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Big-screen TVs are ideal for a living room, but you aren’t going to fit a 50in screen in a kitchen or second bedroom. Unfortunately, smaller TVs often lack the features, connectivity and smart TV functions we’ve come to expect from their bigger brothers. Samsung is looking to reverse this trend with the new LT24B750, a 24in, 1080p TV that still has room for integrated Wi-Fi, DLNA media streaming and access to the Smart Hub online portal.
Smaller TVs rarely look as good as the ones you might put in your living room, but Samsung hasn’t compromised on design at all. The asymmetrical curved stand looks gorgeous, although you can only tilt the screen rather than pivot it, and the glossy black finish provides an attractive contrast. The screen itself has a matte finish, which is perhaps more suited to a PC monitor than a TV, but it should help reduce screen glare if you decide to put it under a kitchen’s strip lights or somewhere in direct sunlight.
Despite the TV’s small stature, you still get a full complement of ports, including component, SCART, VGA and two HDMI inputs, as well as digital optical and 3.5mm audio outputs. Unfortunately you don’t get DVI or DisplayPort connections, which limits its usefulness as a PC monitor. There’s also Ethernet and a Common Interface slot, along with two USB ports that let you play multimedia files locally from a USB flash drive, or record live TV to an external hard disk. Recording functions are fairly basic, and with only one tuner you have to watch the same program you’re recording, but file format support was excellent – all our multimedia files played perfectly.
Once connected to the internet, the LT24B750 shows even greater potential. It has the full version of the Smart Hub portal, which lets you stream movies from Netflix and LoveFilm, catch up on missed programs with BBC iPlayer or watch online videos through Vimeo, DailyMotion and YouTube. You can keep track of your social networks using Twitter and FaceBook, and even surf the web with the built-in web browser. USB mouse and keyboard support makes using these features much easier than on other smart TV systems we’ve used, to the point that you could use it instead of a PC or laptop for checking your email or Facebook page.
Even the most feature-packed TVs won’t seem like great value if picture quality isn’t up to scratch, and here the LT24B750 is something of a mixed bag. Compare it to your living room TV and you’ll be disappointed – the matte display finish might help diffuse light reflections, but it washes out colours, leaving them looking considerably more muted than they would on a glossy screen.
However, in other respects the picture is very good for a small panel. Most Freeview channels look reasonably clean, although noise artefacts are visible on the lower-quality ones such as BBC News. We liked the full-screen program guide, which has a picture-in-picture window to let you carry on watching one program while you flick to another. High-definition footage looks much better, especially Blu-ray video. Images are much sharper and black levels are reasonably deep.
The TV has impressive sound quality – the downward-firing speakers are built into the screen, rather than the stand, so sound doesn’t get muffled. We could turn the volume right up before we noticed any distortion, although there was little real bass.
Small-screen TVs rarely have the advanced features of their larger counterparts, which gives the Smart Hub-equipped S27B750 a major advantage over the competition. It has plenty of inputs and a gorgeous design that will look great wherever you decide to put it. Compared to a 46in or larger set designed for the living room picture quality is merely average, but it will still make an excellent addition to a spare bedroom, kitchen or home office that’s a little tight for space.
