Samsung Q60C: Slim 4K TV with bright, colorful pictures

TV Samsung Q60C – a very good option for the ratio of its price to image quality. The 55-inch screen uses the premium Quantum Dot system to create colors. It is significantly brighter than most TVs in its class. What’s more, it uses Samsung’s patented Dual LED technology, which provides greater color control.

It’s a little disappointing that the Q60C connections don’t provide any support for the latest advanced gaming graphics features. The Q60C series consists of four TVs with diagonals from 55 to 85 inches. In the proposed Samsung QE55Q60C 4K QLED HDR review, we will try to find out whether it is worth buying Samsung Q60C series TVs.

Samsung Q60C review

Design

From the front, the design of the Samsung 55Q60C TV is nothing special. It’s just a screen framed by thin black bezels. The stand consists of a pair of fairly simple legs. The best thing to say about this front view is that the build quality is solid and the legs are so narrow you can hardly see them.

The uniqueness of the design lies in the fact that the legs can be adjusted in height. This is necessary in case you need to place a soundbar under the TV. The design of the Samsung Q60C TV becomes much more attractive when viewed from the side or back of the TV. That’s when you notice how thin it is for an LCD TV.

Its depth is only 2.6 cm. The back panel has a nice matte texture. On the other hand, the vast majority of people look at the front of their TVs most of the time, not the back. If you hang this TV on the wall, then its Ultra-Slim design will be justified. This requires a 200 x 200mm VESA wall mount.

HDR

The Samsung QE55Q60C is a 4K TV capable of supporting HDR10, HLG and HDR10+. We’ve gotten used to the fact that Samsung doesn’t support HDR Dolby Vision . The TV uses a high brightness VA panel with Quantum Dot color system. This technology is able to provide a wider and more dynamic color range than conventional LCD TVs.

Dual LED

The panel is illuminated by Dual LED technology. This means that half of the LEDs mounted below emit a cool (bluer) light while illuminating the image, and half emit a warm (redder) tone.

The idea is that this increases the TV’s control over color tone, which can result in more natural images. Note, however, that the edge lighting does not support local dimming to allow for more localized lighting control.

Quantum Processor 4K Lite

The Q60C’s display hardware is driven by a Quantum Processor 4K Lite processor, which is roughly on par with the Crystal processor used in non-Quantum Dot Samsung TVs. The embedded processor does not have any elements of machine learning / artificial intelligence. Samsung’s ads only talk about improved content scaling below 4K and the ability to automatically adjust the sound profile.

Equipment

The QE55Q60C TV can be controlled by either of the two included remote controls. One of them, surprisingly for the price of a TV, is powered by solar energy. This means you will never have to change the batteries in your TV remote again. There is also built-in support for voice control via the Samsung Bixby, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant platforms.

Smart features are provided by the latest OS Tizen 7.0. It’s excellent in terms of the amount of content it carries, including just about every known streaming app. All of them also provide excellent image quality, despite the lack of support for Dolby Vision encoding, which some streaming services provide.

Game Mode

The 55Q60C TV features Samsung’s Game Bar interface, which provides key game graphics information and provides faster access to several gaming features. There’s also support for the Super Ultrawide GameView feature, unique at this price point.

It allows you to play some compatible PC games in 32:9 aspect ratio to increase your field of view. There’s also ALLM switching, but unfortunately none of the TV’s three HDMI ports support either 4K at 120Hz or VRR.

However, gamers will be delighted with both the number of game streaming services available on the dedicated Samsung Gaming Hub screen and the TV’s very low input lag of 9.4ms when using the TV’s ‘Fastest’ response time setting.

This input lag score is about as low as in the TV world, potentially giving a very nice edge over those playing on slower TVs. In addition, there is an option to “sacrifice” the low input lag by increasing it to around 26ms to get slightly better overall image quality.

To do this, you need to select the “Faster” options, and not “Fastest response time”. This is worth considering for games that don’t rely on ultra-fast response times as much. The Samsung Object Tracking Sound Lite audio function aims to create a virtual 3D surround sound scene.

It places sound effects on the screen in the right place. There’s also support for the Samsung Q Symphony system, in which the TV’s speakers can join forces with Samsung’s soundbar speakers to create a larger and more detailed soundstage.

Image quality

The Samsung QE55Q60C makes a good picture impression for two reasons. First, it is much brighter than most TVs in this price range. It’s actually not bright enough to work with high dynamic range content.

However, bright scenes at least look like true HDR, not just something that’s slightly better than SDR. Another feature lies in its colors, which are displayed on the screen with high quality thanks to the Quantum Dot system. The effect of the Quantum Dot system is especially noticeable on the most saturated reds, greens, blues and yellows.

This is especially true for original 4K content. HD source scaling is also head and shoulders above the norm at this price point, even without all the power of Samsung’s AI-powered databases. The problem with the Q60C is that its image is only perfect when it has the right content.

That is, with the content that fills the screen with color and brightness. If you add a lot of darkness to what is happening, then everything will begin to crumble. In this case, the screen will struggle to convey something like convincing black. Any parts of the image that should look black will look a bit milky gray instead.

The point is that the screen cannot control its brightness well enough. This prevents dark scenes from looking convincing. Grayness can bleed into colors in poorly lit content, causing them to appear flatter than during bright scenes.

On top of all this, very dark scenes can be affected by subtle but still sometimes distracting backlight inconsistencies and clouding of some parts of the image. Experience has shown that it is not uncommon for relatively cheap quantum dot LCD TVs to have black level problems.

Sound quality

The sound on the Q60C TV can be called average. Even at maximum volume, the TV is not loud enough to immerse yourself in a good movie soundtrack. High and, especially, low frequencies of the sound spectrum are reproduced rather weakly. There is no real sense of scale during action scenes.

Luckily, the Q60C’s speakers avoid real distortion even at higher volumes. Dialogue tends to sound surprisingly clear and clean despite the limited dynamic range. During a good movie or TV show, you can hear quite a lot of detail.

The speakers may not have enough room in a narrow cabinet, but at least they are sensitive and well built. In general, both power and dynamic range are simply not enough to reproduce high-quality sound. The TV is equipped with two speakers with a total power of 20W.

Connections

The device has three HDMI 2.0 interfaces. Port number 2 has an eARC connection . There are also a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a digital optical audio output, antenna inputs, a network port (LAN) for connecting to the Internet, and a CI + slot for pay channels. Wireless connections include Wi-Fi5 and Bluetooth 5.2

Pros

• Impressive slim design.
• Bright, colorful pictures.
• Good 4K image.

Cons

• Limited black level.
• Minor problems with dynamic scenes.
• No support for 4K/120 or VRR.

Samsung Q60C Specifications: