcast, including 24-hour weather and music video stations. Bonus!

The SRS TruSurround XT seems to be all hype--the sound is average at best. I definitely recommend hooking up the TV or your DVD player to a seperate speaker system as I did. It's also a bit disappointing that the Picture-In-Picture only works with two different input sources, so you can't watch two different TV stations at the same time. The remote is very easy to use and set up--it works seamlessly with my Samsung audio receiver, so I only need to use the one remote.

Overall, my wife and I are completely satisfied with our purchase. The small negative points I've brought out in this review should be expected, and are moot against the overall performance of this display. If this is the type of TV you're in the market for, I don't see any reason not to get this one.

After a couple weeks, I think this set is great.
The sound is weak if your used to digital surround; but anyone who buys this has most likely got a better system anyway.
It took a week or so to depixelate (I don't watch a lot of tv and have an Infocus projector).
Now I love it!
My only gripe is Amazons shipping. It was advertised for free "prime" shipping.
Others have stated otherwise, but my "Prime" shipping was changed to "ground" shipping. Not only that, but my 5 day ground shipping took 9 days to get to me. GRRRR.....
Amazon shipped it via Eagle (egl).
Having questioned the issue, Amazon has side stepped several times. They now offer free shipping, at your guess. They have since taken it off "prime" shipping status.
It's a great tv, and well worth the money. But if you want it within a week or so, buy it elsewhere.
The only negative is the sound.
I love the set - the shipping/support sucked.

Okay first let me say that most everything the other reviewers have said about this TV is true. I too saw this TV on display at Circuit City side by side with other LCD flat panels from Sony, Sharp and others, and looking at them all running the same video the Samsung picture quality was as good as or better than any of them, to my eyes. The only other TV's that were even close were the Sony (didn't look as good as the Samsung, but cost several hundred more), and a higher end Samsung of the same size (a couple hundred more for increased contrast ratio from 3000:1 to 4000:1, I can't say I saw a difference).

The price was fantastic for this type of TV with the features it has. Circuit City just happened to have one available as an "Open Box Deal", a customer return or something to that effect. The TV was still in brand spanking new condition, still had the remote, manual, and everything, just no box, and I got it for $200 off their list price, so I payed about $1200. I expected to be paying more like $1500-1800 for a 32" LCD HDTV to get a nice picture, so I went home that day very pleased with my purchase.

Well... the TV is great and will probably satisfy 95% of people out there who want to upgrade to HDTV and/or flat panel. I, unfortunately, am one of the other 5%.

The problem for me is that I primarily bought the TV to play video games on. And I am very picky about the picture when I'm playing games. Little things that might not bother most people can be a real annoyance to me.

Issue #1 - Though much improved over what I was used to seeing with older LCD monitors, and even with Samsung boasting a lightning-fast repsonse time of 8ms (one of the fastest I've seen advertised, only the Aquos is advertised faster that I know of at 6ms), there was still VERY noticeable blurring of finer details when things were moving. I hooked up an Xbox 360 and ran a first person game (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for you gamers), which is a gorgeous and VERY finely detailed game. In an outdoor scene, I immediately noticed that when I would move, all the fine details like all of the individual leaves on trees or blades of grass would go out of focus very noticeably. And then when I would stop moving it would take a split second for everything to get back in focus. Even my wife, who is about 10,000x less picky about things like that and often doesn't notice things I complain about on TV pictures, asked why it was doing that before I even pointed it out to her! A sign to me that it is actually something the average person will notice easily.

Issue #2 - While this TV does offer a very high contrast ratio (3000:1 claimed) that does look very good in scenes where you have a very bright colorful scene or a mixed light and dark colored scene, I found that it does NOT look good on primarily dark scenes. If the scene is mostly dark with just a small portion of light/colorful/white elements, the lighter elements will appear cloudy or greyish. Perfect example, I popped in Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2, and the first screen is all black with one line of large white text in the center, and the white text should be a bright bright white, instead it was a dingy light grey. Another example from the same game, when you are viewing the car buying screen where the background is mostly black and dark grey, a bright colored car like a yellow or red will appear washed out or greyish instead of vibrant.

Which seems to be an effect of Issue #3... What it appears to me is that the backlight of the LCD trys to adapt by adjusting brighter for mostly bright scenes and dimming for mostly darker scenes. It is very noticeable when the scene shifts rapidly from dark to light, you will see the scene shift, and then a split second later you will see the whole screen brightness level very suddenly change.

This 'blinking' along with the fact that a mostly dark screen with colorful elements will show the colors to be washed out and very low contrast looking means that, although you are USUALLY getting a great, high contrast and very vibrant picture, in the end it is a very unconsistently great picture. Add to that the blurring effect and I am very unsatisified with this TV as far as playing games on it. And I have spent HOURS adjusting every possible setting for the picture with no luck of alleviating these issues.

I am left to wonder if maybe this TV isn't maybe defective in some way, hence why it was an "Open Box Deal" to begin with. BUT, I have done a lot of reading online since buying this TV and found that at least the issue of the blurring seems to be a well known and commonly accepted issue with LCD's. As I said, I just be one of the extreme minority of picky consumers. As far as the blinking issue, the way it happens it seems to be a purposeful design, not some type of defect.

Lastly, I should mention that I am also a fan of older video games (think Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis), and when I hooked a couple of these older systems up to this TV the picture just looked horrible, but I think this is just an effect of running a very low resolution image on such a high resolution TV, which is something you hear people complain about when viewing regular, non digital TV signals on HDTV's as well, so is not really a fault of this particular TV.

Now, with all that having been mentioned, I will say that when I popped in a couple DVD movies, the TV performed beautifully, very nice, sharp, colorful picture. Were I only a movie buff who wanted a nice 'home theater' experience but didn't have space or money for one of the truly large HDTV's, this TV would work perfectly. So for anyone who is just looking for exactly that, watching and movies and regular TV, I would rate the TV a 5 for having a wonderful picture, great features, tons of inputs, and being an excellent value.

But for playing video games, I can only rate the TV a 2. And since I rarely ever even watch TV, and I use my TV probably 80% for video gaming, I am unhappy and will be returning this TV today and getting a large screen Sony Wega CRT TV. The Wega line, by the way, still has what I consider to be the BEST picture available for any type of gaming. I had a 27" Wega for five years and absolutely loved it.

We looked at many LCD TVs at the local retail outlets. That is the only way to buy any LCD TV. They tend to have the lowest end units on one end of the row and the best ones down at the other end. At the high end were Sony and Samsung units. Both were beautiful. As I already have a Samsung 21" 213T SyncMaster PC monitor, I knew I would like Samsung. Honestly, the Sony had a more appealing bezel with it's high tech silver appearance. But what do you watch when you watch TV? I look at the screen. And Samsung was a little better.

This LNS3241D unit is great. I have not owned any LCD TVs before this one, but I am very particular with anything that shows a picture. You won't be disappointed if you get this television. I live in a metro area and run it off of rabbit ears! No cable required to get instant HDTV. (A better antenna will only improve your experience, however).

I also got the Mustang wall mount at the same time. Not required, but it is a substantial piece of equipment that will securely support your expensive TV.

Best of all, and why I got it here, was that Amazon couldn't be beaten for best overall combined price/shipping/tax. And with Amazon, you know you will not get ripped off.