Samsung Q7 QLED TV

The Samsung Q7 QLED TV is one of the best-designed TVs ever, with sleek, modern styling and impeccable fit and finish. The innovative "invisible" wiring system and breakout box make installation superclean. Picture quality is very good, especially in bright rooms.samsung's "QLED" is a brand-new term for a lot of people, and the world's No. 1 TV maker calls it "the next innovation in TV." With the Q7 series, however, there's more innovation in design and features than in picture quality.

 

The Q7, Samsung's least costly (but still expensive) QLED TV, is a tour de force of sleek extras. Its awesome "invisible" fiber-optic cabling combines with an external connection box to make clean-looking installations easier than ever. It can control connected gear automatically using just the TV remote, even if your stuff is stashed away in a cabinet. And its beautiful aesthetics, down to the remote, the stand and even the backside, are perhaps my favorite of any TV yet.

The TV's design is so good I gave it a "10" in that category and lowered the design scores of other competing sets I've tested, including LG's C7 OLED TV. But this QLED can't compare to that OLED in the category with the most weight in CNET's TV rating system: picture quality.

In side-by-side comparisons the QLED TV's picture looked similar to many other LED LCD TVs. It's very good, especially in bright rooms, and will certainly satisfy most viewers. But in darker environments where expensive TVs should cater to picky home theater fans too, it falls short of the better LCD-based TVs such as the Vizio P series, as well as OLED-based set.Samsung has always made some of the nicest looking televisions, and the Q7 is another stunner. From the front it's almost all picture, with a very thin black frame edged in silver, with a tiny chrome Samsung logo on the bottom. From the side it lacks the razor-thin profile of OLED, but it's still superthin at 1.8 inches deep.I'm a big fan of Samsung's new stand designs this year. The Q7's consists of a tubular bar along the front and an angled support that lets the TV seem to hang in space. It's simple and attractive.

Even the back is well thought-out, with textured horizontal lines and covers that conceal two of Samsung's 2017 TV innovations. One is the new "Invisible connection," a thin, white fiber-optic cable that runs between the TV and a separate One Connect box, into which you'll plug your AV gear, antenna and USB devices.

It's not quite invisible, but is thin and small enough that you could run it along the outside of a wall and it would be tough to spot, depending on the wall coloring. The Q7 ships with a 16-foot cable, which should be plenty long for most people, and unused slack can be wrapped in the included rubber puck. Convenient! The TV's power cable and the thin wire can be hidden in a channel on the back of the stand, for the most discreet wiring of any TV I've seen.

The other innovation is an optional "no-gap wall-mount" ($150 for 55 and 65-inch sizes, $175 for 75-inch). It attaches to the same recessed socket the stand uses, keeps the TV flush against the wall, allows easy leveling and is relatively easy to install. The TV is also compatible with standard mounts ($20 and up), although they'll introduce a wider gap between the TV and the wall.

A TV smart enough to manage your gear Samsung has improved one of my favorite features from last year: the TV's ability to automatically recognize and control connected devices using its own remote and on-screen display. The biggest change is an infrared blaster built into the OneConnect box, allowing its remote signals to reach gear inside cabinets or otherwise hidden.

A good universal remote is more capable, but certainly not as easy to set up. Simply plugging in a device during initial TV setup is often enough to get the Samsung to recognize it and completely set up control using Samsung's TV remote. This unique auto setup ability worked for many of the devices I tried, but there were exceptions, such as the Nvidia Shield, Apple TV and PlayStation consoles. That's not bad, but it's hardly "universal."

Cable box control is particularly impressive and allows you to ditch your cable company clicker for most commands. My Fios box was automatically integrated into the TV's Home menu bar complete with its own Fios icon. The TV's on-screen display let me select the box's own guide (also accessible by pressing the remote's "channel" button), its DVR recordings, its main menu or change channels, all using Samsung's TV remote.

The TV remote can also pause and fast-forward through commercials, although it relied on a pop-up menu instead of dedicated buttons (although Samsung did add forward and reverse skip). You can also direct-dial channel numbers and access special keys like A, B, C, D and "Last" using other pop-ups. If the pop-ups are too tedious, voice commands such as, "Watch channel 570," "ESPNHD" and "Pause" work too.

You'll need to plug your stuff directly into the TV, so if your setup incorporates an AV receiver it won't work. In the end I'd stick with my Harmony, but people with simpler systems that use supported devices might be fine using just Samsung's sleek remote to control everything.

Decent app support, new voice controlsCarrying over the same design from 2016, Samsung's homegrown Tizen-based smart TV system is very good for a TV, but its app coverage isn't as comprehensive as that of Android TV (on Sony sets) or Roku TV. 

4K streaming with HDR is available from Netflix and Amazon, as well as the Fandango-powered TV Plus app, but Samsung's Vudu app currently supports neither 4K nor HDR. The UltraFlix app has some niche 4K content and there's 4K support on the YouTube app. Other major apps like Hulu, Plex and both HBOs (Go and Now) are on-board too, but if you want more you'll probably still need to connect an external device like a Roku or Apple TV.

I like that app tiles and connected devices both appear in the same menu bar along the bottom, and you can arrange them to taste. Click the Home button and you'll be able to browse content from within apps like Netflix and Hulu while your current video keeps playing in the background. The menu even serves suggestions and, on some apps, lets you resume stuff you were watching previously.

If you want to avoid the menu entirely, you can try speaking into the remote. Commands such as "Netflix," "Hulu" and "YouTube" worked well to launch apps, but "Amazon" launched the website instead -- I had to say "Amazon video" to launch its app. You also can't use voice commands within an app. In a cool twist, settings like "Movie Mode," "Game Mode" and even specific settings like "Backlight 8" can also be adjusted via voice.

Key TV features

Display technology	LED LCD
LED backlight	Edge-lit with local dimming
Resolution	4K
HDR compatible	HDR10
Screen shape	Flat
Smart TV	Tizen
Remote	Standard