Samsung UE32EH5000K Pro Reviews

The Samsung UE32EH5000 appears to have been designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: to deliver good picture quality as cheaply as humanly possible. Let's look at the evidence - kicking off with its genuinely remarkable price. It's full recommended retail price is £429.99 (around US$646/AU$634), but at the time of writing it's available online for the frankly extraordinary sum of £270 (around US$406/AU$398). That's cheaper than many of the 32-inch TVs from self-consciously budget brands such as Finlux and Kogan - yet there the 32EH5000 sits, smugly brandishing its Samsung logo for all the world to see.

A few years ago, most television manufacturers – led ironically by Samsung – began to put a lot of effort into trimming down the depth of their LED-based LCD TVs, so much so that it became a contest of slenderness instead of image quality. While aesthetically stunning, these impossibly svelte edge LED LCD displays tend to suffer from screen/ backlight uniformity issues due to the inherently uneven distribution of LEDs, and the proximity of the backlight unit to the LCD screen. Thankfully the Samsung UE32EH5000 bucks this unhealthy trend, preferring to let its picture (and sound) rather than its waistline do the talking. Saddled with a bulging derriere, the TV won’t be in the running for any design award anytime soon, but on the upside you get very impressive black-level performance, screen uniformity and audio quality. Available to buy for under £300, the 32EH5000 rekindles memories of some outstanding budget offerings from the Korean manufacturer such as 2010′s LE32C530 and 2009′s LE32B450. Although it’s not the equal of other 2012 HDTVs that we’ve deemed “Highly Recommended”, the Samsung EH5000 represents excellent value for money which earns it a spot in this category.

What can we say of the EH5000’s looks? Well, they’re hardly likely to set the pulse racing and some might prefer a slimmer model but we don’t really mind the simple approach and, unless you’re wall-mounting, chassis depth shouldn’t really be a consideration. A side benefit of having more room inside the body comes in a fairly effective pair of speakers that out-perform those found in some of the far more costly – and therefore slimmer - TVs that we see. Connectivity options are also similarly basic, with only 2 HDMI inputs, and the remote follows the same theme whilst throwing compactness into the mix but it gets the job done with the minimum of fuss whilst slotting comfortably in hand. We could be accused of labouring a point here but Smart features are also rudimentary, by recent standards, so there’s really only a USB media player to mention although that goes about its business very nicely.