I’ll also agree with other reviewers that you really need to play with the advanced menus in order to tune the picture. “Vivid” and “standard” are nice for cartoons and anime but are too over-the-top for anything else. The auto-adjusting setting is a nice idea but in practice is annoying because it pops up a logo to tell you it is adjusting the picture. I was watching one night and every time I turned a table lamp on or off, the picture would adjust (which would be fine if it didn’t annoy me with an on-screen logo to tell me about it).

This TV is no Samsung (LED). I can definitely tell the difference in the local showroom and the Samsungs are very svelte. But for this price, I don’t think you can find anything comparable. The LED backlighting definitely increases the visible contrast; you’ll see blacks that you just won’t see on a non-LED LCD. I haven’t seen the blooming or LED “popping” that other reviewers have mentioned, but even if I turn off the dynamic lighting, the LED still gives me brighter lighting, less heat and (theoretically) longer life and greater reliability. Plus, I get bragging rights for a while. “Check it out; the very latest in big screen HD tech!”

Speaking of bragging rights, all of my friends have commented about how wonderful this TV display looks, even people who have bought Samsungs and Bravias in the past year. Considering that I bought this TV at a price that was the same as the non-LED Samsungs, I’m quite happy. All the technical negatives noted about this TV are probably spot on, but for the price, I don’t think I could have done nearly as well with any other TV. I bought this TV as sort of a memorial to my brother who died just this past Christmas. He was very into big screen TVs and the latest tech. I think he’d be happy to see his nephew watching Bakugan in HD glory.

Have no comment on audio since I use my own sound system.

The colors were saturated and the blacks were dark, just as you’d expect from the LED backlit set.

But the blooming or haloing created by the local dimming is just too much. There aren’t enough LEDs in the array. So when white text scrolls on a black background like credits you can see a halo around ever letter or word. Then as they scroll, the LEDs turn on and off accordingly and you can very easily see this “pop” of the LEDS turning off. You then begin to notice the same haloing around faces in dark scenes. Pretty soon it is all you see.

You can turn local dimming off, which essentially turns the LEDs into an always on backlight like all CCFL based LCDs. But then you lose the dark blacks benefits, and soon you realize you paid 50% more for a feature that you aren’t using anymore and now your set looks about the same as all the others at far less cost.