Gadget review: The future is here with the Samsung Full HD 3D smart TV

Years ago, people who talked to their TVs, or who started waving their hands in front of the TV must have been considered out of their minds. Today, they’re just Smart TV users. Being able to interact with the TV is one of the biggest adjustments owners of regular TVs have to make when upgrading to smart TVs. TVs connect to the Internet nowadays, record shows, save reminders which pop up on the screen when needed, react to audio or visual commands, and offer a lot of Internet – based features. It may sound like an old person’s conclusion, but the smart TV market is still small, and a lot of people have never used such a TV, and have to adapt to it. In many ways, it is like a first meeting with the future. After this long preamble, let me tell you a few things about the Samsung Smart TV this review is about. And just before I do that, let me say I was one of those people who never had a smart TV before. I knew they exist and heard about what they can do, in theory, but it was something else when I got to play around with it. First off, the Samsung Full HD 3D TV I tried has a diagonal of 138 cm – quite an upgrade from our 70 cm diagonal TV set. At first, you have the feeling it’s a bit too big – it also depends on the room you install it in – but you quickly adjust to it. It was hard returning to the 81 cm diagonal one after just two weeks! We also enjoyed the minimalistic design - a slim, simple screen, and the fact it was easy to install – four screws to install the curved platform attached to the screen, and that’s it. I imagined it can also be mounted on the wall, we haven’t tried it. A word of advice for anyone looking to buy a full HD TV: please invest in an HD cable subscription! Or if you have the digital cable subscription, make sure your digital cable box ‚speaks’ to the new TV – meaning the connectors on both match. Otherwise, you’ll end up like we did – we have a digital TV box from Digi, which only connects via a scart connector, and we could not find one on the smart TV. So make sure to use the HDMI connection - HD TV boxes have such connections. Not only the TV and cable box will speak to each other, but you will enjoy the quality of the image to the maximum, the HDMI connection is much, much better (different Universe) than the scart one. If you have a regular cable subscription – and plan to plug in the cable directly to the TV (which is possible too), you’ll miss a lot in terms of quality, and probably end up watching stuff on the Internet (much like we did). Other than figuring that out, it’s pretty easy to get used to a smart TV, even for non-technical people. Working your way through the menu and some curiosity reveals lots of the features. Including these features that recognize your face – very good for when connecting on Skype – or your voice. And even the feature allowing you to control the TV by moving your hand. It took us a while to figure the last one out – smart TV newbies.... – while we were playing Angry Birds (hint – TV ‚reads’ the image of your open palm, so in order to trigger actions, you have to close your palm into a fist). To activate the image features, you have to open your retractable camera, hidden on the top part of the TV. Press it and it will fully open, facing you. The connection to the Internet will of course depend on the speed of your home or office’s Internet connection. Luckily, in Romania Internet speed is quite good. We connected to WiFi both at home and at work, and everything worked smoothly. Basically, if you have an Internet connection and this TV, you’ll not get bored, no matter what’s on TV. You can choose from one of the video on demand applications that can be installed in the app zone from Samsung, and watch new and old movies. Read news, play games, do yoga and other sports. You can record yourself while playing sports in front of the TV, or Skype with friends – the latter is a nice experience, as you can see them on the large TV screen – provided they have a high quality camera too. The Social media component can be used while watching TV – so you’ll never miss Facebook and Twitter feeds. For us, not heavy social media users, that was a bit too much, so we haven’t tried that feature. But we did watch the World Cup final on our office terrace via the Internet – the match was broadcasted live on the TVR website – and it made the delight of our colleagues and friends. We also watched a few BluRay movies, which wowed us, so indeed the source of videos makes a big difference. An external hard drive and/or USB sticks can be connected to the TV, so you can watch as many movies you want – a multimedia player is integrated. To watch them on a disk, you’d have to connect a DVD or Blu Ray player. The TV has some intelligent, pre-set image settings, including one for sports, and one for movies, which was quite handy. What was not so handy was the use of the remote, which for smart TVs is much more than the old remote we got used to. The biggest problem with this particular one was when writing user names and passwords for different web-based services we used. It took quite a while and in some cases got so boring that we gave up on watching TV altogether. The hand control does help in some cases, and so does the connection via a special app by Samsung via the phone, but it was not enough. Perhaps there was another, easier way of writing things on the TV but we were unable to find it. Or perhaps a smart touch pad can be purchased with the newer TVs? That was however minor and was overshadowed by everything else. The history part was unexpected – the TV remembers everything you’ve watched, or what other family members have watched (when we say remembers, we mean it stores the list of channels viewed, and a print screen from the moment of viewing, so much like the browser history, I imagine this one gets deleted a lot to save from being caught red handed). The YouTube app is included, and quite easy to use by pairing it to the YouTube app on the smartphone – one of the ways to avoid using the remote. What took us aback most however was the image clarity and the image enhancement – all movies had a certain depth, even those broadcast on the simple cable connection (and we compared the same film on the regular TV, and on the smart TV). We later found out this is called ‚the soap opera effect’ – the name totally reflects the feeling. While some people seem to hate this, we liked it! It can be turned off however – it’s called auto motion plus. We haven’t tried the 3D feature as we did not have the needed glasses, but I can only imagine it must be fun – if you like 3D movies at the cinema, why wouldn’t you at home? The down side for smart TVs is for the time being their price. Many Smart TVs are still pretty expensive compared to regular TVs; however, they're worth paying for if you have the budget, and as they become more widespread surely the price will also go down, as with any new technology. The TV we’ve tried is about RON 7,700 at