Samsung TU7000 4K HDR TV Review

Samsung TU7000

UN55TU7000 2160p 60Hz Smart LED/LCD TV

Review Summary
Samsung TU7000

Product Name: TU7000FXZA

Product Description: 7 Series | 4K HDR | Ultra-fast Crystal Processor | Auto Game Mode | Tizen powered smart TV OS | Crystal Display

Brand: Samsung

  • Samsung UN55TU7000
3.5

See full review below

Model year: 2020

Screen size reviewed: 55”

Bottom Line:

Samsung’s TU7000 is a decent entry-level 4K TV. It offers very good contrast and black level performance. Color reproduction is also good, delivering tonally accurate and well-saturated colors. It offers a very good Tizen OS smart TV platform offering plenty of apps with an almost endless supply of entertainment options. It also provides good 4K and 1080p HD performance delivering sharp and detailed picture images with very good clarity.

The TU7000 does have its shortcomings in the areas of HDR performance which lacks in high peak brightness output and no wide color gamut for expanded color range. However, if these performance deficiencies won’t be an issue for you, then have a look at this otherwise solid performing 4K smart LED/LCD TV.

Dimensions:

With stand: (W x H x D) 48.4″ x 30.6″ x 9.8″

Without stand: (W x H x D) 48.4″ x 27.8″ x 2.4″

Weight:

With stand: 31.3 lbs.

Without stand: 30.6 lbs.

Warranty:  One year parts and labor

Pros

  • Very good contrast and black level performance
  • Delivers good picture detail and clarity
  • Color accuracy
  • Excellent gaming TV, very low input lag – approx. 9.5 ms
  • Good 4K upscaling of non 4K content

Cons

  • Contrast and color saturation loss at wide viewing angles
  • Limited HDR and peak brightness
  • No wide color gamut for HDR content
  • Only two HDMI inputs

Intro

Samsung’s standard lineup (basic models) for 2020 currently consists of four models. This could change as the year progresses as additional models may be added. However, this is only speculation on my part. In the meantime, the two latest basic models currently available are the TU8000 and the TU7000, the latter being the focus of this review.

The TU7000 is an entry-level 4K model and is available in a wide range of screen sizes which include: 43” ($299.99), 50” ($349.99), 55” ($399.99), 58” ($449.99), 65” ($549.99), 70” ($749.99), and 75 inches ($999.99).

Design & Features

Samsung TU7000 side view

Side view

The TU7000 is a good looking TV, especially for an entry-level model. Its overall appearance is sleek and well-refined with an ultra-thin bezel surrounding its semi-gloss coated screen surface. The slim bezel design that the TU7000 showcases was once only found on much more expensive models, but has now become commonplace on many of the flat panel designs currently being manufactured; this gives the TU7000 a much classier, and dare I say, expensive look.

The TU7000 uses edge-lit LED backlighting to illuminate the screen and doesn’t local dimming capability.

The TU7000 contains two solidly made feet that are easily inserted (pressed) into the bottom of the TV – no screws or tools required. The feet (stand) gives the TV very good stability with a minimal amount of wobble when I gently rocked the panel back and forth.

The TU7000’s panel depth is quite thin and measures approximately 2.4” deep. Overall, the TU7000 is solidly constructed and doesn’t appear or feel cheaply made.

Feature highlights:

  • Crystal Display – for crystal-clear colors that are fine-tuned to deliver a naturally crisp and vivid picture
  • Crystal Processor 4K – for 4K upscaling of non 4K content
  • Boundless Design – ultra-thin Bezel-less design appearance
  • Tizen powered smart TV OS
  • Auto Game Mode (ALLM) – automatically optimizes the screen and minimizes input lag, giving you more control. Enjoy a smooth gaming experience without motion blur and judder
  • HDR10+, HDR10 and HLG high dynamic range formats supported
  • PurColor color processing
  • Motion Rate 120 for motion blur reduction (60Hz refresh rate)
  • Basic remote – no voice recognition feature
  • Works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant devices
  • Apple AirPlay 2 allows wireless streaming from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac
  • 802.11ac built-in Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth connectivity (ver. 4.2)

Connectivity

  • 2 HDMI 2.0b inputs – HDCP 2.2 compliant
  • 1 Digital optical output
  • 1 USB 2.0 input
  • 1 Ethernet port
  • 1 RF input for antenna/cable signals
  • Bluetooth wireless audio streaming to a compatible speaker or set of headphones
  • eARC – HDMI input #2

Performance

The TU7000 is a decent and solid performing TV – at least with the unit I used for this review. That doesn’t mean it didn’t have any performance issues, which it did. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, let’s talk about what I did like about the TU7000. In my opinion and viewing observations with this TV, I felt its strongest picture quality attributes to be its contrast and black level performance. The contrast ratio was excellent which allowed for very good black level performance while viewing dark content.

Black screen uniformity was good on this display, showing an even tone of black across the entire screen. There was also very little blooming detected when viewing a white object set against a black screen. This TV will serve most viewers well while viewing in a dark room.

Although not great, color rendering was good on this TV without being calibrated. Colors were nicely saturated and tonally accurate. And I was generally pleased with the TU7000’s color presentation even though it doesn’t have wide color gamut capability which would have allowed this TV to display a wider color range when viewing HDR content.

Another area where the TU7000 delivered good performance was with detail and clarity. I was impressed with the amount of detail and clarity I saw for an entry-level TV when viewing 4K images. The images were sharp and refined allowing me to see fine detail in the images I viewed, whether they were close up shots of objects or outdoor shots of buildings or landscape foliage.

What I didn’t like or what could have been better with the TU7000’s performance:

As with most LED/LCD TVs, the TU7000 didn’t have good wide-angle viewing performance when viewing the TV at wide-angles. In fact, I felt it was slightly below what I would typically see with more costly TVs.

Motion handling was generally decent, however, you may experience some slight motion trails behind fast-moving objects depending on the content you are viewing.

HDR peak brightness is not very good on this TV and won’t give you the best performance when viewing HDR content. So this is something you should strongly consider if you want a TV that delivers high peak brightness which will allow for good to very good HDR performance. HDR performance was also hindered by this TV’s lack of wide color gamut capability.

SDR (standard dynamic range) or standard peak brightness is adequate enough (depending on your picture mode setting) to view this TV in all but the brightest of rooms that have lots of natural lighting, i.e., bright sunlight and glare. So keeps this in mind if your room setup has these extreme viewing conditions.

Rtings.com has posted “real scene” SDR (standard dynamic range) peak brightness at 233 nits, and HDR (high dynamic range) peak brightness at 248 nits.

Sound quality – As with most budget flat-panel TVs, the TU7000’s sound quality isn’t great and is typical of what is usually found on TVs in this price class. The bass response is lean an doesn’t provide much impact. The midrange frequencies provide the most sound output delivering clear and clean sound. Dialog was discernable even at higher output levels. I do recommend a soundbar with this TV if you want to take your audio experience to the next level and enjoy much better sound quality.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a decent performing 4K TV and not expecting it to do more than what it was designed for, then take a look at Samsung’s TU7000. For an entry-level model, it gets the job done with the exception of certain performance limitations, namely HDR, peak brightness output and wide color gamut capability. If these performance traits are important to you then I suggest you look elsewhere, such as a Samsung QLED model, that’s if you want to stay with the Samsung brand name.

Samsung TU7000 room view

TU7000


135 Comments

  1. Alexandre Métraux April 22, 2020
    • Milton Clark April 23, 2020
      • Katty November 21, 2021
        • Milton Clark November 26, 2021
  2. Kerry Kantner June 7, 2020
    • Milton Clark June 8, 2020
  3. Martin Goldenberg June 10, 2020
    • Milton Clark June 10, 2020
    • alex August 21, 2021
      • Milton Clark August 24, 2021
  4. Angel June 14, 2020
    • Milton Clark June 25, 2020
    • jeff kacz January 11, 2021
      • Milton Clark January 11, 2021
  5. GeoBumm July 20, 2020
    • Milton Clark July 20, 2020
  6. Mary Rivera August 7, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 8, 2020
  7. Milton August 14, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 14, 2020
  8. ed ritvo August 15, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 16, 2020
      • Charles Davis November 11, 2020
        • Milton Clark November 11, 2020
          • CHARLES MADISON November 23, 2020
          • Milton Clark November 24, 2020
  9. Jourdan Wells August 16, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 17, 2020
  10. Vincent August 16, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 17, 2020
  11. Paul H. Johnson August 17, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 17, 2020
  12. John Diaz August 20, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 22, 2020
    • Karen January 5, 2021
      • Milton Clark January 9, 2021
    • Bruce A Fortin May 24, 2021
  13. Jim Clancy August 24, 2020
    • Milton Clark August 25, 2020
  14. Greg September 2, 2020
    • Milton Clark September 4, 2020
  15. Adam September 5, 2020
    • Milton Clark September 6, 2020
  16. Colleen September 7, 2020
    • Milton Clark September 7, 2020
  17. Bob September 13, 2020
    • Milton Clark September 14, 2020
  18. Darlene September 15, 2020
    • Milton Clark September 17, 2020
  19. Matt September 26, 2020
    • Milton Clark September 28, 2020
  20. Richard October 6, 2020
    • Milton Clark October 6, 2020
      • Steve Corwin October 17, 2020
        • Milton Clark October 18, 2020
  21. Lisa Knudsen October 15, 2020
    • Milton Clark October 18, 2020
  22. Norm Roy October 25, 2020
    • Milton Clark October 25, 2020
  23. Hugh Jones October 29, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 1, 2020
  24. Kevin November 1, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 1, 2020
  25. Michael Mathieu November 2, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 3, 2020
  26. Phillip Nelson November 4, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 4, 2020
  27. David Lai November 5, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 5, 2020
  28. Martin November 10, 2020
    • Martin November 10, 2020
      • Milton Clark November 11, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 11, 2020
  29. Martin Fernandez Cufre November 10, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 11, 2020
  30. Eliot November 12, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 13, 2020
  31. Alejandro Ruvalcaba November 14, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 15, 2020
  32. Mike November 18, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 22, 2020
  33. Carol November 18, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 19, 2020
  34. Carol November 18, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 19, 2020
  35. Steve Harrington November 19, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 19, 2020
  36. Sandi S November 20, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 22, 2020
      • Sandi S November 22, 2020
        • Milton Clark November 22, 2020
  37. A Wayne Wilkinson November 25, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 25, 2020
  38. Jen November 27, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 27, 2020
  39. cliff November 29, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 29, 2020
  40. RY November 30, 2020
    • Milton Clark November 30, 2020
  41. Gary Danner December 5, 2020
    • Milton Clark December 8, 2020
  42. Mark Hanna December 14, 2020
    • Milton Clark December 14, 2020
  43. Deborah December 14, 2020
    • Milton Clark December 15, 2020
  44. Thomas Russell January 12, 2021
    • Milton Clark January 12, 2021
  45. Sam January 20, 2021
    • Milton Clark January 20, 2021
  46. Jay January 29, 2021
    • Milton Clark January 31, 2021
  47. Karen Stewart February 14, 2021
    • Milton Clark February 17, 2021
  48. Tim Aiken February 25, 2021
    • Milton Clark February 27, 2021
  49. Bob Strenad March 18, 2021
    • Milton Clark March 21, 2021
  50. Philip Damask March 20, 2021
    • Milton Clark March 21, 2021
  51. Bob April 27, 2021
    • Milton Clark May 8, 2021
  52. steve saldibar September 17, 2022
    • Milton Clark September 18, 2022
  53. Arber October 5, 2022
    • Milton Clark October 9, 2022
  54. Mike Schmitt October 24, 2022
    • Milton Clark October 26, 2022
  55. Mitchel Heaton November 27, 2022
    • Milton Clark November 27, 2022
  56. Omaris December 27, 2022
    • Milton Clark January 8, 2023

Leave a Reply