Samsung 50" 4K Smart TV

This TV (currently, 2016) has one of the lowest response times and input lag for the price. This is generally a good TV. While my review will focus on using this as a monitor, I'll try my best to describe everything. The quick summary: the sound quality of the speakers are better than average but not amazing, the picture quality and brightness is great, and the Smart TV feature isn't annoying to use. The stand could be nicer as could the viewing angles. This is a VA panel so it's not really as great as IPS or OLED, and keep in mind this is 60Hz and it doesn't even have 120Hz at lower resolutions or even smoothing up 60fps content. SETTING UP This TV is really easy to setup, including being lightweight and small enough to where adding the stand to it isn't a huge hassle and can be done alone. The remote is simple and easy to use. If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, chances are it'll help you set up the WiFi on the TV real quick without having to use the remote to enter the information slowly. This does NOT have a smart remote, meaning you're not going to have a keyboard on it, but it's the easiest remote I've used out of all the previous "Smart" TVs I have had in the past. At first this TV is going to look terrible displaying any text or playing video games. To get this working properly as a monitor, there's a few steps: 1. Plug in your HDMI on HDMI1, which can use HDR. 2. Press the Home button, go to HDMI1 input, and click the "edit" button - then switch it to "PC" - this will make it look smooth / non-pixelated 3. Go to "Home" again, go to settings (left), and then scroll down to "Expert Settings" on the picture settings This will enable 60Hz Now You have to make sure you connect the TV to your graphics card properly. You must have a graphics card that supports 4K@60Hz. I'm using an ATI 7970 but this will work with pretty much any powerful graphics card that has DisplayPort 1.2; since this TV only supports HDMI, you can get a converter. I recommend the "Club3D Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 UHD" as it does support 60Hz. Otherwise if your graphics card only has HDMI 1.4, you will only get 30Hz which I do not recommend. At 30Hz, it will be usable but annoying. Once you have everything connected properly, make sure to update your graphics card drivers and reboot if necessary. Then switch to 60Hz from your Windows advanced display settings. Make sure to also turn off the ZOOM that Windows does by default @ 300% and switch it back to 100% or something like 125% if things look a little too small. PICTURE QUALITY The TV is absolutely amazing qualify if you're switching over from 1080p or anything older. Before this I had the Dell 27" S2715H 1080p IPS monitor, and this is much brighter. This also has more pixels per inch so it looks much smoother. For only 2x the price of my monitor I think the extra size and quality are a big improvement. On "Standard" mode I believe the TV attempts to save power and it might get dim at times, so I would recommend changing this to "Dynamic" picture mode, even though this can give you a headache from being so bright if you're just looking at a big white webpage. The only complaint about the picture quality is darker content. Although the blacks are pretty rich for the panel type, it doesn't really display as well as my previous monitors or my phone. This makes it harder to see what's going on, and the poor viewing angle definitely makes content look worse when it is dark. You can change the HDMI black level from "Auto" to "Normal" to fix this problem but then the entire display looks a little more washed out. Playing lower than 4K content can make the TV get a little jittery so if you're looking for just a good TV to play regular content, you might look elsewhere. Otherwise 1080p content at the correct frequency actually does look pretty good. I can watch 1080p Youtube videos or movies close up without it looking super blurry or pixelated. 4K content looks absolutely amazing and the colors and brightness look good enough to me, even though you could most likely get a TV with richer picture quality at a higher price. Some people do say the color depth on this is 8bit, however, I have read that you can get 10bit from updating drivers and I did momentarily see 10bit as an option on my computer. Even though you cannot get 120Hz on this monitor and it doesn't interpolate 60Hz content, coming from a 60Hz monitor I obviously do not see any of a difference. You will obviously see some extra blurriness watching sports, for example, if you're switching over from a 1080p television that has a better refresh rate. GAMING This TV is 60Hz, so you will not be able to game at 120Hz, even at 1080p. However, unless you have an amazing set of graphics cards, you will most likely not even get 120fps anyway at 4K, so even though I'm sure 120Hz 4K TVs and monitors will come out in the near future, it will be useless until your graphics card can output higher frames. I will tell you that you can get other TVs, but unless they cost at least 1.5x more than this, such as the Sony X830C, they will most likely have some downside to them. For example, I almost went with the LG 43UH6100, but it has 2x the input lag which will definitely be noticable when you're gaming. Speaking of input lag, this TV is one of the lowest input lag and response times for the price. I do not notice the input lag to the point where it would negatively affect my experience when playing video games. I do see some people complain, but I think that is only because their graphics card could not handle it or they did not edit the settings properly to get 4K @ 60Hz @ 4:4:4 HDR. GENERAL MONITOR USE This is perfect for a monitor. The only real downside is the viewing angle when you're sitting up close and the input lag and response time if you're super used to having a 120Hz or 144Hz panel. However, none of this really matters when you're using it as a monitor. Yes, you can definitely tell if you move a window around quickly, but it's not a big deal. If the edges look a little darker from the viewing angle, you can sit back more or you can just have the window you're focusing on be in the center. You can still use this like a smaller monitor - you just have to ignore all the rest of the real estate you have with this. I would definitely pick this over having 4x 1080p monitors because it's so much easier to just be able to move around everything you want. You can use some sort of monitor or display manager to snap on the windows and divide them out better, but I think Windows 10 does fine with this as you can quickly switch between having something else up in each corner of the screen. The TV is so big that I usually have 6 browser or other windows up at once and I can see all of them perfectly. However, it's not too big to where it wouldn't fit on your desk. It takes up about the same amount of space as two 20" monitors side by side and two more on top. Some people do mention having the mouse be jittery or laggy with 4K TVs, but that's not the case with this one. Everything is absolutely smooth, but keep in mind I have a 10,000 DPI gaming mouse. I would definitely recommend getting used to having a "fast" mouse. DESIGN Not the best TV design. The bezel is pretty big and it's also a fingerprint magnet. The TV has one of the worst stands but I guess it's not as bad as stands on older TVs. You can't put it back that much close to a wall or on your desk because it might fall off. Just take a look at the photos to get an idea. I would highly recommend mounting this on the wall. The power cable is not in the best spot next to all the other wires, but the HDMI and other cables are easily accessible on the RIGHT side. The power is on the LEFT side. The power button is at the back of the TV. The remote is very well designed and easy to use. When sitting close up, it might be beneficial to get a curved TV instead if you have some extra money. PRICE The price for this TV is amazing. I purchased this for $425. Other stores did have it available for $399 and some stores had it open box for $360. Comparing it to other TVs, they can go as low as $300 but they do not have all the benefits and quality of this television. Nothing cheaper will even come close to the low input lag of this TV. Something like a cheap Vizio or TCL might have a lower input lag, but only at lower resolutions or quality. The only thing that you can compare this TV to in terms of using it as a monitor is some of the Korean monitors out there. Even then, they usually have lower brightness and picture quality at this price range. While they advertise a lower response time, I hear that they also have worse input lag. There are some newer monitors coming out that have a lower response time and better viewing angles (IPS) but they are at least 2x the cost of this. Do I think an IPS panel would be better? Yes. Do I think it's worth it? No. For the price you can't complain. CONS After owning this TV for about a month, here are a few things that bother me. Since I'm using this as a monitor, there are windows that stay in the same spot for an extended period of time. This causes a noticeable temporary burn-in if I switch windows. For example, if I switch from my desktop windows to a movie, I can see the burn-in where a few of the windows have been for a while. This might get a little distracting. Other than that, the ghosting is a little noticeable at times. Surprisingly, it's more noticeable when I'm scrolling down a white webpage rather than playing video games.