What you should know about the Samsung KS9500 SUHD 4K Ultra HD 240MR Smart LED TV

Have you been thinking about having a Cinema experience in your living room. Have you been trying to figure out how to get a real life gaming experience on a big screen TV. Have you been thinking of a smarter way to get entertained. You should take a look at the Samsung KS9500 SUHD 4K Ultra HD 240MR Smart LED TV with breath taking features.

Samsung Manufacturer review places this outstanding product in the HiTech Hot SPot. While not quite the flagship 2016 SUHD 4K HDR TV from Samsung’s so-far excellent lineup of models for this year, the KS9500 is definitely a worthwhile contender for any serious home entertainment setup. Offering nearly the same specs and quality as the KS9000 SUHD TV we’ve also reviewed , the KS9500 is “augmented” still further by the addition of a curved display which some consumers might find enticing and others not so much. We’ve already made our negative stance on TV screen curvature clear here , but that aside, the KS9500 is one superb piece of 4K TV technology almost across the board.

Offering the latest in Samsung’s UHD Alliance-certified HDR technology and some excellent further specs for color and contrast augmentation, this 4K TV is easily one of the best if not THE best HDR 4K LCD models on sale in 2016, outdone only by Sony’s X940D or Samsung’s own KS9800, both of which are direct-lit models as opposed to the edge-lighting on the KS9500. Nonetheless, despite that edge-lit back panel, this 4K TV delivers some genuinely wonderful peak brightness and as a result also manages excellent contrast overall. In fact, the only 2015 SUHD TV model that could match the KS9500 or the other 2016 SUHD TVs on these particular specs as well as color is the JS9500 from last year. Let’s take a closer look at the KS9500.

Despite its edge-lit display, the KS9500 (along with the rest of the edge-lit 2016 SUHD TV models) offers some of the best display specs we’ve seen this year in any LCD 4K TV. So far, only Sony’s X940D Direct-lit 75 inch Bravia model and LG’s OLED models beat the SUHDs. With that said, the KS9500 is a real powerhouse when it comes to HDR, color, contrast and some tuly superb peak brightness. Its curved screen may be a pointless gimmick but it at least does no real display quality harm and if some users prefer the aesthetic appeal of curvature, then the KS9500 is their better choice over the KS9000
Going into further detail on those display specs, which are core of the KS9500’s best qualities, this TV delivers one of the best examples we’ve seen so far of the UHS Alliance’s “Ultra HD Premium” certification at work. This means some superbly rich and realistic 10-bit color, excellent advanced DCI-P3 color spectrum coverage and 1100+ nit (cd/m2) peak brightness levels that are stunning to see. Black levels in the KS9500 are also fantastic, with the capacity to go as low as 0.015 nits and even lower under some circumstances if local dimming is activated.

The result is a contrast level that’s downright impressive by any LCD measure to-date. Once again, none of Samsung’s 2015 SUHD TVs quite matched these levels and even the JS9500 flagship 2015 TV fell short on both peak brightness and black levels. This is made all the more impressive when you consider that the KS9500 isn’t even a direct-lit 4K TV or Samsung’s 2016 flagship model like the JS9500 was. The SUHD line has definitely improved in this new year.

Furthermore, we love the upscaling technology in the KS9500. It’s superb in doing what it’s mainly built to do and there’s also a whole new twist for even native 4K content at work with this TV’s upscaling. Starting with its essential job of upscaling non-4K content sources, the KS9500’s upscaling engine works superbly with Full HD content and delivers excellent results with 720p and even 480p video sources. All will usually upscale in a way that leaves them looking distinctly better than they would have in a TV with their respective native resolutions. What’s more, the KS9500’s HDR display augmentation technologies also work to improve dynamic range and color saturation in all such video sources.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that any source of SDR non-4K content is converted into HDR video in this TV –it can’t quite manage that—but we do definitely note a slight to very high improvement in video almost across the board. The other interesting twist to this is that the TV also in a way “upscales” native SDR 4K video. It doesn’t improve its resolution of course but the processing engine in the KS9500 does improve color coverage and realism for such video sources.

Finally, we can’t cover what we like in the KS9500 without going into details on the quality of the 2016 Tizen smart TV platform that’s being given across the board to the company’s 2016 TVs. This new version of Tizen with Smart Hub has been improved at least moderately for even better usability, superior intuitive functionality and a layout that’s delightfully clean and easy to move around in when looking for apps, content from all sources and other functions. Needless to say, there’s also plenty in the way of web browsing features in Tizen. In our view this Smart TV OS is perhaps the second best we’ve seen in 2016, after LG’s webOS .

According to G.Rock a user of the product via Amazon, The product is awesome and would have been perfect it it retained the £D feature in the older model,
G.Rock says; Let me begin by saying we have both a 65" JS9500 (last year's model) and a 55" KS9500. Both offer a very good picture for the price with relatively deep blacks and vibrant colors. I would say the JS9500's array dimming works slightly better for letterboxed movies, but for most HD TV content, you won't notice a difference.

There are 2 places where I find the KS9500 trumps last year's model. The screen does much better in a well-lit room; a combination of a significantly brighter screen and a lower amount of reflectivity/glare make daytime viewing much better. Second, SmartHub/TizenOS is significantly improved; super snappy and actually useful this time around - I couldn't believe how quickly the tv can access apps and juggle inputs. Samsung has said they will bring some of the Tizen updates to the 2015 models, but as of this review they have not yet done so.

The two things I lament: the TV no longer supports 3D (if you care about this, stick to last year's model!) and the remote no longer supports the motion-pointer controls (making text input for apps slightly more tedious). These are both relatively minor, but also slightly disappointing.

Two additional minor things of note, but unaffecting my review score. The industrial design of this set is gorgeous; from the practically invisible bezel to the textured back plate - there was a huge attention to detail. Second, as of this review, the TV appears to not yet have passed DirecTV certification - while it is "RVU Ready", you cannot yet use the feature and it is "coming soon"

TLDR; this is a great all around set, but has some trade offs from last year's model.