When comparing Samsung MU6300 40" (UN40MU6300) vs Sony A1E OLED 77" (XBR77A1E), the Slant community recommends Samsung MU6300 40" (UN40MU6300) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Samsung MU6300 40" (UN40MU6300) is ranked 16th while Sony A1E OLED 77" (XBR77A1E) is ranked 187th. The most important reason people chose Samsung MU6300 40" (UN40MU6300) is:
In its range, the Samsung MU6300 has better than average picture quality because of the TV’s high native contrast ratio, excellent black uniformity, and relatively high SDR peak brightness. The TV does almost flawless dark scene reproduction. It has the highest contrast ratio in its range at 5768:1, which allows it to recreate rich and immersive dark scenes which are further enhanced by the TV’s excellent black uniformity. In fact, the MU6300 has the best black consistency out of all of its closest competitors, including the VIZIO M-series and Sony X720E.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Decent overall image quality
In its range, the Samsung MU6300 has better than average picture quality because of the TV’s high native contrast ratio, excellent black uniformity, and relatively high SDR peak brightness.
The TV does almost flawless dark scene reproduction. It has the highest contrast ratio in its range at 5768:1, which allows it to recreate rich and immersive dark scenes which are further enhanced by the TV’s excellent black uniformity. In fact, the MU6300 has the best black consistency out of all of its closest competitors, including the VIZIO M-series and Sony X720E.
Pro Affordable
Priced just above $400, the Samsung MU6300 is the most budget-friendly option in its range.
Pro Compatible with all current generation consoles
The Samsung MU6300 is an excellent companion to any current generation gaming console, including the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U. The TV is also suitable for HDR console gaming.
Pro Works well as a computer monitor
The MU6300 makes an excellent 4K computer monitor because of the TV’s fast response time and full 4:4:4 color support.
Pro Intuitive and straightforward smart platform
The Samsung MU6300 runs the Tizen smart platform which is well known for its simplicity and intuitiveness. Tizen’s entire menu is organized around the Smart Hub which acts as a gate for accessing all the functionality of the TV. Additionally, the Smart Hub has a row which contains the most-used apps.
Pro Accessible inputs
As all the inputs of the Samsung MU6300 are situated on the side of the TV, you will always have unobstructed access to all the needed ports (HDMI ports, USB, Ethernet, etc.) even when the TV is mounted on a wall.
Pro Good for gaming
The Samsung MU6300 has all the bits and pieces needed for a good gaming TV. It has the input lag of 20.2 ms which allows it to do a decent job in fast-paced gaming. Additionally, the TV is perfectly suitable for HDR gaming, since its input lag remains low even while the TV is processing high-bandwidth 4K HDR input.
Pro Suitable for watching sports
The Samsung MU6300 has everything needed to display high-quality dynamic content since it TV features well-handled motion blur, decent picture quality, and acceptable color uniformity.
The TV’s motion blur is handled by its relatively fast pixel response time which ensures that even fast moving objects do not leave overly long trails. Its full response time of 18.7 ms is on par with its main competitors, like the Sony X720E and VIZIO M-series.
While the MU6300’s color uniformity may not be as good as its main competitors, the TV is still capable of displaying attractive and uniform football, hockey, and golf fields.
Pro Perfect TV for movies and HDR content
The Sony A1E is a 4K OLED TV with perfectly uniform blacks and infinite contrast ratio, achieved by its ability to manipulate pixels individually. This, along with its color uniformity and wide color gamut, gives it exceptional picture quality and makes it the perfect choice for movies. It also has no issues with brightness levels as the panel can reach up to ~650 nits of brightness when playing HDR content, and it handles reflections very well.
Pro Great performance in bright environments
The Sony A1E has a practical peak brightness of ~650nits for both SDR and HDR content — it can sustain this level of brightness when playing content. While the number here isn't imposing compared to some other high-end TVs, the panel of this TV offsets this by being an OLED. It can handle reflections very well and will not have any issues with fighting light in bright environments.
Pro Interface is ads-free
The user interface of modern smart TVs can include some advertisements similar to those on the internet or in a mobile app. The Sony A1E does not include any, and it also has a feature for limiting ads in third-party applications.
Pro Virtually no reflections
The Sony A1E's panel has a glossy finish that handles reflections exceptionally well.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
The Sony A1E runs on Android TV — normal Android apps from the Google Play Store (or other app stores) will work on it.
Pro Extremely low motion blur
As the Sony A1E has an OLED panel, it has near-perfect pixel response time; the motion blur is virtually non-existent at sub-1ms, which means this TV will have no issues with displaying extremely fast-moving objects — they will look smooth without any blur or lag.
Pro Excellent for dark rooms
The Sony A1E performs exceptionally well in dark environments. Its ability to produce absolute and perfect blacks means the reproduction of dark highlights and scenes in movies will look great — this is further improved when there's no light around the TV as it allows the blacks to stand out more. This makes it great for watching all sorts of movies in a cinema-like setting, particularly movies with many black highlights/scenes where this is immediately noticeable even to undiscerning viewers (e.g. Interstellar).
Pro Decent sound quality
The sound quality of the Sony A1E is surprisingly good for a TV (which isn't known for having excellent sound). The speakers can get really loud without much distortion happening, and its frequency response is perhaps one of the best measured in a TV's speakers. While an external audio set-up will be better, the built-in speakers should suffice for most users that don't wish to spend additional money on an audio set-up.
Pro Dark scenes are perfectly reproduced
The Sony A1E can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its OLED panel which gives it infinite contrast ratios — it can reproduce dark scenes perfectly because of this.
Pro Wide viewing angle
The picture quality of the Sony A1E does not suffer from much deterioration when viewed from other angles. The brightness will decrease with deviations in viewing angles, but the black levels seem to be maintained perfectly.
Pro Decent for gaming
Input lag is one of the most important factors when considering a TV for gaming — it's representative of how fast the TV can display the image after receiving the input. The Sony A1E has ~30-40ms of input lag, which is decent enough for most gamers, but competitive gamers might find this lacking.
Pro Excellent for watching sports
The Sony A1E's versatility is top-notch. The motion blur along with great overall color uniformity makes it an excellent choice for sports.
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 broader color gamut than SDR content. The Sony A1E has no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR.
Cons
Con Doesn’t look good from an angle
The picture quality of this TV is terrible when the angle between the viewer and the panel is greater than 10 degrees because at this point the viewer will experience noticeable black level degradation. Once the viewing angle reaches 21 degrees, all the other colors will start to degrade. This property makes the Samsung MU6300 not suitable for watching with a crowd.
Con Has ads in the main interface
The main interface of the Samsung MU6300 has some advertisements and suggested content.
Con Can’t handle judder
The Samsung MU6300 cannot fight judder in 24p sources. As a result, some users might experience so-called ‘2:3 judder’ while watching 24p content from old Blu-rays and DVDs.
Con Suffers from image retention issues
The main drawback of OLED panels are image retention issues with static images — pixels on the panel gets burned in when the picture doesn't change for extended periods of time. Noteworthily, the static image doesn't have to be whole like a full wallpaper on the TV; it can happen with content that has a static image anywhere on the screen.
As the Sony A1E has an OLED panel, it, unfortunately, suffers from this problem. There might be some retainment of artifacts for ~10 minutes when this happens, and it usually goes away after watching other content without static images. It's worth noting that while this issue is present, the Sony A1E reportedly handles this pretty well — most users report the artifacts going away only ~5minutes of playing traditional content.
Con Might be hard to access inputs when mounted to a wall
The Sony A1E is extremely thin, and it has a reflective finish on the back. After mounting it to a wall, the inputs might be hard to access, and because of the reflective finish, it can pick up fingerprints/smudges when attempting to access the inputs (which also becomes hard to clean because of how thin it is).
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The Sony A1E can currently only play HDR10 content. It does not support Dolby Vision.
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