Samsung MovingStyle Review

Design

• 27-inch display
• Flexible, moveable design
• Three hours of battery life

If you hadn’t guessed it, the MovingStyle looks a lot different to a regular TV. The 27-inch Quad HD screen sits high, on a wheeled stand, mounted onto an adjustable arm that lets you change its height and also its orientation. It also has a built-in battery that’s good for three hours away from a plug, meaning you aren’t fixed to a specific viewing location – a big part of its charm.

While that in itself is pretty cool, where it really moves things forward from competition like LG’s StanbyME 2, is the ability to remove the screen from the stand entirely. The display has a built-in handle that doubles up as a kickstand, meaning you can take it off and place it on a piece of furniture for even more flexibility.

Considering the wheelable base is very heavy (about 20kg), having this as an option is handy for moving it up or down the stairs, or even into the garden, without having to relocate the stand too. That three-hour battery life is the same whether it’s on the stand or not.

Getting the MovingStyle set up is pretty straightforward – just make sure you read the instructions first to avoid lugging the hefty stand out of the box prematurely. In fact, it needs to be slotted into a rest in the packaging, which then allows you to secure the pole into the base with four screws. You can then hoist it out and stand it up. The screen just clicks on to a circular attachment on the adjustable arm.

This all works well but I do wish the stand had a brake – I have to either hold the stand with one hand or put a foot on the base while reconnecting the screen to ensure it doesn’t roll backwards in the process.

As for colour, the MovingStyle is currently only available in white, which means it’s a little more “look at me” than some people might like. But a TV on a pole is never really going to blend in, so I guess why not lean into it?

It’s worth mentioning that there are two versions of the MovingStyle – a 32-inch 4K version called the MovingStyle Essential (not officially for sale in the UK), and the 27-inch Quad HD version I’m testing.

While the Essential gets the extra resolution, it loses out on a lot of the functionality that makes the MovingStyle so great, namely its ability to run on battery power, the ability to remove the screen from its base, its touchscreen interface, and it only has a 60Hz refresh rate.

Connectivity

• A single HDMI 2.1
• 2 x USB-C
• Bluetooth 5.3

While some people may use it as such, the connectivity on the MovingStyle doesn’t really scream “main TV”. It only features one HDMI 2.1 port (eARC), and two USB-C ports.

The base can be charged via the included power cord, but if you need to charge the display independently, while it’s off its base, you can use one of the USB ports for that.

It also has Bluetooth 5.3 on board, allowing you to connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones to the TV should you wish, while wi-fi allows AirPlay 2, Google Cast and things like screen mirroring.

User Experience

• Tizen OS
• Remote or touchscreen
• Good app selection

The MovingStyle features Samsung’s Tizen OS, which will look familiar to anyone who has used a Samsung TV before, and is generally well laid out and easy to navigate.

You can do this using the included small, solar-rechargeable remote or the touchscreen interface, meaning my kids found their way around it almost embarrassingly easily.

It’s responsive no matter which way you do things. However, you’ll find that not all apps work with the touch interface once you’re in them, meaning you’ll need to grab the remote for those, or use the on-screen controller that pops up. That’s a bit clunky in an otherwise smooth experience, but I’d guess is something that’s out of Samsung’s hands. Netflix and Prime Video work just fine with touch, though.

Finding something to watch is very easy indeed. On the home screen, you have some featured and suggested content from a range of apps, alongside options for live content from Samsung TV Plus. Scroll down and you get a rail of streaming apps, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, ITV X and Apple TV among others. Keep scrolling and you’ll find more rails of themed suggestions, like family favourites, live events and top movies.

On the left hand side, there is a slim vertical menu with some icons. These expand when highlighted, and take you to Samsung’s Gaming Hub, a lifestyle, work and smart home hub called Samsung Daily+, the Samsung Art Store for choosing display art when the TV is not in use (membership required) and a search function.

You can also access the connected devices menu here and all the settings, as well as a shortcut to Samsung’s privacy notices in case you want to review them.

Gaming

• Cloud gaming options
• Slow input lag
• Some gaming specific features

The MovingStyle has a single HDMI 2.1, so you can hook up a games console if you feel so inclined – but I suspect that only casual gamers will be happy with the specs on offer here.

For example, while the MovingStyle offers a 120Hz refresh rate and supports ALLM, there’s no support for VRR. Input lag also sits at around 17ms, which is pretty sluggish for a TV at this price, even if Samsung’s Game Mode will shave off a bit of that when it’s enabled.

There is also Samsung’s Game Bar, which offers a number of settings that will help give you the edge in a game, or otherwise tailor the gaming experience more closely to your taste.

If you don’t have a console, or you’d rather not use up that single precious HDMI port, Samsung’s Game Hub has access to cloud gaming from the likes of Xbox, Amazon Luna and GeForce Now.

Features

• Samsung Vision AI
• Bixby or Alexa voice assistants
• Support for HDR10+

Samsung’s Vision AI leads on the artificial intelligence here, with a shortcut on the remote to load up the Vision AI homescreen, complete with suggested questions and commands. It’s fun to mess around with but I’ve yet to find any compelling reason to use it like this on a telly.

You can set up Bixby or Alexa as your voice assistant of choice, and that is more successful. With Bixby it integrates with Vision AI, and you can navigate the Samsung TV settings a little deeper, but I find Alexa to generally be better in results for content suggestions. I also like that it offers suggestions and nudges for voice activation when you do things via remote.

You can also use it “hands free” if you want to (you can also opt against it if you prefer), whereas Bixby requires you to hold down the mic button.

Samsung’s SmartThings smart home hub is installed on the TV so you can control, view and add any compatible smart home devices on screen. If you already use Alexa for smart home stuff, choosing that as your voice assistant also gives you access to Amazon’s smart home hub.

The processor behind the MovingStyle is the NQ4 AI Gen 2, which was a flagship processor a couple of years ago, and now generally powers their mid to upper-mid range. It’s a very respectable processor indeed, and it shows in an incredibly smooth performance.

The MovingStyle features a matte filter on its screen, which helps to diffuse light in bright rooms and in unconventional viewing positions. There’s an expected pay off in contrast because of this, but it does really work. I’ll talk about picture quality in a moment, but I think it’s the right compromise in a product like this.

It supports HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos, though natively through the TV you wouldn’t really know about the latter. Of course, connecting a soundbar is possible here, but its form factor and use case doesn’t really lend itself to it being a simple solution. Making use of the 2-channel 10W built-in system is going to be something you’re probably going to have to make peace with.

Picture Quality

• Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display
• Could be brighter
• Matte screen filter impacts contrast

It’s fair to say that you probably shouldn’t buy the MovingStyle if you’re incredibly discerning over picture quality, or want the best picture for your money. You are undoubtedly paying a good chunk of the MovingStyle’s asking price for its rather quirky functionality, and you’re going to want to really appreciate and make use of that for the pay offs you make in picture quality.

First off, the screen is Quad HD (2560 x 1440), so not even 4K. Even the most budget TVs pack a 4K display these days, so that’s worth considering.

However, on this 27-inch display, that loss of resolution doesn’t feel incredibly problematic. Images on streaming services are sharp and detailed enough that I don’t necessarily find myself longing for 4K, though it would make this offering all the more solid.

It’s in the nuance that you miss out – there isn’t quite the same feeling of depth to images as you’ll get on a 4K display and there’s a lack of finer detail that makes the textures of fabrics, hair and skin all the more life-like. But I still think the majority of people plonking themselves down in front of this will be more than happy with the detail and sharpness levels on offer here.

That said, it is somewhat reliant on the quality of content you give it to work with. Older terrestrial TV streams that you’ll find on Samsung TV Plus can look particularly soft without the extra pixels and upscaling to play with. But Full HD streams of Sky News on the same service look clear, clean of noise and perfectly watchable – and with that as the baseline for most of the TV you’ll be watching, you shouldn’t come into much trouble.

The MovingStyle has a handful of viewing modes, including Standard, Movie, Eco, Vivid and Filmmaker Mode. I opt for the latter, but switch on the Brightness Optimisation setting to ensure the screen adapts to how bright the room is – at its default brightness level, it’s almost unviewable.

This means that for most situations, the screen brightness ends up being maxed out – and I’d take a bit more brightness still if I could, to really help HDR highlights to stand out more. As it stands, they aren’t as impactful as you would notice on a brighter screen.

Still, colours look good – skin tones are well judged and brighter colours manage to look vivid yet natural.

As I mentioned before, the biggest issue this TV has from a picture perspective is contrast. That matte screen filter feels like an important thing to have on this kind of product, but it does make for less-than-stellar black levels, also not helped by the fact you really have to have this screen at its max brightness most of the time. Very dark scenes can suffer with a lack of distinction and shadow detail too, and even those with mixed light levels don’t have the talent to balance both extremes out to equal abilities.

It’s fair to say that this is a TV for casual viewing, but even as someone who watches TV with a critical eye, I can find plenty to like about the picture quality here when balancing out the other things it offers. Still, there are limitations here, so you’ll want to manage your expectations appropriately.

Sound Quality

• 10-watt sound system
• Standard and Amplify sound modes
• Lacks bass but no sharp edges

As a 10-watt system, sound quality here is not the best. It’s certainly not the most expansive performance, and it lacks some solidity too, with very little bass to speak of and the full presentation overall sounding a bit hollow.

However, it does balance out what it can do pretty well. In Standard sound mode, there are no sharp edges to busy action scenes, and dialogue is clear. This holds true up to a pretty decent volume, even if pushing the volume just makes a relatively small sound louder, rather than any bigger. That of course has a ceiling, but I think you’ll hit a volume that you’re happy with before you get to one where things sound really strained.

The Amplify sound mode is also there if you want to add a bit more oomph to the mid-range and higher frequencies, but I find it makes things sound a bit processed and introduces some sharpness at volume.

While the advice for a TV like this would usually be “add a soundbar”, its form factor makes that a little tricky – though not impossible. You could also hook up a Bluetooth speaker for a bit of a boost, though integration with the screen might be a bit off.

Should you buy it?