When comparing Samsung NU7100 43" (UN43NU7100) vs Sony A1E OLED 77" (XBR77A1E), the Slant community recommends Samsung NU7100 43" (UN43NU7100) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Samsung NU7100 43" (UN43NU7100) is ranked 31st while Sony A1E OLED 77" (XBR77A1E) is ranked 190th. The most important reason people chose Samsung NU7100 43" (UN43NU7100) is:
When you first turn on the TV, it basically walks you through the setup process and you can start properly using it in a matter of minutes. Regarding picture quality, it’s also quite reasonable right out of the box. White balance (gray color inaccuracy) and color dE (color inaccuracy) could be tweaked down for better quality, but most people won’t notice a sizeable difference. In case you can’t figure something out when setting up, the TV also has a handy “e-manual” button.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Doesn’t require a lot of setup
When you first turn on the TV, it basically walks you through the setup process and you can start properly using it in a matter of minutes.
Regarding picture quality, it’s also quite reasonable right out of the box. White balance (gray color inaccuracy) and color dE (color inaccuracy) could be tweaked down for better quality, but most people won’t notice a sizeable difference.
In case you can’t figure something out when setting up, the TV also has a handy “e-manual” button.
Pro Handles darkness very well
Even though the NU7100 doesn’t have local dimming, watching TV in the dark is not a problem due to amazing black uniformity - the blacks are even and there are no clouding issues.
Contrast is remarkable too – blacks are deep, and whites are bright.
Pro Good for gaming
The TV is a great option for a PC monitor. Not only does the NU7100 have ideal low input lag thanks to the “_PC_” and “Game” modes, it also features support for most resolutions, except 1440p.
Another thing to note – Samsung’s app store has the Steam Link app, which lets you connect your PC to your TV and play games without needing to connect the Steam Link hardware.
Pro Great smart features
The NU7100 has a smooth, fast, and easy-to-navigate interface with a lot of room for customization, so you can tailor it for easier access to your most-used apps.
Samsung’s app store has a huge and diverse app library, second only to the Google Play Store.
The SmartThings app allows the user to control the TV and other connected devices via their smartphone.
Pro Versatile use
From games to movies, sports and use as a PC monitor, the NU7100 is a good TV for diverse usage. The balance of low input lag, good picture quality, and decent motion handling make sure of it.
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 Poor viewing angle
The quality of the picture degrades quite a lot when looking at the TV from the side – the brightness decreases, and colors get washed out, especially the blacks, which distort when watching even slightly off center.
Con Ads
All Samsung TVs run advertisements and the NU7100 is no exception. There is no way to turn them off or disable ad tracking.
Con Not great for HDR content
The NU7100 is best suited for standard-dynamic-range (SDR) content. It won’t be able to handle HDR content because of the weak color gamut and color volume (the number of colors the TV can display).
Con Misperforms in light-filled environments
The TV’s peak brightness is not too good, so it’s best suited for rooms without a lot of light.
Even though the TV’s reflection handling is very good, it still won’t properly deal with them in brightly-lit rooms.
Con Mobile app has limited functionality
The SmartThings app won’t be able to completely replace the actual remote due to some drawbacks, such as no text input and no app launching possibilities, which are features that are absolutely necessary for a proper remote.
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.