Samsung U8000F (UE43U8000F) review

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Samsung absolutely dominated the affordable TV world, with generation after generation of cut-price TV bangers.

But then, two or three years ago, Samsung’s budget TV wheels came off a bit.

We can only speculate about why that happened – though we can say for certain that the slight drop off in Samsung’s budget TV quality awkwardly coincided with the irresistible rise of some relatively new value-focused brands, particularly TCL and Hisense.

Which brings us to the U8000F. Can Samsung’s feature-rich 43-inch budget TV start the process of rebuilding the South Korean brand’s former cheap and cheerful TV glories?

Price

The 43-inch U8000F’s £239 / $250 / AU$749 price really doesn’t seem a lot to ask for a 43-inch TV wearing the Samsung badge. Especially one with a native 4K screen capable of playing HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ content, and which sports both Samsung’s feature-rich Tizen smart system and a decent number of gaming features.

The U8000F range is also available in (deep breath) 50-, 55-, 58-, 65-, 70-, 75- and 85-inch screen sizes, priced at £279, £329, £349, £449, £699, £649 and £999 in the UK, respectively. And yes, the 70-inch does appear to cost more than the 75-inch at the time of writing for some reason.

The closest rival to the 43-inch U8000F to find its way onto our test benches in 2025 has to be TCL’s 43P7K. This costs a tenner less in the UK, has Google TV smarts, and boasts Quantum Dot colour technology (which the UE43U8000F does not).

Design

The UE43U8000F’s screen sits within a neatly trim and attractively matte-finished black frame that’s also strikingly slim around the back. The slender extremities of the rear, though, soon give way to an actually quite chunky backside by today’s standards, while the little black slot in (no screws required) feet look cheap and cheerful at best, and a bit comical and stunted at worst.

Build quality feels quite lightweight by Samsung’s usually high standards – even though the U8000F’s so-called MetalStream design is apparently created from a single sheet of metal to create a “seamless and modern aesthetic".

The rear panel features some quite striking sculpting, though, for people fond of looking at the back of their TVs for some reason, and unless you’re wall-hanging it, you won’t really be aware of the rear’s cumbersome depth.

The TV ships with two remote controls: a regular chunky one with a full button count, and a much slimmer ‘smart’ one with a smoother finish and a more stripped-back set of controls. Both actually work well, though the slimmer smart one is more comfortable to hold. Note that the smart remote with this TV does not carry a solar panel or rechargeable batteries, as many of Samsung’s 2025 smart remotes do.

Features

The U8000F is an LCD TV illuminated by direct LED backlighting. There’s no local dimming or Mini LED lighting in play here, which is unsurprising, given the price. The panel is a VA type, though. These traditionally deliver better contrast (but slightly reduced viewing angles) than the IPS alternative.

The UE43U8000F doesn’t join its more premium Samsung siblings in using Quantum Dots to produce its colours, but the PurColor system driven by Samsung’s Crystal processor is still claimed to deliver a wider gamut than most budget TVs can.

Smart services on the U8000F are provided by Samsung’s own Tizen platform. This isn’t the most advanced Tizen system in town, lacking the Samsung Ambient features (art-based screensavers) and built-in voice control support of more premium Samsung TVs. Though you can add voice support via Alexa and Google external voice recognition devices, if you have any.

You do get the comprehensive range of streaming and catch-up TV apps available on more premium Samsung TVs, though, as well as Samsung’s dedicated Gaming Hub screen.

Cramming so many Tizen features into the hands of the U8000F’s quad-core processor does cause quite a bit of sluggishness to creep into proceedings as you try to zip around the menus and fire up different apps. Also, as ever with Samsung TVs, there’s no support for the Freeview Play or Freely platforms, though all the key UK terrestrial broadcaster catch-up apps are provided individually.

You can control the TV via Samsung’s SmartThings mobile app as an alternative to the two physical remotes, and it’s also possible if you happen to own a Galaxy Watch to control the TV via hand gestures and movements.

Connections are predictably down compared with Samsung’s premium TVs, as you get just three HDMIs, a single 5V USB port, an Ethernet port, and an RF tuner input – alongside, of course, the now expected Bluetooth and wi-fi wireless options. As this is a 60Hz screen, the HDMIs don’t take in 4K/120Hz gaming feeds.

The screen is far from a bust for gamers, though. ALLM support enables the screen to automatically switch into its fastest responding Game mode when a game source is detected, at which point input lag is reduced to an impressively speedy 9.9ms. There’s also support for VRR, albeit only up to 60Hz, and support for the HGiG system, where set-up routines on your console enable it to choose the optimum HDR for your particular TV. Plus, there’s the Gaming Hub mentioned earlier, which brings all your gaming sources – including an extensive array of streamed gaming services – into one dedicated screen accessible directly from the Tizen home menu.

Since this is a Samsung TV, there’s no support for the Dolby Vision HDR format, with its extra scene-by-scene picture information. You do still get Samsung’s home-grown HDR10+ alternative to Dolby Vision, though, alongside the more basic HDR10 and HLG formats.

Sound on the UE43U8000F, finally, is provided by a 20W stereo system, bolstered by such features as OTS Lite (which in this set-up uses clever processing and left/right volume variations to try and make sounds appear to be coming from the correct part of the screen); Q-Symphony, which lets the TV’s speakers join forces with those in an attached Samsung soundbar; and an Adaptive Sound option that continually analyses incoming sound so that it can optimise the way it’s presented.

Picture

We test the UE43U8000F right alongside the TCL 43P7K we mentioned earlier – a comparison that reveals a heady mixture of relative strengths and limitations.

Starting with the good news, the UE43U8000F’s pictures enjoy a relatively balanced look, where colours all seem to exist in exactly the same tonal universe for whatever movie or TV show you’re watching.

In other words, no tones look either unduly exaggerated or relatively washed out versus the rest. This sort of consistency is crucial to delivering an immersive and compelling picture – and, happily, it holds good across all three of the main picture presets we recommend: Standard, Movie and Filmmaker Mode.

The U8000F also handles motion better than its TCL rival for both camera pans and, especially, the movement of people and objects within the frame.

Moving objects look sharper and less impacted by judder or processing softness – especially if you choose the Picture Clarity Custom option, turn off noise reduction (at least with native 4K sources) and then tone down the judder reduction setting to around its level-four option. With this taken care of, motion looks as good as we’ve ever seen from a budget TV.

This, together with the U8000F’s colours also looking natural and balanced (especially in the Standard preset), means that its pictures really do look very watchable for most of the time. Much more so than you would normally expect to see for this sort of money. This needs to be kept in mind as we now run through areas where Samsung’s budget TV doesn’t perform quite so well.

Starting with how it can look a little dull compared with the TCL 43P7K. You can get the Samsung looking closer in brightness and dynamism to the TCL if you push its Contrast Enhancer feature up to High in the Standard preset, but this can cause a little blueness to creep into dark scenes where previously there were impressively neutral black tones. This mode can also cause noticeable clipping in the brightest parts of HDR pictures. So while we recommend trying it out, especially in a bright room setting, it won’t suit everyone.

The UE43U8000F’s native 4K pictures don’t look quite as sharp or three-dimensional as those of the TCL 43P7K, either – at least where relatively static shots are concerned and the Samsung’s superior motion performance isn’t getting the chance to shine.

When it comes to handling dark scenes, the U8000F is again something of a mixed bag. In its Standard preset, which ultimately becomes our favourite, it manages to produce impressively deep black levels during very dark scenes, with only faint hints of grey to disrupt the immersive blackness. The screen’s global dimming system does take a lot of brightness out of the screen in Standard mode to achieve these black levels, but manages to avoid subtle shadow details being crushed out of the picture.

In keeping with other recent Samsung budget LCD TVs, though, very dark scenes can reveal areas of backlight clouding, as well as slight ‘jetting’ coming in from the screen’s bottom left and right corners. The clouding is fainter than that of the similarly afflicted TCL 43P7K, but it’s still enough to be a little distracting at times. Especially in the Movie and Filmmaker Mode presets, which take a less aggressive approach to global dimming and so leave dark areas looking generally greyer than the Standard mode.

Samsung’s attempts to optimise the UE43U8000F’s dark scene performance also cause the backlighting to dim and brighten quite distractingly with scenes that contain sharp cuts between dark and light shots. This is at its most noticeable in Standard mode, and almost disappears in Filmmaker Mode. Almost, but not quite, despite the Filmmaker Mode turning off both of the dynamic tone mapping and contrast enhancement features that are really the only adjustable features that might alter this backlight behaviour. In other words, this appears to be a distracting issue you can’t completely remove from the picture.

The Standard preset also completely turns the backlighting off for fades to black, resulting in a sudden drop into total blackness followed by a burst back of returning light that’s actually much more likely to distract you from what you’re watching than the bit of residual greyness over a fade to black you get without the backlight turned fully off.

The UE43U8000F’s pictures become really quite flat-looking in the Filmmaker Mode and, to a slightly lesser extent, Movie presets, and this in turn creates a slightly waxy look to skin tones you don’t get in Standard mode. Finally in the negative column – though this is an issue with every budget VA-type of TV – contrast takes a big hit if you have to watch the screen from much of an angle.

While the UE43U8000F’s issues meant we struggle to settle on a picture mode that we can completely lose ourselves in (which is particularly frustrating because we feel that at least some of the issues could quite easily have been avoided), we definitely need to wrap this section up by stressing that for most of the time, at least, a carefully set up UE43U8000F is much easier on the eye than the pictures you get from most of the budget competition.

Sound

The UE43U8000F sounds pretty strong for its money. For starters, surprisingly, the OTS Lite system actually delivers really quite well on its promise of placing sound effects in the right place on the screen, despite only having two speakers to work with. In fact, it even manages to make some sound effects sound like they exist outside the screen’s boundaries when appropriate. This all helps to make a good movie mix feel busy and involving.

The OTS Lite system’s work includes helping speech appear to be coming from the screen rather than somewhere below or behind it, and while the TV isn’t the loudest in town, it does deliver just enough bass to stop the sound becoming thin. Yet at the same time, it always sensibly stays within its speakers’ limitations, never succumbing to buzzing, crackling or dropouts.

A bit more raw power and volume from the speakers would have been good, as would a touch more sensitivity to the faintest details in a mix. Overall, though, even more than with its pictures, the U8000F’s sound manages to be balanced, clean and confident enough to draw you into the onscreen action.

Verdict

The 43-inch Samsung U8000F isn’t the most dynamic picture performer in its class, and it’s prone to just enough distracting backlight issues to deny it five-star status. For most of the time, though, at least in its Standard preset, its pictures and sound are far more balanced and immersive than those of your average budget TV.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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