Tour & Design

The front of the UN55B7000 has a clean, elegant look that would look at home in any modern home. In fact, Samsung had several models displayed on their stand at CES alongside works of art, and they didn't look out of place. The only major distinguishing marks are a Samsung logo at the bottom.

The front of the LNXX B7000 has a clean, elegant design

**Back**

The back of the UN55B7000 has a similarly clean look, with a panel at the bottom right covering the input/output ports, and the power cable snaking up to the middle of the back. The four  screws are for the mount, which can take any standard VESA mount, or Samsung's new low profile mount that is just 0.6 inches thick. 

*The ports and sockets on the back are under the panel

at the right
*

**Sides**

There isn't much on the left or right side of the UN55B7000; because it is just 1.19 inches thick, there just isn't much here. 

The sides of the UN55B7000 aren't much to look at, because the display is so thin

**Stand/Mount**

The stand of the UN55B7000 shares the clean design aesthetic of the rest of the display; the base is either aluminum or black (Samsung have not decided which color to use in the final version) and has a clear plastic pole that the TV itself sits on. This allows the display to rotate freely. Alternatively, it can be mounted on any standard VESA wall mount, and Samsung have announced a new wall mount that holds the display just 0.6 inches off the wall, making it look almost like a high-end picture frame. 

*The stand of the LNX B7000 is on a clear plastic post
*

Samsung's new low profile mount puts the screen just 0.6 inches off the wall

**Aesthetics**

Samsung's design principle for this year seems to be simple elegance, and the UN55B7000 is a fine example of this; it has a simple, understated design that leaves the screen images to do the talking. 

Performance Features

Display Size & Technology

Built around a 55-inch LCD panel, the UN55B7000  is unusual in that the backlight for the screen comes from LEDs instead of the more widely used CCFL (Cold Compact Florescent Lights). These are white LEDs that are located around the edge of the screen, rather than having an array of LEDs behind the screen like some other manufacturers. While this is presumably simpler (as it requires fewer LEDs), it does mean that this display can't do local dimming, where some of the LEDs can be dimmed if the content on that area of the screen is dark. Other manufacturers are using this on some of their displays, but Samsung is not offering this on any of their announced 2009 models.

Caption

Format & Resolution

Like all of the LED models, the UN55B7000 has a full HD panel with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, so it can display a full 1080p signal without having to scale or reduce the resolution at all. The UN55B7000 can also handle all of the high definition formats, from 1080p down. 

Brightness, Blacks & Contrast Ratio

Samsung was somewhat tight-lipped about the technical specifications of the UN55B7000; they declined to reveal any details of the black level, brightness or contrast of the UN55B7000 beyond a few marketing slogans. For instance, they describe the UN55B7000 as having a 'Mega Contrast Ratio', but didn't give any specifics of what that really means. Likewise, they describe them as having deeper blacks than other LCD screens, but didn't give any specifics on this. So, we'll have to wait until closer to the product release date to get the detailed specifications.

Refresh Rate & Motion

The UN55B7000 has Samsung's new Auto Motion Plus processing system, running at 120Hz. The more expensive 8 series doubles this to run at 240Hz, but we haven't tested this yet, so we don't know how much of a difference the faster processing will make. The demos that were running on Samsung's stand at the CES show looked impressive, though; motion was noticeably smoother and more natural looking.

Viewing Angle

Again, Samsung did not make any numbers available here, but we found that the pre-production unit on the Samsung stand had a good viewing angle; the colors started to get somewhat pale at angles beyond about 60 or 70 degrees off straight on. That's a very acceptable angle, though; most of the TVs that we review start to fall off somewhat sooner. Of course, we will have to wait to get a full production unit in before we can draw any real conclusions, but it certainly looks promising. 

Color

We saw good, strong color in the pre-production unit that we looked at on the CES show floor, and Samsung is offering an extended color gamut that they call Wide Color Enhancer Pro. However, most extended color gamuts of this type only work if the source material can be output in the same color gamut, and most devices can't do this. However, if you have a number of other Samsung devices, this might be useful feature to have.

Connectivity & Media

Audio & Video Ports

The demo units of the UN55B7000 that we on display at the Samsung stand had their ports concealed, and Samsung didn't want us taking the port cover off for fear of industrial espionage. However, our crack journalistic instincts lead us to believe that under the cover are 4 HDMI Ports,  an antenna port, 2 USB ports, a handful of analog inputs, a headphone socket and an Ethernet port. But, of course, all of this is subject to change between now and when the product is revealed. One interesting thing to note here is the rather neat cable holders that re built into the case and the port cover, which hold the cables in place.

A nifty port cover doubles as a cable router on the back of the LN 55B700*

Media & Other Connectivity

Like most of the other manufacturers, Samsung are looking beyond just video as a source of content for their TVs. The first big feature here is the Internet@TV system, which allows the display to run Widgets, small programs that grab data from the Internet such as stock prices, news feeds, photos, etc. So, if you want to keep track of your falling stock portfolio while watching Teletubbies, you can. The Widget system was created by Yahoo, but it is an open system that anyone can write Widgets for, so other sources of data may be possible as well. There is already a Widget that allows the viewing of YouTube videos, for instance. The UN55B7000 also supports playing back video, photos and music from USB devices such as hard drives or thumb drives, but there are no built in media card readers. There is, however, support for the new DLNA wireless standard, that allows devices such as PCs and media centers to wirelessly stream media to the TV. This will require an additional wireless adapter, though. 

Placement

As you can see from the photo above, the ports are not best placed for easy access. You won't for instance, be able to easily plug in a device such as a camcorder or portable media player without having to rotate the screen around for easy access. Some displays put a selection of the ports on the side of the screen for easy access, but all of the ports on the UN55B7000 are at the rear.

Audio

Samsung declined to give us much in the way of specifics on the speakers built into the UN55B7000; they did not provide the wattage or number of speakers. We do know, however, that the speakers are located on the bottom of the display, pointing downwards, and that there is a subwoofer built in. Given the rather weak built-in speakers that we usually see on TVs, we look forward to seeing if this addition makes for beefier sound without having to invest in an external speaker system.

Controls, Menu & Remote

Remote

The remote for the UN55B7000 was not available for examination. Perhaps Samsung were afraid that we would go on a rampage, turning off displays all over their stand. We would not do that, of course, but the remotes we've seen on previous Samsung models have been pretty good, with big buttons and a comfortable feel in the hand.

Controls

The controls on the display are located at the bottom right corner. There are 6 touch controls, which are only visible if you touch the panel; otherwise, the lights fade out so they don't detract from the look of the display. Again, the controls on Samsung's display units were disabled in case someone went in and switched over to CNN, but we found similar controls on other models to be slightly irritating; you need a firm touch to trigger the control. But we'd expect that most people will use the remote control for most things, so that's not likely to be a huge problem.

 

Menu

We were not able to get access to the on-screen menus of the UN55B7000, but a brief glimpse that we got when someone was setting up the screen showed a straightforward tabbed interface that looked much like the layout on previous models, such as the LN46A750 that we reviewed here.

Conclusion

Although it's hard to draw too many conclusions from our limited hands on at the CES show, the signs for the UN55B7000 look good; the design is clean and the demos look very promising. But we'll have to wait until the display is released before we can draw any real conclusions, which is due to happen in the first quarter of this year. We'll also have to wait to get information on another important aspect of this display; the cost, and how much less than the flagship 8 Series this model costs.