I got my 65X930E mounted and set up, so I thought I'd share my thoughts. A few notes:
- I'm coming from a Samsung PN60F5300 plasma. It's one of the last plasmas they made, and was regarded as a great bang-for-the-buck set, especially for watching movies in a dark setting. Unfortunately…
- My great room has floor-to-ceiling windows that face west. Because of this, there's a big section of the day where the room is quite bright, and a couple of hours where the TV gets a few shafts of direct sunlight. With the plasma, this made the picture quite washed out / completely unwatchable, depending on how bright the day got.
Installation:
- This set is heavy for an LCD, around 80lbs. The plasma was 60, and I assumed that the 930 would be lighter… good thing I checked the weight before I took it out of the box! Build quality seems great, with a bigger ratio of metal to plastic, etc.
- The wire routing / stand solution is really nice, but I wall-mounted it.
Overall Picture:
- Bright. One of the reasons I went with the 930 was its reputation as a "light cannon," hoping to out-bright the sun. Even on SDR content, this thing does that and then some - we've had a couple very bright days, and the direct sunlight that rendered the plasma unusable is only slightly noticeable on the 930.
- The F5300 didn't have the absolute lowest black levels of any plasma, but it was leaps and bounds over the LCDs I had seen at the time. The 930 smokes it. In anything but a pitch-black room, the perceived contrast is far better, and I get absolutely none of the washed-out feeling that I've associated with LCDs. This was one of the main concerns that I had with this set: I'd stuck with plasma for a decade because I'm a stickler for dark blacks, and wondered if this would be a step back. My feeling is this: if you're a plasma person, unless you had one of the absolute-best models, the 930 won't disappoint…and even then, the brightness may counteract it.
- Motion seems great. I don't perceive ghosting, trails, etc.
- As others have noted, less-than-1080p content will likely look worse on this set than a good 1080p one. I sit ~10ft away, and I can see more image artifacts than I remember noticing on the plasma. I doubt that the 5-inch size increase is a big factor…but I also may be scrutinizing content that I normally wouldn't have! :)
- The top and bottom edges are slightly darker than the rest of the image, but it's pretty benign.
- I'm still playing with some of the picture settings, but I find it interesting that many seem to crank up the X-tended Dynamic Range and Auto Local Dimming options; for me it seems to introduce a ton of noise, especially on streaming content. Right now I've got them on Medium.
Gaming:
- So far, I've only used my PC with it. I had been DSRing the heck out of stuff on the plasma with a 1080ti, but going to true 4k is just plain different. There's a…solid-ness to everything that is a bit hard to describe.
- The plasma had input lag of ~70ms, so the 930 is a clear upgrade. I'd gotten pretty used to the lag (hey, I was able to get the "Speedlunky" achievement with it!), so it'll actually take some adjustment.
- Playing Rocket League in the 1080p/120hz mode feels like cheating, after playing at 60fps for so long. Everything is easier to time, tracking the ball is quicker, etc.
- I'm really glad I no longer have to think about burn-in, as I did with the plasma.
Interface:
- As reported, the Android interface is awful. Jerky, slow, just generally painful. Can't even stand to use it to look at 4k YouTube stuff.
- Switching between different picture modes is a many-button affair. Super inconvenient.
- I'm using a Harmony Hub to run the whole system, and the 930's "WiFi control" absolutely plays hell with other devices, to the point of causing weird issues like shutting off the TV when changing the volume on a Denon receiver. If you use this system, turn off the WiFi control and just go with regular infrared.
All-in-all, it's a pretty impressive set. If anyone has any questions, fire away!
