Customer Reviews

Samsung LNT5265F 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

5 star:		(159)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I have only watched it tonight, but so far everything looks great. I could definitely see some of the things that people have questioned on this thread, but the settings change took care of anything I could find with it, but then again I am not a super videophile...I know just enough to be dangerous.

One thing I noticed while messing with the settings is that they definitely make a big difference in getting to an ultimate image on this LCD. Furthermore, this model appears to be very flexible, and as such most of the non catrostophic issues I am hearing about on different forums can be cleared up if you are using the correct settings. The settings that I am using are below in case you care. The most important one of the lot was the HDMI Black=Low.

Samsung LN-T5265F Bad Mamma Jamma
Scientific Atlantic 8300HD over HDMI

Mode=Movie
Contrast=85
Brightness=42
Sharpness=25
Color=60
Tint=G50-R50
Backlight=5
Tone=Warm1
Black Adjust=low
Dynamic Contrast=low
Gamma=-1
Color Space=Auto
White Balance=all 15
Color Control=all 15
Edge Enhancement=off
YvYcc=off
DNR and DNIe: Off
Energy Saving=Medium
HDMI Black=Low

A few other things to note, especially if you are in the market. I bought mine from Amazon, and the seller with the low price that day was OfficeDepot. They have a subsidiary called TechDepot that sells consumer stuff; didn't know that until after the order was handed off from Amazon. I got the low price I wanted, and have someone to go work with in person if something goes wrong.

Delivery came from Pilot Freight, and the delivery guy was totally cool about me getting it out and sending a signal to it before I signed the slip and went beyond the point of no return for refusal of delivery. Offer your delivery guy a drink...they should have no problem sticking it out for five minutes while they are sipping a cold bottled water on a hot day.

I also wanted to mention that I got my HDMI cables from monoprice and they are excellent cables given the insanely low price compared to other places. Don't let the kid at Best Buy try to talk you into Monster unless he is going to let you use his employee discount. I even called monoprice tech support to ask a quick question, and they were really helpful, I got it answered in less than 5 minutes from when I dialed them.

Other than a few other things to figure out, this has been a wicked purchase so far. My wife is really happy with it, and even though it was extravagant, is glad that we got the 52" instead of the 46". I am putting together a desktop pc that will go in my living room that will play Blu-Ray so the ultimate test will be in a few weeks once I dump Casino Royale BD onto the 1080p native resolution.

Bottom line is that I did as much research as I could, took my time in making the purchase, and I am really happy so far with what I got. It is a great LCD, and with the HDMI 1.3 support, you are as future proofed as you can get today. Anyone not sure should definitely buy the Samsung...much better than the Sony, and I think that once all the reviews are in on CNET, this gen of Samsung LCDs will be number one on their Editors Choice list, surpassing the Sony.

Sorry for the rant, but when I was researching my purchase, a lot of what I learned was from posts like these. Hopefully what I am posting here will help others make a good purchasing decision. Good luck. Gotta get back to the Discovery HD Channel now! Not sure how I EVER watched anything in SD before.

We've had our 5265 for a few days now, and I've had some time to adjust and tweak the settings to where color, brightness and black details are pretty good. That's kind of an understatement as there is a big WOW factor when it's all set up well. A very important factor with a tv this large is the quality of the signal being fed to it. If your provider uses heavy compression on the signal being fet to you, you're going to see macro-blocking artifacts and other such noise. Our tv is plugged into cable directly out of the wall, and the built-in tuner takes care of the rest. HD from NBC and others is very cool. We watch DVDs on an upscaling Sony with HDMI, and the picture is very enjoyable. HD-DVD or BluRay would be a real treat.

I only have a couple of relatively small issues that keep me from giving it 5 stars. One is that when auto-programming cable channels, the tv would freeze-up and turn itself off whenever it got to channel 108 for some reason. Then, after a moment, it would turn itself back on and repeat as long as it was on 108. There's nothing on 108 for us, so to bypass this, I just unplugged the cable as it reached 108 and plugged it back in after it was past it, and everything works fine. Now, to be honest, I'm not sure it's the fault of the tv or the feed from the cable company, but it didn't happen with our smaller tv.

The second problem (minor) is that sometimes in dark scenes, it seems like the tv can't figure out how to properly display the darkness. I'll say it again: only sometimes. It happens so infrequently that most people would probably not notice, but it shows up as lighter shades of gray eminating from the sides of the tv inward. 9 times out of 10 the tv shows solid black, but sometimes (mostly depending on the disc being watched) it shows these lighter side areas in a scene that's very dark or has darkness with little other detail. I'm a bit paranoid about these big LCDs since I'm a former owner of another brand that had terrible banding problems. On the 5265, though, it is seemingly so small a problem that I hesitate to mention it, but it's there, and some people have a harder time with it than others.

On the plus side, again - the picture is amazing and even standard definition played off of our home video camera looks really nice. Also, the screen is glossy compared to most LCDs. If you don't like reflections (think near tube-tv reflection) or have sunny windows facing where you'll put this tv, it could cause you problems. I happen to really enjoy the glossy screen, however, as it ads a real feel of... oh, I don't know how to explain it - visual "POP", I guess. A very nice tv for the price. I'm looking forward to enjoying ours for a long time.

Bottomline regarding the Samsung 1080p 52" is that I am quite pleased. The only LCD I saw that may be better is the Sony but it is my personal feeling that you are just paying for the name. I was also told that the screen on the Samsung and the Sony are made by the same manufacturer so the only difference is asthetics and extra features. The Sony however comes with a stiff price increase.

I have a very bright room and I am energy concious so a plasma was not a good option for me since they catch a lot of glare and use more power. The picture quality you get out of a plasma in the right setting still is superior to LCD but only in certain instances. The Samsung LCD picture is awesome 90% of the time, where it falls short is in very dark scenes. There is a problem with what I found from other blog sites and reviews (based on the Sony with the same screen) of "light leaking". In very dark scenes the picture is sometimes not totally black you can see what appear to be shadows or pixel movements. Now most people don't even notice it but if you're a perfectionist geek like me it is an annoyance. However, for me the LCD is still the better choice than plasma and I would not change my decision the picture quality is excellent most of the time so it is not a big deal. Of all the LCD's that I have seen this one along with the Sony have the best picture quality hands down. Although, Sharp's new box is getting close. Don't be fooled by low end manufactured products claiming to be as good. Carefully, look at the specs and the picture quality particuarly during fast moving scenes where you may catch bluring.
I have not had the opportunity to see how the 1080p resolution looks yet (Blu-Ray, HD-DVD) but I'm sure it is as breath-taking as HD.

I bought this TV recently after years of watching, reading and waiting for pricing to get to a point where I thought it would be the right time. Whatever you thing pricing will do it seems the fact of the matter is that technology will always be better and pricing better the next year, you just have to jump in at some point. Pricing has taken a significant drop in the last 2 years on such items.

First, I would like to say there are only minor reasons I didn't give this set 5 stars, but most I knew before the purchase so that should give some insight to their ranking being very miniscule. Had the 65F series from Samsung had included 802.11g wireless, and a little more feature rich "wiselink", 5 stars it would've gotten. Course, I do tend to ask quite a lot of my electronics. I believe Samsung will introduce the wireless aspect in their plasma units later this year. Would be nice to stream media via your router from other computer, etc.
I've owned big screens before, seen several sets in friends homes of different makes/models, as well as researched on the internet/stores till my eyes were crossed. One does want to cross all t's and dot all i's when make a purchase of this magnitude. At this time, this LCD takes the cake in my opinion. Even out of the box the picture was very clear, but as most of you have probably read in other forums, the picture really comes alive with a few tweaks within the settings. The menu was very pleasant to use and easy to navagate. DVD disks can be bought for such a task, but I think most will do just fine doing it themselves and come to see the picture really explode with vibrant and clear color. Pay special attention to black level as it makes quite a difference.
As with any t.v., the picture will only be as good as the signal it is fed, as well as the path at which the signal takes such as cables. With that in mind, HD programming and an HDMI cable, you'll wonder how you did without this set and much less how we all used to watch SD t.v.
The wiselink feature is great as I've used it for viewing photos as well as listtening to Mp3's. I just wish it would support video thru a flashdrive. Pardon if I'm wrong, but I think it doesn't support it. If someone learns likewise, please let me know! This LCD also does a great job of acting as a pc monitor. Yeah, 52" richly clear computer monitor! Might have done better with a DVI as opposed to the VGA port, but still very nice and sharp.
The internal tuner does a nice job of pulling in over the air digital and HD programs (which vary by area), and can do a decent job of even fine tuning those. At this time I've done so with a very old set of plain everyday "rabbit ears". However that is about all I've done with the internal tuner as I'm using a satellite set top box tuner that will do the same, so that's a little easier for me.
Hm, I guess I should be wrapping this up.....sorry for the long winded session, but for people trying to make a decision, more info is usually helpful. In a nutshell, this is one of the best, if not the best LCD's I've seen/used. Picture is excellent and can be made better thru tweaking, although I didn't touch much on that as parts of it can be attributed to personal tastes. Exta functions such as a pc monitor, USB wiselink and integrated tuner makes it better and are user friendly. 3 HDMI ports, 2 component and several others as well as an optical output is very nice. It doesn't leave one stranded in the ability to hook up several components in a higher end fashion.
Now, I can only imagine what this set could do with a Blu-ray dvd player, I'm sure it would be breathtaking! Most HD programing viewed on this set already does that to me. That will probably be my next purchase, I guess as soon as the format war settles as well as the prices.
Well, I guess that is my reviews conclusion. I hope this will be of some assistance to people irreguardless of which brand/type of t.v. they purchase. As for myself, I wouldn't change a thing and have no buyer's remorse whatsoever!
I would also like to comment that this set also has very nice sound, and the hidden speakers add to it's asthetics. I use a surround sound system for movies and such, but this units sound system really lacks nothing. The 20 degree swivel stand does a very nice job, is very easy to move the t.v. side to side, all the while keeping this big LCD stable. Looks to be easy to install on a wall mount as well. Hope this helps!

I have had this TV for three weeks now, and have not wished for a second that I had picked something different. I basically shopped by reading the comments of other owners and by standing in the showroom and comparing it to other brands, including side by side comparisons with LG, Sharp, and Sony LCD sets. In every case I thought Samsung looked better and had a more clear and defined picture. I still think so.

I have purchased quite a few items from Amazon over the years, with never a problem, but nothing this expensive. I was a bit nervous. The savings of over $1,700 was in the end too much to ignore. The only thing I would change was I paid to expedite ship the TV, which was probably a waste of money since the item is too large to go by air and will be trucked to you anyway. I made the purchase on a Tuesday night, the TV shipped from Dallas on Thursday and I had it Monday afternoon. Amazon informed me of the ship date and provided a tracking number so I could check with the shipper and follow the progress of the shipment.

The box was strapped 3 times and shrink wrapped then strapped vertically to a pallet. The box is much larger than the TV, because the TV sits in the center of the box and basically floats in an island of Styrofoam. It would be really hard to damage the TV in shipping.

Setup is simple, the remote basic functions are intuitive and I did not read the manual for several days. The HD picture is better than being there. You have to see some programs to believe it. It seems like you can see all the tiny leaves on a tree 100 yards away. And the colors are so good they are unreal. Digital and old analog channels will be at least as good as on your old set, digital is sometimes quite a bit better. I will probably get a home theater system, but the sound is pretty good without one. It has a surround sound setting but to my ear it just sounds louder. We watch the TV both in the dark and in a fairly bright room not far from a large window. I can not see a problem with picture glare or brightness, it just looks great all the time.

I have an HD cable box and also a Toshiba HD A2 DVD player. Connecting to the TV and the DVD proved interesting. I got by far the best picture using a set of $20.00 component cables from Acoustic Research. They provided a far better HD picture both from the cable box and the DVD player than did a $100.00 HDMI Monster cable and a set of $80.00 Monster component cables. All cables were either 3 or 4 feet long. You might want to try both HDMI and Component cables. It is worth it to get the best HD picture you can. I have no idea why this was the case, but you could easily see the difference.

Attaching other hardware to the TV seems very simple and intuitive. I attached my laptop and turned the TV into a giant monitor. You just have to go to the TV menu and set the input option to the device you want the TV to see, Computer, DVD, Cable box etc.

I highly recommend this set and Amazon.com.

I have purchased three different well reviewed and top of the line 50"+ plasmas in the last six months. I thought I did the proper research, but there are quite a few nuances that I discovered only after working with them for a while.

This Samsung LCD is by far the best I have purchased. It cost a bit more money, and thus my discovery of it later than the others, but was worth it. In fact I will be selling the other two brands and buying more of these.

This LCD has 1080p NATIVE resolution. This was a major drawback on the other so-called 1080p Plasmas. They were not native 1080p which meant that resolution was interpreted on those models. It was in fact unreadable when using a computer. But since they were advertized as 1080p, I didn't find this out until I hooked up a computer and found out the hard way.

The bezel is beautiful, and the case is attractive from the back side too; nice if you have it in a location where you can see it. The screen itself is sharp and clear, I am typing on it right now at it's highest resolution setting. Controls are easy to figure out so you can adjust the picture to your liking and it even makes very pleasant sounds when starting and powering down. There are a plethora of connections and the physical controls (in case you need them instead of the remote) are well hidden but accessable in the top edge.

I can't find much of anything I don't like about this very well designed product except there is a bit more background reflection than other models since the screen is so sleek, but it is a very small drawback when compared to all the positives. I highly recommend this model. It feels like a giant ipod.

Before purchasing I was a little leary, both of the bright room concerns voiced earlier and of buying from an Amazon associated company, not Amazon itself. Purchasing a month ago, both fears were unfounded.

Electronic Express was fine, shipping on Monday after a Friday order via FedEx Ground. The box was strapped vertically to a pallet and the driver helped removing it from the pallet and using a hydraulic platform to get it to the ground and into the house. Net result: no shipping nor delivery problems. The set worked perfectly upon arrival.

As to the picture and operations, I have it on an HDMI connection from a DirecTV HD satellite connection. The black level is as astonishing as they advertise and the picture as clean and crisp as I observed earlier (at a Sears where they had this, the Sharp and the Sony side-by-side, with the Samsung as good as the Sony and much better than the Sharp).

We are in Florida, where the sun is known to be particularly bright and this room has huge western sky facing windows. There is a little sun glare and reflection in the very late afternoon but all parts of the screen are still easily viewable and after a few minutes any annoyance from glare and reflection is tuned out by one's eyes. In sort, there's no problem here with the issue.

Highly recommended for the price and overall quality.

Addendum (December 2009): Well, a month after the warranty expired, so did this product. I had an authorized Samsung repair shop look at it and the LCD drivers had failed. Great, I thought, a simple circuit board change. WRONG! That circuit board was "married" to the display so the entire display needed to be replaced. $1500 plus labor! Short result: the Samsung was junked and a reliable Sony replacement purchased. Star rating reflects the unconscionable cost of repair of a somewhat simple problem.

The one star is for the beautiful Over The Air HD that I am receiving with this TV. It's exactly what I expected from this unit. Unfortunately I have to deduct 4 stars for each of the other inputs that came DOA. All HDMI, Component, S-Video, and Composite imputs on the back and on the side show "Weak or no signal" when valid sources are plugged in. Since Samsung is starting to give me the runaround about repairs/replacement I've decided to submit a less than favorable review. I hope this will be resolved soon, because I still have high hopes for this TV given the quality of the OTA input.

UPDATE:
I finally was able to get a tech out to look at the TV (no thanks to Samsung) and they replaced the "PCB" (main board). Everything works as it should now. According to the tech they've had other people with simalar problems. Either the tuner works and the inputs don't, or the inputs work and the tuner doesn't. Replacing the main board seems to be an easy fix though, once you get through Samsung's customer service BS.

I'd update this to 4 stars if I could, but Amazon doesn't allow that I guess.

I originally saw this set a few weeks ago at Sears and the picture quality blew away everything else they had on the floor. The richness of the colors and the clarity were simply awesome.

I did the research and was a little disappointed after reading some of the reviews and was a bit hesitant about making this "big ticket" purchase based on the comments concerning the glare due to the "glossy" screen.

My "TV room" has 4 large skylights and is not that large. I was replacing a rear projection 50" non-HD Phillips TV which also had a "glossy" screen and the reflection in this particular room were horrible. But the age of that TV (circa 2000), the fact that it wasn't HD, coupled with the spectacular performance of the Samsung floor model I saw at Sears, drove the purchase.

I ordered through Amazon, even though it wasn't the lowest price they showed at the time, due to their fantastic customer service I have always received in the past, plus they offered free shipping. The order was placed on a Wednesday, shipped on Friday, and the confirmation indicated Eagle would "white glove" it to me. Amazon shipping showed it would arrive 8-12 days after the ship date, though after checking Eagle's web site I found they estimated 6 days from when they picked it up. The tracking provided on both web sites was good, though the Eagle site always seemed to show the most up-to-date location status. Bottom line, as soon as I saw the set was at a local destination I called Eagle and arrange for delivery the next day, which was the following Tuesday. Total time from order to delivery was 6 days with 2 being a weekend, and 2 days earlier than either site showed.

The set arrived in pristine condition. The Eagle rep brought it in, unpacked it, allowed my wife to inspect it, including a quick power on and pixel check, then took away all the packing material. Though I still think that was a bad idea in case "knock wood" anything goes wrong later.

Talk about the "WOW" factor. The default settings on this TV were absolutely fantastic. But easy to find "tweaks" on the internet from other owners that measured/calibrated this model in their own homes for their sets, made it even better to set a baseline for my set as opposed "show room floor" settings, which I could easily further "fine tune". The review from Jolly G. Giant "texaspumpkinhead" was my personal baseline and it worked great. So the picture went from stunning to OMG! This set has a ton of options for setting the picture to your liking, which is important since your lighting conditions and preferences will most likely differ from the ones the default settings were designed for. But don't be worried, there is a "reset" menu function that takes everything back if you get lost. BTW each inputs settings are saved individually, so you can set up each one to your liking and not have to worry about resetting each input after you "tweaked it" just because you changed device.

My fear about reflections never materialized. This TV is set up in the same exact spot as my old projection TV that was almost un-viewable at certain times of the day due to reflections caused by the skylights and patio doors. This Samsung's high contrast ratio must somehow push through that even with the glossy screen, because we saw minimal reflections with this TV and the picture just knocked our socks off. Most of the reflection we did see were from the gloss black frame, not the LCD screen itself, and we even tried turning on/off lamps in the room and opening/closing doors. In all cases the picture remained the best we personally have ever seen.

We are entirely pleased with this set and the whole purchase process. The only reason I didn't give this set a "5 star" rating is because I attempted to fine tune it even further using Digital Video Essentials, and found the left side of the screen was a little brighter than the right and could not be adjusted out with any setting I could find when viewing the grey scale test patterns. This perceived "anomaly" does not however affect the picture quality we have seen so far, at least by our "laymen" eyeballs. We have only been able to see what this set can do at 1080i so far, and it is simply spectacular. Can't wait till we upgrade to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray when the dust clears from that battle ;)

If you are on the fence about this unit, as I was, based on my experiences with it, I would highly recommend it. I watched the price on this set for a few weeks and it dropped a few hundred dollars. BTW Sears wanted $3800.00 for it at the time I first saw it BEFORE tax. When I made the purchase, the price was a wee bit over 3K. The very next day it dropped to $2924.00. A simple call to Amazon and they credited me back the $100 and change it went down and the rep told me I have 30 more days, and if it falls again, they will give me more back!! Believe you me, I will be watching the price here as well as thoroughly enjoying this fantastic set!!

I purchased my set from Amazon (on 5/30) and have to report that overall it was a great experience. This is the first time I bought such a large/expensive item from them, but their reputation is good and I figured I'd give them a try (and you can't beat the price).

The set shipped through Eagle and the Ohio warehouse. Once the package arrived in Atlanta, I called Eagle to schedule a delivery based on advice from this forum. It turns out I acted a little prematurely. Eagle contracts with a firm called Freight 1 which is used to deliver the set to your door. It turns out they schedule independently of Eagle. They called Monday and told me they could not deliver before Thursday. I politely explained I already scheduled a Tuesday delivery with Eagle and had taken off work to accept delivery (and play with the new toy). The gentleman was understandably a little upset, but he was able to "squeeze" me in for Tuesday. Long story short, they showed up right on time Tuesday and I have to tip my hat to Freight 1 for being flexible. The delivery men borought the set in the house, unboxed it, and set it on my stand for me. They suggested I keep the packing material in case of a problem. Remember to tip your delivery men everyone.

Before I get to my impressions of the set, I want to point out that this is the third HD set I've owned in the last 6 years. I am an amateur HT enthusiest and have been on the quest for (affordable) perfection for quite some time. My first HD set was a Mits 46809 CRT projection. The Sammy is now replacing a Toshiba 52HM84 DLP projection set.

I must say that this is easily the best picture of all the sets I have owned or configured for friends. It has an amazing black level for an LCD set. The colors out of the box in Movie mode are pretty darn good for defaults. A few tweaks from the defaults and the set looks fantastic. It's actually hard to make this set look bad. For you out there that a obsessed with tweaking and can't seem to find the right settings, I suggest you just put it in Movie or Standard (depending on which looks better for the content, stay away from Dynamic) and simply lower the brightness if needed and set the color mode to your preference (warm or standard). If in Movie mode, you may want to activate dynamic contrast for a little extra punch. This is first set I've seen (besides a Panny Plasma I tweaked) that looked pretty good with the defaults.

This set doesn't look any better or worse when displaying SD content than my DLP. These sets are so precise that any amount of garbage is blown up and magnified. It's like listening to AM radio on a nice home theater system. That said, it's totally watchable on this set. HD content is of course fantastic. PC and Video Game content is absolutely gorgeous! If you are a gammer or have a HTPC, then this set is perfect.

I can happily report there is absolutely no detectable motion blur. I spent an hour so watching various fast paced sporting events and did not detect any blur that was not in the source. I also spent some serious time with Gears of War, Dead or Alive, and PGR and can report no noticable blur. My DLP had a big problem with false contouring, but none is apparent here. If you see blur, I can almost guarantee it's in the source. Try using the wonderful "still" button on your remote to freeze the frame. If the blur is there when frozen, guess what?...it's in the source!

Another thing to point out is this set has an absolutely fantastic color depth. I saw no color banding whatsoever on test gradients. For those with Discovery HD, there is a Planet Earth commercial that shows a DVD case panning across the Earth that has an excellent dark gradient on it. No color banding on this at all! (my DLP had some noticeable banding on this image). Color me impressed.

The glossy screen does cause some reflection issues. I would say if you have any windows directly behind the set, you may have issues when watching during the day. It's not terrible (about the same as a CRT tube set or my old CRT projection set), but it is certainly much worse than my matte DLP set. That said, we have some 60 watt lamps on both sides of my sofa directly behind the TV, and while you can see their reflection if you look for them, they don't cause a problem for nighttime viewing. Sunlight is your main enemy is this regard.

Overall, I honestly feel this is one of the best sets out there for the money.

P.S. The price of the TV was lowered about $100 dollars two weeks after my purchase. One email to Amazon and they credited the difference the same day! I will not hesitate to buy electronics/appliances from Amazon in the future.