Samsung UE40ES5500K Pro Reviews

The Samsung UE40ES5500 is a decent budget 40″ LCD-based HDTV, although it doesn’t excel in enough areas to get an all-out recommendation. Overall image quality is a step back compared to what we’ve seen from Series 5 in the past: in particular, we remember that the LE40B550 (three generations before) featured a panel of comparable quality to those found higher up in the range, with less low-tone smearing, and on certain units, a full colour management system with near-perfect accuracy. Perhaps the addition of “Smart TV” features at this price point has forced compromises elsewhere? The UE40ES5500′s biggest strength is surely its gaming responsiveness. If you can see through the motion blur, you’ll be rewarded with very low input lag from connected games consoles and PCs. In fact, some console users even find that a screen with inherent motion blur helps them better enjoy games with low frame rates (most games on the underpowered current generation consoles only run at 30fps) due to the “smoothed motion” appearance. We’re not convinced that this is as good as £500 can buy, but if you can accept motion clarity which is low even by LCD standards, then you’ll be rewarded with decent colour accuracy, good contrast performance, and a good selection of web connected features.