Samsung BD-F5900 Control

There are two ways to control the Samsung BD-F5900 - the top buttons and the remote. As I mentioned, the top buttons on the unit are touch capacitive. The buttons respond well though I found them to be oddly laid out. Within the circle, there is eject on the left, stop on the top, play/pause on the right, and power on the bottom. If it were me, I'd have put power on the top, eject on the bottom, play/pause on the right, and stop on the left. I figure they put the power on the bottom because that'd be the most used button but, frankly, I don't agree.

The second way to control the Samsung BD-F5900 is the included remote. I've reviewed a few Samsung displays and my parents (at my recommendation) own one so I'm very familiar with their remotes. It was very eerie how similar the Samsung BD-F5900 remote is to the others I've held. It is a much less "high-end" remote for a much more basic device, but the aesthetics, shape, and general hand-feel were remarkably similar. In this I was very impressed.

There is a large, dedicated Netflix button just below the play button. When I first picked up the remote, I was worried that I'd often miss-hit the Netflix button when I meant to hit play, but that never happened. Most of the other buttons are similar sizes and shapes with a few exceptions. First, the controls for the Blu-ray playback are white rather than the black of the rest of the buttons. They are also angled toward each other (the top row leans toward the bottom and vice versa). This makes them fairly easy to find in the dark. The up/down/left/right cursor/selection controls are also angled toward the center 'enter' button. While these buttons are all black, the angling and slightly different shapes makes them a bit easier to find.

The major knock, and it is a big one, is that the remote is not backlit. Those white Blu-ray control buttons are of the 'glow in the dark' variety. That works fine for the first few seconds after you shut off the lights, but after that, they are very hard to find (and impossible to read). With the two skip buttons next to each other on the left, and the fast forward/rewind buttons on the right, this forces you to memorize their location. The cursor control buttons, even with their angling, are very hard to find in the dark. The rest of the buttons you'll just have to memorize.