To try to better understand how long a TV should last, we're running 100 TVs through an accelerated longevity test for the next two years. We've just posted our results after eight months, see our latest updates.
The Samsung CU7000 is one of the entry-level models in Samsung's 2023 lineup, replacing the Samsung AU7000 in North America. It's part of Samsung's Crystal UHD series of TVs, sitting below the Samsung CU8000. It competes with other entry-level models like the Sony X75K, The Hisense U6H, and the TCL 4 Series. It's a very basic model that lacks features like variable refresh rate (VRR) and HDMI 2.1 support. It uses Samsung's Crystal Processor 4K, first introduced in 2020 and designed to provide powerful 4K upscaling. It runs a simplified version of Samsung's 2023 Tizen OS interface, which offers most of the features of more advanced models. The CU7000 comes with a simple battery remote, which lacks the bells and whistles of the CU8000, like voice support and solar charging.
Our Verdict
The Samsung CU7000 is a good TV overall. It's particularly good at playing bright fast-paced video games, as it has a great response time in bright scenes and a very low input lag in Game Mode. Its low response time in bright scenes makes it a good TV to watch sports on as fast, bright action looks clear. It's also great at watching movies on DVD, as it has decent contrast and can remove judder from 24p sources. However, its low overall brightness in both SDR and HDR combined with its barely decent reflection handling forces the TV into being a dark room TV, and its poor viewing angle makes the TV hard to watch with a group due to its colors quickly shifting and dimming as you move off-center.
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Good low resolution upscaling.
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Fast-moving action is crisp, especially in bright scenes.
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Low input lag in game mode.
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Decent contrast for deep blacks in dark scenes.
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Poor low-quality content smoothing.
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Lacks a local dimming feature.
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Doesn't get very bright.
The Samsung CU7000 is alright for catching up on your TV shows. It upscales lower-resolution content well and has satisfactory reflection handling. Unfortunately, it has an inadequate viewing angle, leading to colors quickly shifting as you move off-center, making it hard to watch shows with a group as people sitting on the sides see a degraded image. It also has poor peak brightness in SDR, so the TV is better suited for a dark room.
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Good low resolution upscaling.
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Poor low-quality content smoothing.
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Doesn't get very bright.
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Narrow viewing angle.
The Samsung CU7000 is decent for watching sports. The TV has an especially fast response time in bright screen transitions, which is great for sports, as fast movement in bright scenes will look crisp and clear. The TV is also great at upscaling 720p content, which is the resolution most sports are streamed at. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't get very bright, and its reflection handling is barely adequate, so the TV doesn't look good in brightly lit rooms. It also has a narrow viewing angle, so it can be hard to watch sports with a big group as people sitting on the sides see a degraded image.
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Good low resolution upscaling.
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Fast-moving action is crisp, especially in bright scenes.
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Doesn't get very bright.
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Narrow viewing angle.
The Samsung CU7000 is a very good TV for classic, indie, or fast-paced online games. It has a fantastic input lag in Game Mode, as well as a good response time. It's great for fast-action games, as your inputs are translated quickly to your on-screen characters, and the fast response time makes for crisp action without excessive motion blur. The response time is especially good at bright screen transitions; however, it's slow for dark scene transitions, making this TV good at playing bright and fast games but less so for darker titles.
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Good low resolution upscaling.
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Fast-moving action is crisp, especially in bright scenes.
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Low input lag in game mode.
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Doesn't get very bright.
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Limited to 60Hz and has no VRR support.
The Samsung CU7000 is alright for watching the latest hit movies in HDR. The TV has adequate contrast allowing for deep blacks in dark scenes; however, without local dimming bright scenes won't pop, and dark scenes will look washed out due to the backlight always being on at the same intensity. The TV has poor peak brightness in HDR, so you'll need to watch HDR movies in a dark room. It has an okay but not satisfactory color gamut, so it can't show the full range of colors of an HDR signal, leading to muted colors.
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Removes judder from 24p sources.
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Fast-moving action is crisp, especially in bright scenes.
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Decent contrast for deep blacks in dark scenes.
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Poor low-quality content smoothing.
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Lacks a local dimming feature.
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Doesn't get very bright.
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Narrow color gamut.
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Terrible pre calibration color accuracy.
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No DTS audio support.
The Samsung CU7000 is good for playing the latest AAA titles. The TV supports 4k @ 60Hz with HDR and has a good response time overall, especially in bright scene transitions; it's a great TV for bright fast-paced games. It has very low input lag, leading to a seamless transition between your controller and the on-screen action. Unfortunately, its peak brightness in HDR is middling, and the TV has only decent reflection handling, so make sure to play your games in a dark room. And while it has a decent contrast ratio in Game Mode, the lack of local dimming and its poor color gamut means that games won't pop in HDR. The TV also doesn't support the latest gaming technologies, like VRR or 120Hz refresh rate, which isn't optimal for new consoles or powerful PCs.
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Fast-moving action is crisp, especially in bright scenes.
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Low input lag in game mode.
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Decent contrast for deep blacks in dark scenes.
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Lacks a local dimming feature.
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Doesn't get very bright.
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Narrow color gamut.
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Terrible pre calibration color accuracy.
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Limited to 60Hz and has no VRR support.
The Samsung CU7000 is decent as a PC monitor. It has a low input lag and response time in Game Mode; this will make for very responsive mouse or controller inputs when gaming, and as this TV is great at bright scene transitions, you won't have annoying ghosting or blurring behind moving windows. Just make sure to not set your PC to 'dark mode', as this TV's response time is not great with dark scene transitions. This TV shows proper chroma 4:4:4 when set to Game Mode and its input set to 'PC', which is great for text clarity; unfortunately, it uses a BGR subpixel layout which is inversely not great for text. For professional design work, this TV isn't optimal with its poor color gamut and color volume, as well as terrible pre-calibration accuracy. It also has a poor viewing angle, so you'll have a hard time finding an acceptable viewing position without having off-tone colors on the screen.
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Fast-moving action is crisp, especially in bright scenes.
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Low input lag in game mode.
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Displays chroma 4:4:4 subsampling.
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Doesn't get very bright.
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Narrow color gamut.
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Terrible pre calibration color accuracy.
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Narrow viewing angle.
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Limited to 60Hz and has no VRR support.
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Inaccurate color profile.
- 6.7 Mixed Usage
- 6.4 TV Shows
- 6.6 Sports
- 7.2 Video Games
- 6.6 HDR Movies
- 7.4 HDR Gaming
- 7.2 PC Monitor
- Updated Sep 11, 2023: We bought and tested the TCL S4/S450G, and added relevant comparisons below.
- Updated Aug 28, 2023: We bought and tested the Sony X77L/X77CL and added a few relevant comparisons below.
- Updated Aug 09, 2023: We bought and tested the LG UR8000 and added a few relevant comparisons below.
- Updated Jul 10, 2023: Converted to Test Bench 1.11. With this update, we've added a new Upscaling: Sharpness Processing test and revamped our Blooming test so the scores and picture better match the real world experience. With this change, it was necessary to remove the Black Crush test. Finally, we've updated our usage scores to better align our scores with user expectations.
- Updated Jun 22, 2023: Updated the text regarding HDR Native Gradient.
- Updated Jun 19, 2023: We've added a mention of the newly-reviewed LG UR9000 in the Viewing Angle section of this review.
- Updated Jun 14, 2023: We've added a mention of the newly-reviewed Samsung Q80C QLED in the SDR Brightness section of this review.
- Updated May 08, 2023: We have rebalanced our Pros & Cons and made some minor revisions to the text to improve readability.
- Updated May 04, 2023: Review published.
- Updated Apr 27, 2023: Early access published.
- Updated Apr 12, 2023: Our testers have started testing this product.
- Updated Apr 11, 2023: The product has arrived in our lab, and our testers will start evaluating it soon.
- Updated Apr 05, 2023: We've purchased the product and are waiting for it to arrive in our lab.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 65-inch Samsung CU7000, and these results are also valid for the 43-inch, 50-inch, 55-inch, 58-inch, 70-inch, 75-inch, and 85-inch models. The Samsung CU7000D is a variant sold at Costco and Sam's Club but is otherwise identical to the CU7000. Note that the last five letters in the model number (FXZA in this case) vary between retailers and individual regions, but there's no difference in performance.
| Size | US Model | Short Model Code |
|---|---|---|
| 43" | UN43CU7000FXZA | UN43CU7000 |
| 50" | UN50CU7000FXZA | UN50CU7000 |
| 55" | UN55CU7000FXZA | UN55CU7000 |
| 58" | UN58CU7000FXZA | UN58CU7000 |
| 65" | UN65CU7000FXZA | UN65CU7000 |
| 70" | UN70CU7000FXZA | UN70CU7000 |
| 75" | UN75CU7000FXZA | UN75CU7000 |
| 85" | UN85CU7000FXZA | UN85CU7000 |
Our unit was manufactured in March 2023; you can see the label here.
Compared To Other TVs
The Samsung CU7000 is an entry-level budget TV with decent performance. It's of comparable quality to 2020's Samsung TU7000, with each having slight advantages here and there. It's a very basic TV with limited picture quality and few extra features. There are better budget models available from other brands, like Hisense and TCL. The Hisense U6H is comparable to the Samsung CU7000 but is much cheaper, while the Hisense U7H and Hisense U8H both outperform the Samsung CU7000 and are typically cheaper. TCL, for its part, outperforms the CU7000 with the much cheaper TCL 4 Series/S455 2022 and TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED, as well as with the vastly better TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED. Overall, the Samsung CU7000 is probably not worth your money.
For other options, check out our recommendations for the best TVs, the best budget TVs, and the best 4k gaming TVs.
The Samsung CU7000 and Samsung CU8000 are surprisingly comparable TVs, each having particular strengths. The CU8000 has a wider color gamut and slightly higher peak brightness, making it more pleasant to look at. It also has a more premium, slimmer design. However, it's a particularly slow TV; its response time is poor, which makes it ill-suited for watching sports or for playing fast-moving games but helps with watching movies as a slow response time reduces perceived stutter. One of the CU7000's primary strengths is its fast response time, especially in bright scene transitions, making it suited to sports and fast games. Ultimately, the CU7000 is likely cheaper and of particular interest to those wanting a cheaper TV to play games on and watch sports, while the CU8000 has a premium look and outputs more impressive images due to its wider color gamut and slightly higher peak brightness.
The LG UR8000 is better than the Samsung CU7000/CU7000D. The LG has much better accuracy and does a better job smoothing out low-quality content, which is great if you mainly stream your favorite shows or movies. The LG also gets brighter in most real HDR content while still tracking the PQ EOTF accurately.
The Samsung CU7000 and Samsung TU7000 are very similar TVs. The TU7000 has better contrast and color accuracy, while the CU7000 has slightly better peak brightness in both SDR and HDR, much better PQ EOTF tracking, and a faster response time. The CU7000's response time makes it the better choice for fast-moving action in games and sports; however, the slower response time of the TU7000 makes it better suited for watching movies as it has less stutter.
The Hisense U6H is better than the Samsung CU7000. It has a better contrast ratio, further enhanced by its local dimming feature. It also gets brighter than the Samsung in both SDR and HDR, has a wider color gamut and color volume, and is significantly more color accurate. This makes it the better TV for watching movies or for playing cinematic games. The Samsung does have a faster response time, making it better suited for watching sports and playing action games, although the Hisense has VRR support for gaming.
The Samsung CU7000/CU7000D is better than the Sony X77L/X77CL. The Samsung has much higher contrast and better black uniformity, resulting in a better dark-room viewing experience. The Samsung also removes judder from 24p sources, so movie playback is smoother overall. The Sony is a bit better if you have a wide seating arrangement, though, as it has a much wider viewing angle and is more accurate out of the box.
The Hisense A65K is much better than the Samsung CU7000/CU7000D. The Hisense delivers much better picture quality overall, with higher contrast, higher peak brightness, and a much wider color gamut, allowing it to display a wider range of colors with HDR content. The Hisense also offers a few extra features, including VRR support to reduce tearing for gamers.
The TCL 4 Series/S455 2022 is slightly better overall than the Samsung CU7000. Even though the TCL also lacks local dimming, it has a much better contrast ratio than the Samsung and has much better black uniformity, making it better for watching movies or playing cinematic games. The CU7000, however, has a faster response time, making it better for fast-action in games as well as for watching sports, but this also introduces stutter in movies.
The Samsung CU7000/CU7000D is better than the LG UR9000. They both have similar brightness levels in SDR; although the LG is a bit brighter in HDR, the Samsung has significantly better contrast and black uniformity, giving it superior image quality and making it much more pleasant to use in a dark room than the LG. As the Samsung's viewing angle is pretty mediocre, this leaves both TVs with different use cases: the LG is the slightly better bright room TV, especially when watched with multiple people sitting around the TV, while the Samsung works best as a dark room single viewer panel.
For most users, the Samsung CU7000/CU7000D is a bit better than the TCL S4/S450G. The Samsung gets a bit brighter, so it can handle more glare in a bright room, and it has a faster response time, so motion in sports and games has less blur.
The TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED is better than the Samsung CU7000. The TCL has local dimming and much higher peak brightness than the CU7000 in both SDR and HDR, as well as a wider color gamut and better color accuracy; this makes it better for every usage where image quality is important. The Samsung does have a slightly faster response time making it better suited for sports and fast-moving games, although the TCL supports VRR, making it particularly attractive to gamers.
Test Results
The Samsung CU7000D looks good for a budget model. It's thicker than the Samsung CU8000 but has thin bezels, and its textured plastic feels good to the touch. Overall this doesn't feel like a budget model.
The feet are plastic and feel okay. You don't need to screw them in; you just slide the feet in place, which makes for a quick and easy install process. The TV wobbles a bit, but overall it's acceptable. The distance from the table to the screen is 3.3 inches, high enough to fit most soundbars.
Like many other Samsung models, the back of the Samsung CU7000 is made of plastic and is textured with etched horizontal lines. The TV doesn't offer much in terms of cable management, but it has channels through which you can run cables, and then through a clip set on one of the feet. Unlike the Samsung CU8000, all three HDMI ports are found within the back cutout; the CU8000 had one HDMI port facing directly outward from the back, which is a potential nightmare for wall-mounting close to a wall. A mounting arm is recommended, as the cutout is hard to reach otherwise.
The TV has decent build quality. It's made of plastic, feels good to the touch, and looks good. It's thicker than the Samsung CU8000 but doesn't flex nearly as much when you shake the panel, which is likely helped by the added thickness, so it feels sturdier. The Samsung CU7000D's back panel does flex significantly when you press on the area around the VESA mount holes, but it's not concerning. The feet are made of plastic and feel cheap, but they hold the TV well. While the TV does wobble on its stand, it's not bad.
The TV's contrast is decent, and blacks look great in dark scenes. Unfortunately, due to the lack of local dimming, dark scenes look washed out when bright highlights are present.
This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. As the TV can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the scene, dark scenes look washed out.
This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight level of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the scene. The lack of dimming zones means that there are no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.
Switching to 'Game' mode doesn't make any noticeable difference in dark scene performance.
The TV's HDR brightness is poor. It's not nearly bright enough to display HDR content properly. Bright highlights don't stand out, and the entire screen dims when highlights are shown in very small sections of the screen. This TV doesn't provide a good HDR experience.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: Movie (HDR)
- Brightness: Max
- Contrast: Max
- Color Tone: Warm 2
This TV is slightly brighter in HDR when set to game mode, but its overall HDR brightness is still disappointing. The screen still dims significantly when bright highlights are shown in small sections of the image.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:
- Game Mode: On
- Brightness: Max
- Contrast: Max
- Color Tone: Warm 2
- Color Gamut: Auto
- HDR Tone Mapping: Static
The Samsung CU7000D has truly remarkable PQ EOTF tracking. Its near-blacks are raised a bit, but after that, the TV follows the PQ EOTF curve almost perfectly. This means that the brightness of HDR content is displayed almost exactly as the creator of the content intended up until the max brightness of the panel. The TV does clip everything above its peak brightness, resulting in a loss of fine detail.
The Samsung CU7000D's SDR brightness is barely acceptable. It's not bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room and is better suited for moderately-lit or dark rooms. There's no noticeable variation in brightness with different content, no matter how bright it is, which is good. It's brighter than most similarly-priced budget models, like the TCL S4/S450G. If you need a TV with much better SDR peak brightness, look at this TV's higher tier sibling, the Samsung Q80C.
These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: Movie
- Backlight: Max
- Color Tone: Warm 2
- Gamma: 2.2
The Samsung CU7000 has an okay color gamut. It has good coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, which is the most common color space for HDR content. Its colors are generally undersaturated, and its tone mapping isn't accurate except for saturated colors and, to a lesser degree, very lightly saturated ones. The TV's coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space is inadequate, so it's not future-proof, as Rec. 2020 will become more prevalent with time.
The Samsung CU7000's color volume is poor. In the more common DCI-P3 color space, the TV struggles with displaying any bright colors, and some of its colors, in particular some medium reds and blues, are very inaccurate compared to an ideal TV. The TV can display darker colors well, but anything above that isn't accurate. Its Rec. 2020 color volume is terrible.
The Samsung CU7000 has sub-par pre-calibration accuracy. Its gamma is way under the target of 2.2, so it's significantly over-brightened in all scenes. The TV has a hard time displaying accurate medium shades of gray, with color accuracy being way off; all shades of gray have too much green, red, and blue. Its color accuracy is poor throughout, with most color shades deviating from reference.
The Samsung CU7000's post-calibration accuracy is great. White balance accuracy is closer to reference, and its color temperature is nearly perfect. The TV is hard to calibrate for, however, and its color accuracy is still slightly off from reference for every color except for blues and reds.
You can see our full calibration settings here.
The Samsung CU7000 has okay color uniformity. Near-dark scenes look very good, even with some noticeable banding. On scenes with large areas of uniform colors, there are some major deviations in color and vignetting on the sides.
The TV has great black uniformity. There's some clouding throughout the screen, but the screen is otherwise decently uniform and won't be distracting in dark scenes.
The Samsung CU7000D has a sub-par viewing angle. The colors quickly shift when you move off-center, so it's not ideal for a wide seating area or if you like to move around with the TV turned on. If you want a TV with a better viewing angle, look at the LG UR9000 or the Sony X77L/X77CL.
The TV's reflection handling is decent. Considering that this TV has a low peak brightness, you're better off avoiding putting this TV in a bright room.
The TV's HDR gradient handling is alright. There's significant banding in dark grays and noticeable banding in dark reds, greens, and blues, as well as in bright greens.
Unfortunately, the Samsung CU7000 doesn't have the same great low-quality content smoothing as the Samsung CU8000. There's very noticeable macro-blocking with low-quality content, although details are preserved well. If you care about low-quality content smoothing and want a similar budget model with better processing, check out the LG UR8000 instead.
480p content looks great on the Samsung CU7000. Content from 480p sources like DVDs will be upscaled well.
The Samsung CU7000 uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For most content, this isn't a problem, but when using this TV as a PC monitor, this could impact text clarity. There's some visible dithering in the blue and red subpixels, leading to dithering in bright scenes.
This TV has a good response time. Like the Samsung CU8000, it has poor dark screen transitions, resulting in ghosting in dark scenes; this is not the TV for fans of games like Resident Evil. However, unlike the CU8000, the rest of its transitions are great; this TV is very good at light screen transitions and very fast at transitions from complete black to complete white screens. There's some overshoot in transitions involving going from dark scenes to bright scenes quickly, but nothing too distracting.
The TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, resulting in flicker that'll annoy users who are sensitive to it. Unlike the Samsung CU8000, the Samsung CU7000 doesn't flicker in Movie mode or all other picture modes except for Game Mode when the brightness is set to 19 or below.
The Samsung CU7000 supports backlight strobing, more commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). While it's supposed to improve the appearance of motion by reducing the amount of persistence blur, the strobing on this TV is poorly timed and introduces noticeable crosstalk. When you enable Game Mode, the feature introduces motion duplication, which isn't optimal. Finally, backlight strobing lowers the TV's brightness, which can annoy some users.
Like the Samsung CU8000, the Samsung CU7000 can interpolate a lower-frame rate content up to 60fps. It looks okay in slower scenes, but when the action ramps up, it leads to artifacting and haloing.
The TV has decent performance regarding stutter. Its stutter performance is fantastic for 60 fps content, so slow panning shots in games or sports will look great. However, its performance in 24 fps content, like movies, is barely adequate and will result in stuttering.
The Samsung CU7000D can remove judder from native 24p signals, like DVDs or Blu-rays, as well from native apps. However, it can't remove judder from 60i or 60p sources, so movies played from satellite/cable boxes won't be judder free.
This TV doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies.
The TV has remarkably low input lag. While its input lag is lowest in Game Mode, it's also low outside of it, making it more similar to 2021's Samsung AU8000 than the Samsung CU8000. Like other Samsung TVs, to have low input lag while transmitting a chroma 4:4:4 signal, you need to put the input to 'PC' and enable Game Mode.
The Samsung CU7000D supports all common resolutions at 60Hz, and unlike the Samsung CU8000, it supports 1440p @ 60Hz. The TV can also display proper chroma 4:4:4, which is important for text clarity when using this TV as a PC monitor.
This TV has a 60Hz panel, so it only supports 4k @ 60Hz on a PS5. It'll automatically switch to Game Mode when the TV detects a game console as its input device, giving you the lowest possible input lag for games.
The Samsung CU7000D is a 60Hz TV, so it only supports 4k @ 60Hz on the Xbox Series X and S consoles. It'll automatically switch to Game Mode when the TV detects a game console as its input device, giving you the lowest possible input lag for games.
Like its bigger sibling, the Samsung CU7000D only supports HDMI 2.0 bandwidth but does have eARC. It supports passthrough of all Dolby formats, which is great, but like other Samsung TVs, it still can't passthrough any DTS formats, which is disappointing for fans of DVDs and Blu-rays, as they use DTS as their audio format.
The TV's frequency response is middling. It has a very low maximum volume; this is terrible for users who want to listen to loud audio from their TV. The TV sounds worse as you increase the volume, which isn't great considering that you'll likely raise the volume on this relatively quiet TV. The TV also doesn't produce much bass.
The Samsung CU7000D's distortion performance is mediocre. There's a fair amount of distortion both at moderate listening levels and at max volume.
Much like the Samsung CU8000, the Samsung CU7000 comes with the 2023 version of Samsung's proprietary Tizen OS but with a reduced feature set. In particular, this includes some reduced animations to make the OS run smoothly on this lower-end TV, but like its bigger brother, this TV now supports MultiView.
Like other Samsung TVs, the Samsung CU7000D has an impressive selection of apps in its app store, with apps for all major streaming services.
The Samsung CU7000D has a good remote, which is nearly identical to the one used for 2021's Samsung AU8000. Unlike the Samsung CU8000's remote, this one requires disposable batteries and has no voice control options. It still has buttons for popular streaming services.
There's a single button underneath the Samsung branding on the center of the TV. You can turn the TV on and off, change the volume and channels, and select inputs.
