Customer Reviews

Samsung PN58A650 58-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV with RED Touch of Color

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this TV to replace a 55" Mitsubishi HDTV that I have had for 8 years. I have researched the purchase to death for 2 years. I did not want to go down in size, (I considered the 52" LCD), as the placement would add 2 feet distance, but could not afford the larger LCD. The plasma screen is fabulous. Lots of great features. I bought the Avia II calibration DVD, but the Samsung was spot on in the standard mode. No adjustments needed. We already have a 32" Samsung LCD in the bedroom and have been very happy with it. This was my first major purchase from Amazon and it could not have gone better. The TV arrived 2 days early and the White Glove service was exactly that. The driver helped unpack and set up the TV. We inspected it and powered it up. No problem. I saved around $1,000. over the big box stores.

This is the TV to buy! Absolute perfect screen, displys HD broadcasts and movies, etc with perfection. Best choice I ever made. Amazon has such an amazing price that you cannot go wrong buying this TV from Amazon. Local electronics stores want a thousand dollars more for this product. It came in ahead of promised date in perfect condition. Amazon's white glove shipping service is a great selling point. They bring it inside your house, unpack it, and plug it in to make sure it works before you sign for it. Take my word for it... BUY IT!!

I am happy with the TV, Great picture and attrative set. Compared to other manufacturers, Samsung has the best picture in this price range and size. I bought the Samsung 52 inch LCD 120 hrtz Touch of Red and I was blown away by picture but had a problem with set in menu mode so I decided to jump up to 58 inch. A down side is plasma heat and power consumption, second the picture does blur alittle time to time trying keep up with poor analog TV signal. Garbage in Garbage out. With digital TV and or good DVD this set is just as good as 52 inch, Great Picture. I would give it 5 stars but all Samsung sets have so called PIP or PAP where you must go into menu to get PIP and you can not swap picture and must go into menu again for PIP sound, A real pain!!!!So as for useable PIP (Football Sunday) forgit it. It is a good idea to have power conditioner like panamax for this plasma set as well, it is sensative to power changes, makes the tube flash a bit. You will like this TV for the price on Amazon.

I spent the good portion of 2 years researching and waffling back and forth on a high def TV. Was 42" plasma big enough? Was LCD better? What would make more sense for the PS3 and Xbox 360? All of these things held me back until finally this TV grabbed my attention. Samsung has created an amazing product. The touch of color adds style and class and this TV has it all. 4 HDMI ports, a PC input, a USB port to load music and photos. The options are endless. The picture is absolutely stunning and out of the box it was amazingly user friendly. This TV has the size and specs to meet all your needs. Gaming on it is awesome with no lag effects like some LCD's have experienced and if you like football then you will love this TV. And a blu ray movie on this set is simply lifelike The white glove service was my only issue. They deliver it and bring it inside, but other than turning it on that is all they do, so take your time examining the TV. Other than that the experience with Amazon was great and they credited my account within one day when the price dropped so I cannot complain. This is a must have for the price.

The flexiblity of the picture is incredible- the amount and quality of the adjustments you can make is truly staggering. I can't say enough about the quality of the picture once it's dialed in a bit, so much that I'll spend about 8% of the purchase price to get an ISF cal done once it's got a few hundred hours on it. What a vast improvement over my old HD RPTV.

There isn't much at all on the market that will give you this performance for the price. Check out AVSForum for more on that.

There are plenty of inputs, the USB allows firmware updates, supports 1080p60, and plenty of brightness. The TOC frame looks very slick, colored or no.

This was easily programmed via a Harmony 890 universal.

This Samsung 58" plasma 650 television is superb! The picture is fabulous and the price I picked it up for from Amazon was great. I would recommend this television for anyone who likes a large plasma. It's got a great appearance and can be optioned for just about everything. I had it put in my Media Room and was glad I ordered the 58" 650 as opposed to the smaller plasma. I also have a Panasonic 42" plasma which has been number one rated in the past for picture quality and I can tell you the Samsung 650 rivals it.

All in all this is an excellent television. Blu-ray movies are absolutely beautiful, and standard DVDs upscaled by my PS3 don't look bad either. HDMI cables provide a noticeably better picture than any other input. The only thing that doesn't look so good on this TV are SD TV channels. These tend to be very grainy. In terms of calibration, you really don't need to spend $400 to have someone calibrate the TV to make it look good. Just play around with the settings until you get it the way you want it.

As mentioned in the title, burn-in is problematic on this television. Do not leave any menu screen on the television for more than a couple minutes. Make sure that if you do get artifacts on the screen that you use the scrolling anti burn-in tool. This has saved me a couple of times already. Also, make sure to utilize the pixel shift function, and remember to turn the brightness and contrast down if you ever play video games where you have a still image in the corner of the screen.

My only other complaint is that the speakers that are built into the TV aren't very good. You will need a home theatre system to go with this TV. Even an inexpensive system will greatly improve the sound quality. The home theatre is a must have with this TV.

All in all this TV is a great value. It has some small problems, but no TV is perfect.

We researched fairly heavily - both features of this set and the pricing - before buying. We are extremely happy with the product and the Amazon buying experience.

The Samsung PN58A650: Phenomenal
It's gloriously big. This set replaced a 42" plasma ED set. The large format is breathtaking.
I was somewhat hesitant about the fact that this is Plasma as opposed to LCD. The colours and brightness of this set (A650) are awesome while presenting, of course, all the other benefits of Plasma. Now that it's up and running I realize that I definitely did not need to worry about Plasma.
It separated from its stand to hang on the wall very easily. Although not light, my wife and I hung it on the old set's existing wall rack easily (once I bought the extended bolts required by my existing wall rack components).
The USB picture display sounded gimmicky until I tried it. Very cool. It will be great for social gatherings.

Buying at Amazon: The biggest surprise.
I was reluctant to buy this kind of thing online with no local retail representation. This was triggered by all the typical apprehensions. Through this experience, I have learned that my fears were ill founded.
Firstly, the set was delivered significantly ahead of schedule. (Friday versus the following Tuesday).
Secondly, the delivery service brought the set into the house, unpacked it. They voluntarily verified that all functions were operational prior to asking me to accept the delivery. Then they asked - again - if all was OK before leaving.
And, of course, no local store (specialty store, national chain, Big Box, or "Special Sales Event") pricing came even close.

Amazon has now become my first choice for purchase of big ticket items.

This is as good a picture I have ever seen on any TV, movie screen, etc. and is very "tweakable". It's almost 3-dimensional at times.

That's the good news, now if only the sound "system" wasn't a bit behind the times I would have given the whole unit 5 stars. Unfortunately, the Samsung online "chat" person I contacted confirmed that the HDMI cables from my PS3, DirecTV HR20, and my new little box from Roku that streams Netflix videos, do not pass the 5.1 surround sound signal from the HDMIs into the single optical out on the back of the TV that goes out into my Onkyo surround sound receiver. Setting it up that way, which seems like the way its designed to be to reduce cable clutter, will give you sound, but only 2.1 sound. If you want to hear 5.1 surround sound, you have to bypass the TV and send your optical audio directly from your players to your surround sound receiver. Boo! That means, instead of 1 optical cable going from the TV to the receiver, you need 3 separate optical cables going into 3 optical inputs on your receiver. Sadly, I only have 2 optical inputs on my receiver so I have to get up off the couch (ouch!) and go unplug cables and switch them around, and so on, everytime I want to switch devices to hear the 5.1 surround sound. Samsung tells me this limitation may be upgraded in the near future and maybe a firmware upgrade can do it. Maybe? I had read HDMI was already carrying 5.1 sound and was the "future". I guess the future is still in the future for this TV. (I've recently learned you can buy a hand operated 3 into 1 toslink optical cable multi-switch but that still doesn't mean you can stay on the sacred couch unless you get really long cables running across the living room floor - what an unecessary hassle).

The other disappointment is that Samsung claims their remote can't be programmed to run my HD DirecTV satelitte DVR box (HR20) which is hard to believe considering DirecTV has been around for 2 decades, has millions of customers and is hardly an off-brand. Oh well, hopefully I can program my Harmony remote to run everything (of course it can't run the PS3 which is Blu Tooth! Double boo on Sony for making things so difficult!). By the way, the DirecTV remote can only be programmed to run on/off, and sound level, but none of the advanced features. Sound thru the TV speakers is decent and if you know how to use EQ, you should get good "normal" sound.

On a more positive note, delivery from Amazon was excellent and the unit arrived several days ahead of schedule. Bravo! Now if I can just tweak this thing to make my Cleveland Browns win the Superbowl, it will be perfect............

We recently remodeled our home and created a recess in the wall perfect for a 58" TV. I researched for some time during the remodeling precess and narrowed it down to a Panasonic or a Samsung. We finally decided to order the Samsung 650 Touch of Red on Wed night about 9pm. My delivery was to be Thursday of the next week. My wife got a call on Friday afternoon, less than 48 hours later saying that they wanted to deliver our TV. We had them wait until the evening.

The guy that delivered was real helpful, brought it in, hooked it up to show that it worked and work it did. We run the sound trough our Surround Sound. The picture is beautiful and I received it as quickly as if I had bought it locally. I saved $700 on the unit and $300 in taxes.

This wasn't my first Amazon order but this was by far the most ezpensive one. Amazon is great and the TV is too.