The 8000 series of TVs from Samsung has beena staple in the mid-range TV market for years, but how does the 2020 8000 series TV ...
The 8000 series of TVs from Samsung has beena staple in the mid-range TV market for years, but how does the 2020 8000 series TV compareto last year’s RU8000? We just bought the brand new Samsung TU8000 .
Throughout this video we'll be comparing tolast year’s RU8000. It’s worth noting that Samsung has shiftedtheir lineup and this year’s TU8000 succeeds the RU8000 in name only, and is actually closerin performance to last year's TU7100. So we’ll do some comparisons to that modelas well. If you’d like to skip straight to our testresults, then see the links in the description below. We bought the 55 inch TU8000, but it is alsoavailable in a wide range of sizes from 43 up to 75 inches.
We expect these other sizes to have very similarpicture quality and performance, but obviously as the sizes get bigger you'll likely needa bigger table or a more durable wall-mount. The design of the TU8000 is almost identicalto this year’s entry-level QLED, the Q60T, and looks slightly more premium than lastyear’s RU8000, though the legs don’t look quite as nice. The borders of this TV are very thin and arequite a bit thinner than last year’s RU8000. The wide-set legs support the TV well, andlike some other Samsung TVs they attach securely without the need for screws, which is niceand convenient.
The controls on the TV are very similar tomost recent Samsung TVs and consists of a single button below the Samsung logo in themiddle of the TV. Being as all controls from Power to volumecontrol or source input selection are within one button, you have to rely on a differentseries of short of long presses to activate different commands.
Which can be a bit confusing and difficult,so you’ll probably want to make sure to keep your remote handy. If we move around to the side, the TV is thinand looks good. It sits close to the wall when mounted, whichis nice.
All of your inputs are on the rear of theTV, with some facing sideways, and some facing straight back, unlike last year’s RU8000which had only sideways facing inputs, making it easier to get to them all if you wallmountthe TV. There are two HDMI ports facing sideways,and one facing straight back, giving you a total of 3, which is one less than last year’smodel.
On the sideways-facing panel you also haveyour tuner input, and 2 USB ports. Facing backwards you have your earlier-mentioned3rd HDMI port, as well as your Digital Optical Audio out, ethernet port, and unlike manynewer TVs, Samsung included composite inputs this year so you can plug in older devices,which is nice. As far as cable management, Samsung includesclips for the feet, similar to last year’s model.
While this is very simple, it’s effectivein helping route all your cables in one place. Now we'll move on to the picture quality. As always, check out our website for an updatedcomparison with new TVs as we buy and test them. First up is contrast ratio. The contrast ratio is the relative brightnessof white versus dark areas in a scene.
It is generally considered one of the mostimportant aspects of picture quality, as a high contrast ratio helps dark scenes to appearmore detailed without details getting lost in the gray. Unlike the slightly higher end Q60T, the TU8000doesn’t have Samsung’s new Dual LED technology to help its contrast. That being said, the native contrast ratioof this TV is excellent and is improved over last year’s RU8000.
This helps its black uniformity perform exceptionallywell, making this TV a great choice for watching movies in a dark room. Unfortunately, the TU8000 doesn’t have localdimming to further improve the perceived contrast of real scenes. However, this is to be expected as the RU8000didn’t have it either, and Samsung reserves this feature for their higher-end TVs. Let’s move on to gray uniformity. Our gray uniformity test checks for issueswith the panel where different pixels are all supposed to display the exact same color,but may not.
This can result in distracting areas knownas the dirty screen effect, which is especially noticeable when watching sports or playingvideo games. This is one aspect where this year’s TU8000performs significantly worse than last year’s RU8000.
The left and right edges of the screen arenoticeably darker, and there is some visible dirty screen effect at the center, which willlikely be distracting during sports or panning shots. It’s worth noting that gray uniformity isone aspect of the panel that can vary between units, so yours might perform differently. If you come across a panel that doesn’tcorrespond to our results, let us know in the comments below. Now on to viewing angles.
Having good viewing angles helps keep theimage accurate when viewed from an angle, which can be important if you’re watch theTV with a large group of people, or if your couch is positioned to the side of your TV. Like most TVs with VA type panels, the viewingangles of the TU8000 are disappointing. At an angle the black level raises quicklyand the image looks washed out. While it performs slightly better than lastyear’s model, it’s still not very good overall.
If your TV is in a bright room, good reflectionhandling is important to cut the amount of glare. The TU8000’s reflection handling is abouttypical of most mid-range TVs. Its semi-gloss finish helps diffuse reflectionsa bit across the screen though overall it’s only decent and may strugglein moderately well-lit rooms. It’ll likely be hard to see the image ina bright room or with direct glare from a window, especially since it’s SDR peak brightnessis only decent.
SDR Peak Brightness refers to how bright yourscreen can get when watching most standard non-HDR content. A brighter screen will help your TV overcomereflections and glare, and unfortunately this screen can’t get very bright, and is quitea bit dimmer overall than last year’s RU8000.There's no local dimming so the brightness doesn'treally change with most window sizes, but the TV does have CE dimming, also known asFrame Dimming which dims the whole screen during dark scenes. Unfortunately, this can crush some details,and it can’t be disabled.
If you watch HDR content then the abilityto produce brighter regions of the image is important to produce impactful highlight detailand help make the image ‘pop’. Unfortunately, while the TU8000 supports HDR,it’s very dim with HDR content, and can’t produce bright specular highlights. It performs even worse than last year’sRU8000 and at below three hundred nits, HDR content really won’t stand out.
Also important for HDR is the ability to takeadvantage of the more saturated colors that are possible in HDR, due to the wider masteringcolor space Unfortunately, the TU8000 doesn’t have a very wide color gamut at all, and again,performs quite a bit worse in this regard VS last year’s RU8000. Overall, this TV isn’t the best choice ifyou watch a lot of HDR movies or TV shows from your favorite streaming service, or playHDR capable games from an Xbox One X or PS4 Pro. Speaking of games, how is the motion handlingof this TV? Unlike last year’s RU8000 which had a 120Hertz panel, all sizes of the TU8000 have a 60 hertz panel.
We’ll talk about the effect of this a littlelater on in this video. First up for motion is Response Time. Response time is an average of the time ittakes for the TV to transition from one color to the next. The TU8000 has a great response time, butagain it doesn’t perform as well as last year’s RU8000 and there’s a bit of blurbehind fast-moving objects, though it may not be noticeable to everyone. The backlight of the TV flickers at 600 hertz,which is such a high frequency that it isn't noticeable to most people and can't be seenin our moving logo photo.
However, like this year’s Q60T, we foundthat on full-screen single uniform colors it causes a kind of strange rolling effect. To help reduce motion blur, the TU8000 hasan optional black frame insertion feature. The flicker of the backlight can also be adjustedfor those who want a clearer image. This can be enabled by selecting the “LEDClear Motion” setting in movie mode.
This results in a clearer image with lesspersistence blur, though it’s not as good as some other TVS as you can see some duplicationof the image, and it also darkens the screen a fair amount. Unfortunately, like with both the RU7100 andthe Q60T, the LED Clear Motion doesn’t work in game mode for low input lag. When in game mode the backlight flickers at120Hz, and enabling LED Clear Motion doesn’t adjust this, so more duplication is noticeableand the image is less clear. This may be fixed with a future firmware updatethough.
Now on to input lag. When using this TV in game mode, it reducesthe input lag of the TV, and for most signals, it’s under 10 milliseconds, which is closeto the theoretical minimum at 60 hertz. This is actually an improvement over lastyear’s RU8000 and is great for fast-paced games as it feels very responsive. Unfortunately, like I mentioned before, thisyear’s model only has a 60 hertz panel, so it can’t display a 120hz signal in gamemode, which is disappointing. Also, unlike last year’s RU8000, this TVno longer supports variable refresh rates. This is a huge downgrade if you game withan Xbox One X with VRR or from a PC, and it’s a shame that they excluded this from boththis TV as well as this years Q60T.
Now for the smart features. Like all Samsung Smart TV’s, the RU8000uses Samsung’s own Tizen OS, although the 2020 version has a slightly simpler interfacewith no animations and a new ‘Dark Mode’ instead of the white background. Overall, it’s similar to previous SamsungSmart Tvs and is easy to use. The remote is also the same as Samsung hasused for the past few years with the 8000 line and is small and straight-forward touse.
It still includes the quick launch buttonsthat Samsung included on the RU8000’s remote, which allows you to quickly open Netflix,Amazon Prime, and Samsung TV Plus. We did experience a bug with the Smart OSduring testing which caused overscan issues and is detailed on our written review linkedhere or down below. It’s worth noting that we bought this TVas soon as it was available so hopefully it’ll get worked out over the next few months. Overall, it’s easy enough to fix and wedon’t expect it to be a problem for most people.
At this point you’re probably asking yourself,but Nick, how do the speakers sound? Well if you guessed ‘about the same as mostTVs’, then you’d be right. The speakers have a decent frequency responseand can get fairly loud, but as is expected, they’re lacking in bass. For better and clearer sound it’s alwaysbest to go with a dedicated speaker system or even a soundbar. Overall, the TU8000 is a good TV that’sdecent for most uses, though unfortunately, overall it’s a bit of a downgrade over lastyear’s RU8000.
It performs closer to the RU7100, especiallyin regards to HDR and gaming performance. Though this seems to be becoming the norm,as each year, the 8000 series seems to perform a bit worse than the 8000 of the year before. Keep this in mind when looking for a new TV,as even this year’s Q60T, which is one model up over the TU8000 performs slightly worsethan last years RU8000 overall.
So that's it! What do you think of the 2020 Samsung TU8000? Is it worth the upgrade over last year’smodel or have we reached the point where we should be looking to Samsung’s QLED linewhen looking for a solid mid-range TV? You can check out all of the measurementson our website.