Digital Trends

Samsung LN46A630

October 6th, 2008 | by Nick Mokey

Setup

Although most people will only have to deal with Samsung's packaging once, we give the company credit for producing a box that makes unpacking such a large TV a breeze. After releasing clips on the side of the massive box, the entire top and sides lift away like a giant sheath, leaving the TV sitting exposed on a small cardboard base. Though there are no handles for lifting, the TV's thin side profile makes it easy enough to grab and have up on a TV stand with two people lifting.

After setting it down, we found the TV exceptionally easy to hook up components to as well, due to its swiveling base, which moves with only the lightest touch, making it easier to access the rear panel. One HDMI cable and a power cable later, we were in business.

Video Quality

In testing, we found that the LN46A630 produced sharp, colorful and dazzling video on par with some of the best 1080p screens we've tested. The black levels and contrast drew our attention before we even attempted to tweak or enhance it with any of Samsung's numerous settings – one of the best hallmarks of a superior-quality panel. Without boosting contrast or using artificial black-level enhancements, the inky blackness this Samsung was capable of made bright spots pop, and the colors look spot-on.

The vast array of settings this TV sports made it easy to further tune it to our personal taste and liking. Users can adjust everything from standard brightness and contrast levels to the proportion of red to green, and how much edge enhancement to apply. There's a even a special blue mode for serious TV tweaking enthusiasts to use for calibration. The only disappointment came from the mere three profiles (movie, standard and dynamic) for saving different settings, which made it tougher to do A/B comparison tests as we played with different settings to find which we preferred. 

Menu System & Configuration

Given how many features and tweaks Samsung has packed into this television, the sleek menu system does an admirable job of keeping them all straight and easily accessible. Each of the major functions (video, audio, channels, etc.) gets an icon on a slim bar running down the left side of the TV when the menu pops up, and scrolling through them provides a grayed-out preview of what each one entails. After selecting one, a bright-blue highlight clearly calls out which option has been selected. Snappy response times made it easy to cut through submenus directly to the ones we wanted, rather than wading through them as we’ve done with slower systems. Not only was it laid out intuitively enough to find most settings without the manual, attractive ones, too, with full-color overlays and transparency effects.

The "Tools" shortcut on the remote was an especially interesting feature, allowing you to build your own cheat-sheet of commonly accessed adjustments that's available with a single button press. Like to turn down the lighting levels as the sun goes down outside? Add it to your Tools menu and it’s only one button press away. 

AutoMotion Plus

One of Samsung's most intriguing options to play with on this television, and one of the most boldly advertised, is AutoMotion Plus, a technique for milking the display's super-fast refresh rates to generate the illusion of smoother motion. Since normal televisions refresh only 60 times per second, a TV refreshing twice as fast, as the LN46A630 does, would ordinarily only double the number of times a given frame is displayed. Instead, Samsung tries to "fill in the blanks" by digitally generating its own inbetween frames, effectively smoothing out on-screen motion by artificially doubling the framerate.

Of course, the problem with pulling data out of thin air crops up when in-between frames aren't entirely predictable, as with fast on-screen motion or jerky photography. While AutoMotion Plus lends an almost eerie life-likeness to camera pans of slow scenes, it also produces some strange effects with movement that's not quite as smooth. Human motion, for instance, starts to look variably sped-up or slowed-down during some scenes, producing awkward movement that might make you question, if we were still in film-reel days, whether the motor driving the projector was on its last legs.

Fortunately, Samsung offers three levels of intensity for AutoMotion, plus an off feature for those who can't deal with it at all. We found it tolerable on the lowest setting, but a bit annoying and even distracting past that. The good news: Even with AutoMotion turned off, the television performs superb when dealing with fast motion and exhibits little to no motion blur thanks to its snappy 120Hz refresh rate. 

Sound

Inexplicably, sound from this TV actually stacked up worse than the lower-end Samsung PN50A450 we reviewed before it. The dullness and lack of presence sounded more akin to what we would expect from a smaller (and cheaper) TV, and left us fairly unimpressed. While it's not unlistenable, and will probably prove satisfactory for most television content, hardcore movie fans will want to invest in an accompanying home theater system to bring audio performance up to par with the spectacular on-screen performance. 

Conclusion

An MSRP of $2099 may scare away budget-minded buyers looking for a display that’s “good enough” and has the right price tag, but that number is absolutely justified by the LN46A630's outstanding picture quality. If you're looking for a big-screen TV that delivers silky-smooth cinematic motion and crisp, vivid colors, in a slick contemporary presentation, Samsung's LN46A630 won't disappoint. Add the LN46A630 to your shortlist this holiday season.

Pros:
 
• Top-notch picture quality
• Plenty of options for fine tuning
• Sleek, easy-to-use menu system
• Attractive, unique bezel


Cons:
 
• Unimpressive sound
• Could use more profiles for different settings