Samsung BD-F5900 First Impressions and Build Quality

The Samsung BD-F5900 came well boxed in a very small package. As you might expect with a Blu-ray player, there really wasn't much to it. The player, a remote, and a manual. There was a paper reminding me to check for updates to the firmware. Like most users, I totally ignored this and never really had a problem with the player. I did update it eventually just to see if it would make any difference but, like most Blu-ray player updates, it seemed to be focused on making sure some newer (that I didn't own) discs would play back correctly. I updated it over the wireless connection and it stalled out a few times but eventually it took.

The Samsung BD-F5900 is a very good-looking player with a gloss black finish on all visible surfaces. Like many components with gloss finishes, the Samsung BD-F5900 came with a plastic sheet stuck to all of them to keep fingerprints off. The right front edge of the Samsung BD-F5900 is curved which highlights the round iPod-eque control panel on top. While the control looks like it should spin to fast forward or rewind, it doesn't. There are capacitive controls for play/pause, eject, stop, and power. Just below this, there is a large readout on the front which will let you know the status of your disc or the player.  In the Settings, under "General" it says there is a way of adjusting the output of this readout but there doesn't seem to be an actual control for it yet. I had the player set in my rack off to the side so it didn't bother me. Some consumers may find the brightness distracting; others might find the size of the display (large) to be refreshing and easy to read.

The Samsung BD-F5900 is a light player but you'd expect that from a standalone Blu-ray box. The BD-F5900 is not designed with audiophiles in mind as you can tell from the back of the box. With an HDMI port, an optical output, and an Ethernet connection, this player is designed for those that have fully made the switch to HDMI. It is possible to send the audio out the optical port and the video (and audio) out the HDMI port, for those that have a high definition display but a legacy receiver.  However, keep in mind that the lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD will only output via HDMI.

One thing I was surprised not to find in the box was an antenna. For me, one of the big draws of the Samsung BD-F5900 was its built-in Wi-Fi. For many devices, an external antenna is a requirement. It was nice that Samsung had built the antenna into the BD-F5900. External antennas, in my experience, tend to be a weak point - i.e. they tend to get in the way and/or get snapped off. An internal antenna solves that particular problem. The front has a USB port under a small cover. Oddly, the warning about switching off that input (or powering down the BD-F5900) before disconnecting the USB source was located on the back.