If you haven’t changed the settings on your new Samsung TV, you’re likely not getting anywhere close to the best picture quality or viewing experience it’s capable of delivering. It’s time to change that.
We’ve been hearing this from every TV brand for years: Research shows most folks don’t touch even the most basic settings for their TV. Straight out of the box, it gets set up and that’s it.
We get it: It’s fun to just break into your new toy like a kid at Christmas. But if you don’t take the time to make a few easy changes, you’re missing the opportunity to elevate your TV-watching experience. With just a few minutes of clicking buttons, you can transform how your TV’s picture looks and even make it easier to use.
Here are seven settings changes to make to your Samsung TV that will help you get the very best picture, no matter what your preferences might be.
Turn off these default settings
These days, TVs ship with an Eco setting turned on by default. As much as we want to help the environment, there are probably more effective ways than limiting the brightness and contrast of your TV. It’s like buying a high-performance sports car, but the acceleration and top speed are capped at 40 miles per hour.
Here’s how to turn it off. Press the Settings button on your remote, go to All Settings, then navigate down to General & Privacy, then Power and Energy Saving, and toggle Energy Saving Solution to Off.
While you’re here, turn off Brightness Optimization as well. Many TVs now come with optical sensors that can detect the brightness of your room and how warm or cold that light may be. The TV then adjusts the picture automatically (supposedly), optimizing brightness and color temperature accordingly. However, this feature doesn’t always work well. Turn this off to ensure that your TV isn’t making the brightness or color decisions for you, especially in a room with some natural light.
Get the best brightness
With these critical settings now under your control, select a picture mode. Start in an app such as YouTube. Press the Settings button on your remote. Then navigate right to Picture Mode. We like modes like Cinema, Movie, or Filmmaker. If you prefer a cooler, or more blue, color temperature, try Standard. Avoid Dynamic Mode: It tends to juice things up a bit too much and look harsh and blown out.
Next, set the preferred brightness of your TV. Some folks like a brighter setting for watching during the day. Those who watch mostly at night don’t need as much brightness. If you watch during both day and night, you can set different brightness levels for two different picture modes and switch between them.
The trick here is to recognize that sometimes you’ll be watching SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) content and other times, you’ll be watching in HDR (High Dynamic Range). Therefore, you’ll want to set the brightness for both on your Samsung TV.
Set the brightness for SDR content by going into your Settings quick menu. Then navigate to the right to Picture Setup. There, you’ll find Brightness, and you can adjust it to your liking. You can also go into the All Settings menu, then Picture, and then Expert settings.
To set the brightness for HDR, you’ll need to play some HDR content. This could be a YouTube video, such as the beautiful content produced by Eugene Belsky (one of our favorites). Press the Settings button on the remote and navigate to Picture Setup. Here you can adjust the brightness in the same way as for SDR.
There’s one more thing you can do to make your Samsung TV even brighter: adjust Local Dimming. Press the Settings button on your remote, then select All Settings, then Picture, and then Expert Settings, and navigate down to Local Dimming. Experiment by changing this setting to Low, Standard, or High. On the Low setting, the brightness will be lower, but there will be less blooming and halo around bright objects on dark backgrounds. On the Standard or High setting, you’ll get more brightness from your TV, which can be great for watching during the day. If you want to see bright highlights really sparkle we recommend keeping brightness turned all the way up.
Smoother motion, convenient control
Motion smoothing: Some people like it, but some feel like it makes everything look weird, or fake, which is why it’s known as the soap opera effect.
To adjust the motion smoothing on a Samsung TV, go back to Expert Settings (see above) then Picture, and navigate down to Picture Clarity Settings. You can turn Picture Clarity off entirely or reduce the severity of the effect by turning down Blur Reduction and Judder Reduction to a lower setting. Experiment with this — you may find you don’t want it on for movies, but you like how it looks for sports. It all comes down to your viewing preferences.
There are also a few settings that can make using your Samsung TV easier.
During the initial setup of your TV, you should be prompted to connect other devices so they could be recognized; this allows the remote to control the basic functions of those devices. If you skipped that part, or if you’ve added a new device or you’re having trouble controlling those other devices (e.g. turning them on and off), you can make adjustments via the HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) setting. On a Samsung TV this is called Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC).
Click the Settings button on your remote, then navigate down to Connection, and then External Device Manager. Here you can turn it on or off. With it on, for example, you could control your soundbar volume and even navigate your PlayStation’s main menu with the TV remote.
The moral of the story is: When you buy a new TV, it will definitely look good, but it can look even better. It’s 100 percent worth diving into the settings to explore just how brilliant your TV’s picture can look. Even if your TV is a few years old and you’ve never changed the settings, now is a great time to explore how you can unlock even more viewing awesomeness from your set — with just a few tweaks.
Have a different brand of TV and want to make similar adjustments? Most modern TVs have similar features to Samsung, however, they might be labelled differently, and it can get confusing. If you’re looking for LG, Sony, Hisense, TCL, or Panasonic, we have instructions for those, too.