Samsung 43" TU7100 HDR Smart 4K TV with Tizen OS

Product Information

This frankly unlikely level of fidelity is carried over to most other aspects of picture-making too – give the Samsung a fighting chance with some high-quality 4K content and it’s an eminently watchable TV. The colour palette it draws from is wide and convincing, and it has little trouble differentiating between even very subtle variations in tone, and serves up entirely believable skin-tones. The Samsung TU7100 is powered by the Tizen operating system. This is one of the better TV interfaces offering wide app support and smart home functionality. So it’s down to a 4K HDR10+ Blu-ray disc of Sam Mendes’ 1917 to allow the AU7100 to give the best possible account of itself. And within reason, it’s a very agreeable account indeed. The screen struggles with some of the low light sequences in Barbarians (Netflix), but its HDR is adept enough to add intensity to flaming torches and the like.

The UE43AU7100 doesn’t clamour for your attention on a crowded TV shelf or make any claims that it’s taking affordable TVs to places they’ve never gone before. You won’t see it turning up in any future ‘classic TV design’ exhibits, either. This means if you try and take advantage of the TV’s Dolby Digital Plus support using a soundbar you’d only have room to connect one other device. Considering how many households have multiple devices, I’d liked to see the TU7100 come with at least three HDMIs.

While that may sound boring, having put it through its paces I can confirm the Samsung UE43TU7100 is anything but dull.

Freeview Play is not available on Samsung TVs. But, if your Samsung TV was manufactured in 2016 or earlier, it will most likely have Freeview installed. The downside is that the Samsung TU7100 doesn’t have the fastest operating system out there. Even doing basic things like scrolling through menu screens and there’s a noticeable delay between you enacting a command and it happening. Apps also can take longer than I’d like to open. The Samsung TU7100 offers better picture quality than you’d expectThe only bit of advice I’d give is to make sure you turn off, or at least reduce, the TV’s Picture Clarity setting. The feature is designed to reduce noise and generally make TV and movies look smoother, but during testing I found it just gave most content the ‘soap opera’ effect. This version of Tizen isn’t quite the full enchilada, as found higher up the range, but it’s not far off. If you can live without niceties like Ambient mode and TV/Smartphone Multi-View, you won’t feel short-changed. As far as build quality goes, you’re on admirably safe ground here. We can’t remember the last time we saw a Samsung TV which seemed poorly constructed. Sure, it may not be built from the most indulgent materials – the plastic boomerang feet, in particular, don’t feel anything special – but the AU7100 is flawlessly finished and built to last. If you’re embedded in Samsung’s SmartThings ecosystem you can speed things up by copying over apps, settings and logins from any other Samsung TV you have in the house.

If you temper expectations, the Samsung TU7100 delivers perfectly enjoyable pictures with a high average picture brightness. As long as you don’t come to the TU7100 expecting the performance of a model that sells for twice the price, you won’t be disappointed. And as befits a television that’s intended to sell at a very competitive price, not much by way of ‘design’ has happened here. Samsung will tell you the AU7100 is ‘bezel-less’, but that’s not true. The bezels are pretty minimal, though, which is nice. Plus the feet leave enough space below the bottom of the screen to accommodate a soundbar, which is prudent. We measured peak HDR at 287 nits, using a 10 per cent measuring window. Reducing this window to 5 per cent, saw the screen’s ability to handle HDR peaks drop to 210 nits. There are rival TVs, too, that can deliver both native 4K and upscaled HD images with more raw sharpness and apparent detail than the UE43AU7100. Again, though, the level of sharpness the UE43AU7100 adopts feels carefully chosen to deliver an organic, immersive image rather than an actual weakness of either the LCD panel or the Crystal Processor.

Samsung’s cut-price 4K TV is terrific value – with a few caveats

You can also follow the instructions detailed below for some models. Follow these instructions to retune your Freeview compatible Samsung TV: Stepping down in quality to some 1080p Full HD content actually confirms the Samsung as a fully capable device. Naturally enough there’s a drop-off in detail levels, accompanied by a little less certainty where motion is concerned and a little more picture noise (especially in scenes of uniform colour, such as sports broadcasts), but the TU7100 proves an adept upscaler. Some softness in an upscaled picture is only to be expected, but the Samsung stays pretty regimented in most circumstances. Select the Antenna type that you are using ( Air or Cable) and press the Enter button. Make sure that your aerial is connected to your device before re-tuning.