Home > Consumer Reviews > Samsung LN52A550 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

This television is truly one of the best purchases I have ever made. The picture is simply flawless with no dead pixels, high contrast, and absolutely even color over the entire picture. I can't find anything bad to say about the picture at all.

The menu system is easy to understand but a few functions take more button presses than they perhaps should. The feature to display pictures from a USB flash drive is simple to use and your pictures will look incredible when blown up on the screen. There were more connections than I needed but that's a good thing considering possible future needs.

The only caveat is that the sound is a bit disappointing. There is little low end puch to the sound. I use it with an AV receiver so that isn't an issue for me.

The outer edges are a shiny piano black and it looks great. The screen being matte (unlike the higher end Samsung models) really cuts down the glare and that was a big selling point for us as our viewing area is near our kitchen and our old CRT TV really had a lot of reflections that were annoying. No problem with the Samsung though. I've only played regular DVD's on it so far and they look reasonably good as long as you are a few feet away.

Normal (non-HD) programs look really good. This TV does a good job of conversion to whatever signal you give it. HD programs look incredibly sharp as you would expect.

Overall, I would recommend this TV to anyone and Amazon as the company to provide it. It's a great value even though there were a couple companies offering a (very slightly) lower price. Amazon did a great job for me with this purchase (I was wary of ordering a TV like this over the Internet). After the order, they emailed me that there may be a delay as they ran out of stock but it actually came on the first day of the original delivery window. The delivery company from Washington DC did a fine job and they even waited for me to open the box to make sure it wasn't damaged.

I had narrowed my choice for a new tv to either the Panasonic 50" plasma or the Samsung 52" LCD. My daughter has the Panasonic which is a very nice set. But due to the brightness of the room, I decided on the Samsung. I've had it set up for the past week and all I can say is this is an amazing tv. Regarding the price, local big box stores are selling this for $2799. I paid $2338 at Amazon on April 2 and due to the 30 day best price policy, to date I have received $120 in credits to my card. If you're in the market for a tv, I cannot say enough about the Samsung LN52A550P or Amazon.

This is my first HD TV I have purchased in my life. I have been having this TV for 2 weeks now. There are no dead pixels. The picture quality and colors are great! The sound quality is average. There is no bass and/or treble controls on this TV. The sound on this TV is loud enough for a small room. If your room is really huge then it might not be loud enough for you. I would recommend for you to buy a home theater system for this TV to get the full amazing sound experience. The screen barely has any glare on it when I open all my windows when it's sunny outside. Standard and high definition channels look amazing on this TV if you use a HDMI connection. I don't see any ghosting when I play my video games or computer games. The menu system for this TV is very user friendly. I wish Samsung made bass and treble controls available in the menu options like the Sony Bravia TVs. Overall this TV is great!

It took me a long time to decide between this one, the 6 series and the 7 series. What really did it for me was the matte screen. They say the super-glossy screen of the 6 and 7 series helps the contrast, but I stared at both TV's in a Circuit City for a long, long time (a total of about 4 hours of time between about 6 visits at different times of the day/night) and I simply could not see the difference in that respect. What I could see, clearly, was my reflection in the 6 and 7 series TV's, but not in the 5 series. Though I did like the appearance of the 6 and 7 series better, the 5 series simply performs just as well IMO, costs less and doesn't have the irritating reflective screen.

HD looks breath-taking, SD looks good too and gaming on this bad boy is fantastic. It'd be nice if it had a DVI input instead to use as a PC monitor, but VGA is good enough. Still can do 1080p over VGA, the colors look great and it makes a fantastic PC monitor.

Just so everyone's clear, the 5 series is NOT a 120hz TV. The 6 and 7 series are, not the 5 series. Which is fine, cause I actually decided after much watching of the 6 and 7 series, I don't really like the 120hz feature. It might be nice for live TV and/or sports and maybe gaming, but for movies and regular TV... it just doesn't look right to me.

Anyway, I love it and so will you. You won't be disappointed with this TV.

When matched with TiVo HD, Time Warner HDTV service and a quality HDMI cable, the result is stunning for HDTV channels. I find myself mesmerized by the output quality, and I don't want to go back to watching regular tv channels (even from cable). Regular (compressed) channels from Time Warner are unimpressive (they look filled with noise). Blueray is phenomenal.

Even compared to my 47" Panasonic plasma and Sony 32" LCD which are about a year old, this unit's display of colors, including blacks, is far superior.