Samsung AU9000 Crystal UHD Smart TV

The Samsung AU9000 will betray its price-point every now and then – you’ll be struck by a lack of out-and-out brightness, some especially vague sound, or some visible difficulties when upscaling low-resolution content. But most of the time, you’ll just sit and revel in the brilliantly accomplished images issuing from a screen far more slender than you might have been anticipating.

Samsung has been a major player in the mainstream TV market for ages now, yet the AU9000 still seems like a remarkable achievement at the money. It’s a remarkably slender device, is operated using one of the leading smart TV interfaces, is generously specified, and delivers outstanding pictures.

Obviously, it’s not perfect at such a low price: sound is the very definition of ‘dull’ and it can act up when asked to do a big upscaling job. But that’s to miss the point of what Samsung has done – serve up a TV that looks, both physically and in terms of its picture quality, considerably more expensive than it actually is.