You can hear everything that's going on, but we'd really recommend picking up one of the best soundbars for a richer experience. Some settings tweaks can help make it that bit more impactful, but the true benefit of HDR won’t shine through here. If you find HDR too dim, use the 'Movie HDR' Picture Mode with Advanced Contrast Enhancer, Contrast, and Brightness each at their max, and Gamma ST. Compared to other budget VA panel TVs, the Samsung TU8000 offers good gaming performance but is lacking in terms of HDR. On the other hand, the TU8000 has a somewhat improved contrast ratio and much better black uniformity.

Samsung TU8500 review (UE50TU8500): an excellent cheap - T3 Samsung TU8500 review (UE50TU8500): an excellent cheap -T3

The TCL has better picture quality thanks to its local dimming feature and significantly brighter screen. We've added two new videos demonstrating the local dimming feature (or lack thereof in this case) with real content. On the other hand, the VA panel on the Samsung delivers a much better dark room performance with an excellent contrast ratio and incredible black uniformity. However, it's just decent for watching sports or TV shows in a bright room, as it doesn't get very bright, and it struggles with glare in bright rooms.The Vizio has a much better color gamut, better gradient handling,a faster response time, and a full-array local dimming feature. It also prompts you to download any extra on-demand apps you might like on the TV and choose your voice assistant, as well as helps you get the OneRemote set up as a universal control for all your sources.

55 Samsung UE55D8000 Full HD 1080p Freeview HD Smart 3D LED TV 55 Samsung UE55D8000 Full HD 1080p Freeview HD Smart 3D LED TV

It can't get very bright and has just decent reflection handling, so it's best suited for a dark or moderately-lit room.It captures skin and the desert scrub with realistic tones that are hard to match at anywhere near this budget. It’s neatly finished on the rear with a fairly uniform 6cm thickness and no awkward lumps sticking out to hinder wall-mounting. There’s no doubt that if you’re looking for a well-specified 4K UHD TV that won’t break the bank, the TU8500 is an enticing prospect. Organisation isn’t the best so dialogue can get a little lost in the busiest scenes, but overall it’s fine, if lacking a little detail. It also supports a wide color gamut and the out-of-box color accuracy is much better, plus it can get significantly brighter.

Samsung UE55D8000 Review | Trusted Reviews Samsung UE55D8000 Review | Trusted Reviews

On the other hand, the Samsung has much deeper and more uniform blacks as it uses a VA panel, and it has a slightly lower input lag. The only area where the TU7000 significantly outperforms the TU8000 is gradient handling, as it has much less banding. As for the remote control, it’s a standard issue Roku remote, just like the one that comes with the Hisense A7200G Roku TV. The Samsung also gets brighter in SDR, upscales lower-resolution content better, and has motion features like motion interpolation.

Enter the Samsung UN55TU8000 – not quite the pinnacle of the 8-series, but close enough for us to be excited at its arrival. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature to improve the uniformity, but it wouldn't change much in this case anyway. You can use it as a very decent soft remote control which also includes the use of TV voice commands. The frozen rock landscape, the ice clouds and the spacesuits with pimpled textures are all delightfully produced.