Samsung PS50B650 Plasma HDTV Review

Samsung are on a roll with their latest range of LED LCD TVs, but in his AVForums review David Mackenzie finds that the company’s Plasma range of TVs are still great value for money and offer some degree of picture accuracy as well.  You can read the review here

Like the B560 version, Samsung’s PS50B650 is a slightly frustrating, but still recommendable HDTV. There’s so, so much going for it: excellent styling, great video processing, calibration controls which allow for Reference quality colour reproduction, as well as Greyscale and Gamma accuracy that’s nearly as great. Not just this, but there are features galore, and incredible picture detail. Irritatingly, a few quirks spoil the party: there’s motion artefacting in certain video sources, the “Cinema Smooth” feature which is needed to get judder-free motion from 24fps film content changes the picture characteristics ever so slightly and needs to be enabled manually, and the panel’s image retention might be slightly irritating for some.

If you absolutely can’t wait in the hope that an updated model will fix the few remaining issues and must buy a Plasma TV now, then the Samsung PS50B650 should make it onto your shortlist, provided you’re aware of the potential issues.

Had Samsung fixed the “50hz flaw”, the PS50B650 would have unquestionably received a “Highly Recommended” badge and would have been an obvious choice for a bargain-priced display. In its current incarnation, all I can do is present the hard data and ask you to draw your own conclusions as to whether this TV is for you. We look forward to seeing what Samsung can do to improve upon this HDTV in an updated model, but for now, the PS50B650 stands as something of a bargain that’s just a little rough around the edges.