Samsung NU8000 TV Review

The design of the Samsung NU8000 is excellent. Compared to the MU8000, the new stand feels very solid and has a slightly smaller footprint, although if you were planning on using a soundbar in front of the TV, you might have to make some concessions. There are new cable management guides cut into the back. The TV does not include the mini OneConnect box, all of the connections are towards the side of the TV.

The stand is very different than the ones on the two previous models (the MU8000 and KS8000). It is very similar to the stand found on the JU7100. The TV is very stable and there is very little wobble.

Footprint of the 55" TV stand: 12.5" x 31.4".

The back of the TV has a textured finish very similar to last year's MU8000. It has new tracks for cable management that are cut the entire width of the back of the TV. The VESA wall mount is 200x200 instead of the 400x400 found on most of last year's models .

The NU8000 has slightly larger borders than last year's MU8000. The finish of the main bezel has changed from silver to black.

The TV is quite thin when viewed from the side, although it is slightly thicker than last year's MU8000.

When wall mounted, the TV doesn't stick out much which is good. The lack of the OneConnect mini means you will have more work if you need to change the connections, but you don't have to worry about where to place the box.

The overall build quality is average, nearly identical to the MU8000. It is almost entirely made of plastic but feels solid. We haven't experienced any quality issues.

Update 07/31/2018: A few readers are reporting a clicking sound issue. From our investigation it seems to come from heat expansion of the back cover. We think that once the TV is warm enough it should settle down.

Excellent native contrast ratio on the Samsung NU8000, approximately 15% better than the MU8000. This high contrast ratio allows the TV to produce deep black scenes, especially when viewing in a dark room.

The local dimming feature has very little impact on the contrast ratio. This is to be expected as the local dimming on this edge-lit TV is not very effective at making blacks deeper.

The local dimming on the NU8000 is bad. It dims the screen less than the MU8000, but focuses the dimming on moving highlights as it should. This helps reduce the amount of visible blooming and the black levels appear raised.

Great SDR peak brightness. In dark scenes, the TV tries to keep black levels low rather than favoring brighter highlights. Brightness remains consistent, regardless of content and the TV is bright enough for most rooms.

Update 06/12/2018: Retested peak brightness on firmware update 1103, and by sending the signal with our Samsung K8500 Blu-ray player. The brightness is now significantly higher, by around 60 cd/m². The score has been updated.

Decent HDR peak brightness, slightly better than last year's MU8000 but significantly dimmer than the X900F. It is able to produce brief bright highlights especially in the 2% - 10% range. Bright enough for almost all rooms.

Update 06/12/2018: Retested peak brightness on firmware update 1103, and by sending the signal with our Samsung K8500 Blu-ray player. The brightness is now significantly higher, by around 60 cd/m². The score has been updated.

Good gray uniformity. The uniformity issues appear mainly around the edges of the screen. As such, the TV's dirty screen effect is not problematic when watching sports or playing games.

Dark scene uniformity is very good. The edges appear slightly brighter than the center but should not be noticeable.

Poor viewing angle. Colors and brightness shift if you are even slightly off center. The side seats of a 3 seat couch will notice a small difference, but people sitting further off center than that will have degraded picture quality. If viewing angle is an issue, an IPS panel like in the X800E would be a better choice.

Black uniformity is very good on the NU8000. No clouding can be seen with or without local dimming. Standard deviation is much better than last year's MU8000, and this year's X900F, which results in uniform dark scenes without distracting areas.

Like the MU8000, it is impossible to completely disable local dimming on this TV. As such, it is impossible to determine the true native black uniformity performance of this TV. We ran our test with the local dimming feature set to 'Low' (the lowest setting). The test for black uniformity with local dimming was taken with local dimming set to 'High'.

The TV reflects a lot of light, but not as bad as other models we have tested like the MU8000. The semi-gloss finish diffuses reflections across most of the screen although there are no visible rainbows.

Good color accuracy out of the box, but follows our target of 6500K and 2.2 gamma much worse than last year's MU8000. White balance has too much red/green and gamma is too high across the entire curve at 2.42. The color temperature is cold at 6032K giving colors more of a yellow tint.

Update 04/12/2019: This TV was incorrectly measured with Brightness +2, instead of at 0. This only has a small impact on the results (slightly dimmer dark scenes below about 30 IRE) and so we don't plan to retest it.

White balance and color temperature are near perfect post calibration. We were unable to correct color accuracy, although it remains acceptable for most people. We obtained the best results in the 'Movie' picture mode.

You can see our recommended settings here.

There are no obvious issues or artifacts when upscaling low-quality content.

No obvious issues upscaling 720p content.

1080p content played from a Blu-ray looks good.

No issues with native 4k content.

Good color gamut on the Samsung NU8000, slightly better than the MU8000. Colors in HDR will be fairly accurate, although the TV has difficulty displaying deep greens. Very similar results to the Sony X900E.

The 'Movie' picture mode's HDR EOTF follows the target PQ curve very well, up until it rolls off into its max brightness. 'Game' and 'PC' modes also have fairly accurate EOTFs. In 'PC' mode the 'Dynamic' picture mode has the best HDR EOTF, because 'Standard' mode has a bug where it sometimes gets stuck in a dim state. *Corrected, see below.

Update 05/02/2018: The color gamut was erroneously measured at a 50% stimulus. It has been remeasured at 75% stimulus to be in line with our other TVs. The results remain almost identical.

Update 11/07/2018: The bug with the PC mode EOTF mentioned earlier was a mistake, it turns out the TV's 'Eco' mode was left on in PC mode accidentally (the PC mode setting is independent of the normal one). The PC mode EOTF has been remeasured in the 'Standard' picture mode, and isn't quite as good as the 'Movie' mode EOTF (darkens dim shades a little), but is still pretty good.

Decent color volume. It does a better job than the MU8000 at displaying bright colors across its entire color gamut, but still does not display deep, dark colors very well.

The NU8000 handles color gradients very well. There is some visible banding especially in darker colors.

There is no measurable temporary image retention on the NU8000, even immediately after the burn-in scene. This is good, especially for gamers.

We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

Very fast pixel response time, good enough for fast-moving content like sports and video games. Most of the blur in the photo is due to backlight flicker; the ghosting trail following the moving logo is fairly short, which is good.

The TV dims its backlight by using PWM flicker at 240 Hz. This flicker is unfortunately present at all brightness levels but is less severe at high brightness. This flicker makes fast motion look a little more clear, but also introduces unwanted duplications, as visible in the photo in the Response Time box.

The Samsung NU8000 has an optional 60 Hz flicker mode, activated by enabling 'LED Clear Motion' in the 'Auto Motion Plus' menu. This 60 Hz flicker greatly clears up motion during 60 fps content, but the flicker can be bothersome to some people. This flicker can also be activated in Game mode, by using the 'Game Motion Plus' menu, which is a first for Samsung TVs.

Update 01/09/2019: We have retested the backlight flicker at 120 Hz, and can confirm that the NU8000 does flicker at 120 Hz when displaying a 120 Hz signal.

The Samsung 55NU8000 has a 120 Hz panel, and can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120 fps. This makes motion much smoother, but can look strange to some people (the so-called 'soap opera effect'), and sometimes adds unwanted artifacts during fast motion. Interpolation is activated by setting 'Auto Motion Plus' to 'Custom'; increase the 'Judder Reduction' slider to interpolate low frame rate content, and increase the 'Blur Reduction' slider to interpolate 60 fps content.

Game mode now also has motion interpolation, 'Game Motion Plus', which doesn't look as good as 'Auto Motion Plus' but adds much less input lag, as explained in the Input Lag box.

The TV is decent at showing smooth motion in low frame rate content like movies, however, its fast response time can sometimes make motion look stuttery, such as in wide panning shots, because each frame stays unchanged for 29 ms.

The 55NU8000 can remove 24p movie judder from most sources, except 60i input such as cable boxes; this is a regression from last year's Samsung TVs, which could remove judder from all common sources. To activate judder removal, set 'Auto Motion Plus' to 'Custom', 'Judder Reduction' to 0 and 'Blur Reduction' to 0; this will remove judder without adding soap opera effect.

The NU8000 does not support FreeSync from our Radeon RX 580 GPU. We tried various combinations of game mode, PC mode, input refresh rates, etc., and FreeSync was never detected as supported.

Update 05/23/2018: Firmware version 1103 has added FreeSync support.

Update 06/08/2018: FreeSync has been tested and the score has been updated. FreeSync was supported from our Xbox One S and our Radeon RX 580 GPU, in 1080p, 1440p and 4k resolutions. FreeSync is activated by enabling the TV's Game mode and FreeSync settings; PC mode is not required. We tested in Ultimate mode because it has the widest range, and we only recommend Basic mode when you experience problems with Ultimate.

Update 10/26/2018: We have received confirmation that the 49" NU8000 does support FreeSync. Since it has a 60 Hz panel, the 1080p VRR range is limited to 60 Hz.