Samsung The Sero  TV Review

Update 09/28/2020: We've added a video of the TV rotating from portrait to landscape mode; you can see it here.

The Samsung Sero has an outstanding design. It has a 43 inch screen that can rotate to portrait mode to consume vertically-filmed content, like on social media sites. Like Samsung The Frame 2020, it has thicker borders that make the screen look like a piece of art, and it's mounted on an easel-like stand that supports the TV very well. The bottom portion of the stand is covered by a navy blue fabric, protecting the TV's front-firing speakers. There are wheels that you can purchase separately if you often need to move the TV around.

The stand is a mix of metal and plastic. It supports the TV very well and doesn't wobble at all.

Footprint of the 43" stand: 22.1" x 11.9"

The back of the TV is plain except for a fine texture that's etched into it. For cable management, there's a panel to hide the inputs, and cables are routed through a cutout at the bottom of the kickstand. Also, the front of the stand extends down far enough that you can hide your Blu-ray player or gaming console behind it.

The borders on the Samsung Sero are thicker than other high-end Samsung TVs and are closer in design to Samsung The Frame 2020's.

The TV is pretty thick with the stand, but the screen itself is only 1" (2.5cm).

The Samsung Sero's build quality is excellent. It's mostly plastic except for the stand, which has a metal frame below the plastic shell. There's no flex at all and it doesn't wobble. The rotating mechanism is hidden and works very smoothly.

Unlike most Samsung TVs, the Sero uses an IPS panel with a mediocre contrast ratio. This results in blacks that look grayish when viewed in a dark environment.

Note that the contrast ratio can vary between units.

Good SDR peak brightness. It's very consistent when displaying different content, except for the 2% window, which is caused by frame dimming. It's bright enough to overcome glare in most lighting conditions.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration, using the 'Movie' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to maximum and Gamma set to 2.2.

If you don't mind losing image accuracy, you can achieve a higher peak brightness using the 'Dynamic' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max. We were able to get 461 cd/m² in the 10% window using these settings.

The Samsung Sero doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video above is provided for reference only.

Mediocre HDR peak brightness. It's only marginally brighter than SDR and has the same frame dimming in the 2% window. It isn't bright enough to make highlights pop in HDR content.

We measured the HDR peak brightness before calibration, using the 'Movie HDR' Picture Mode, with Brightness and Contrast set to maximum.

If you don't mind losing image accuracy, you can get a brighter image in HDR using the 'Dynamic HDR' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to maximum and Adv. Contrast Enhancer set to 'Medium.' Using these settings, we achieved a peak brightness of 475 cd/m² in the 10% window.

Gray uniformity on our unit of the Samsung Sero is good. The sides are visibly darker, but there's only a small amount of dirty screen effect. Uniformity is much better in near-dark scenes.

Note that gray uniformity can vary between units.

Black uniformity on our unit is bad. There's clouding throughout the screen and some backlight bleed too.

Note that black uniformity can vary between units.

The Samsung Sero has decent viewing angles when it's in landscape mode, and is suitable for a small to a moderately large room. Unfortunately, viewing angles are narrower when the TV is in portrait mode, as black level rise and gamma shift happen a lot sooner. You can see the portrait mode (vertical) viewing angle in this video.

The angle at which the video is shot looks different due to the screen's natural upward tilt.

Decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss coating handles ambient reflections well, but not direct reflections, so it's best to avoid placing the TV opposite bright lights. You can see the reflection handling when the TV is in portrait mode in these pictures:

• Average Room
• Average Room Off
• Bright Room Off

The white lines in the portrait mode pictures show where a landscape image would be displayed and aren't visible in regular content.

If you need a TV with better reflection handling, check out the LG UN7300.

The Samsung Sero has excellent color accuracy out of the box. Most color inaccuracies aren't noticeable and white balance is only slightly off. The color temperature is on the cooler side despite the 'Warm 2' Color Tone setting, giving images a blueish tint. Gamma doesn't follow the target; dark scenes are too dark, and bright scenes are too bright.

Note that color accuracy can vary between units.

Update 09/29/2020: We've changed the Auto-Calibration function status from 'Untested' to 'Undetermined'. Like other 2020 Samsung TVs, the Sero hasn't been listed as compatible with CalMAN.

After calibration, color accuracy is exceptional. White balance and gamma are nearly perfect, but the color temperature is still cooler than our 6500K target. Except for blues and reds, the remaining inaccuracies shouldn't be noticeable without the aid of a colorimeter.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Samsung Sero upscales 480p content, such as from DVDs, well and without any visible artifacts.

720p content like cable TV is upscaled well.

There are no issues with the upscaling of 1080p content.

Native 4k content is displayed perfectly.

The Samsung Sero is a 4k TV and can't display an 8k image.

The Samsung Sero has a great HDR color gamut. It has outstanding coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content, and decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space. The 'Movie' EOTF follows the PQ curve relatively well, with just some over-brightening in very dark scenes to avoid crushing. The 'Game' mode EOTF follows the curve much closer, as you can see here.

If you find HDR content too dim, you can make it brighter by setting the Picture Mode to 'HDR Movie,' Contrast Enhancer to 'High,' and ST. 2084 to maximum. These settings result in this EOTF.

Okay HDR color volume. It has trouble displaying bright colors because it has a low HDR peak brightness, and it can't display dark colors well due to a low contrast ratio.

Excellent gradient handling. There's only some banding in the darker shades and in the reds, which shouldn't be noticeable in most content. Unfortunately, enabling Noise Reduction doesn't seem to have any effect on our test pattern or in regular content.

There are no signs of temporary image retention.

Note that temporary image retention can vary between units.

While some IPS panels like this have some temporary image retention, this doesn't seem to be permanent as the IPS panel in our long-term test appears to be immune.

The Samsung Sero has a good response time, resulting in only a short blur trail behind fast-moving objects. However, there's a bit of overshoot in the darker transitions that can cause some motion artifacts.

The backlight is flicker-free when the TV's brightness is at maximum. Below that, the backlight flickers at 120Hz in all picture modes. Unfortunately, this flickering frequency causes visible image duplication. Turning on Picture Clarity doesn't affect the frequency rate, but enabling LED Clear Motion does and lowers it to 60Hz.

The Samsung Sero has an optional Black Frame Insertion (BFI) feature to improve motion clarity called LED Clear Motion, located in the Picture Clarity Settings menu. Turning it on lowers the backlight's flickering frequency to 60Hz, but there's terrible crosstalk causing image duplication.

You can use BFI when gaming by turning on LED Clear Motion in the Game Motion Plus Settings menu.

The Samsung Sero can interpolate lower-frame content up to 60 fps to make motion look smoother. Unfortunately, it doesn't perform all that well. Motion looks smooth in scenes that aren't busy, but artifacts appear the moment the action gets intense before the TV stops interpolating entirely, resuming only in quieter scenes. There's noticeable image duplication in the photo due to the backlight's 120Hz flicker.

If you want to use motion interpolation, set Picture Clarity to 'Custom' and the Judder Reduction slider to '10'.

Even though the TV has a relatively fast response time, lower frame rate content doesn't stutter much. If image stutter bothers you, enabling motion interpolation can help.

The Samsung Sero can remove judder from all sources. It does it automatically for content from 24p sources and native apps. For 60i or 60p sources, you need to set Picture Clarity to 'Custom' and leave the Judder Reduction slider at '0'.

The Samsung Sero doesn't support variable refresh rate technology.

The Samsung Sero has exceptionally low input lag and remains low even when playing in 10-bit HDR. The TV allows for the use of motion interpolation when gaming; however, it adds a considerable amount of latency.

To get low input lag, turn on 'Game' mode. If you want to use motion interpolation when gaming, enable Game Motion Plus in the Game Motion Plus Settings menu and leave the Judder Reduction slider at '0.' There's an 'Auto Low Latency Mode' that automatically puts you in 'Game' mode when a game is launched from a compatible device. To use it, set 'Game' mode to 'Auto' and enable Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC). For PC use, enable 'Game' mode and label the input in use as 'PC.'

The Samsung Sero supports most common resolutions at 60Hz. It can display chroma 4:4:4 properly as long as you label the input in use as 'PC.' For high bandwidth signals such as 4k @ 60Hz + 10-bit HDR, enable Input Signal Plus for the port in use.

The Samsung Sero is advertised to have HDR10+ support. However, it didn't work during our testing, and the content was shown as just HDR10 instead. It's likely a bug that should be fixed in a future firmware update. We'll retest it once it's available.

The Samsung Sero supports eARC, which lets you send high-quality audio like Dolby Atmos via TrueHD over an HDMI connection. To use it, set HDMI-eARC Mode to 'Auto' and Digital Output Audio Format to 'Auto' or 'Passthrough.'

The Samsung Sero's internal speakers have a decent frequency response. It's reasonably well-balanced but becomes more V-shaped when playing near max volume, as the bass and treble become more emphasized. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot of bass extension, so it can't produce a thumping or rumbling sound. It doesn't get that loud and is more suitable for a small to medium size room. Also, there are some compression artifacts at max volume.

Good distortion performance. The total amount of distortion is very low at any volume level and shouldn't be noticeable for most people.

The Samsung Sero runs on a simplified version of Tizen OS with reduced features, similar to the Samsung Q60T QLED. It's easy to use and runs smoothly. The only issue is that the user interface isn't optimized for portrait mode, so it's displayed with black borders at the top and bottom.

There are ads and suggested content on the home screen and within the app store. There's no way to disable them.

There's a large selection of apps in Samsung's app store, so you should be able to find what you need.

The remote control is almost identical to the Samsung The Frame 2020's, except that it has a dedicated button to rotate the screen. There's a motor built into the stand to turn the screen, so there's no need to do it manually. There's a microphone in the remote for voice control through Bixby. You can use it to change the TV's settings, ask for information such as the weather or time, and search for content. That said, content search only works in certain apps. We were able to perform a search on YouTube, but not Netflix.

There are many ways to mirror your smartphone's content. You can do it with Samsung's SmartThings app, use the 'Cast' function built into most Android phones, or use AirPlay on iOS devices. The Smart View function on Samsung phones works as well. Mirroring works for apps, games, and media. The TV follows your phone's orientation, so if you change your phone's orientation, the TV will turn too.

Just like Samsung's The Frame 2020, there's an ambient mode that showcases pieces of art when the TV isn't in use.

The TV's control consists of a single button behind the TV, on the stand's top ledge. It allows you to perform the essential functions such as turning the TV On/Off, changing the input source, changing the channel, and adjust the volume. You can also use it to rotate the display.

• Remote control
• 2x AA batteries
• User guide
• Power cord