Samsung QE55Q60B
The Korean company’s cheapest 55in Quantum Dot TV doesn’t quite nail it
The Samsung QE55Q60B talks a very good game for a TV that is now available for just £699. Its 55in screen uses a premium Quantum Dot system to create its colours; it is significantly brighter than most TVS in its class; and it even uses Samsung’s patented Dual LED technology to, hopefully, deliver more colour control than you would expect to get from an edge-led lighting array.
As usual, Samsung has split its latest TV range into the Quantum Dot haves and the Quantum Dot have-nots. The Q60BS are the cheapest Quantum Dot haves, which makes the QE55Q60B the most affordable 55in QLED TV in Samsung’s current range.
In fact, the price it now sits at, following a flurry of recent reductions, is low enough to pitch it against lower mid-range sets from more traditionally value-based brands such as TCL and Hisense. That is despite the fact that its Quantum Dot picture quality benefits from the extra colour-enhancing controls afforded by Dual LED technology (more on this later).
No-nonsense design
From the front there is nothing particularly special about the Q60B’S looks. It’s just a thin, black frame wrapped around the screen with a couple of fairly plain-jane, blade-style feet attached a few inches in from each side. The best that can be said about this front view is that the build quality is robust, and the feet are so narrow when the TV is viewed head-on that you barely notice them.
The 55Q60B becomes a much more premium-looking proposition if viewed from the side or rear, as it’s then that you notice how impressively thin it is for an LCD TV – just 2.6cm from front to back.
The Q60B is a 4K TV capable of supporting the HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ HDR formats but, as ever with Samsung, not Dolby Vision HDR. It backs up this solid range of HDR support with a Quantum Dot colour system capable of delivering a wider, more dynamic and more nuanced colour range than regular filter-based LCD TVS.
Now, about that Dual LED technology. This finds half of the edge-mounted LEDS that light the picture emitting a cool (bluer) light, and half emitting a warm (redder) tone. The idea is that this increases the control the TV has over colour toning, potentially resulting in more natural images.
Solar flair
The Q60B can be controlled by either of two supplied remotes, one of which, surprisingly for the TV’S price, is one of Samsung’s solar-powered Solarcell models. This means you will never need to change its batteries. There is also built-in support for voice control via the Samsung Bixby, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant platforms, and it is possible to control other devices in your home from the TV, courtesy of its support for the Smartthings protocol.
Smart features are provided by the latest version of Samsung’s Tizen-based Eden interface. This is excellent in terms of the amount of content it carries, including just about every streaming app known to man – and a few more besides. These all deliver great-quality streams too, notwithstanding the lack of support for the Dolby Vision encoding that some streaming services carry. The only notable app absentee is Freeview Play, surprisingly; but Samsung does still deliver catch-up apps for all of the main UK terrestrial TV broadcasters’.
While its content is impressive, we are not fans of the way Samsung’s latest smart TV system is presented and organised. Moving to a full-screen interface from the previous generation’s superimposed rows of content along the bottom edge feels unnecessary, and the layout and navigation of the new smart interface both feel unhelpful and illogical at times. Experience suggests we will probably see a much-improved refinement of this new approach next year. Here’s hoping.
The Q60B gets Samsung’s Game Bar interface, which provides key information on incoming gaming graphics and provides faster access to a few gaming-related features. This includes support for the Super Ultrawide Gameview feature that lets you play some compatible PC games in a 32:9 aspect ratio. There’s also ALLM switching, but no support over any of the TV’S three HDMIS for 4K at 120Hz feeds, or VRR. Gamers will be enthused, though, by the seriously speedy 9.4ms of input lag on the TV’S ‘Fastest’ response time setting. The Samsung Q60B makes a good first impression on two counts. First, it is much brighter than the majority of TVS we see in this price category. Bright enough, in fact, to handle high dynamic range sources with genuine conviction – by which we mean that bright scenes, at least, actually look like genuine HDR rather than just like something that’s a bit better than SDR. It is particularly effective at injecting intensity into small, bright highlights.
The other instant strength comes with its colours, which pop off the screen with the sort of vigour and enthusiasm we have come to expect from Quantum Dot systems backed up by decent amounts of brightness. The impact of the Quantum Dot system – together, perhaps, with the Dual LED lighting – is particularly apparent with the most heavily saturated reds, greens, blues and yellows, though it also feeds into authentic skin tones. Once you have grown accustomed to these highlights of the Q60B’S pictures,
you also become aware of its excellent sharpness. This is especially true with native 4K content, of course, but actually its upscaling of HD sources is also a cut above the norm at this price point.
The problem for the Q60B is that its pictures only excite with just the right sort of content. Namely, content that fills the screen with colour and brightness. Inject much darkness into proceedings and things start to fall down pretty badly as the screen struggles to deliver anything like a convincing black colour.
“The idea behind Dual LED technology is to increase the control the TV has over colour toning, potentially resulting in more natural images”
Fade to grey
Any parts of a picture that should look black instead look a pretty milky grey, as the screen fails to control its brightness enough. This prevents dark scenes from looking at all convincing, limits the HDR experience to the bright end of its extended range, and contributes to an inconsistent viewing experience where dark scenes in a film just don’t feel as comfortable to watch as bright ones.
On top of this, very dark scenes can be affected by faint but still sometimes distracting backlight inconsistencies and clouding over some parts of the picture.
The Q60B’S most surprising issue is with motion handling. With its motionprocessing elements set to deliver with 24p movie sources (a setting that generally yields the most natural results) the image can suffer with noticeable ‘jumps’ and stutters after sharp cuts.
The Q60B’S rather average pictures are joined by similarly average sound. Even at maximum volume, the TV isn’t really loud enough to immerse you in a good film soundtrack, and its sound is also quite thin, having limited extension into either the treble or, especially, bass ends of the audio spectrum. Dialogue, though, tends to emerge surprisingly clear and clean despite the limited dynamic range and sound ‘projection’. There is also quite a lot of detail to be heard.
Despite making a pleasing first impression with its design and some of the more aggressive aspects of its picture quality, in the end, Samsung’s attempt to make Quantum Dot technology more affordable doesn’t result in the budget hero we had hoped for.