65 Class Q7fn Qled Smart 4k Uhd Tv (2018) Review

If you're looking for a smart Boob tube, just oasis't shopped Samsung'southward QLEDs, you should—they're arguably the best TVs being fabricated today. And while the loftier-stop Q8 and Q9 series might induce sticker shock, the Q7 serial are relatively affordable and evangelize the aforementioned rich and accurate quantum dot color. Indeed, one time you've seen them, the 55-inch 55Q7FN ($i,500) and the 65-inch 65Q7FN ($2,400) reviewed hither won't seem overpriced at all.

The just major departure is that the Q7 series TVs utilise edge lighting rather than straight backlighting. Only the the merely time you might really notice the lesser effulgence and contrast (if you're being actually picky) is with HDR (high dynamic range) textile; otherwise, they deliver largely the aforementioned experience.

Design and specs

Short of embedding your TV into the wall, y'all won't find a cleaner installation than you get with the 2018 QLED TVs, including the 65Q7FN. It's less than 2 inches thick (56.9 inches wide and 32.vi inches tall), weighs 50 pounds, and has barely whatever bezel at all—almost 0.2 inches. Samsung calls information technology bezel-less, which is in line with the industry-wide practice of omitting qualifying adjectives such as "practically" or "about" from about all statements. Samsung sells a flush mountain that will get the TV "virtually" flat against the wall.

Samsung

Nothing to see here, folks. The unmarried very sparse cablevision that connects the 1 Connect breakout connectivity box is routed through the stand up. You lot'll only run across it if you wall mount the Television receiver, and fifty-fifty then it's hardly obtrusive.

Only there are two things that really raise the "disappearing TV" design motif. The first is the single thin cable running to the Television receiver that carries all the signals and—new for 2018—the power. Information technology connects to a breakout box which houses all the ports: 4 HDMI, 3 USB, one coax for an antenna (there is an onboard tuner), one RS-232C, and ethernet. The Wi-Fi adapter onboard is 802.11ac, and there'southward Bluetooth support as well. The issue is, the Ane Connect box finally deserves its name.

Ambiance baby!

The second feature that aids with the minimal-visual-intrusion blueprint aesthetic is Ambient Mode. Basically, you lot have a photo of the expanse surrounding the Television using your phone, perform a couple of tricks using the Samsung app, upload it to the TV, and you wind upwardly with something like what you see below. Note that we don't build with brick  here in earthquake country anymore.

Samsung

The QLED series will mimic the area surrounding the TV based on a photo y'all take and process with Samsung's app. This is Samsung's picture, not ours. The black background in our test area didn't do the Ambient feature justice.

Ambient fashion is a pretty cool feature, and I was surprised just how well it works. Personally, I'll opt for saving power and live with the blank screen, simply for parties it's a nice chat starter.

Remote and interface

Exterior of LG'southward magic remote and its free-range cursor, the QLED's One Remote remote is my favorite amongst minimalist remotes. It'southward small, feels adept in the paw, looks classy, facilitates voice control, and—most of the time—is a joy to employ. Especially clever are the the dual-office, "power window" style volume and channel-select buttons. Push forwards to increase values, pull back to decrease them, and press down like a normal button to select.

Samsung

The One Remote is minimalist and more often than not a delight. But adding defended transport buttons wouldn't injure.

The price for remote minimalism, on the other hand, is sometimes boring scrolling through lists of numbers and functions. In particular—the send functions other than Play/Interruption (stop, fast frontwards, rewind, side by side, previous, etc.) require an actress press. I don't call back information technology would kill the concept or overpopulate the remote to add dedicated send buttons, specially as the remote tin can control Samsung Ultra HD Blu-ray players.

The QLED'south on-screen interface is attractively rendered and logically laid out; but over again, information technology'south a bit tedious. The "dwelling" push button, for instance, takes you to the same identify on the menu every time, no matter where you were when y'all terminal accessed it.

If I was in Expert picture settings, and wanted to meet the results of my calibration without the bill of fare visible, to get back in that location I must click Dwelling, scroll to the settings, then click my way through to the Good settings again. Information technology'due south a pain. Perhaps a browser-style forrad push button to compliment the "exit" button. Merely saying. Less is more, except when it'due south not.

Operation

As QLED TVs are closer to OLED in terms of operation and price than other LED-backlit LCD TVs, the commencement thing I bank check is night area contrast, blooming, and border leakage. I was quite impressed with the Q7FN'southward full general lack of these baneful phenomena. Role of reason is that the Q7's are edge lit rather than direct backlit, then there's only not as much light to block off.

I did find some slight leakage in the upper left of the display, only that was about it.  It'due south still non the velvety blackness of OLED, simply the badgerer cistron has been reduced to practically goose egg.

After my time with the Q9F model  in 2017, I was expecting a bit more sustained effulgence from the Q7FN, merely it maxed out at most 800 nits rather than the ane,000 I saw with more expensive Tv with straight backlighting. Samsung assured me that the Q7FN can render 2,000 nits for very brief instances during the display of HDR textile. I believe them, simply don't have the equipment to objectively verify information technology, and my impression remains that the HDR result is not as pronounced as with the direct-backlit models.

Color, on the other hand, is every chip as rich and accurate. Thank you quantum dots. It's perhaps not quite as vivid as with the Q8 and Q9 serial, just it'south darn close. I noticed some very mild moire and shimmer on slow pan shots with highly detailed 4K UHD video. I twiddled the Digital Make clean View, Auto Motion, and contrast enhancer until the cows came home and was never successful at fully eliminating the trouble.

I'one thousand being picky most that, as the Q7FN exhibits far less of the shimmer and moire than most LED-backlit LCD TVs. Let'southward just say it'south that the closer to perfection you get, the louder the flaws. I should note that there was none of this on the shop demo. That's why we check with our own evaluation material.

I also noticed some pinch-similar artifacts watching the overpass shoot em' up from Deadpool. Not a large matter, and lowering the motion settings helped a lot.

One more than nice improvement is the off-axis viewing, which is merely superb. The new less-cogitating brandish covering and substrate made the Q7FN viewable at even extreme angles. And it remained that way when we turned on the test lab's glaring overhead fluorescents. There are not a lot of TVs that can match that aspect of the Q7FN.

Audio and USB playback

You may take heard commercials touting soundbars because of thin-screen Television set's lousy sound. Well, I wouldn't call the Q7FN's audio lousy. Information technology's articulate plenty and fairly loud, merely information technology's not great either. The stylish path to comeback is a soundbar, and you can discover plenty of those in TechHive's Soundbar hub. But the best soundbar in the globe can't come close to producing the sonority of a good surround system, or studio monitors, or a number of other options. But throwing that out in that location for your subconsciousness to absorb.

The Q7FN played back (from a USB stick) all the virtually popular types of my broad variety of exam paradigm, audio, and video files. This isn't something a lot of users indulge in, merely it tin can be revealing of how a company sweats the little things. Audio formats supported include MP3, M4A, Ogg, FLAC, APE, Apple tree lossless, and most common 16- and 24-scrap wav files. Paradigm files that it will render are .png, .jpg, .bmp, besides equally ane 3D format. GIF is non supported. Video file support includes all the major MPEGs, AVI, h.264, and h.265, but for some reason it missed on a couple of older h.264 AVCHD files and Ogg Theora. I'll requite Samsung a B+ overall, and recommend an Ultra Hard disk Blu-ray thespian such as Oppo's UDP-205 if you desire broader file support .

Still no Dolby Vision, but HDR10+ is on board

Now for the major puzzler facing anyone who wants to buy a Samsung QLED: What are arguably the best TVs on the market don't support the well-nigh pop dynamic HDR format, Dolby Vision. All the other major vendors do.

Samsung

Samsung doesn't support Dolby Vision, opting instead for its own format with dynamic metadata—HDR10+. Evidently HDR-ten is supported besides.

The Q7FN does support the universal i-adjustment-at-the-beginning HDR10, as well every bit Samsung'southward culling to Dolby Vision—HDR10+, which, every bit does its rival, supports scene-by-scene aligning palette and dissimilarity adjustment.

Most the only HDR10+ content available, however, streams from Amazon. Co-ordinate to Samsung, more is in the offing, simply it'due south not here yet and I've seen no announcements. If for some reason it doesn't catch on, you lot're going to be missing out on some very nice-looking Dolby Vision renderings.

Conclusion

If it weren't for the lack of Dolby Vision, the Q7FN would take my whole-hearted recommendation every bit the to the lowest degree-expensive way to become into quantum dot color. The picture is merely slightly less fantastic than its pricier siblings and it pretty much disappears into the room like a chameleon. Adept stuff and well worth considering fifty-fifty if yous're on a upkeep.

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Source: https://www.techhive.com/article/583287/samsung-65q7fn-4k-uhd-tv-review.html

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