Samsung DU8000 TV Review

The Samsung UN65DU8000FXZA looks good for an entry-level model. It's a thin TV with slim bezels on three sides and a slightly thicker one on the bottom. Overall, it looks premium.

As part of our two-year test, which has so far subjected 100 TVs to over 10,000 hours of accelerated testing, we found that edge-lit TVs like this one have significant durability issues. These issues range from warped reflector sheets and cracked light guide plates to completely burnt-out LEDs. You can read the full results of our investigation here.

The TV uses two plastic feet that support the TV well. The footprint of the 65-inch stand is 42.2" x 3.2".

The height of the feet is adjustable, and you can set them to two different positions. The lower position, which you can see in the photo, puts the screen close to the table. The other position is high enough that most soundbars fit below the screen. The height of the lower position is 2.1", and the higher one is 3.07".

The back of the TV is identical to the Samsung CU8000. It's made entirely out of plastic and has etched horizontal lines. There are two ports that directly face the back and a cutout where you'll find the rest of the inputs, so these can be hard to reach if you have the TV wall mounted. The TV has channels on the back and comes with a clip that can be attached to either foot for cable management.

The Samsung DU8000 has mediocre build quality. It's made entirely of plastic, and there's some wobble from front to back, but the TV recovers quickly. There's also some flex on the back of the TV that increases near the VESA mounting points, but this doesn't cause any issues. However, there's a large gap between the area where the screen meets the border. We don't know if this is isolated to our unit, but it's concerning.

The Samsung DU8000 has unremarkable contrast. Its native contrast is good, but it lacks a local dimming feature, so blacks are deep in dim and dark scenes, but they become raised and washed out when bright highlights are on the screen. It still looks much better than many similar budget models, like the Hisense A6N.

The Samsung DU8000 doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles during dark scenes.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. This means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between dimming zones.

Switching to Game Mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

The Samsung DU8000 has inadequate HDR brightness. It's not bright enough to display HDR content properly. Bright highlights don't stand out, and overall, this TV doesn't provide an impactful HDR experience.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50
• Contrast: 50
• Color: 25
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm 2
• Color Space: Auto
• Gamma: ST.2084 (0)

Results with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active'

• Hallway Lights: 219 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 202 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 103 cd/m²

If you want better HDR brightness, look at the cheaper Samsung DU7200/DU7200D.

Although the TV is slightly brighter in Game Mode, it's not noticeable, and it's still too dim to provide an impactful HDR experience while gaming.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness: 50
• Contrast: 50
• Color: 25
• HDR Tone Mapping: Static
• Color Tone: Warm 2
• Color Space: Auto
• Gamma: ST.2084 (0)
• Game Mode: On

Results with HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Active'

• Hallway Lights: 222 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 235 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 135 cd/m²

The Samsung DU8000 has very good PQ EOTF tracking. Blacks and near-blacks are slightly raised, while shadows and midtones are displayed a bit dimmer than intended. There's only a slight roll-off with content mastered at 600 and 1000 nits, so most details in bright highlights are lost. With content mastered at 4000 nits, there's a more gradual roll-off to retain some detail in highlights.

By changing HDR Tone Mapping to 'Active,' you get a brighter overall image but a less accurate one. It also changes the behavior of the tone mapping depending on the picture setting used. In 'Movie' mode, there's a more gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to preserve more details in highlights. In 'Game' mode, the TV has a sharp cut-off, so it stays brighter near the TV's peak brightness, but details in bright highlights are lost. You can see the results below.

• Movie
• Game Mode

The Samsung DU8000 has sub-par SDR brightness. It's not bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room, so it's best suited for dark or moderately lit rooms.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 50
• Contrast: 45
• Color: 25
• Color Tone: Warm 2
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color Space: Auto

If you want a Samsung TV that's better suited for a bright room, check out the Samsung Q60D QLED or the Samsung DU6900.

The TV has a good color gamut, with excellent coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space. Reds, yellows, greens, and cyans are undersaturated, and less saturated reds and blues are displayed inaccurately. The TV has okay coverage of the Rec.2020 color space that is increasing in popularity, with almost all colors being off the mark.

The TV's color volume is mediocre. It doesn't display darker colors well due to its unremarkable contrast, and it can't display most colors at high luminance levels.

The Samsung DU8000 has decent pre-calibration accuracy. Reds, greens, and blues are underrepresented in darker shades of gray, color temperature is cooler than than our target of 6500K, and gamma is much darker than the 2.2 target. Color accuracy is decent overall, but there are noticeable inaccuracies with magentas, reds, and blues.

The Samsung DU8000 has good post-calibration accuracy, but unfortunately, calibrating the TV doesn't do much to affect the picture. Using the 2-point offset and 20-point settings had no effect at all, so you're limited to using the 2-point gain setting only. This is unusual and is a bug that Samsung is aware of, but it currently really limits your calibration options.

Reds, greens, and blues are still underrepresented in darker shades of gray, and although the color temperature is a little closer to our 6500K target, it's still too cool. Colors are slightly more accurate, but there are still noticeable inaccuracies with magentas, reds, and blues. Gamma barely changed at all, so everything is still too dark.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Samsung DU8000 has decent gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are darker than the center, and there's some noticeable dirty screen effect towards the middle of the screen with large areas of uniform color. On a very dark or near-black screen, its uniformity is good, but the sides are noticeably brighter than the center.

The TV's black uniformity is incredible, although there's some minor cloudiness throughout. There's no local dimming feature, so the entire screen is blueish and cloudy when bright highlights are on the screen.

The Samsung DU8000's viewing angle is sub-par, so the TV isn't a good choice for wide seating arrangements. There's significant color shifting and brightness loss as you move off-center, and the image looks increasingly washed out as you move further away to the sides. If you're looking for a budget-friendly TV and need one that has a wider viewing angle, take a look at the LG UT7570.

The TV's reflection handling is decent. It does an outstanding job with indirect reflections, like when you have glare from a source that isn't directly facing the screen. With more direct light sources hitting the screen, reflections are very noticeable.

The TV's gradient handling is alright. There's significant banding in greens and noticeable banding in dark grays and dark reds.

The TV has poor low-quality content smoothing. Although it preserves details well, there's no noticeable smoothing done, and artifacts are still present. There's likely a bug at play here since last year's Samsung CU8000 did a much better job at removing artifacts.

The TV's upscaling and sharpness processing is satisfactory overall. Fine details are upscaled well for the most part, but hardcoded text is a bit hard to make out. Adjusting the sharpness value from '0' to '20' has very little effect on the image, but the following setting is the most accurate without adding oversharpening:

• Sharpness: 5

The Samsung DU8000 uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it can impact text clarity.

The Samsung DU8000 has a good response time. Fast motion is clear, but there's still some noticeable blur behind very quick-moving objects. Unfortunately, transitions in dark scenes are very slow, which results in black smearing behind dark objects.

The TV uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, which introduces flicker that can bother people who are sensitive to it. The amount of flicker varies depending on what picture mode the TV is set to and what settings you're using.

• In 'Dynamic,' 'Standard,' 'Entertain,' and 'Graphics' modes, the backlight flickers at 240Hz with the brightness at '19' and below, and is flicker-free at all brightness levels above that.
• In 'Movie' mode, the backlight flickers at 480Hz at all brightness levels.
• In 'Filmmaker' and 'Eco' modes, the backlight flickers at 240Hz at all brightness levels.
• In 'Game' mode, the TV is flicker-free across all brightness levels.
• With BFI enabled, the TV flickers at a very slow 60Hz.

The Samsung DU8000 supports backlight strobing, more commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). The feature is designed to improve the appearance of motion by strobing its backlight and reducing the amount of persistence blur. The BFI feature on the TV flickers at 60Hz, so there's still some image duplication present.

The TV has optional motion interpolation to help smooth out low frame rate content. It does an okay job with smoothing slower-moving scenes, but it struggles so much with faster scenes that there are noticeable artifacts, a screen-tearing type effect, and haloing around characters.

Due to this TV's relatively slow response time, it does an alright job with stutter in 24 fps content like movies, but there's still noticeable stutter with slower camera movements. It's fantastic with 60 fps content, though, so there isn't noticeable stutter with higher frame rate content.

The Samsung DU8000 removes judder from native 24p signals, like DVD or Blu-ray players, as well as from native apps. Unfortunately, it doesn't remove judder from 60i or 60p sources, so movies played from satellite/cable boxes aren't judder-free.

This TV doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies. The 85-inch model of the Samsung DU8000 does support VRR alongside a native refresh rate of 120Hz. If you want a smaller TV that supports VRR, check out the Samsung Q70D QLED.

The TV has incredibly low input lag when used in Game Mode. To have low input lag while transmitting a chroma 4:4:4 signal, you need to set the input to 'PC' and enable Game Mode.

Unfortunately, 1440p @ 60Hz doesn't work while in Game Mode, so the 1440p @ 60Hz results are with the TV set to 'Movie,' which leads to a lot more input lag.

The TV supports all common resolutions at 60Hz. Unfortunately, 1440p doesn't work in Game Mode. The TV displays a cropped window, even though 1440p works fine outside of Game Mode.

There's also an intermittent issue when displaying chroma 4:4:4 that resembles dithering.

The Samsung DU8000 is a 60Hz TV, so it only supports 4k @ 60Hz on the P55. It has Auto Low Latency Mode, so it'll automatically switch to Game Mode when the TV detects a game console as its input device, which gives you the lowest possible input lag for games. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't display 1440p properly inside of Game Mode, so you can't game in 1440p with the lowest input lag possible.

The 85-inch variant of this TV supports 4k @ 120Hz, as well as VRR.

The Samsung DU8000 is a 60Hz TV, so it only supports 4k @ 60Hz on the Xbox Series X|S. It has Auto Low Latency Mode, so it'll automatically switch to Game Mode when the TV detects a game console as its input device, which gives you the lowest possible input lag for games. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't display 1440p properly inside of Game Mode, so you can't game in 1440p with the lowest input lag possible.

The 85-inch variant of this TV supports 4k @ 120Hz, as well as VRR.

The TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, but the 85-inch model does include HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on some of its ports.

The TV has eARC support, which allows it to pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source to your home theater system or soundbar. Unfortunately, it doesn't support any DTS formats that are commonly used on many Blu-rays.

The TV's frequency response is mediocre. It sounds well-balanced at moderate levels but sounds progressively worse as the volume increases. At maximum volume, which isn't very loud, the TV doesn't sound great, so it's better suited for a quiet environment. Like most TVs, it lacks bass.

The TV's distortion performance is unremarkable. Distortion is audible near and at max volume, so you need to listen at lower volume levels for no distortion.

The TV comes with the 2024 version of Samsung's proprietary Tizen OS but has a reduced feature set compared to more expensive models, so you don't get features like TV to Mobile or Ambient Mode+. Still, it's fast and easy to use and supports Samsung's popular Multi View feature.

Like most TVs, there are ads on the home screen. You can't disable them completely, although you can turn off targeted ads.

Samsung's app store has all of the most common streaming services, so it's easy to find your favorite content. It also includes a great selection of additional apps.

The Samsung DU8000 comes with the same minimalistic remote as the 2023 Samsung CU8000. The remote has a rechargeable battery that you can charge via USB-C or solar power. It has buttons for popular streaming services, and the voice control gives you access to Bixby and Alexa. You can ask it to change settings, switch inputs, and answer basic questions, but it can't search for content within apps.

There's a single button underneath the Samsung branding on the right side of the TV. You can turn the TV on/off, change channels, adjust the volume, and select inputs.

• Remote control
• Power cable
• Clip for cable management
• User guides