Samsung PS58B850

Samsung has replaced its remote conrol with a new, backlit design that's easier to use in the dark.  A second, smaller remote is also included, which only includes the basic functions, as well as a USB Wi-Fi dongle to connect to your wireless network without having to rely on the Ethernet cable.

The on-screen menus are clean and modern, with attractive animated icons that retain some of the traditional Samsung look.  They could be more responsive, but are generally a treat to use.  One interesting setting is the ability to set the brightness on the plasma screen, which is more or less the equivalent to adjusting the backlight on an LCD screen.  As we'll see, though, the effects produced by this setting are less impressive than you might think.

Image Quality
Even when we turned the plasma cells up to their highest setting, white was never brighter than 170 cd/m² on average test card (with 25% white); an LCD screen showing the same scene would easily fly past 300 cd/m².  The result is that the screen lacks a little bit of clout when in a bright environment: putting it in a south-facing room on a sunny day, for instance, would make a noticeable difference.

This weakness is inherent in all plasma screns, which only have a fixed amount of brightness to be distributed across the whole frame.  This means that very bright scenes end up looking pale, but invidiual bright points against a dark background are incredibly bright and stand out well.  This explains why the contrast ratio changes from one scene to the next, but we found it always fell between 1500:1 and 2600:1 in this case, with black at 0.06-0.09 cd/m².  These are very impressive scores, and the measurments we took of the gamma curve and the evenness of black and white tones were also excellent.

Things started to turn sour when we looked at colour handling, where we measured a DeltaE of 5.7, a long way from the perfect score of 3.0.  The discrepancy between the 'real' colours and those shown by this TV that this represents is hardly shocking, and will indeed probably go unnoticed by the majority of viewers.  Indeed, when a friend of mine who was visiting the lab saw some of the test clips we were using, they were astonished by the excellent quality and certainly didn't complain about these colour defects.

To be fair, though, the videos that proved so impressive were HD movies--content that the PS58B850 excels at for two reasons:

• there's no need to upscale the frame to fit the size of the screen, which isn't the case for DVDs or Standard Definition sources which look a lot less sharp.  The upscaling performed by this TV is average at best, and its huge size really highlights the lack of precision in low defition sources.

• Blu-ray content filmed at 24 fps is improved by the Cinema Smooth treatment which interpolates extra frames.  It works in much the same way as the Movie Plus system on Samsung's LCDs--except that it only works with 24 fps movies, not television pictures or DVDs, leaving us wishing Sasmsung had stuck with Movie Plus.

As has always been the case with plasma screens, the viewing angles are excellent, with the DeltaE at 45° 5.8, just a notch above the 5.7 we measured facing straight on.  The image appears just as bright looking from the side, too.  It's only when you reach 45° above or below the screen that things look a lot darker, but that's almost entirely forgiveable for use in the home: you're much more likely to be looking at the screen from one corner of a room than you are to be looking down at it from the ceiling, after all.  That's especially true given the size of this TV, which should be at least nine feet from the audience; any closer and you'll notice the individual plasma cells flickering.

In general, the PS58B850 did very well and delivers an excellent picture quality.  However, several factors conspired to keep it from scoring a perfect five stars in this section:

• as we mentioned above, the average brightness is a little weak, and never creeps above 200 cd/m²

• the screen itself has a very glossy finish and is often subject to reflections

• Cinema Smooth mode isn't activated for all sources

• As a plasma screen, this TV is susceptible to screen burn.  It's a classic problem that affects all screens of this type, and one that still hasn't been solved.  During our tests, we noticed very light burning when showing static test cards, and it's for the same reason that using plasma screens is usually not recommended for computers or games consoles.

As you will no doubt have noticed, none of these points is particularly troubling if you're looking for a TV to use in a dark room to watch movies.  If it's the Home Cinema experience that you're after, then having 58'' worth of screen real estate on an excellent plasma is a great result.

Sound
Our eyes were certainly captivated, but the same wasn't true for our ears.  Compared to the size of the screen, the sound quality was nowhere near good enough, and the fact that the speakers on the PS58B850 point backwards, rather than towards the viewer, didn't really help.  As for the so-called 'built-in sub-woofer', we were left wondering where it was hidden. 

Energy Consumption
This last area is the trickiest.  Although this TV only uses an absolute minimum when in standby--just 0.1 W--it is enormously greedy when you switch it on, with an average consumption of around 411 W.  This varies from scene to scene, depending on what's on the screen, falling to 80 W for a plain black test card, but in any kind of real-life usage it's unlikely to fall below 400 W.  Even accounting for the extra space on screen, it's around twice as much as an LCD screen.

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