Hi and welcome to the review of Samsung TU7000 series from 2020 TV lineup. This is Samsung’s
entry-level UHD TV series this year available in a wide variety of screen sizes, from 43”
up to 75”. I tested the 50” version which I paid around 400 euros - for the actual pricing
go check the links in the description.
TU7000 is the successor to the 2019 RU7100 series that had decent picture quality and
features for the price. TU7000 is very similar, except that it has a few new features, such
as HDMI eARC support, so now you are able to get lossless audio out of the TV. More
about that in a moment.
TV has a very simple black design, with thin bezels and two feet that are separated approximately
1 meter apart. The feet can be assembled without any tools and you will get two clips for cable
management.
On the back of the TV is a nicely textured plastic cover with holes for wall mounting
and connectors facing to the side. Wired connectivity is limited, but for most users, it will be
sufficient. There are two HDMI 2.0b connectors that you can use to hook up set-top boxes,
Blu-ray players and AV receivers, with one of them supporting eARC. Then there is one
USB 2.0, antenna, Toslink and finally, there is a common interface.
Wireless connections include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as the ability to stream content directly
from your Android or Apple smartphone or Windows 10 PC.
TU7000 comes with standard remote control without a built-in microphone. The remote
has 44 buttons that include Netflix, Prime Video and Rakuten TV dedicated buttons. There
is also a button to open settings menu that helped me a lot during the picture calibration
process, though the buttons are very small and difficult to find in the dark environment.
If you want a more advanced remote with built-in microphone, then check a slightly more expensive
TU8000 series.
All new Samsung 2020 TVs have the latest Tizen OS 5.5. It’s a system that first appeared
5 years ago only on Samsung TVs. Similar to LG’s webOS, the platform went through many
small changes over the years, but its principle remained the same. Again we have a home menu
in the lower part of the screen with icons that can be added and arranged as you like.
The default color theme is darker than on previous generations, so it is more gentle
on the eyes, especially when watching HDR content in a dark room. The system and all
the apps I tried were working perfectly stable and TV was booting from standby within 2 seconds.
There is some lag when browsing the menus, but all the apps were working fine which is
more important at the end.
Coming to picture quality, TU7000 series delivers a good overall picture. The panel has native
Ultra HD 4K resolution so static images are very sharp and full of details. In motion,
due to 60 Hz screen there are fewer details visible, but blur is not distracting like
it was - for example of Sharp BL5 series I tested before. As usual for VA panels, contrast
is high and images have a good amount of depth, but only if you sit directly in front of the
screen or under a small angle. TV also has the black frame insertion technique that should
improve motion resolution, but that only brought negative effects such as doubling of objects,
flickering and darkening the screen. So I turned it off. Also, motion resolution gets
worse in dark scenes - another negative effect of VA panels.
Samsung says that this TV uses Crystal 4K processor, but my tests revealed exactly the
same results as last year. This is not necessarily bad as TV was handling well my usual set of
tests, with good upscaling, cadence detection and effective noise reduction.
HDR is very limited, as I expected. Though TV supports HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, it doesn’t
have the hardware capable of displaying high brightness and wide color gamut. With peak
luminance just below 300 nits and without local dimming, HDR basically looks like SDR.
Colors were very accurate in Movie mode and for gamers I recommend Game mode with low
input lag of just 17.6 ms. There is also a PC mode if you want full-color resolution.
Coming to sound, the two down-firing speakers are good for not demanding users. Of course,
I got a much better result when I connected the TV to the AV receiver or used good Bluetooth
speakers. As I mentioned before, TV supports HDMI eARC, but I was only able to get Dolby
Atmos within Dolby Digital+ and Dolby TrueHD containers when connecting it to the Marantz
NR1710 AV receiver. TV was not passing through DTS or 5.1 PCM formats through this connection.
To conclude, Samsung TU7000 is a decent entry-level Ultra HD series that I expect to be very popular
due to its combination of features, picture quality and price. It is a well-rounded TV
that will perform well for watching live TV, movies and TV shows in SDR format. Gamers
will also like this TV due to low input lag and auto low latency mode that will automatically
activate Game mode when gaming content is detected. All the popular apps are here and
it is also very easy to stream content from your phone to the big screen. Considering
all this, I can recommend TU7000 series.
You can expect practically the same picture quality from other Samsung UHD TVs this year,
such as TU8000 series, as all of them have 60 Hz VA LCD screens with low peak luminance
and lack of wide color gamut. If you need a TV with better HDR performance with Samsung’s
logo on it, then consider the QLED series.
Big thanks to company Ronis for sending me Marantz AV receiver for testing. Please check
their website at ronis.hr. Thanks so much for watching and if you like my content, consider
subscribing to my channel for more videos like this. Cheers and see you soon in my next
video!