Samsung declares The Body Professional: might this be the right TV?

Samsung’s The Body has been enormously in style ever since its launch. There’s no scarcity of imitators at this level, with different producers attempting their hand at making a TV that seamlessly blends in with dwelling decor and may convincingly seem like wall artwork when idle. However none have captured lightning in a bottle fairly like Samsung.

And in 2025, Samsung is trying to fend off copycats by introducing The Body Professional. With the art work aspect of issues nicely dealt with, now the corporate is aiming to make The Body Professional a superb TV for all the pieces else. The Body has nailed the aesthetics and elegance from the beginning. Individuals purchase it for the vibe greater than the rest. However as a TV, it’s at all times simply been, nicely… superb. There wasn’t a lot wow issue when it comes to brightness or the general image high quality that got here with the good design. That is likely to be altering now.

There are two fundamental upgrades that put the “professional” in The Body Professional. First, Samsung is shifting to Mini LED, which the corporate says will give The Body Professional a lift in distinction, brightness, and black ranges. The common Body, which isn’t going anyplace, has by no means provided any native dimming to talk of.

However there’s an necessary caveat: this isn’t Mini LED within the common sense. Usually, Mini LED TVs comprise a ton of small dimming zones behind the display screen. This lets them be far more exact in lighting up solely the sections of the show that want it whereas preserving black ranges and shadow element elsewhere. The Body Professional doesn’t try this.

As an alternative, Samsung is putting Mini LEDs alongside the underside of the display screen, whereas claiming that this method nonetheless produces some stage of native dimming. To me, all of it nonetheless very a lot appears like an edge-lit TV. However I’ll give this “Mini LED” tech a good probability at any time when I get one in for overview.

Samsung can also be boosting The Body Professional’s most refresh fee from 120Hz to 144Hz, so PC players can get even smoother visuals than earlier than. However if you happen to have been hoping “professional” would possibly lastly imply Dolby Imaginative and prescient help, that’s nonetheless a no.

The Body has at all times been one thing of a compromise; possibly you’ve bought a major different who refuses to permit a uninteresting black rectangle into the lounge. So that you, being the nice and thoughtful individual you’re, in the end comply with “settle” on The Body. After first listening to about The Body Professional, I used to be hopeful that it might be a lot much less of a compromise.

However this asterisk round Mini LED has me rather less excited. Like current fashions, The Body Professional’s show has a matte end to present your most well-liked artwork a extra genuine look and masks the truth that you simply’re taking a look at a display screen. However matte screens can typically reduce a show’s punch, so real Mini LED backlighting might’ve helped fairly a bit in that regard.

The second main enchancment is that The Body Professional now not has a skinny wire operating between it and Samsung’s breakout field that homes all of the HDMI inputs and the TV’s different brains: that connection has gone totally wi-fi. It will lead to a fair cleaner look with much less cable muddle. And the Wi-fi One Join Field, which helps as much as Wi-Fi 7, eliminates yet one more telltale signal that The Body Professional is a tv. Now, all you’ve bought to fret about concealing is the show’s energy twine. Samsung says the wi-fi connection between the field and TV works at distances of as much as 10 meters, “even with obstacles in its path.”

The Body Professional can also be getting the identical litany of AI-powered options as Samsung’s different 2025 TVs. AI is such a spotlight this 12 months that there’s a devoted button on the distant for activating Click on to Search, which may present you “who the actors are in a given scene, the place that scene is happening, and even the clothes the characters are carrying,” in keeping with Samsung’s press launch.

A brand new Samsung Meals characteristic can acknowledge dishes onscreen and give you the recipes to make them — or one thing in the identical ballpark, at the least. Past that, the corporate is dialing up its AI-enhanced image and sound optimizations, and AI can also be reaching into accessibility options like Dwell Translate, which may “immediately translate closed captions on stay broadcasts in as much as seven languages.” That’s very neat.

The important query is one I can’t reply but: how a lot will this factor price? How rather more costly will The Body Professional be in comparison with the common mannequin? Samsung received’t be sharing pricing particulars till nearer to the spring when it ships. If the corporate will get cocky and goes too excessive, that might break loads of the enchantment right here. However if you happen to already know that some model of The Body is in your future, you’re in all probability very joyful that The Body Professional now exists.

Pictures by Chris Welch / The Verge