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Viewed head-on, the AU9000 is an unremarkable-looking device – and I mean that entirely positively. A narrow bezel and some minimal feet is all anyone really wants from their new TV no matter how much or how little they’re paying, right?
This is a 4K LED screen, powered by Samsung’s ‘Crystal 4K’ processor and with support for HLG and HDR10+ standards of HDR (we’re used to Samsung refusing to offer support for Dolby Vision, but it never stops being galling). It’s not uncommon for a mainstream TV to betray its price-point more readily with the sound it makes than with the images it produces. And so it proves with the Samsung AU9000 TV. While white tones hardly pop from the screen, they’re clean and equally detailed – so while contrasts are far from the widest you’ve ever seen (even at this unremarkable price-point), they’re convincing nevertheless.The Samsung AU9000 includes the full Tizen-powered smart platform and it’s responsive, intuitive and easy to navigate. There’s a launcher bar along the bottom and a second layer that provides faster access to the various streaming services.
The Samsung AU9000 is a 4K (3,840 x 2,160) HDR smart TV that comes in screen sizes ranging from 43in to 75in. It’s part of Samsung’s Crystal UHD series, which is its cheapest range of 4K TVs, sitting below its various QLED sets. Step down to some 1080p content and the Samsung remains a composed and convincing watch. Inevitably, there are drop-offs in pretty much every area: detail levels aren’t quite so high; skin-tones aren’t quite so naturalistic; colours aren’t quite so wide-ranging; motion isn’t quite so stable. But given the amount of work the 50AU9000’s Crystal Processor 4K is getting through, these shortcomings are minor in the extreme. Elsewhere, the 4K HDR10+ news is equally good. Detail levels are high across the board, and the amount of information the Samsung loads into skin-tones in particular is impressive. Colours are natural and convincing, with a degree of vibrancy when required but never over-driven. Plus, they’re wide-ranging enough to give expression to even subtle differences in shade or tone.Of course, we don’t all live on a diet of brand-new cutting-edge content - and when it comes to upscaling, the Samsung (mostly) continues its good work. Certainly an HD broadcast of some elite-level tennis suffers hardly at all – colors are confidently described, on-screen movement is stable in almost all circumstances, and detail levels stay high. There’s a little coarsening of skin-tones and a hint of jaggedness to the more difficult edges, but by and large the BU8500 remains eminently watchable. There are two ways to consider the design of the 50AU9000. The first is from straight-on, because that’s how you’ll be watching it. And when viewed this way, the Samsung is completely anonymous – but in a good way. After all, very few people want their TV to draw attention to itself, so design flourishes are pretty rare. The Samsung AU9000 is mostly screen, with quite narrow bezels across the top and down each side. The Samsung AU9000 reveals its budget nature most obviously when handling HDR content, especially when it comes to peak brightness. The TV can hit around 300cd/m² on both a 10% window and full-field pattern in Dynamic mode, but in Filmmaker Mode this luminance drops to around 250cd/m² on both a 10% and a full-field pattern.
The gameplay is excellent, with the 4K resolution and bright HDR rendering the ray-traced action of Call of Duty adeptly. Motion is smooth and free of artefacts, while the incredibly low input lag ensures responsive gaming. A sense of value is absolutely critical to the Samsung BU8500. It exists to make sure that you can get lots of the latest features for a low price, or to give you the chance to upgrade to a larger screen while still keeping within your budget. What it does do quite comprehensively, though, is make the source point of sound vague and hazy. And while there are worse-sounding TVs out there, there aren’t that many that sound as resolutely matter of fact and unengaged as the 50AU9000.If you’re intending to see the Samsung AU9000 TV perform at its best, then you’ll need to serve it some native 4K content with HDR10+ augmentation – because, as is always the case (and as is always galling) with Samsung, there’s no Dolby Vision dynamic metadata HDR standard on the spec-sheet. Slim chassis, great spec and very agreeable picture performance is all well and good – but when it comes to audio performance, the Samsung BU8500 sounds like an affordable flatscreen TV of the old school. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Set-up menus are similarly logical, and strike a nice balance between brevity and comprehensiveness. Achieving a picture that scrolls smoothly, defines edges confidently, and is decently bright and detailed, shouldn’t take long. Getting a colour balance you’re convinced by may take just a little longer. There’s an impressive choice of apps for a TV at this price point too, with Netflix, Prime Video, Now TV, Disney+, Apple TV+, Rakuten, YouTube, and all the UK TV catch-up services; plus there’s the Universal Guide to help you sift through the extensive selection of content.
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