Picture quality

While its competitors seemed to struggle with reproducing black and accurate color with any sense of fidelity, Samsung's E450 performs like a TV hundreds of dollars more expensive. The Samsung had the deepest black of all the plasma TVs at its price, and shadow detail was very good as well. The two-point system meant I could tweak the TV's black-and-gray response from the greenish tinge of the Panasonic X5 to something more natural. Colors were vibrant even if they weren't the most natural-looking. A lack of a color management system meant I couldn't tweak colors to get them to reference standard. The competition also showed some problems with solarization and false contouring but the Samsung was able to mostly avoid these artifacts. Of course, it is only 720p (1,024x768 pixels), so you may see some vertical interlacing on an all-white screen, but this wasn't an issue for most program material. There were some problems with 24p and 1080i sources, however.

Read the full review of the Samsung E450 series.