Samsung UE40B7020W

With the World Cup right around the corner, i thought i'd prepare myself by giving the TV a little upgrade. For the past five years i've had a Sharp Aquos 32'' LCD TV. It's done a fantastic job over the last five years and it was well worth the £750 i paid for it at the time.

But this is 2010 and with the onslaught of HD i felt i needed something a little more....well...HD and wanted to futureproof myself a little and go for LED rather than LCD - and i couldn't stretch to a 3D TV.

I looked around for a few weeks but eventually settled on a Samsung UE40B7020 and i have no regrets.

Currys tried to sell me the model below this (50hz - rather than 100hz) for about £1k - They wouldn't budge on price - Poor, poor customer service

Eventually found this TV for £800 - a bargin. (http://www.1staudiovisual.co.uk/catalog/samsung-series-7020-ue40b7020-full-1080p-freeview-p-7069.html)

The picture is immense, especially now with Sky HD. Every detail is so crisp and clear, which is unbelievable when you consider the TV is less than 3CM's thick!!

User interface is great and it's very easy to install. It even came with the Samsung Pebble remote (along with the traditional remote), which gives you something a little different.

One of the main reasons for going for this TV was the fact that i can hook it up to my home network and connect it up to several laptops and computers and stream content from them, without going through something like an Xbox or any other home computer. Being online means that the TV comes with some 'widgets' - little applications pre-installed on the tv to provide you with news and weather and even stuff like Facebook and YouTube.

There are loads of Pro points with this TV but i also have a couple of gripes - hence the 4 out of 5.

The speakers on the TV are so weak - they really struggle with any bass sounds - gunfire on games like CoD:MW2 sound like you're flicking plastic - truly disappointing. So my advice would be to hook it up to a cinema system.....which i would have done but......

.....the problem with taking a big step to upgrade your TV is that it often disturbs the rest of your living room set up - As such, my home cinema system has now been made redundant due to lack of the right connections on the back of the TV.

The TV has something like:

4 x HDMI

1 x SCART/Component

1 x LAN

2 x USB

and a few more i can't remember.

But it was the fact it only had 1 SCART/Component connection that's caused me to dump my cinema system. Not a bad point against the TV, more of a point that i now need to upgrade something else.

Anyway to summarise out of 10

Picture =10 can't fault it - contrast and shadows are beautiful

Sound = 4 -for a high spec TV the speakers really do let this one down when you need that big bassy sound

Ease of Installation = 9 very simple - plug and play

Design =10 looks great and at only 3cm's thick it'll pretty much fit or hang anywhere

Overall = 9 out of 10