The benefits of a curve screen TV are questionable. The claim is that you get a more immersive experience than the flat-screen counterparts. Brands usually express it as an experience people have to see to believe. Being one of the trusted brands in the market, Samsung has taken the initiative to make them more popular. The J6300 is one of their cheapest curve TVs. The model is available in four size variants, 32-inch, 40-inch, 48-inch and 55-inch. We’re not sure how much difference a 32-inch curve screen will make, but that’s a story for a different day. We’ll be looking at its bigger 48-inch variant today. With its curve screen, the TV comes packed with smart features and Samsung’s own proprietary Tizen OS. The TV supports full HD, and is not 4K. For that though, you can get the TV around Rs. 96,000*. Is it worth paying for? Let’s find out.
Design and Build
Samsung certainly knows how to design TVs to looks their best. They have done a really good job of accentuating the curvature of the screen into a stylish design. If not the performance, the TV can be bought just for its premium looks. No matter where you place or how you set it up in your room, the TV will definitely stand out to be aesthetically pleasing. Personally we prefer it on the stand. The Y-shaped sleek design of the stand compliments the curve screen.
The 48-inch screen comes with a slim bezel around it. Like the new J5300, this TV also features a metal strip at the bottom. It highlights the premium design of the J6300 and also goes really well with the stand.
Even though the J6300 looks sleek, it isn’t as slim as the other 48-inch flat-screen TVs. The curve design here plays a huge role in hiding it. The back panel is steel and it looks pretty tough. Important ports such as the HDMI and USB are placed near the left edge of the TV. The rest of them can be found towards the center. Because of the curve design though, the back has space along the sides, so all the ports are easily accessible.
Features
The J6300 is a premium smart TV and you can be rest assured that you’ll be getting some premium features to play with. It has full HD support. Samsung claims to have integrated the TV with something they like to call Auto Depth Enhancer, which is meant to add depth to the picture, giving it a lively feel.
There are plenty of connectivity options. The four HDMIs ports seem to be sufficient for most homes. Even if you connect a set-top-box, a Blu-ray player and gaming console to the TV, you’ll still have an HDMI port to spare. Component is also present. Three USB ports are also for media playback from a 1TB hard drive. You can also connect a wireless keyboard and mouse for easy functionality. You also get Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct that help you connect your devices to the TV wirelessly.
The list of apps is huge. You have different categories to choose from, such as Video, Music, Games, News, Sports and many others. With the help of the video and music apps, you can keep yourself entertained for hours, if there is nothing good to watch on TV. It’s not just for entertainment, there are plenty of other apps from other genres. However, if you go through the list, you might just find something related to your interests or hobbies. A huge number of popular educational games are also present in the app market. So when kids aren’t watching their favorite cartoons, they can enjoy and learn through these apps. The TV has 1GB of internal storage, which is more than sufficient to save a ton of apps.
So it’s safe to say that the Samsung J6300 isn’t just a curve TV. It can also act as your alarm in the morning and brief you on your daily schedule from your smartphone. Unfortunately this can only be done with Samsung smartphones. With the help of the built-in Quick Connect feature on the smartphone, you can sync it with your TV easily. You can set an alarm on the TV. Accordingly, the TV switches on displaying the time and the weather forecast of the day. The Quick Connect feature also acts like a shortcut for the Screen Mirroring.
The TV comes with two down-firing stereo speakers. The chunky profile of the panel gives us a little confidence in the speaker area. Both the speakers together are powered at 20W (RMS). Samsung also promises Virtual surround sound. It’s something that will make the experience even more immersive. However, we still think a home theatre would be the right choice to go with, especially when you are spending so much on a TV.
Performance
While you get premium features with the Samsung J6300, it’s a little disappointing to see stuttering in the user interface. There is a noticeable delay in the time you press the button on the remote and the see it being executed on the screen. We noticed this delay while scrolling through the setting and the Smart HUB. At this point, it was still pretty usable. Once we connected our hard drive, things got a little worse. The TV managed to read the hard drive quickly, but it took plenty of time to align all the files on the screen. At this point, the interface got extremely slow. Using the virtual keyboard was a bit of struggle. We personally believe that the Tizen operating system works better with the keyboard and mouse. Some shortcuts on the keyboard also seemed to work on the TV, which was good to see.
When it comes to screen quality, we quite liked the J6300, but there were some issues. Starting with the curve design; it’s still a little difficult to spot the difference between the flat-screen TV and a curve TV of the same size. In our time with the J6300, the only instance when we were able to notice in the curve design was when using the Smart HUB feature or some of apps on it. The interface adds a little depth here. However, we didn’t see any difference while watching movies or YouTube videos. An advantage of the curve design is the reduced reflections. The TV anyways has high brightness levels, but the ability to withhold reflections, benefits in good viewing angles. This however is another problem with the curve design. To enjoy a good experience, you have to view the TV by sitting right in the center. Viewing the TV from the extreme corner of the room, won’t prove to be very good, because of the curve design. Another benefit of the curve design is the that you can sit a little closer to the TV than you would compared to a flat-screen of the same size, which can make the picture immersive.
We should mention that, like the J5300 we reviewed a few days back, we also had the J6300 set in Dynamic mode. We would naturally suggest using the Standard mode, but the picture looked just too dull. The Dynamic mode has vibrant colours to offer. It looks borderline gaudy, but it’s much closer to the ideal picture. A few tweaks should help bring down the loud colours to a point where they don’t hurt your eyes. The sharpness is just too high on the TV. It’s both good and bad. We saw ‘The Tree of life’ on the TV and absolutely loved the performance. The extreme detailing in the picture compliments the great camera work done in the movie. However, the screen struggles a lot during fast action sequences. Edges on objects in the frame look blurry. That’s not the biggest problem we noticed though. A few minutes into some of the tests, we noticed that the TV was constantly adjusting the contrast ratio in big increments, according to the scene.
After every cut scene, we were able to notice the sudden change in the contrast levels after a second or two. That said, it’s still a little difficult to spot the changes, and it also depends on how drastically the scene changes. The down-firing speakers are impressively loud. With the volume set to ‘40’, we were still able to get a clear sound at a distance of 8-feet. The speakers have depth. However, it helps in achieving a higher immersive experience while watching movies with spine-chilling background scores. The only down-side is the low sharpness. There isn’t a lot of the distortion, but music does sound a bit flat. They might not be your ideal speaker for music, but they’re better than what we’ve heard from other TVs in the price range.
Verdict
The 48-inch J6300 is more of fashion statement than a performance TV. In terms of picture quality, we think it’s very close to the J5300 we reviewed a couple of days back. It’s good but not great. So it’s mostly the curve design and a fancier interface that you are paying the extra buck for. The bare minimum benefits you get from the both, don’t really justify for the high price according to us. It would be better option to invest a J5300 if you you’re looking for pure performance. However if you want a TV that has a decent performance and adds style to your room, the J6300 is recommendable.
