Samsung AU8000 TV Review

The TV is a bit stylish for an entry-level model. It comes with new feet compared to 2020's Samsung TU8000, and they sit flat against the table. It has a simplistic look with thin bezels all around and looks nice in any setup.

The stand consists of two plastic feet that support the TV well. You can customize the feet to place the TV in a higher vertical position (in photo) to place a soundbar in front without blocking the screen, or it can be placed closer to the table as seen here.

Footprint of the 55 inch stand: 42.6" x 11.1". The height of the lower position is 1.78", and the higher one is 3.08".

The back of the TV has similar etched horizontal lines as other Samsung TVs. It doesn't offer much in terms of cable management, but you can run cables through the clips in the feet and the tracks in the back panel. The ports all face to the side, but because they're placed inside a cutout on the back, they're nearly impossible to access when the TV is wall mounted.

The Samsung AU8000 is much thinner than the Samsung TU8000 and doesn't stick out when wall-mounted.

This TV has decent build quality. It's made entirely of plastic that feels good, and the entire thing is well-built together without any obvious issues. However, the back panel flexes a lot near the center and inputs, which is noticeable when plugging in HDMI cables.

This TV has a VA-type panel, resulting in great native contrast and blacks that look black in a dark room. Although it's great, the contrast ratio is a bit lower than other similar TVs with VA panels, including the Samsung TU8000. If you want a TV with a higher contrast, then check out the Samsung Q60/Q60B QLED.

Update 02/7/2022: Unfortunately, switching the Samsung AU8000 to 'Game Mode' enables its frame dimming feature, which causes a noticeable decrease in brightness in small, bright scenes. When displaying a 2% slide in 'Game Mode', the brightness flashes quickly at 145 cd/m² before quickly decreasing to 104.3 cd/m², significantly lower than the sustained brightness outside of 'Game Mode'. This isn't noticeable with most real content, but generally, dark scenes are significantly dimmer in 'Game Mode' than out of it, but only in SDR. In HDR, there's no difference between modes, as they both show frame dimming.

The SDR brightness is okay. It's an improvement from the Samsung TU8000 because there's no frame dimming in the 2% windows outside of 'Game Mode'.

These measurements are from after calibration in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with Brightness at its max, Gamma set to '2.2', and Contrast at its default setting with all other image processing disabled. If you want an even brighter image at the cost of accuracy, the 'Dynamic' Picture Mode reaches a peak brightness of 399 cd/m² in the 10% window.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the TV, so you can see how the backlight performs and compare it with a TV that has local dimming. If you need something with local dimming, look into the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2021.

There's no local dimming feature on this TV. We still film these videos on the TV, though, so you can see how the backlight performs and compare it with a TV that has local dimming.

The HDR brightness is poor. It's not bright enough to display HDR content properly, and small bright highlights in dark scenes are dimmed considerably by the TV's frame dimming feature. The EOTF doesn't follow the target well either, as most scenes aren't as bright as they should be.

These measurements are with the 'Movie HDR' Picture Mode with Brightness and Contrast at their max with all other image processing disabled. If you want a brighter image, set Contrast Enhancer to 'High' with ST.2084 at its max; this results in a slightly brighter image as you can see in this EOTF, but the overall peak brightness of the TV is about the same.

The Samsung AU8000's HDR brightness in Game Mode is once again poor. It's pretty much the same as outside of Game Mode and there's no noticeable difference.

These measurements were taken with Game Mode enabled, Color Gamut set to 'Auto', Color Tone on 'Warm 2', and Brightness and Contrast at their max.

Sadly, this TV has just decent gray uniformity. There are a few patchy areas throughout the screen, which are distracting when you're watching anything with large areas of uniform color, like sports. Note that the exact uniformity varies between individual units, so yours might not look identical to this.

This TV has excellent black uniformity. The screen is cloudy throughout, but it's very uniform, so it's not very distracting. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature to reduce the cloudiness of the screen.

The Samsung AU8000 has narrow viewing angles, which is expected from a VA panel. Colors start to shift, and the image looks darker as you move off-center. If you have a wide seating arrangement, a TV with an IPS panel like the Hisense A6G or the LG NANO75 2021 might be a better choice.

The reflection handling is impressive, and it's a nice improvement from the Samsung TU8000. It handles a moderate amount of light well, and even though it struggles more with stronger light sources, it's still better than most entry-level TVs.

The Samsung AU8000's out-of-the-box accuracy is good. Most colors are slightly inaccurate, except red, yellow, and cyan are a bit less accurate. The white balance is okay, but brighter shades of gray are a bit off. The color temperature is fairly close to the 6500K target, and gamma follows the 2.2 target somewhat well, except most scenes are a bit brighter than they should be for a moderately-lit room. If you want a TV with even better out-of-the-box accuracy, the Sony X80K is a good alternative.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. Any remaining inaccuracies to the white balance and most colors are almost impossible to notice, except for saturated reds, which are a bit off. The color temperature is closer to the calibration target of 6500K, but it's a bit cool, giving everything a slightly bluish tint.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Samsung AU8000 upscales 480p content, like from DVDs, without any issues.

There aren't any problems with upscaling 720p content.

1080p content like from Blu-rays looks as nearly as good as 4k content.

The Samsung AU8000 displays native 4k content without any issues. There's some dithering with pixels, but it's not noticeable with real content unless a pure white screen is displayed.

This is a 4k TV that can't display an 8k image.

The panel is different from the Samsung TU8000 and looks like an MVA panel, which is a type of VA panel and performs the same. There's dithering with blue pixels, but it's only visible with a full white screen. It has BGR subpixel layout, which negatively affects text clarity when using it as a PC monitor.

The Samsung AU8000 has a decent HDR color gamut, with good coverage of the DCI P3 color space. This results in vivid colors when watching most HDR content, but it can't display the full range of colors available, so some content can look dull and muted. It has very limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, and it can't display a wide color gamut, so it's not very future-proof.

Due to the narrow color gamut, the color volume is mediocre. It displays darker colors fairly well, thanks to the high contrast, but it struggles more with brighter colors.

The gradient handling is excellent, which is a significant improvement from the Samsung TU8000. There's a bit more banding in the reds and greens, but it's still not too noticeable. The Noise Reduction setting, which is designed to smooth out gradients in low-quality content, doesn't appear to do anything at all.

There are no visible signs of image retention on the Samsung AU8000.

VA panels like the one used in this TV are unlikely to experience burn-in, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

The Samsung AU8000 has an okay response time. Like many TVs with VA panels, transitions in dark scenes are very slow, resulting in a long trail behind dark objects, known as black smearing. Motion looks blurry because of this slower response time, and there are noticeable duplications due to the TV's backlight flicker.

The Samsung AU8000 uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, which results in flicker that bothers some people. It's flicker-free in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with the Brightness set to anything '25' and above, but it flickers at 480Hz at '24' and below. It flickers at 120Hz with Picture Clarity enabled or in Game Mode. It also flickers at 120Hz in the 'Dynamic', 'Standard', and 'Natural' Picture Modes, but it's flicker-free in those modes if the backlight is set to its max.

The Samsung AU8000 has a backlight-strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). BFI is designed to improve the appearance of motion by reducing the amount of persistent blur. It flickers at 60Hz outside of Game Mode if you enable LED Clear Motion, but once Game Mode is enabled there aren't any motion settings and it always flickers at 120Hz, which leads to motion duplication. Unfortunately, the flicker introduced is poorly timed, resulting in noticeable crosstalk, so the overall usefulness of this feature is limited. Note that the score here is based only on the refresh rates supported by this TV's BFI feature, not how well the feature performs.

The Samsung AU8000 has an option to interpolate 30fps content up to 60fps, known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It looks okay in slower scenes but stops interpolating altogether during busy scenes, which is distracting due to the sudden change in frame rate.

Since the TV has a slower response time, there's very little stutter when watching low frame rate content, like movies.

Like the Samsung TU8000, this TV can only remove judder from sources that can send a true 24p signal, like a Blu-ray player or a streaming box with a "match frame-rate" feature. It can't remove judder from sources that don't have this feature, like most cable boxes.

This TV has a basic 60Hz panel without any variable refresh rate support. If you want a budget-friendly TV with VRR support, check out the Vizio M6 Series Quantum 2021.

This TV has incredibly low input lag as long as Game Mode is enabled. Surprisingly, even outside of Game Mode input lag is still low enough for most casual gamers.

The Samsung AU8000 supports most common resolutions, but only at 60Hz, as it doesn't support a 120Hz refresh rate. Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly, which is important for clear text from a PC but only in the TV's 'PC' mode.

Since it's a 60Hz TV, it only supports 4k games up to 60fps from the PS5 and Xbox Series X. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode to get the lowest input lag possible when a game from a compatible device is launched.

Unlike the Samsung TU8000, the Samsung AU8000 doesn't have any component or composite inputs. You'll need an external HDMI adapter to connect older devices like retro game consoles.

Even though the Samsung AU8000 doesn't have HDMI 2.1 inputs, it still supports eARC. This allows you to pass uncompressed audio in the Dolby Atmos via TrueHD format to a compatible receiver over a single HDMI connection. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS, which is disappointing, as many UHD Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The frequency response is mediocre. It doesn't produce bass, and there are compression artifacts at its max volume. You have to listen at moderate levels if you want a more well-balanced sound profile.

The distortion performance is mediocre. Although there isn't too much at moderate listening levels, it increases quite a bit at its max volume. However, it depends on the content, and not everyone may hear it.

The Samsung AU8000 comes with an upgraded version of Tizen compared to 2020's Samsung TU8000; the menu navigation feels smoother, and it's easy to use. However, it has fewer features than some higher-end models like the Samsung Q80/Q80A QLED as it lacks things like MultiView.

Sadly, there are ads on the home page and app store, and there's no way to disable them.

Samsung's app store has a great selection of apps, including all major streaming services.

This TV comes with the same new redesigned remote as other Samsung TVs in 2021, except it requires disposable batteries instead of a rechargeable one. There are shortcut buttons to popular streaming devices, and the voice control gives you access to Bixby, Alexa, and Google Assistant. You can ask it to change settings and switch inputs, but you can't ask it to search for specific content in apps.

There's a single button below the Samsung branding on the right side. You can change volume, channels, and inputs and turn the TV On/Off.

• Remote control (with 2x AA batteries)
• Power cable
• Clips for cable management
• User guides