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  • Tour & Design

  • Performance Features

  • Connectivity & Media

  • Controls, Menu & Remote

  • Conclusion

  • Tour & Design
  • Performance Features
  • Connectivity & Media
  • Controls, Menu & Remote
  • Conclusion

Tour & Design

The front of the PN58B850 has a clean, modern look, with just a small Samsung logo at the bottom. The controls are located in the bottom right corner, but most of the time they are invisible, as they are touch controls with lights that only come on when you touch the panel. 

The Samsung PN58B850 in all its glory

**Back**

The major feature on the back of the PN 5B850 is the cover that goes over the ports, at the bottom right. To the right of this is the power socket, and near this are the 4 screws that connect to the wall mount. Any standard VESA mount can be used with this large TV, but make sure that it can handle the weight; this is a heavy display. 

*The port cover is the major feature on the back of the display
*

**Sides**

Given the slim profile of the display, it's no surprise that there are no major features on the sides. 

The left side is too thin to hold any major features. 

 

**Stand/Mount**

The stand of the PN58B850 is in the form of a clear plastic pillar atop a base that comes in either aluminum or black (Samsung have not decided which color to use in the final version). For wall mounting,  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 stylish mount of the PN 5B8500

**Aesthetics**

Simple elegance is the best way to describe the PN58B850; it looks great, but doesn't distract from the image on the screen. There are a few nice touches as well, such as the clear edge to the bezel which softens the look of the display and catches interesting reflections. 

Performance Features

Display Size & Technology

The PN58B850 is built around a 58-inch Plasma panel, but Samsung claims to have done some serious behind the scenes work to slim down the usual hefty power requirements of large plasmas; they claim that it will suck down 40% less juice than a similar sized model from last year. They've also slimmed down the depth of the panel, so the whole display is thin. In fact, Samsung claims that it is the thinnest 1080p Plasma out there. 

Caption

Format & Resolution

As befits a top of the line model like this, the panel is a full HD one, which means it has 1080 by 1920 pixels and can display every single pixel that a 1080p video signal can throw at it. And, like all HDTVs, it displays the images at a 16:9 aspect ratio. 

Brightness, Blacks & Contrast Ratio

Like all of their just-announced-but-not-yet-released 2009 products, Samsung was somewhat tight-lipped about the technical specifications of the PN58B850; they declined to reveal any details of the black level, brightness or contrast  beyond a few generalisms. It has, for instance, 'the darkest blacks ever seen on a HDTV' and 'extremely high dynamic contrast ratio', but there is no information on what this actually means in terms of numbers. Hopefully Samsung will release more details soon, and we'll know for sure when we get one of the new units in for testing in our lab.

Refresh Rate & Motion

The PN58B850 has the same 600Hz sub-field processing as most modern plasma TVs, but this shouldn't be confused with the refresh rate of LCD HDTVs; plasmas use a different form of processing and screen updating, and the two aren't comparable. In sub-field processing, the plasma display divides the screen up into different areas, and updates them in between frames of video to make motion smoother and to compensate for a problem called dynamic false contouring, where the process of updating the screen creates false areas of color (you can read the patent for the sub-field processing technique here). However it does it, the demos that Samsung were running at the show looked good; we saw smooth motion and no evidence of ghosting, trailing or other issues. We should note, however, that this was a hand-picked pre-production unit designed to highlight the model, so it is perhaps no surprise that it looked good. We'll reserve judgement on this until we get a review unit in.

Viewing Angle

Like all plasma displays, the PN58B850 had an excellent viewing angle; colors remained bright and clear until about 50 to 60 degrees away from straight on, and they were even tolerable at wider angles. Another thing that we noticed was that that the new anti-glare coating on the PN58B850's screen seems to be very effective; what little glare we noticed was very soft and didn't detract from the iamge quality. Samsung calls this new coating Ultra FilterBright Plus. 

Color

Colors on the PN58B850 looked good, with strong, bright colors on the screen and good levels of shadow detail. However, our comemnt about hand-picked pre-produstion units above still counts here. One thing to note is the inclusion of what Samsung calls Wide Color Enhancer Pro, where the processor maps the standard HD and SD video color space onto a wider gamut. Normally a wider color gamut requires content specifically produced for it. Again, we'll have to reserve judgement on whether this is a good or a bad thing until we can do some proper testing.

 

Connectivity & Media

Audio & Video Ports

The demo units of the PN58B850 that were on display at the Samsung stand had their ports concealed but our examination of other smiliar models indicates that this one has 4 HDMI Ports, an antenna port, 2 USB ports, a handful of analog inputs, a headphone socket and an Ethernet port. But, of course, we could be wrong, and Samsung might change their minds before the product is released. One interesting thing to note here is the rather neat cable holders on the port cover.

The ports of the PN-58B850

Media & Other Connectivity

A lot of the recently announced TVs are going beyond jsut showing video, ading the ability to stream video off the Internet and show other content. For the PN58B850, this is in the form of Samsung's own Internet@TV system, which allows the display to run  small programs (called Widgets) that grab data from the Internet such as stock prices, news feeds, photos, etc. The PN58B850 also supports playing back video, photos and music from USB devices such as hard drives or thumb drives, but no media card readers are built in. 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

Whatever the ports are under the spy-proof cover, they are not best placed for easy access. To plug in a device such as a camcorder or portable media player , you will have to rotate the screen around, which is not easy with a 58-inch plasma screen and remove the cover. 

Audio

Samsung declined to give us details  on the speakers built into this big screen, except to clarify that they point downwards from the bottom of the case and include a sub-woofer to boost the sound. But we'll have to take their word on that until we try it our. 

Controls, Menu & Remote

Remote

The remote for the PN58B850 was not available for us to look at, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Controls

We were also unable to try out the controls of this display, as they were shut off to stop pesky CES attendees from fiddling with the controls. But we were informed that they are located on the bottom right corner of the front, and are the standard touch-screen controls that we've seen on other Samsung models.

Menu

Because the controls were shut off, the on-screen menus for the PN-B850 remained a hidden world to us, like a distant land glimpsed from a mountaintop. But we would anticipate that it will use the same straightforward tabbed interface that we saw on previous models, such as the LN46A750 that we reviewed here.

Conclusion

It's hard to come up with any real conclusions on the PN58B850 without the biggest piece of buying information: price. Samsung have not revealed the price of this model yet, but we do know that it will be available in the first quarter of this year. Certainly it looks like an impressive display with a number of interesting features, such as the Internet@TV Widget system, and a claimed very wide contrast ratio. It's also a looker, with a thin, sleek profile that makes it look more like art that consumer electronics. So, we'll look forward to trying it out in our labs sometime soon. 

Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

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Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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