Samsung TV 2018 Settings Guide: What to Enable, Disable and Tweak

By Brian Westover
published

We walk you through the menus and features of Samsung's 2018 TVs so you can outsmart your new smart TV.

How to Turn on Ambient Mode on 2018 Samsung TVs

A new feature on Samsung's 2018 smart TVs is Ambient Mode. This low-powered mode is sort of like a screensaver for your TV, with moving imagery and even live information updates, but without the full brightness and power usage of regular viewing. Samsung boasts that the power usage is so low that running Ambient Mode for 3 hours a day will amount to less than $1 on your power bill. Here's how to enable Ambient Mode:

1. Go to the home screen. On the home screen menu, navigate to the left, highlighting the Ambient tile, and hit Enter.

2. Use the Ambient Mode button. A dedicated button on the Samsung One Remote also opens Ambient Mode, shifting your TV into a low-power state that continues to display images and information.

3. Choose Ambient options. There are several screen choices for Ambient Mode, including artistic imagery, time and weather information, and up-to-the-minute headlines.

Here are a few options: 

Art

Clock, weather and headlines

4. Deactivate Ambient Mode. If you want to turn off the TV, the power button will still do the trick. If you want to resume viewing, simply press the Home button to put the TV into regular mode.

Brian Westover
Brian Westover

Brian Westover is currently Lead Analyst, PCs and Hardware at PCMag. Until recently, however, he was Senior Editor at Tom's Guide, where he led the site's TV coverage for several years, reviewing scores of sets and writing about everything from 8K to HDR to HDMI 2.1. He also put his computing knowledge to good use by reviewing many PCs and Mac devices, and also led our router and home networking coverage. Prior to joining Tom's Guide, he wrote for TopTenReviews and PCMag.