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The Samsung LE32C580 is low-cost 32in LCD TV that looks a lot more expensive than it is thanks to its sleek design. In fact the LE32C580 shares a few design cues with its 40in big brother, which is no bad thing. The glossy black bezel and stand, complete with transparent column certainly make this look like a more expensive purchase, and for many that could be reason enough to buy one.
There’s a decent array of connections too, with four HDMI, component, composite, RGB SCART and VGA inputs. You’ll have no problem hooking a computer up to the LE32C580 via VGA or HDMI, with both ports offering native 1,920×1,080 resolution with no overscan.
There are both analogue and Freeview HD tuners built into the LE32C580. There’s also a good looking eight-day EPG complete with preview window. The Freeview HD tuner means that you can watch HD content without having to invest in more kit. Although the level of HD on Freeview is pretty limited at present, hopefully that will change over time.
The LE32C580 also has an Ethernet port for connecting to your network. This will allow you to stream media from PCs and DLNA compliant devices, but this TV doesn’t support Samsung’s internet apps. That’s a shame, because Samsung has the best internet app service of all the TV manufacturers.
Picture quality is a bit of a mixed bag. HD pictures are undeniably sharp, but black levels simply aren’t as deep as we would have liked. Dark City simply didn’t look, well, dark enough – blacks looked a bit grey, and tweaking the settings to get the blacks darker, we ended up losing significant amounts of shadow detail.
Likewise, Alan Wake on the Xbox 360 lost much of its atmospheric impact, with the dark, spooky locations looking a little washed out. And when you’re playing a game that hinges on being suspenseful and scary, a lack of darkness is a major problem.
Even the colours in Coraline weren’t as vivid and striking as they should be, while the overall dark environment just wasn’t deep and black enough. The situation is better with high intensity scenes, like the chase in Casino Royale, but blacks and colours still appear paler than they should.
Standard definition content is watchable, but there are noticeable compression artefacts, especially when watching a low bit-rate Freeview channel. It’s a similar situation when streaming XviD encoded video from USB – the LE32C580 scales the image well in most cases, but there are noticeable artefacts in bright scenes.
Sound quality is quite poor, and you’re not going to get much impact from movies. However, to be fair, that’s pretty much par for the course with a 32in LCD TV.
It’s a good-looking TV with a lot of features, but the image quality wasn’t quite what we were hoping for. At this price you can get a TV with better picture quality.
