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Although it hits plenty of high points, the Samsung UNES8000 LED TV cannot ultimately justify its high price.

The Samsung US55ES8000 LCD TV is beautiful in design, and delivers an excellent picture once you make the adjustments. The voice and motion-control features... actually worked, and will likely work even better as Samsung tweaks the firmware in light of customer feedback.

... if it is an all-round smart TV experience you are after, with brilliant picture quality to boot, the E8000 is as good as it gets.

Samsung’s ES8000 is a worthy update to its predecessor, and the company demonstrates its edge over much of the competition with the Smart TV functionality.

In truth the pseudo-Kinect control options are a little gimmicky, and contribute significantly to the set’s high ticket price. However, its excellent image quality and peerless smart TV connectability ensure you won’t feel short-changed.

While there may be other less expensive HDTVs (mostly plasmas) that arguably deliver better value-for-money when it comes to 2D picture performance in a darker viewing environment, the Samsung UE55ES8000 remains one of the best LED LCD TVs we’ve seen lately.

Make no bones about it – the UE55ES8000 is a magnificent TV. There aren’t many sets that can match its incredible feature list and level of innovation.

We are still not impressed with the Smart TV platform but features do not weigh much in our book; picture quality does and therefore we award ES8000 with our Highly Recommended Award.