Samsung LN46B610 review: input lag, deinterlacing and upscaling using the piLagTesterPRO

This 1080p "120hz" TV from 2012  looks good at 480i/p and does a great job of deinterlacing appearance wise, but has bad lag.

Image quality

Good upscaling is critical for retro gaming. Ideally, all pixels should appear equally sharp and bright (no aliasing), and angled lines should appear smooth, with no jagged, irregular steps. Also important is that the display shows most or all of the pixels it is sent. Often, this is not the case, with some number of pixels cropped from the bottom or top edges. Shockingly, these tests are relevant for modern gaming as well, because even at their native resolution many TVs have aliasing and cropping.

I attempted to adjust the set to minimize cropping and aliasing; the results below are for the best mode I could find for each.

resolution aliasing cropping (side, top)
480p/i almost none about 20 off each side
720p mild, but visible none if you choose "screen fit".
1080p none none
960p worse than 480p/i but not bad none

The display has 4 HDMI, 1 VGA, and 2 yPbPr input. I only tested HDMI.

Input Lag

I used a piLagTesterPRO to measure input lag. This device sends a frame of video over HDMI and measures how long it takes to display it. This display has a game mode, which appeared to reduce lag by 10ms or so, but it's hard to know for reasons explained below.  I toggled all the other display quality settings as well, but did not see any improvements, however the tests reported below are with every "enhancement" set to off in game mode.

Complicating things significantly, this is yet another display that does not actually sync refresh to the input signal - instead it fills its own internal frame buffer from the video input and then draws that with an additional delay that is randomly determined each time you turn on the set or switch inputs. To take one example, input lag for 720p can vary from 53ms to 68ms - one full frame of video.

 It can't even properly synchronize the display of this buffer with the refresh rate of the input: if the input is 59.94hz (aka NTSC), then it rapidly drifts out of sync every 10 seconds or so and has to drop a frame. For 60.0hz refresh rates, it does better with no evident drift.

I've elected to report the average lag values here, since that seems fairest, but there's no right answer; for more discussion of this issue see the above link. It's worth noting however, that this kind of changing lag is the hardest for your brain/hands to adapt to. I'd much rather have an extra 16ms of fixed lag added to the display than one like this where sometimes the extra lag is 0ms, and sometimes it's 16ms.

This TV supports 24hz at 1080p; and it really draws at 24hz with no dropped frames or temporal distortion, so it should be good for movies. It's maximum refresh rate for TV modes is 60hz; it cannot accept 120hz inputs.

Input Lag Test Results

I report two kinds of values. 1st response measures how long it takes for the TV to start responding (I use a 5% change in display brightness). This overly optimistic value doesn't tell how long it takes to see anything useful, but matches what other reviewers call input lag. full response is a more realistic measure of lag, and requires the display to reach 80% of full brightness. This combines both input lag and response time, and is closer to what you would actually experience in a game.

One odd and disappointing design choice is that this TV draws from the bottom of the screen up. Thus the first pixels painted on each frame are the bottom row. This seems like a REALLY dumb choice; since the HDMI signal is sent from top to bottom this means the TV can't possibly start processing the next frame until the entire thing is sent to the TV, implying an extra 16ms of lag. And indeed this TV has lots of lag. At least when it starts drawing it actually scans out slightly faster than the input refresh rate, taking only about 8ms.

bottomtop
Resolution1st (average)full response1st responsefull response
480i69.074.077.082.0
480p53.058.061.066.0
720p53.058.061.066.0
1080p53.058.061.066.0
960p53.058.061.066.0

There's nothing to be excited about here - recall that the bottom is drawn first so if you only look at those numbers you get a false sense of the speed.

At least interlacing isn't that much slower- it only adds 1 extra frame (16ms).

Comparing response time at the bottom vs the top we can finally see the one sense with which this is a 120hz tv: once it starts drawing the frame of video it proceeds at twice the speed of the input, taking only 8ms. This clever trick is not enough to make up for the slow speed of the rest of the system though.

This display does fine with 960p so you could hook up an OSSC to it, though the visual quality of 960p is not as good as 480p.

Results compared to other displays & conclusion

To allow quick comparison between many displays I've summarized the results across all the displays I've personally tested with the piLagTester Pro. Min lag is the time to the first response, measured where the screen starts drawing (typically, the top, but for this TV the bottom); real lag is the time to the full response, measured where drawing finishes (usually the screen bottom, here it's the top), i.e. input lag + scan out + response time.  Numbers in red denote average values that can vary by up to 8ms between power cycles.

This is sorted by the best real lag each display can produce: native resolution and maximum refresh rate.

DisplayYear made (TV?)Native Resnative min lagnative real lag480i real lag480p real lag720p real lag1080p real lagnative response timenative scan out
Dell E198FPb20081024p2.720.439.035.05.0012.70
Vizio VO370M20101080p2.523.683.049.047.024.35.4715.67
Dell U2410 (game)20101080p4.026.262.228.326.526.56.0016.20
TCL 40S32520211080p6.527.360.629.027.927.76.0014.83
AOC/Envision G19LWK2010900p3.131.239.538.738.437.815.5012.60
Dell E2211H20141080p3.033.634.734.534.133.815.0015.57
Panasonic TH-58PE75U2008720p28.034.034.034.034.034.06.000.00
Dell 1907FPc20081024p3.034.035.934.815.0016.00
Panasonic TH-42PX75U2008720p28.034.034.034.034.034.06.000.00
Corprit D157 (hdmi)20211080p3.134.534.934.834.633.916.2515.13
Samsung S27C23020141080p2.936.136.636.137.018.2514.97
Vizio E470VL (vga)20111080p22.039.039.039.039.09.008.00
Dell U2410 (sRGB)20101080p20.542.862.445.043.143.16.1316.13
ACER AT326520121080p19.543.862.745.343.843.88.0016.27
sony XBR 43X800D20174k24.544.346.546.044.644.75.0014.83
RCA L40FHD4120101080p20.346.665.048.047.046.09.6816.63
Sony 40VL130 (game)20081080p22.847.366.349.047.347.39.0815.43
Polaroid FLM-373B2007720p28.049.082.049.049.049.07.0014.00
Philips 42PFL3603D/F720091080p29.050.084.050.050.050.05.0016.00
Emprex HD 32022007720p27.050.5126.051.050.08.5015.00
LG 42LC2D2006720p28.350.654.650.850.46.3015.95
GPX TDE3245W2016720p28.051.0102.051.051.051.08.0015.00
Sony KDL-46EX40020101080p28.052.087.052.052.052.08.0016.00
Toshiba 40L2200U20141080p30.056.074.056.056.056.010.0016.00
Samsung LN32B3602010720p37.660.062.161.860.560.18.0014.40
Vizio VO22L FHDTV10A2008720p28.061.094.061.061.061.018.0015.00
Vizio VX20L HDTV2007720p28.062.095.062.062.062.018.0016.00
Sharp LC-C3234U2009720p33.064.683.666.664.615.0016.60
Samsung LN46B61020121080p53.066.082.066.066.066.05.008.00
Toshiba 46L5200U20131080p55.071.089.076.071.074.08.008.00
Sony 40S20L12007720p48.472.090.172.973.49.6014.00
Samsung LN46C63020121080p54.572.190.790.388.572.310.007.63
SANYO DP507492010720p67.075.0103.094.079.075.07.001.00
Samsung HP-T425420111080p69.775.794.176.075.75.001.00
LG 47LW6500-UA20121080p66.680.7149.7149.081.780.92.2711.83
Vizio E470VL (hdmi)20111080p69.086.0128.095.095.086.09.008.00

Where's this model? way at the bottom. Way, way at the bottom. It's not the worst I've tested, and not even the worst Samsung I've tested, but it's definitely to be avoided. The only Samsung TV from anywhere around this date of manufacture that I like is a budget model (Samsung LN32B360), from 2 years prior to this TV and performs better in every way, though it's only real standout feature overall is  lag for 480i.

Other models (same performance?)

I tested the LN46B610A5FXZA , which is the 56" version. The manual says it is part of the "series 6, 610, 640" . Based on that manual there appear to be several other versions: Based similarities in their names and shared manual, I suspect that the LN40B610 LN46B610 LN52B610 would perform similarly, just with differing pixels sizes. However, I've made no efforts to check if their specs exactly match each other. The same manual also covers the LN32B640, so it's likely it's similar as well. In fact most of the Samsung TVs from 2006-2012 perform similarly, or worse than this one, especially if they advertise 120hz. I'd give a hard pass to all Samsung TVs from this era unless I had specific data on the model that proved it was an exception to that rule. Or, I just wanted to watch movies, for which they are great.

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