Recs.
Updated
The Samsung MU9000 is a versatile 4K TV suitable for movies, gaming, and sports.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Good for HDR content
On top of its great picture quality, the MU9000 has a high HDR peak brightness level and wide color gamut that makes it good for HDR.
Shadows look pretty good with nice details, and highlights are quite vibrant thanks to the peak brightness level of ~450 nits.
The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~60% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered decent enough for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.
It’s worth noting that while the MU9000 has local dimming that’s supposed to make HDR better, the local dimming is crap and doesn’t do much - it increases the contrast ratio by a meagre amount and does nothing else.
Pro Suitable for gaming and watching sports
The MU9000 is pretty versatile. On top of its great picture quality, it has features that makes it perform quite well for gaming and sports.
It offers a responsive and fluid gaming experience - players will have no issues keeping their actions in sync with what’s on the display, and fast-moving objects won’t leave any trails on the screen. That is thanks to the low input lag of ~25ms and the panel’s quick response time of ~15ms, which results in virtually no motion blur.
It’s also great for watching sports because of the virtually non-existent motion blur that makes fast-moving objects, like football, look smooth. The panel is also pretty uniform - it has also has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.
Pro Intuitive user interface
The MU9000 runs on the Tizen smart platform, known for its simplicity and intuitiveness.
It’s easy to navigate and access all the functions of features of the TV - the whole menu of the Tizen OS is organized around a menu known as the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching, etc.
It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.
Pro Inputs are very accessible
The MU9000 comes with a OneConnect box which moves all the hard-to-access rear inputs away from the TV. Thanks to this, you’ll always have full access to all inputs and outputs of the TV even if it’s wall-mounted. The OneConnect box can also be used as a USB charging hub.
Pro Great picture quality
The MU9000 can produce really detailed pictures, especially in dark scenes thanks to its really deep black levels. It has a contrast ratio of about 6000:1, which enables it to produce blacks that are 6000 times darker than the brightest white.
The colors are lifelike and accurate even without any calibration by the user. They will look really vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.
Even in a decently-lit environment, the MU9000's picture quality can still hold up - the panel is excellent at handling reflections thanks to its glossy finish, and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.
Cons
Con Not really value for money
The MU9000 is a great TV, but the retail price can be off-putting for some because the picture quality and features it offers are present in other similarly-priced models, e.g. the Sony X900E. This TV can be really worth it when on sale, or if Samsung offers better after-sales service in your region.
Con Not suitable for group watching
The MU9000 has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for watching with groups.
Audience sitting away from the center of the screen will not experience the same picture as those sitting in the center, because the picture quality starts to deteriorate significantly when viewing from just ≥20° away from the screen's center - the colors will start looking dull and blacks will look like greys.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Great color representation
The MU9000 does an excellent job with color accuracy — the colors are almost perfectly accurate out of the box and there is no calibration required.
Pro Great color reproduction
The color gamut of a TV refers to the range of colors the display can reproduce — the wider the color gamut, the more colors it can display, and the better the overall picture quality will be. This is extremely important for HDR content because it requires a much wider color gamut than SDR content. The MU9000 has a wide color gamut, and it has no issues with reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR.
Pro Great for dark rooms
The MU9000 shines in dark environments — it is great at reproducing dark scenes, making it suitable for enjoying media in a cinema-like setting. It performs particularly well in films with many black highlights/scenes where this is immediately noticeable even to undiscerning viewers (e.g. Interstellar).
Pro Dark scenes looks great
The MU9000 can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its high native contrast levels, which clocks in at 6023:1 native. This, along with good black levels and uniformity, gives the TV the ability to achieve great representations of dark scenes beyond most expectations.
Pro Great black levels and uniformity
The black levels of a TV affects the viewer’s perception of other colors next to it. If the black levels are not deep enough and doesn’t remain uniform across the screen, the overall picture quality will look “flat” without much depth. The MU9000 handles this well with only <1.5% deviation (across the entire screen) from what a pure black screen should be — this results in a significant gain in its native contrast levels, thereby increasing the picture quality.