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Re-activateYou may have seen ads for Samsung LED TVs in recent Best Buy circulars and wondered if these sets are really "a whole new species of television," as Samsung claims on its Web site.
In short, not really. These TVs are merely additions to a growing field of LCD sets that use LED backlights instead of the usual fluorescent lamps.
The new Samsungs do use a different design than some other models. Earlier this year, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony introduced LCD sets with full-array LEDs, which are placed across the entire screen. Our tests of some of these TVs found that they excelled in black level, contrast, color, and brightness.
The new Samsungs (including the UN46B7000, UN46B6000, and UN40B6000 in our latest LCD TV Ratings, available to subscribers) differ in that they're edge-lit, with LEDs only around the perimeter of the screen. But even this is not unique; Sony uses the same type of edge lighting on its Bravia KLV-40ZX1M (also in our Ratings). All four of these sets did quite well, although our experts thought the full-array LED sets had slightly better black levels and contrast.
Sony calls its edge-lit LED set an LCD display, as we think is correct. Samsung appears to be compounding the confusion with some of their statements to other media. DisplaySearch said personnel at a Best Buy event featuring Samsung TVs specifically said the new sets are LED TVs, not LCDs with LED backlighting.
The knowledgeable folks at the AVS forum are also raising questions.
Let's set the record straight. This isn't a brand new type of TV, and it has no connection to the only truly, legitimately new TV technology now on the market—OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology.
Have you personally been puzzled about this? Are you otherwise drowning in the alphabet soup of TV technology? We'd love to know. —Eileen McCooey
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