Samsung LN52A850 52” 120Hz, 1080P LCD TV: The Living Review

Initial Impressions

Even though at this point I have only had the Samsung LN52A850 in my possession for a short amount of time, I have really come to appreciate almost everything it has to offer. Even without having the time to properly calibrate the picture to my liking, it was able to produce absolutely eye-watering images of such stunning clarity that I am now more anxious than ever to actually sit down for a few hours and tweak it to my heart’s content. Its design has been a hit with everyone who comes to my apartment and I happen to love the touch of red instead of a depressingly black bezel. The instruction manual is also surprisingly top notch and covers literally everything in simple to understand English while being supplemented by some of the best on-screen menus I have ever seen.

While I may not be what you would call an overly technical TV reviewer, I have owned and auditioned enough HDTVs that I know this one stands head and shoulders above nearly every other set on the market. That in itself makes Samsung’s asking price a bit of a bargain for those of you looking at the latest Sony Bravia XBR or Sharp Aquos HDTVs.

You would think that in the few days that I have had this TV I wouldn’t have found any major issues with it. Well, you would be wrong since there was one problem right from the get go: for some reason the LN52A850 seriously messed with the reception with the IR remotes for both my Blu Ray player and Bell HD PVR 9242. I had heard of this being a problem with certain set-top box remotes (the 9242 among them) but after trying numerous solutions including turning down the backlight on the TV and moving the components into another piece of furniture, nothing helped. I am now using the RF remote from the PVR and crossing my fingers that the interference doesn’t happen with the next Blu-Ray player I buy. However, looking at some of the release notes from past firmware updates for this TV, it seems like this issue was resolved with the 1003 update. Stay tuned for next week’s update to this article since I plan on upgrading the firmware to the 1004 version as soon as possible.

There are some other minor issues I will go into further detail as this review runs its course but there is one thing I can tell you right now: until I mess around with the setting a bit more, the AMP (Auto Motion Plus) feature is staying completely off. They say to not judge a book by its cover so my jury is still out deliberating about the usefulness of AMP and will come back shortly with their impressions. Unfortunately, so far it isn’t looking good.

Normally, I am a very critical person (it comes with the territory folks) but it is extremely hard to find any faults with this Samsung TV even if it is still early in the review process. It is simply an amazing product which I believe Samsung needed after some issues began popping up with the 650 and 750-series TVs.

To complete this first part of this review, I have to say that I think the look on my father’s face said it all when he saw his beloved New England Patriots playing on the Samsung LN52A850. I think Mr. Bean portrays it best….minus the drool of course:


To be continued...