My Sammy 51E550 is still in the break-in process, so I can only give my preliminary impressions.
Aesthetics: This TV has the good looks typical of Sammy designs. Thankfully, it has the rectangular pedestal which I prefer over the spider pedestal of Sammy's higher-end plasmas.
What I don't like about the pedestal is that it has a translucent neck. The pedestal neck is supposed to hide the wires coming from the TV, but this model lets you see those wires, which is not a good idea.
The base + neck of the pedestal and the frame/bezel are all made of clear, thick plastic. There's a black backing behind the clear plastic so that the frame and pedestal will look like they're in piano black finish, yet at the same time prevents fingerprints and smudges from being as noticeable as they would be on plain black gloss plastic. The black backing stops just before it reaches the edges, so you get a modern-looking clear trim on the edges. The reason why the pedestal neck is translucent is because there's no black backing on the neck.
The steel back panel is unusually thin. Poke it with your finger and it wobbles. It seems like a very thin-gauge steel sheet. The flimsy material at the back makes you wonder if the glass on the front panel is also paper-thin, considering that there are a lot of reports about spontaneously-cracking Sammy plasma glass.
Picture: Picture quality is better than I expected. Black levels will not match Panny's 2012 1080p plasmas, that's for sure. But black level on this Sammy is good enough, in fact slightly better than the 2009 Panny 50C10 that it replaced, which already had good blacks.
Colors are very accurate out of the box. I tried a preliminary color and tint calibration for a few minutes, but I found that default color and tint were already correct.
Cell light is too bright for me, so I made a preliminary setting of 15 (out of 20). However, 3D really needs a cell light setting of 20 to compensate for the darkness of the 3D glasses.
Setting all noise reduction to off and raising sharpness to 40 (out of 100) gives a very sharp but natural picture, which allows me to see the film grain structure on film-based movies while avoiding edge-enhancement halos. Dithering is not visible at normal viewing distance; however, it is visible when you're too close to the screen, which is normal for plasmas. Posterization (color banding) is lower on this TV than on my old Panny, which is new to me, since I've already gotten used to slight posterization on Pannys.
I ran my "I, Robot" BD scene for my "green ghosting' or "green phosphor lag" test, and the good news is that I can't see any green ghost at all. On my old Panny, I can still see green ghosting if look hard enough, but I see no green ghosts on this TV at all. I find it hard to believe that the phosphor formula on this TV has perfected the speeds of the green and blue, so maybe a user with more sensitive eyes will still see green ghosting. But as for me, the green phosphor on the Sammy responds fast enough to be a non-issue.
Motion cadence is very good. Motion Interpolation is not available. Playing a 23.976 fps video (also called "24p" in shorthand) on a regular (default) setting, you get 60p cadence with a 2-3 pulldown. Not bad, but not good enough in 2012. Set to Cinema Smooth and you get 23.976 fps in 96Hz frequency, which is just excellent --- still has the natural judder of 24p film, without cadence error judder.
I can't figure out how you play 23.976 fps in 60Hz frequency without pulldown, so I'm assuming that 60Hz will only render in 60p cadence, with 2-3 pulldown. Not good enough. That's old tech, the way DVD renders in 2-3 pulldown, complete with motion cadence errors.
I think this TV needs some time to settle. The picture looks like it's getting better with use. Out of the box, film-based movies did not look too natural, similar to an LED TV. After a couple of days, film-based movies now look more like film, just as a proper plasma should render it. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what changed, but I have a feeling that black levels improved slightly, and color intensity reduced slightly.
Sound: The sound on the built-in speakers is terrible, as expected. It's the typical tinny sound of today's flat panels. No surprises there...
A minor note is the slower picture processing speed. I'm very particular with sound sync, and I observed that there's a noticeable sound delay on my external 5.1 sound system. With my old TV, audio delay on the AV Receiver was set to 27ms. On this TV, I now have the AV Receiver audio delay set to 80ms.
Known Issues/Potential Issues: Temperature is OK. I was worried because it doesn't have cooling fans, and I saw this model running hot at SM MOA. That unit was not properly ventilated, and of course, it was running in torch mode. But it really runs cool as long as there's proper ventilation. No problems in an airconditioned room; no problems without air con if there's proper ventialtion.
There's no external filter on the screen, so this TV will have reflections when viewed in a bright room.
I expected buzzing, but I was relieved to find that I can't hear any buzzing, which was surprising. No buzzing, not even with a full-white signal on-screen, not even from the rear of the TV. Maybe my old ears have gone bad...
Fade-to-black shut-off is present, unfortunately. This TV shuts off the panel light when a totally black picture is on-screen. Try the start of the Lord of the Rings Part I with subtitles on. It starts with a black screen while Cate Blanchett narrates. The screen shuts off, then turns on when subtitles appear, then shuts off again when subtitles disappear, and so on. Really annoying. There's no "off" option for the shut-off feature, but there is a workaround. On my unit, setting brightness to a minimum of 45 (the default position) disables the shut-off feature. Fortunately, 45 or 46 brightness is a good setting.
I was under the impression that this TV was IR-proof because of this article:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57449881-221/samsung-plasma-wins-cnets-accidental-burn-in-test/ --- NOT. I can see IR from black bars or from simply staying in the menus too long. But it's true that it's a non-issue because IR quickly disappears in minutes, sometimes even seconds.
Phosphor burn --- no worries. No plasma has had burn issues for several years.
Screen uniformity --- not perfect on plain white or light-colored slides. But I can't see any DSE (dirty screen effect) whatsoever on ordinary program material. Very good uniformity, much better than my old Panny, where I can see some very slight DSE on program content if I looked hard enough.
Brightness pops --- I still haven't seen it. I'm sure it's there, so I'll just post as soon as I see it.
