Please stop using your smart TV’s default picture mode—it’s making everything look worse
Most TVs come with default picture settings that are anything but optimized for home viewing. What you get instead is a blown-out, oversaturated picture that may look great at a glance in a store, but is just too much for watching movies and TV shows in the comfort of your home.
Default picture settings on TVs are set for showrooms
It hurts your eyes!
TVs are made to be sold, and in a well-lit showroom, a properly calibrated picture can appear dark and washed out. For this reason, manufacturers usually increase the brightness and color saturation to the maximum so that the TV can withstand harsh lighting and stand out from the crowd.
This is why most TVs display a picture that is too bright and punchy by default. Brands can’t predict which units will end up as display models, so they play it safe and ship each unit with enhanced brightness and color saturation, ready to use. The problem is that these settings are far from ideal for home viewing. Once you unbox your new TV, you’re faced with excessive brightness and oversaturated colors that don’t do justice to movies, shows, or games.
On top of that, many TVs come with certain post-processing features enabled by default, some of which can actually hurt picture quality. The bad news is that almost all brands do this, but the good news is that you can fix the problem in just a few minutes by dialing back or turning off these settings.
- Display technology
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55 inches
- Refresh rate
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144Hz
Samsung’s ‘The Frame’ is a stunning 4K QLED TV, perfect for any wall. This latest model comes with customizable black or white frames, a slim design, stunning visuals, and plenty of apps to stream your favorite content.
You can improve the picture quality of your TV with just a few adjustments
All it takes is a few minutes of your time
Now the easiest way to improve image quality is to enable Cinematographer mode. This preset brings together a number of picture settings aimed at providing more accurate colors, adjusting brightness to a comfortable level, disabling motion smoothing, and disabling other post-processing features that may reduce image quality.
If you prefer to fine-tune things yourself, the first setting to turn off is motion smoothing (also called motion interpolation). This makes everything look unnaturally fluid, which is why it’s commonly called the “soap opera effect.” Filmmaker mode usually turns it off automatically, but you can also turn it off manually. That said, motion smoothing isn’t always bad. You should leave it on when watching sports, playing games, or watching quick documentaries.
Another parameter that can downright degrade image quality is sharpness. Crank it too high and the picture becomes noisy, with objects surrounded by fine halos as the TV artificially enhances the edges, which in turn destroys the finer details. You should either turn the sharpness all the way down or keep it very low.
Other settings you may want to change include contrast, color, brightness, and backlight. Contrast and Color adjusts the overall contrast and color saturation. In most cases, the default settings will make the colors “vibrant” and the image eye-catching. This is anything but positive for the long-term viewing experience, as it can result in color clipping, crushing of color details, and diminished shadow detail. The good news is that you can fine-tune the color saturation and contrast on each TV until you’re happy with the result.
Brightness is a little trickier. Set it too high and the image will appear washed out; Set it too low and you risk getting a pitch-black image that loses detail in dark scenes. For best results, select a dark scene in your favorite movie or TV show (or game) and adjust the brightness until you can notice detail in the shadows while the image still appears relatively dark.
The backlight setting adjusts the intensity of the backlight on TVs that use it, including FALD (full-array local dimming) TVs, or the brightness of individual pixels on OLED TVs. Increasing this option will make the image brighter overall without washing out shadow detail like the Brightness adjustment can. The higher the amount of ambient lighting in your home, the higher you will want to set the backlight.
In general, enabling Cinematographer mode is the easiest way to improve your TV’s picture quality. Some TVs have similar picture presets, usually called Cinema, Theater, Movie or something similar, which should also look pretty solid. If Cinematographer mode seems too dark or bland for your taste, check out the other similarly named modes available on your TV. Whatever you do, I recommend avoiding modes called Vivid, Dynamic, Bright, or similar.
- Dimensions
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57 x 33 x 3.0 (without stand)
- Display technology
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Mini-LED LCD
- Brand
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Hisense
- Refresh rate
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Up to 144Hz
- Resolution
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4K (3840 x 2160)
- HDR?
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Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Advanced HDR
The Hisense U7N is an affordable TV with great specs, impressive brightness, and all the gaming features you’ll need, including a high refresh rate display and HDMI 2.1 ports.
If you like the way your TV looks with its default settings, that’s great too
Switching to Cinematographer mode and dialing back motion smoothing and sharpening works well for most people, but if you prefer the default image, that’s fine too! No one can decide what is best for you.
I only ask you to check the Filmmaker and Cinema modes and try watching a few scenes (or a few episodes of your favorite TV show) with motion smoothing turned off and sharpness reduced. If you don’t like the way your TV’s picture looks, you can always go back.
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