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By Ty Pendlebury, CNET.com.au
May 16, 2008

If you ask Samsung, it will tell you that 60 percent of all TVs sold by Christmas will be 1080p. Given that plasma and LCD technologies continue to improve as prices keep falling, this could well be true. But the question we need to ask is: Will anyone get any benefit out of a 32-inch, 1080p TV in their average living space? The LA32A650A1RXXS is an interesting experiment.

Upside: *Cue pompous fashion commentators voice* This season, red! … is the new black.

LG has its Scarlet TV and Samsung has its Crystal Design. If you have a red feature wall, then do the Koreans have the TVs for you! Samsung's flagship televisions sport the Crystal Design which uses a finish invented by car manufacturers and is "inspired by the glass-blowers of Murano, Italy" apparently. What you get is a slight red accent which is a lot subtler in person than it appears in the product shots here. CNET Asia's Philip Wong may be gaga over it, but we'll just say it looks "nice".

Design notwithstanding, the TV also packs a variety of features into the box. First is the 1,920 x 1,080-pixel native resolution, followed by a whopping four HDMI ports, a 100Hz frame rate-doubling function and a "wheel" remote.

Downside: For us, 1080p is too large a resolution for such a small TV. There's no real way you'll be able to distinguish differences between it and 720p at your average 1 - 2m viewing distance.

Unlike other larger-size models from the family, this TV has a comparatively low dynamic contrast of 15,000:1 (down from a 50,000, but which might as well be a gazillion given the nature of dynamic ratings). This means you won't get the theoretically deep, rich blacks you'll see on other Series 6 panels.

Outlook: The design looks great, the feature list is fairly pimped out, but this TV still makes us hesitate. We'd happily accept a lower-res set at this size which means it would downscale to 1,366 x 768-pixel if it meant outlaying less cash. Will the public go for it? Only time will tell.

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