Samsung TV Dimming Issues | Fixing a Dim Screen

If you’ve got a Samsung TV, then there’s nothing worse than having the brightness on your television too high or too low. It can impact your ability to see the screen, and it can ruin your whole watching experience altogether.

Sometimes with a new smart TV, it might appear to be darker than it should be. And even if you change your brightness settings, this might not be the solution to the problem that you’re looking for.

Depending on your TV and its situation, there will be a different resolution to your dimming issue. So, let’s look at why your Samsung TV is dimming, and what you can do to resolve it.

Samsung TV Dimming Issues

In most scenarios, this is actually just a feature of modern Samsung TVs. They are designed to work with the lighting around you, much like the newer models of Macbook do too.

Samsung TVs have an inbuilt feature which they now call their Ambient Light Detection feature, but in the past it was referred to as ECO sensor. This is actually designed to work with your surroundings, and its intention is to minimize the power usage of your TV overall.

What does this mean? Well, when the light around you gets brighter, the TV screen will get brighter so you can see it clearly. And if you turn the lights off in the evening, then the TV screen will dim down to match your surroundings, saving energy.

You’re not the only person that’s dealt with this Samsung TV dimming problem. Although it’s not technically a problem, and more just a feature of your smart TV.

Can I turn off this dimming mode?

Some people don’t like to have the dimming feature on their Samsung TV, and that’s fine. It’s up to you whether you want to have this feature on or off.

If you do want to turn it off, then all you need to do is go into your Settings, go to General and then find the option for your Ambient Light Detection. Here, you can turn off the dimming of your TV.

If you have an older Samsung TV model, then you might need to turn it off a different way. Instead, go to System, then into Eco Solution and finally into Eco Sensor. There, you can turn this feature on and off very easily too.

For the most part, Samsung’s dimming settings are actually pretty good. But much of this really depends on your lighting. If you have a brightly lit room, then the ambient light detection function should work pretty well.

Adaptive/Dynamic Contrast

Although it’s not exactly the same issue, another thing that’s often referred to as the screen dimming is something referred to as adaptive contrast, or more commonly with Samsung TVs as Dynamic Contrast.

This is heavily related to your televisions contrast ratio. The contrast ratio is the difference between the darkest colour that your television is capable of produce (black) and the brightest colour that your television is capable of producing (white).

With a TV that uses dynamic contrasting, it will try to make an even greater difference between the two. So, the light colours will appear even brighter, and the dark colours will appear even darker than they did before. This is what people sometimes refer to as dimming, as it makes the screen darker.

Usually, you can change the Dynamic Contrast settings of your television in the settings. You can choose to have it on high or medium, or if you’re not a fan of it, then you can turn it off completely.

Backlight Problems

If you’ve done both of these things and you’re still having a problem with your television, then it might be a problem with the TV itself. One main thing that could cause your TV to become dim and dark is an issue with the LED backlights behind your television screen.

Unfortunately, the only fix for this (aside from doing it all yourself which is pretty difficult) is actually getting a technician to fix it for you. The pieces that you need for fixing the problem are relatively cheap, but depending on which technician you use it could cost a little bit to fix in labour costs.

Usually, this is cause by a short in the circuit of your TV’s backlight. In some cases, you might not be able to make anything out on the screen at all. This is more than just “dimming”, and you’ll be able to tell if this is the problem that you have.

Conclusion

Whether your TV dimming is just a feature of your television or it’s an actually a problem with your TV, hopefully this articles helps you to resolve your problem. In most cases, it’s going to be down to the automatic dimming feature of your TV, or dynamic contrast, also known as global dimming.

You can also check to see whether your TV is in Movie Mode and if turning this off makes any difference. You should also play around with your screen brightness too to see if you can stop it from dimming. If none of these help, then it could be a problem with your backlight, which is a bit more complex.

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About Jon

Hey, I'm Jon. I'm an engineer by trade, so it makes sense that I'm obsessed with anything technology related! On the weekends, you can find me playing around with my computers or fixing something around the house. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to get in touch.

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