Even better, these good looks accompany solid image quality and a long list of desirable features, including 3D support (with a pair of active-shutter glasses), Wi-Fi, a built-in Web browser, oodles of apps, and robust streaming-media services. You can even make Skype video calls with an optional webcam, and an unusual two-sided remote provides a QWERTY keyboard to help with data entry.

But with a list price of $2700 and street prices in the $1600-to-$2500 range (as of September 15, 2011), the UN46D8000YF is one of the pricier sets in its size class. If you don't plan on using its advanced features, you may prefer a less expensive set with good image quality and comparable size.

In our juried image quality tests, the UN46D8000YF earned high scores across the board. Viewers particularly praised its brightness/contrast, color, and skin tones. Judges did notice some artifacts in aerial shots of buildings in The Dark Knight on Blu-ray Disc, and some found the color in one or two recorded HDTV clips to be oversaturated. But other judges praised the same clips, and almost everyone liked the way it handled color in the DVD movies. Despite minor issues, the set's 240Hz refresh rate and Samsung's Clear Motion technology seemed to work pretty well on the motion benchmarks, too.

Like other LED-backlit sets, the UN46D8000YF is parsimonious in its energy consumption, drawing no current when powered down, and a meager 66 watts per hour (on average) when in use. Its overall green score was 92 out of 100, which we rate as very good.

Because it has almost no bezel, the set looks a bit small for its screen size, but it also looks very sleek. To keep the set slim (it's 1.2 inches thick, not counting the pedestal), Samsung put ports along two edges of a recessed area on the right rear of the set, created skinny adapters for connecting component and composite video inputs (one each), and recommends using HDMI cables no thicker than 0.55 inch.