Samsung - 51" Class (50-3/4" Diag.) - Plasma - 1080p - Smart - 3D - HDTV

I have very high standards for audio and video equipment, so when it was time to replace my old Sony WEGA Trinitron I spent months researching to find the best TV I could afford. Since the new OLED's are several thousand more than I want to pay, the obvious choice for the best picture quality is plasma. Yes, plasma! It is well known in the audiophile/videophile community that nearly all the TV reviewers and editors have plasma sets in their own homes. And with this TV Samsung has overcome plasma's shortcomings (it's as bright as many LED TVs!) It is so hard to judge picture quality in the store. Calibration is everything, and TV's on display in the store are set for the brightest picture rather than a good picture. Once I got my Samsung Plasma home and calibrated the picture settings (which can be found online) I was amazed at the picture! Incredible bright room performance, unlimited viewing angle, and absolutely no motion blur. The picture quality is as good or better than any of the new 4K "Ultra HD" sets I've looked at. (Unless you sit less than 3 feet from the TV - the pixels are much smaller on the 4K sets.) Oh, and 51 inches may not seem big in the store, but it will be HUGE in your home. If you are not a hard core gamer and picture quality is important to you, and you don't have $9,000 to spend on OLED, the 51f8500 is without a doubt the next best choice. It's not exactly cheap, but it is packed with the latest features - pop-up camera, voice and gesture control,quad-core processor, Skype, wi-fi, loads of apps, I could go on...

The picture and color quality are excellent. Specially for movies.

Purchased it 12/20/13 5 days after manufacturers warranty ended a thin vertical line appeared in the middle of the screen and it gets wider every week

This is the 2nd Plasma PNF518500 I've bought in 6 months. One for my Mom and one for me. Mine was $400 cheaper as had a price drop alert on rtngs.com. I figured the price would drop as this is the very last of the plasmas and Samsung would want to clear inventory. I did extensive research on Plasmas for nearly two years and found the Samsung 8500 line. Then waited and waited and waited for the price to come down. Totally worth the more than 50% savings from MSRP. What I loathe about LCD TVs is that flat "video" effect. Looks fake. With plasma you get the deep blacks that provide depth. The picture is beautiful. Breathtaking. Rich. Tried 3D last night and was BLOWN AWAY. Watched 300 and while I can do without blood splatter on my screen, I was truly in AWE of the 3D. You put an enclosed little battery in your 3D glasses and you pair with the TV, super easy to do. Then hold on, it's a thrilling experience! When my curtains are drawn, the room is medium dark. Picture has no reflection, perfect image. I just opened the curtain 10AM and yeah, you can see the window in the picture but that's with EVERY TV. Mom's living room is bright and big. Picture is excellent there, rich and deep. Samsung is known for have a great picture in a bright room as its picture is brighter than other plasmas. Better than Panasonic's plasma. I've used the Smart features fairly regularly. All easy to set up. My favorite is using my smart phone to pair with the TV and then selecting the exercise video I want to watch on my smartphone and have that instantly available on the TV - mirroring. Makes it easier than using the Samsung typewriter interface. Just find your video on your mobile device and hit play and BOOM! it's on your TV screen. Magic. All internet features run fast and accurate. I've got Verizon slow speed DSL and never had a stutter in the download. Perfect. Sound is great for me. My Mom has a HUGE living room and it sounds just fine there with no receiver/speakers, just straight from the TV. In my much smaller apartment, sound is great. I will use "surround sound" speakers that I have when watching a big movie but otherwise, I'm quite content with the TV's speakers. Though to be sure, I'm no audiophile. Just a regular "listener." I was shopping for another TV with my bfriend for his parents. I looked up and saw a beautiful LCD picture and thought, well geez, I thought plasma was the best but this picture matches it. It was a 4K. So the future for us plasma/picture enthusiasts is bright. By the time we want a new TV, the 4K will be affordable. So no worries. The Samsung rates better than the Panasonic Plasmas. From CNET: The high-end Samsung PNF8500 is phenomenal, a truly innovative model #thanks to its high light output# that was the only 2013 television aside from Panasonic plasmas to score a 9 or higher in picture quality. It also costs nearly twice as much as the ST60, which also scored a 9. That extra cost is no longer a barrier as they are CHEAP! MOVE FAST. NO FASTER!!! They'll be gone in a heartbeat. FYI, in some instances 2013 Panasonics are going for MORE than MSRP now. 60" ZT60 MSRP $3,499 - from Panasonic's website, 60" ZT60 today on Amazon 2 new $5,979. So you might just be surprised that when you go to sell this old plasma in a few years, you find plasma-philes willing to pay up for it. That's good news too! Ok, I've gone on too long. Just buy the thing. It beats its closest competitor, has an excellent picture, fantastic 3D and Smart TV Features, fine sound. As of Sunday, 10/5/14 at 5AM, the price dropped $400 on the 51" to $1,399 and $400 on the 60" $1,999. Frankly the 51" is a better value as it dropped as much as the higher priced 60" model. The 64" dropped $600 to $2,499. MSRP 51" $2,699 60" $3,799 64" $4,399. Hope this helps. Good luck!

First, I have to say that this is our first wide-screen flat-panel TV. We previously had a very nice Sony 27 inch CRT model, neither HD nor wide screen, so this was a huge change for us. I purchased this mainly on the basis of the Consumer Reports and CNet reviews. My first choice was a similar Panasonic plasma TV, but I waited just a few days too long and the size we wanted had gone by the time I got around to ordering one. (Panasonic shut down their production at the end of 2013.) This is more expensive than the Panasonic would have been, but was also rated more highly by CR. The unit is indeed good-looking, at least as these things go. The bezel is thin, and the stand is unusual looking and (we think) rather elegant looking. The picture is gorgeous! We both feel that it is like seeing television and our favorite shows for the first time. Much of it looks as if we were looking through a window with the actors right there on the other side of the glass. Very impressive, indeed. The two HD movies we watched were quite spectacular, with incredible detail and no motion artifacts that I noticed. I have not tried to adjust the picture settings except for cranking up the brightness a bit. I have not yet seen any need to change the default settings. But having said all that, I have to note that it is truly much less bright than a CRT or an LED/LCD screen. We have it in our living room, with quite a bit of window light. Since we do not watch much television during the daytime and since it is winter now and the sun sets early, the brightness has not been a problem. I knew that a plasma TV would be less bright than an LCD, but I wanted to avoid the viewing angle restrictions of an LCD because of our seating arrangements, and I relied on the test reports saying that this is one of brightest plasma sets there is. Plus I liked the reported picture quality, and I have not been disappointed. My spouse has watched some Sunday morning talk shows and had no complaints. But if we were to watch a movie in an afternoon I think I would want to close the draperies to get the best viewing. We’ll have to wait until summer to see how causal TV viewing is affected on a regular (daily) basis. The screen reflectivity is quite tolerable in my opinion. A nearby lamp is often on when we watch and I hardly notice its reflection in the screen. I have noticed that the picture is noticeably dimmed when one looks at the TV from above, especially when close to it. We have the set on a fairly low TV stand, not on the wall. This is not really an issue for any normal viewing positions. I have read that the set Hs a feature to reduce glare from overhead lamps, and I suspect that accounts for the reduced visibility from a high angle. As CR noted, the TV audio quality is decent enough for routine viewing, not much worse than our old CRT TV. As for the features, it is certainly equipped with plenty. The Wi-Fi worked well right from the start, no issues. We have used a couple of web sites and had no problems, but have not tried anything challenging such as streaming a movie from the web. The set has enough apps that we probably could eliminate the ROKU, whose services it seems to more or less duplicate. We have not yet tried the 3D but I look forward to it. Hookup -- The set has four HDMI inputs and a component input, and a digital optical audio output. This allowed me to connect the Blu-ray player, the Roku and cable box to the HDMI inputs and feed my non-HD audio receiver with the TV digital audio output, thus avoiding the need for a new audio receiver. (I feed a couple of older non-HD video devices through the receiver to the TV using the component input.) Remote controls -- The remote controls are an interesting pair. One is a conventional remote, with buttons for most functions. The buttons are mostly quite large, with good clear legends, and available backlighting. We have found it easy to operate the set and to navigate the menus using the regular remote or my existing universal remote. The regular remote has a few buttons for a cable box, and the TV has an IR blaster to transmit signals to the cable box or other devices. It was easy to select the correct cable service during the initial setup. I did have a small problem in that the TV will turn on the cable box automatically, but does not turn it off. I have not spent much time trying to troubleshoot this minor problem. The second remote is an elegant device, and sophisticated, and in theory is a universal remote, but I have found it too complex for convenient use. It has a touch pad (like a PC) for web navigation and for many other functions. This remote has but a few buttons, and depends on the touchpad plus some on-screen menus and a screen keyboard to control the TV or other devices. Another feature is a microphone that can be used to command the TV. I have tried this a few times but have (so far) found the voice control to be more frustrating than it’s worth. I have searched the on-line manual and help screens but have been unable to locate a comprehensive list of allowed spoken commands, so it’s been a guessing game to learn what would work. The other main problem is that the TV has occasionally popped up the voice command menu in the middle of a TV show or a movie, when we did nothing to request the menu. My guess is that some bit of sound on the program triggered the pop-up menu. The worst part is that the pop-up silenced the TV audio so you lose whatever is going on until you can kill the audio menu. I went into the settings and disabled the audio command system to avoid similar incidents. The TV can also be controlled by hand gestures, but given my experience with the audio commands (plus little interest), I have not been tempted to tackle that. Overall, and aside from the peculiar universal remote and the audio command feature, we are delighted with this TV. Most of our observations match those of the two reviews I read (CR’s and CNet), with the exception that I did not think the audio was as bad as CNet did. Also -- We had Best Buy deliver the set and the delivery people were great. They were conscious of the need to minimize tracking in water and dirt (there was a snowstorm underway), they quickly assembled the stand and placed the TV where we wanted it, and connected the cable box to it. We were very pleased with the delivery.

So far this tv is pretty good. My only complaint was this whole "judder" reduction setting. I thought that I noticed some weirdness with movements on the screen, fast action/people moving their hands quickly, and with this being a Plasma that simply just does not happen... not on any of my other Plasmas anyway. So I go thru all the settings & find the judder reduction or whatever its called (I have NEVER seen that option on any other plasma btw). It was set to standard, which clearly was not going to work for me so I changed it to smooth. Uh yeah, that was even worse. People's hands were blurring when they moved along with other things blurring & having short trailing affects. All I could think was WTF this is a Plasma not a LED. Long story short I called BB & geek squad said to turn the judder thing off all together, which it oringinally came set on "standard". After I did that the movements were what I'm used to with my other tvs. Just thought I would give a heads up to anyone who might be considering or about to purchase this particular tv. Its also extremely bright in comparison to my other plasmas!

I just picked this TV up yesterday from Best Buy. In the store they had it sitting next to a Panasonic VT50 the (now former?) leader in plasma displays. You could immediately tell the picture quality on the 8500 was sharper. Colors pop, blacks are deep and dark, overall the picture quality really is amazing. You have to see it to believe it. I found the overall design of the TV including the stand, stylish and of high quality materials. I tried out the voice controls and to my surprise they work very well. I was easily able to navigate to Netflix without issue. It has all the other apps that you would expect from a modern smart TV, netfilx, pandora, amazon video on demand, plus many more. Also I found the user interface to be much cleaner and and more performant than its panasonic competition. My only complaint on the TV's is that the sound quality on these newer TV's seems to be sacrificed for thinness. I would mark it down for this except all TV's across brands of this style seem to be doing that so its certainly on par with its competition. Overall I am very very pleased with TV and would recommend it to anybody who is serious about getting top notch picture quality.

We have had this TV for about a month and it far exceeds our expectations. The picture quality is incredible. We were back and forth between plasma and LED, but watching a lot of fast action sports (primarily Hockey) we went with the plasma due to the 600mHz. The picture is bright and sharp like that of a LED. The 2D to 3D feature is nice as well, We actually use it more than we expected. This is our first smart TV and using those features is not disappointing as well. We plan to buy the compatible full keyboard to make web browsing easier. Overall very satisfied and well worth the little extra money.