Samsung UE32EH5000 review

Usability

There's not much you can complain about here. The Samsung 32EH5000 gets the same clean on-screen menus afforded to the non-smart areas of Samsung's high-end TVs, and the remote control is surprisingly easy to use thanks to its logical layout and responsive keys.

There are a couple of quirks in the on-screen menus. For instance, putting the 'Game' preset under a 'System' subsection of the General menu rather than with the other picture preset options seems bizarre.

And we question the need to divide the key picture settings into two separate picture submenus rather than just putting them all together in one.

Overall, though, the Samsung 32EH5000 delivers a level of simplicity that's perfectly in keeping with the likely straightforward needs of its price-driven target audience.

Sound

Perhaps inevitably, the Samsung 32EH5000's sound isn't as outstanding as its pictures. After all, small, slender-framed TVs don't have much physical space to work with when trying to provide decent speakers.

The Samsung 32EH5000's soundstage follows the small TV trend of being very short of bass, with the predictable effect that the rowdiest moments from action blockbusters routinely end up sounding thin, compressed and generally unconvincing.

However, with the more straightforward kind of material - chat shows, news shows, Bargain Hunt - that makes up the majority of normal TV schedules, the Samsung 32EH5000's audio is actually perfectly acceptable.

Voices sound clear and fairly well rounded, and treble detailing is nicely done, without audio starting to sound harsh, despite the lack of bass to balance out the treble information.

Value

It feels like nearly every month now a new TV comes along that forces us to remap our expectations of the budget TV market. But even by today's value-driven standards the Samsung 32EH5000 looks like a bargain of genuinely colossal proportions.

Not because it does anything out of the norm with its features; in fact, its lack of online features, DLNA networking functionality and 3D playback make it relatively lightweight in the feature department.

Where it does hugely outgun budget rivals, though, is with the small matter of its picture quality, which humbles the efforts of some TVs costing two or even three times as much.

Smart features and the like are all well and good, but we've still got a soft spot for any TV driven by the traditional view that picture quality is still the most important thing a TV can do.