Stunning looks, stunning hi-def picture, loads of internet features.
Cons
Noise reduction can't be turned off, slightly uneven backlighting.
Review
Let me start by saying that, straight out of the box, this is a stunning looking Led tv! The first thing that you will notice is that the UA55D7000 has a thin 12mm clear bezel and a narrow 5mm thick black border that surrounds the screen which almost gives the appearance that it's just the screen and not much else, sitting on a four-legged chrome stand. Personally, I think it looks sexier than it's top-of-the-line, near identical, twin brother the UA55D8000 which has a 12mm chrome bezel. And as far as features and specs go, there is very little difference between the two flagship models. Turning the tv on for the first time, some of the factory settings were a bit off the mark. The first thing I noticed was that the backlighting was up way too high with a setting of 15/20 which showed quite a bit of uneveness, but bringing the setting down to single digits, pretty much eliminated this issue. After calibrating the tv with the Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark blu-ray calibration disc, the picture quality that this Samsung tv is capable of producing is probably the best images that I've ever seen, particularly high definition sources have a real pop and vibrancy to them that will blow you away. However, the on board noise filters can not be completely turned off which may be a deal-breaker for some videophiles but admittedly, it does do an excellent job of eliminating any unwanted digital noise and will also get rid of unwanted noise on video based material and I feel Samsung's on board noise processors do a far better job than of any of it's competitors and are on to a winner. But it is not perfect by any stretch as it didn't handle films with heavy grain on blu-ray such as Black Swan and Minority Report all that well as in some scenes it made the actors faces look as though their skin was pealing or giving them a flakey appearance. The inability to completely turn this feature off is disappointing as I feel it's a rather heavy-handed approach from Samsung when really this should be left in the hands of the viewer to control. The only way that this could be completely turned off was to switch the settings to Game Mode which improved the above mentioned films picture quality markedly as grain structure was left in tact which gave these films a more natural look and much closer to the directors intended vision for these films. However this also means compromises would need to be made such as access to the Motion-Plus feature is then disabled, which means that a bit of motion judder did creep in while watching certain scenes but all in all, after seeing the results, it's something that I could live with. It's handling of standard def material is admirable although not the best in it's class but this tv's strength is definately it's handling of high definition material as I then put on the animated features Rio and Puss In Boots and was astonished by the detail, colour and vibrancy, you'll be hard pressed to find another tv out there that will match or better it for sheer picture quality. 3D playback has also improved over last year's C7000 series tv, as I then put on the blu-rays Tron: Legacy 3D and Legends Of The Guardians 3D, there was nice depth and dimensionality and found very little evidence of cross-talk or motion jaggies, it's still not top of it's class, that belongs to Panasonic and Sony but Samsung have rapidly made some major ground in this area and is not far behind. The active shutter glasses provided were comfortable also as I bearly noticed I was wearing them. I haven't had time to explore the many internet features on this tv but you can be comfortable in the knowledge that this is an exceptional Led tv that has very few peers as far as sheer picture quality goes. There were some stunned looks and expletives mentioned that I cannot repeat here as to how beautiful the Samsung UA55D7000 Led tv looked and performed and comes very highly recommended.
