ES8000 is a Smart TV and comes with Samsung’s complete package of smart features, including voice and gesture controls. The platform has not changes much compared to last year’s TVs and even though the dual-core processor is faster, significantly smaller smartphone still feel light-years ahead of Smart TVs. The most useful functions are actually Samsung’s pull and push functionality that allows you to share content between your devices (requires Samsung smartphones or tablets). The app quality and selection still needs improvement and the voice commands and gesture control systems feel gimmicky instead of adding real value to the user experience.
When it comes to picture quality, Samsung ES8000 gave us many reasons to applaud performance. ES8000 offers no dramatic picture improvements compared to last year’s D8000, and we had hoped to see just a bit more, but in the end – and when compared to the competition – we still need to say that Samsung has a very competitive LCD-TV on their hands with ES8000. The most positive picture characteristics include deep black depth, fairly accurate colors in the Movie profile, fast response time and great-looking HD pictures. Our sample had no clouding issues to speak of but we know from experience that clouding can vary a lot from model to model so share your opinion in the forum thread.
All in all, ES8000 has the same strengths as its predecessor – and that is a good thing. We had a chance to compare it to most of the other new 2012 LED models during testing and we have no doubt that Samsung offers better picture characteristics in many areas. We are still not impressed with the Smart TV platform but features do not weigh much in our book; picture quality does and therefore we award ES8000 with our Highly Recommended Award.
