I watch pretty much everything that’s on TV—from hordes of zombies to hoarders of junk, from art house to Sell This House—I’ve sat through hours upon hours of tv shows and films. For people like myself who take couch potato-ship quite seriously, would the KS9000 be a good weapon in fighting the urge to leave the comfort of the living room?
Design: 4.5/5
An off the bat description of the television: it’s beautiful—no bells and whistles, just a minimalist’s joy. It is simple yet refined and no piece feels out of place—an economy of space and material. The brushed texture on the back helps make the TV not look too plain. The buttons are well hidden, but conveniently placed on the bottom part of the television.
Hardware: 4/5
The TV’s strong suit (as with other TVs of the same manufacturer) is its contrast ratio. The blacks can go pretty dark, and details in the image are well-defined. This is because the TV uses Precision Black and Quantum Dot technologies which give darker blacks and 64 times the color expression of non-Quantum Dot Samsung TVs. The Moth Eye anti-reflective coating helps the blacks become even darker by minimizing the glare on the screen.
With a native resolution of 4K with HDR support playing anything lower than 1080p resolution will look stretched and pixelated. With that being said however, films in 720p will still be watchable, and watching movies or playing video games in 1080p would still look pretty good.
The sound quality is standard with any television set in the market these days with the levels usually giving way to background music and sound effects, while being on the weaker side for dialogue. The volume is pretty low as well—I had to crank the dial up to 80 just to be able to hear what the characters are saying. Even with the “Amplify” audio setting selected, the sound is still weak.
With that being said, most people who buy this kind of television set will not settle for stock audio and are likely to purchase separate speakers. If you are not one to do so, it would be wise to make sure the source audio will be loud enough.
The number of ports for different sources on the connect box is something that I am appreciative of. There is very little need to shuffle around the back of the television every time I have something different to plug in.
User Experience: 3.5/5
I am very much a caveman. I like the feeling of initial discovery. I rarely look at manuals unless it is really necessary, and with the KS9000, I am finding myself more and more reliant on the manual to navigate through the settings.
Television manufacturers have tried over the years to streamline the remote, putting in just a few buttons—reminiscent of those older clickers our parents and grandparents used to use. It would have been great if they were able to adapt their menus to the simple button layout, but instead of just pressing a few specific buttons on the remote, I had to scroll through several menu pages just to find the things that I was looking for.
The Smart Apps slightly make up for the initial frustration of finding all the settings. The video apps like YouTube and Netflix are 4K-ready, and the fact they can be installed on the TV and be accessed with just a press of a button takes away the chore of hooking up other source devices to stream videos.
Value: 4/5
Overall, the KS9000 is an excellent TV with a reasonable price tag not far from competitors’ models of the same class. With stunning image quality and cool extra features, those who can shell out the cash would find Samsung’s offering hard to resist.
Bottomline:
The Samsung KS9000 SUHD Curved TV is a beautiful television screen that produces beautiful images. Its image-enhancing technologies make anything you project onto the screen stand out. While the audio quality is less commendable, and the source settings and other menus are challenging to navigate for the first few tries, the television set is a decent choice for any couch potato with some money to spare.
Also published in GADGETS MAGAZINE October 2016 Issue.
Words by Robby Vaflor