Why you should use Samsung Smart Calibration to tweak the picture on your TV

I’m pretty confident that 99% of people reading this have never done anything to really adjust the picture settings on their TV but you have to ask yourself next time you sit down to enjoy a movie – is this the best this movie could look?

For owners of a select range of the latest Samsung TVs there’s a brilliant calibration process available in the SmartThings app that sets the perfect colour and picture settings for your TV.

In simple terms, the colour you see on the screen may not be truly representative of the content you’re watching.  And this is especially so in the case of movies.  Directors love to tweak every little bit of a scene to bring your eye to a certain area, but also to ensure the story and their efforts are conveyed to you in the perfect way.

But if you’re watching Movies in “Standard” picture mode, then you’re probably not seeing that.  Many TV’s, Samsung included, also include a movie specific picture mode called Filmmaker, but I think many people are just stuck on Dynamic or Standard for most of their viewing.

Using the Samsung Calibration process will allow you to tweak the colour settings of the TV, or in the most advanced mode, even create a whole new Movie viewing mode.

To do this, you need first to check your model is compatible with the SmartThings Screen Calibration process.

At the time of writing this included the QN900C/QN90C/QN900B/QN800B/QN700B/QN95B/QN90B – which each will support both Basic and Professional Calibration modes, while Basic calibration is also available on these models: S95C/S90C/QN85C/Q80C/Q70C/Q60C/S95B/QN85B/Q80B/Q70B/Q60B/The Serif/The Frame/The Sero.

Basic mode is quick and simple, and to my eyes does a great job at adjusting the colour and brightness levels to a natural tone.

Think of it this way – we all play around with the settings when we first get the TV, and, every single panel is ever so slightly different – so those colour settings provided out of the box might need a tweak to give you the best colour.

You do this all with your compatible Smartphone.  Basically any Samsung S, Z, Fold, Flip or Note model smartphone released after January 2019 will work with this process, as will many recent iPhone models

The compatible TV you want to calibrate must be paired with your Samsung SmartThings account, and appear within the app.  Once it does, you simply press on the TV in the app, and Calibration will appear as one of the menu options.

Here you will either see just basic, or both basic and professional modes.

To get going you simply press your choice and your TV will display a Smart Calibration screen with a white box in the middle.  This is where you hold your phone, screen out, main cameras facing the TV up to that white box.  You can hold it ever so gently off the screen, but you should be super close – within a centimetre for the best results.

For about 20-30 seconds your screen will flash colours and during this whole time the phone is “seeing” those colours and making assessments about how close they are to expected.

Your TV will then make adjustments and display a beautiful aerial photo.  On your smartphone you can click on the Original, or Calibrated buttons which will show you on the TV how the picture has changed.

What I noticed was it felt more natural, and less intense – I feel like whenever I make adjustments I always go too far.  Proof!

If you have one of the models that supports Professional mode, you can go a step further choosing that option.

You will need a tripod for this so your phone can sit close to the screen or a much longer period – this test will take 5-8 minutes and does far more than “just” colour.  In this mode your compatible TV and Phone will work together to perform a thorough calibration for 20-point white balance, grayscale linearity, gamma, and chromaticity.

I don’t even know what half those things are – but I can tell you when I fired up the movie in my new Movie (Calibrated) mode it looked epic.

When you spend your hard earned cash on a brand new TV for your home, you should get the most from it – so check out the Smart Calibration for your TV today.

This article was written with the support of Samsung Australia