Overview
4k is here and so is the 4k price tag. However, the Samsung 40KU6020 Smart LED TV comes in well below the average high street price. It also boasts the latest mod cons like UHD, upscaling and cloud gaming. It also performs well in the sound department.
So what’s the catch? Well, the most obvious drawback is that it’s only 40 inches, which means if you are upgrading from an HD telly, you won’t be as blown away by the increase in picture quality. Some gamers have also complained that there is a slight lag in the picture with really fast moving shoot ’em ups. Apart from this, we are struggling to see the downside at this price.
Design
The 40KU6020 has fairly standard Samsung looks, which is no bad thing. There’s a black plastic bezel around the edge that, while it might not be brushed aluminium, is still thin enough to still look quite smart. The frame is also fairly standard for a modern TV. The only slight con is that it doesn’t allow the TV to swivel.
Picture Quality
The Samsung UE40KU6020 is called “UHD” and “4k” on different manufacturers’ websites. It’s pretty confusing the way UHD and 4k are thrown around, but essentially they mean the same thing – namely that the TV packs in twice as many pixels as a normal HD television. Traditional HD TVs had 1,920 vertical columns of pixels and 1,080 horizontal rows, and now Ultra HD TVs have 4,096 columns and 2,160 rows. So you’re essentially jumping from 2 to 8 million pixels.
This TV is 40 inch, which means you don’t quite get to see every actor’s pores like you do with the Samsung UE50KU6000 , but you are still going to notice a huge uplift.
It also comes with HDR technology. Essentially, this makes the dark regions of the TV darker, and the lights lighter. It doesn’t sound like much, but it really does render the picture in a much more realistic way – especially if you are watching a night scene. Have a look at the picture below to see the effect.
A common complaint is that there isn’t currently much 4k TV around, and if you are after a real bargain then you could just go for a standard HD model. However, if you buy cheap, be prepared to buy often, because Netflix and other providers are having a big push on this type of content over the next 12 months (all of Amazon Prime’s and Netflix’s originals are now produced in 4K).
Also, Samsung has come up with some pretty nifty technology that upscales standard HD content to 4k on the fly. We found this kind of upscaling to make a marked difference, but it still to our eyes falls short of true UHD content.
Buying from Samsung also means you get a lot of their proprietary tech baked in. Purcolour, which is essentially a wider palette of colours to play with, UHD dimming, which adjusts colour on a pixel by pixel basis and Ultra Clean View, which removes noise from your input signal, all chip in to make a picture that you just don’t get with the cheaper brands (we’re mentioning no names).
The only slight drawback is that some users have said there is a slight lag in the picture. This really doesn’t affect standard viewing or gameplay but we wouldn’t pick this model if you are planning to play fast moving shoot ’em ups.
Sound
The sound is pretty decent for a TV. However, while TV quality has doubled in the past 5 years, ever thinner models have meant that speaker quality has not kept up. However, soundbar prices have also been squeezed so we would seriously advise investing in one of these.
In short, you won’t have complaints about the sound, but even a £100 soundbar will put you in another league sonically.
Smart TV Features
The 40KU6020 boasts Samsung’s latest Tizen-based system. It’s deceptively simple, with every app being just 3 clicks away. When you call it up you get a bar across the bottom of the TV that has your installed apps (popular ones like Netflix are pre-installed). You can install more apps via the app store and pretty much everything you’d want is in there. You can also browse the net, though we’ve always found doing this via a remote is frustrating.
It also has Cloud Gaming through the Gamefly and Playstation Now apps. It’s a nice feature but due to the TV not having anywhere near the processing power of a Playstation the games are quite limited. Think of it as a bonus, but definitely not as a replacement for a console.
Other Points:
Set up was really simple and took less than 5 minutes.
The TV comes with the Samsung Smart View app that lets you enjoy pictures, music and video stored on your mobile and PC easily on your Smart TV. It also lets you control the TV with your mobile for those annoying moment when you lose the remote down the side of the couch.