Samsung sero TV review: Is the rotating screen the future of home entertainment?

With more videos being filmed in portrait mode thanks to the growth of TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, we reviewed a brand-new television set that brings them to the big screen

If you have a compatible phone, such as the Samsung galaxy, you can connect to the television for screen mirroring (The Independent/ iStock)

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Samsung sero TV: £1,299 ‒ Buy now

In nearly 10 years of reviewing TV, I've had hundreds of programmes thrust my way, some good, some Belgravia, but never a physical TV.

Until recently, that is, when Samsung sent its new model, the 43-inch sero, over for examination.

The sero, retailed at £1,299, has all the usual bells and whistles of the modern smart TV, with one crucial addition: at the push of a button, the screen rotates to a portrait rather than landscape setting.

Now that so many videos are in portrait, on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, why would you not want the option to watch them in the same format on the big screen?

TVs have evolved a lot over the past 20 years, but mostly in quite predictable ways: wider, thinner, more higher definition. Crucially, they have grown steadily cheaper. A set that would have been accessible only to tycoons a few years ago can now be yours for a few hundred pounds.

For all the talk of the “golden age of TV”, ushered in by HBO, Netflix, Amazon and the other new streaming services, this has also been a golden age of televisions.

This has coincided with an explosion in viewing devices. We view as much on laptops or phones or tablets as on traditional TVs. “I don't own a TV” was once an impeccable cultural signifier that you preferred opera or Latin translation for your evening entertainment, but it's no longer a reliable way of indicating you don't watch any.

You might be gobbling down just as much Selling Sunset as the rest of us, just furtively under the duvet rather than out and proud in the front-room window.

What hasn't changed, however, is the landscape image format. The ratio changed to the standard 16:9 with the introduction of widescreen TVs, which made it better to watch films on TV, but at the price of awkwardly reshaping some old programmes in 4:3 that had been designed for squarer televisions.

There was a minor controversy around Disney+'s reshaping of The Simpsons to fit widescreens, which cut off a few visual jokes that happened at the top or bottom of the screen. (There is now an option to watch them in their original ratio.) It feels more satisfying to watch in widescreen, and certainly more cinematic, but I'm not sure how much of that is just habit.

On first impressions, the sero is a perfectly good modern TV. It has a large crisp screen and a smart black mounting. Once you've jumped through the various sign-in hoops there are options to control it using an app, a designated Netflix button on the remote, and the other expected accoutrements.

Left in portrait setting, it looks strange in the living room, like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey that sets the monkeys off.

The problem for the sero, which is not really its fault, is that there isn't much to watch on it yet. Videos on Instagram and TikTok are fast and disposable, designed to be recorded and viewed on the go. The ones I sample in portrait don't gain much from the big screen, and in fact it is a little disconcerting to see figures so large.

The shape of phone screens has been dictated by the shape of the human hand, and phones' evolution from traditional handsets, as much as the viewing experience. What works well in the hand is not necessarily the ideal experience for the viewer.

Equally, there is no innate reason for the preference of the widescreen 16:9 format. The earliest films were in 4:3, because one of Thomas Edison's employees decided on it. The early TVs were made to be 4:3 as a result. Films found ways to go wider, to compete with TV.

The 16:9 standard is a compromise between wider and squarer options. At the moment, the Sero feels like a solution to a problem nobody has, But it could prove to be the vanguard of a revolution in viewing. Maybe in future all films will be shot in vertical 16:9, the better to appeal to viewers raised on phone videos. Rather than just scrolling wondering what to watch on Netflix, you might have to wonder what shape to watch it in, too.

The verdict

For TikTok obsessives with the cash to spare, I expect this could become a must-buy. The rest of us will probably wait until the entertainment world has caught up with the delivery system.

Buy the Samsung sero 4K HDR smart TV now

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