Think of this 26 incher from Samsung as any one of last year’s larger models, shrunk down Mike Teavee style into a kitchen, bedroom, or dorm-sized model. It sports the same classic piano-black case as its bigger cousins — as well as the same cheesy start-up sound that chimed every time we powered it up.
But the 26A450’s bright, detailed picture impressed. Yeah yeah yeah, it’s only 720p. But in this size you’d have to almost strap it to your head to notice. And there’s nothing cheesy about its vivid color — surprisingly accurate for a set this small., even besting many of this year’s small models. It scores surprisingly well in our video processing tests, It’s a bit challenged in the areas of de-interlacing 24 frame-per-second film-based HD sources and removing jaggies from diagonal lines, but then so are many of the 32-inch and smaller TVs we’ve tested this year. And who really worries about 24 FPS film sources on a 26-incher