I am looking for a 55" LCD, LED. I was told to get really good quality I would need to buy a 3D even though I have no need for 3D. I was told the basic Samsung that was on sale for $800 was pretty bad even though it seems to have good specs. I am tempted by the cheap one but I am hesitant about buying one so inexpensive
In my experience you do NOT need to buy a 3D TV for good quality.
FWIW, I’ve had a 46" Sony for a few years now and it’s been great. Everyone who’s seen it (especially in HD) have remarked that the picture is amazing.
Other than that, do your homework and read lots of reviews.
My experience is you don’t HAVE to have 3D for good TV quality, but nowadays any high-quality TV has 3D. When you’re at the top end, it’s 3D, there’s no two ways around it. We didn’t particularly want 3D, but every single TV that was of the size/quality we wanted had it.
We bought the predecessor of this Samsung TV a couple years ago, and are very, very happy with the picture quality. More than once, we’ve been out, and noticed that other TVs had much worse quality that ours does. Given that we buy a TV once every 15 years or so, we were OK with the price. We did find it on sale, didn’t pay anything near list price.
I absolutely love my 55’’ samsung. It wasn’t the absolute top of the line model when I got it a year ago, but it was near the top. Yes it has 3D (which I hardly ever use), but as others have informed you, a top of the line TV with a great 2D display is going to have 3D. The picture quality and color quality is just superb. Can’t say enough good things about Samsung.
I am very happy with my 60" Sharp Aquos. It was reasonably priced for its size back then and is even cheaper now and has a great picture.
I have a 50" Samsung LED/LCD (not sure) – it was a gift, and I think the price was about $800. It’s my first HD set so I have nothing to compare it with, but I love it.
Samsungs are good quality in my experience. If it’s your first big screen you’ll be very happy with it as AuntiePam has stated above.
Thanks for the good info. I have a Samsung now, 52"
with 120HZ and of course 1080P. At the time, 5 or 6 years ago this was top of the line. Most TV’s at the time were 780P and 60 HZ. It is still awesome but sometimes it flickers when I first turn it on and I have to wait about 5 minutes for the picture to become stable. Also I have been tracking my energy use and I can see that this TV is an absolute energy hog so it’s time for a new set. If I could get a bottom of the line set that would be equal in quality I would be happy but then again if the sets that are triple in price are that much better it may be worth it since I would probably have it for at least 5 years and I do love quality HD.
You’re going to be happy with a Samsung or a Sony. My Sony has 3D but I have never used it and probably never will. It’s like trying to get a phone with no camera because you never take pictures.
We just bought a 55" Samsung, 6300. Did my research, made up my mind what I wanted to spend and what technology I wanted and didn’t want to pay for. Then we bought the TV that we both gavitated to at the store, because we liked the picture and it was on sale.
There are real differences between technologies, LED, LCD and Plasma, but I don’t think those make that big of a difference in your viewing enjoyment. Maybe one is better in a dark room, or the TV is heavier and uses more energy (Plasma). At the end of the day, its a TV and any TV today is a hundred times better than the 15" CRT you had 10 years ago.
The two big features we looked at were 3D and Smart technology. We didn’t care for the 3D and our TV didn’t have it. Don’t feel like I’ve missed anything and I didn’t pay for stupid glasses that will never be used. I also didn’t care about Smart TV, because I didn’t know. Now that we have it I am amazed at what we can view over WiFi. Even if our cable went out we could watch TV. Get Smart TV if you have WiFi in your house.
I have Apple TV. Would this be the same as Smart TV. I use it for Netflix, streaming photos and music. I was interested in the Samsung 6000 series that I saw at Costco for $800, which is bare bones, no Smart TV, no 3d. I researched it and the consensus is, pretty good but bad implemation of 120hz motion which is something I highly value on my 6 year old Samsung. I am now deciding on the set that is higher quality than the bare bones model, or go all out for the 3D set which is loaded with features I will never use or care about but has best picture quality that I want.
Yes. My tv is also a smart tv but I can also access all of those features through my DVD player.
I think its the same. I guess each company implements “smart” in different ways. Our Samsung can access our WiFi and has various apps that allow us to do computery things on the TV. There is a browser for example. There’s the Netflix stuff like you mention (we don’t have Netflix.) We do use HBOGo, which has all of HBO’s series and is easy to access. I use Youtube on my TV a lot now, which looks great on the 55" TV. Lots of other apps that we are still learning about. Like the app that lets us look at pictures via the USB port. Samsung also has some kind of service that delivers movies that we haven’t tried. Strangely, there is very little information on how the Smart features work and what is available.
The interface for all this is very crude - driven by the remote. Some things are easy to navigate with the remote, others (like the browser) are infuriating. Samsung has a keyboard/remote that should make it a lot easier.
We’re a big fan of Sony, especially the Bravia line. Ours is only a 40" though.
Sony, and I assume Samsung too, has a smartphone ap where you can use the smartphone’s keyboard for things like the browser which makes for a less frustrating experience.
Sony also has tons of stuff besides Netflix. You can access Amazon video services and many others. Also Pandora and all of the usual streaming music services and bunches of specialty channels like NPR pod casts, yoga and cooking classes and a lot of others that I haven’t bothered to explore.
I still think plasma has the nicest colors and deepest blacks if you can live with the other disadvantages.
I have the Panasonic Viera. Love it! It has all the built in goodies, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora etc…
One thing that especially makes me giddy: Panasonic has a remote app for your phone. Not only can you control the TV with it but you can also take any picture or video you have on your phone and send it directly to your tv.
I love that damn app! 
The only thing I don’t like about my Panasonic 55" is that the on-screen menus are high contrast so leave an after-image. This is not the same as plasma burn-in, as it goes away after a minute or so of normal use, but it’s still annoying and seems to me to be rather short-sighted.