Chances are you probably know all there is to know about Currys, but if you don’t then here’s a little more detail about them.

I compared the M9500’s pictures to those of the K8500 and there doesn’t appear to be a major step-up in image quality with UHD discs. Thankfully, there are enough feature upgrades elsewhere to justify the higher price. In terms of actual features the main one is clearly support for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, with its increased resolution, 10-bit video, wider colour gamut, high dynamic range (specifically HDR 10) and HEVC decoding. The M9500 will optimise Ultra HD content to the native capabilities of your display and also down convert HDR automatically if your TV doesn't support that feature. This year Samsung have added the ability to adjust the SDR to HDR conversion with three options – Low Gamma, Medium Gamma and High Gamma – depending on the actual brightness of your non-HDR display. Whilst the M9500 supports HDR10, it shouldn't come as a surprise to discover that it doesn't support Dolby Vision but then Samsung don't support this version of HDR on their TVs either. The player also supports regular Blu-ray, DVD, both of which can be upscaled to 4K, and CD (which can be ripped) but there's no support for 3D Blu-ray. This is sure to prove controversial but the reality is with no new TVs supporting the feature it was only a matter of time before 3D support was dropped from players as well. In the box there is a power supply and the remote and an easy-to-follow instruction guide. Less time to set up means more time to enjoy a great picture and sound that comes from this player. Playable discs (recordable media): BD, BD-R, BD-RE, BD-ROM, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW

Connections & Control

The most welcome cosmetic difference between this and the K8500 is the addition of an OLED display, placed on the sloping front edge. It’s a little too small to read from the sofa, but the helpful status messages remove the guesswork involved when using the K8500. The M9500 offers DLNA media streaming from PCs and NAS drives, including hi-res FLAC, WAV, AAC and AIFF up to 192kHz/24-bit and a comprehensive range of video codecs. Whilst its debatable that someone investing in an Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray player will be watching many DVDs, the good news is that the M9500 had no problems playing both PAL and NTSC DVDs. The player had very effective deinterlacing and cadence detection, with the interlaced signals being handle well regardless of whether it was film or video based or even a mixture of the two. The motion produced from the test DVDs we used was also very good and free of unwanted judder or other issues. As mentioned in the section on 4K upscaling, the player was also able to take this deinterlaced standard definition signal and upscale it with genuine skill, delivering images that were free of unwanted artefacts and surprisingly watchable when you consider the resolution of the source.

Don’t hassle through settings to turn on your HDR. Just connect UHD Player to your UHD HDR TV and automatically get amazing HDR resolution without moving your finger. But if you prize convenience over reliability then there’s built-in Wi-Fi with support for 801.11ac. The side-mounted USB port allows you to play music, video and picture files. Samsung UBD-M9500 – Features READ NEXT: The BEST soundbars of 2017: Boost your TV audio Samsung UBD-M9500 review: Performance and image qualityIntegration between this player and a Samsung TV is seamless. You can control both using the Smart Remote that ships with Samsung’s latest sets, which makes life remarkably easy. In fact, those with an all-Samsung system can pretty much grab any of the remotes and find the function they want.

This 4k player is compatible with 4K UHD movies, Blu-rays and DVDs which is great if you have a collection of films you enjoy watching and you don’t want to part with them. The Samsung UBD-M9000 Blu-ray player will also upscale any non-4K content, making your old collection look better than it ever has before. It offers twice the colour range of existing conventional Blu-ray players and 64 times higher colour expressions, surpassing the digital cinema standard. You’ll enjoy realistic picture quality like never before as this 4K player gives you the Hollywood experience you’ve always wanted to have. Samsung have also given the menu system an update, keeping the easy to setup approach of the K8500 but adding a few new features as well. The basic menu layout is similar and crucially all of the key options default to their auto settings, which means that the player will just optimise the output automatically to match the capabilities of your display. What this means in practice is that the resolution, the frame rate, the HDR and the colour gamut will all be set by the player depending on the EDID information delivered by the display. Although you can select things like resolution and colour format separately we would simply recommended leaving the settings on Auto because the M9500 did an excellent job of optimising itself for all the displays with which we tested the player.The Samsung UBDM9000 4k player comes full of great smart apps built-in (Netflix, YouTube, catch up TV and many more besides) so there is no need for endlessly changing between TV and 4k player to get to your smart apps. All the apps are there in one place, accessible through the Tizen operating system, which displays them as tiles at the bottom of the screen. One of my main criticisms of the UBD-K8500 was its lightweight build quality, which compared unfavourably with Panasonic’s more robust players. The UBD-M9500 is slightly improved, but the plastic casing still has the air of a budget player – at this price I’d expect something a little more luxurious. The M9500 also lets you watch content taken on Gear 360 or YouTube 360 videos and control them with the player’s remote. You need to convert Gear 360 content on a Galaxy smartphone or PC first, and watch them via the USB port. You might rightly wonder why Samsung bothers with apps at all, since all 4K TVs come with their own built-in streaming apps. However, although most modern 4K TVs support the full range of 4K services, some early 4K tellies may not have, and f you’re a 4K projector owner, having apps built into your player is essential since projectors rarely have built-in streaming apps.

However, one thing it won’t do is play 3D Blu-ray discs, which may reflect its dwindling popularity but won’t impress those with a large collection of 3D movies. It doesn’t play SACD or DVD-Audio discs either, both of which are supported by the Sony UBP-X800. There's no doubt that the M9500 is a very capable 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player that can be setup with the minimum of fuss. If you simply leave it in its default auto settings it will optimise its output to suit your display and deliver a flawless performance with UHD Blu-ray discs. If your display can't support HDR (High Dynamic Range) then the player will very effectively convert the image to SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) and you now have three different options depending on the brightness of your display. The M9500 also plays Blu-rays superbly, scaling the images with precision, whilst the deinterlacing and scaling of DVDs was equally as effective. The Samsung is also an excellent source of streaming video content, with the player automatically outputting the correct frame rate. The audio performance was just as good and the M9500 supports both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, which means you can also enjoy immersive audio formats like Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Auro-3D.The overall performance of the Samsung UBD-M9500 is fantastic. Much like the Oppo UDP-203, I found the player responsive and speedy to load discs; it’s better in this regard than the Xbox One S. It isn’t noisy either: even at quiet volumes I couldn’t hear the disc spinning, and there’s no fan noise at all. It’s much less distracting than the Xbox One S. The UBD-M9500 also renders regular Blu-ray discs with a sure hand, making the detailed landscapes in The Martian look remarkably sharp and focused. Here I could see a slight improvement over last year’s model – the M9500’s images looked slightly sharper and more composed. It also streams hi-definition video content like a champ, offering crisp, solid pictures with no buffering problems over Wi-Fi.