LG 55LV4400 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED-LCD HDTV
Product Descriptions:
- LG’s LED technology provides a slim profile and delivers amazing brightness, clarity and color detail, as well as greater energy efficiency compared to conventional LCD TVs.
- TruMotion 120Hz technology lets you see sports, video games and high-speed action with virtually no motion blur.
- Full HD 1080p gives it superior picture quality over standard HDTV. You’ll see details and colors like never before.
With LED picture quality and a TruMotion 120Hz refresh rate, sports and fast action movies on the LV4400 never looked better. … Read all Reviews »
List Price: $ 1,199.99
Price:
Why you should buy this TV, from a skeptic!,
I am value shopper who wants the most bang for my buck. I took a risk on this TV (after reading very educated reviews like the one J. Finkel wrote. He did all the work for me.)
Here are (5) quick ways to turn this 3-star sub five hundred dollar TV into a 5-star one thousand dollar set.
1. Don’t believe all the negative reviews. The picture on this set is amazing, but not right out of the box. It needs some adjusting. Refer to J. Finkel’s review for the exact settings. The picture is beautiful after 10 minutes of tweaking.
2. The sound has no bass. Buy a cheap PC subwoofer (under $20) and plug it into the analog line out. Then switch the line out volume to variable. Voila. I now have a great sound system. My wife said,”that is 100% better!” right after I plugged it in.
3. Sports on this TV is great. I watch a lot of NFL/NCAA football and the picture looks great. Just use the sports setting and if you have a good quality signal like HD cable or HD digital broadcast you will rarely notice any blurring. I was considering a plasma to avoid blurring for sports, but this TV is more than adequate for all the benefits it has over plasma (LED lamps will last forever, bright high-contrast no-glare screen, and this set only weights 20 pounds)
4. Gaming on this tv is the best experience you could hope for. Just plugged in my XBOX360 and set it’s output to 1080p to the TV. Never seen anything prettier than Skyrim, Madden 12, Halo Reach, Deadspace 2, and Dance Central. These games are gorgeous in 1080P and play with zero lag on the Game setting. PS. 120HZ TRUmotion is not used for GAME setting and it is for the better…just like all other TVs with this setting, it prevents lag from processing the signal so your movements on the controller are quick and responsive. No loss in quality of the picture without the 120HZ TRUmotion. That’s only needed for viewing sports.
5. Smart TV? No. Amazing TV? YES
Before you buy this TV you have to know what you are getting. It is a 42″ LED edge-lit LCD 1080P TV. It is not a smart TV and it is not full of bells and whistles. It will give you a bright, beautiful display with accurate colors, plenty of inputs, a 20 degree swivel base, a great viewing angle and sound that needs upgrading for movies/gaming. It will not give you the ability to tweak black levels, but there are plenty of ways to work around that. Just read the other educated reviews. Just like a good marriage, it takes work but rewards far exceed cost. If I want a smart TV I can just plug in my internet connected XBOX 360 (or PS3), laptop, or just buy a Roku player for under a hundred bucks. No sense paying an extra $300 dollars for the “SMART” label.
6. A bonus tip…if all else fails and the screen just doesn’t look right to you…turn OFF the ENERGY SAVING MODE! So many reviewers leave that on and never get to see what the set can do in full backlighting.
Bottom Line:
Great Value, Great Picture. This is an excellent no-frills LED HDTV for the price. You won’t be disappointed if you understand what you are getting with this TV…for better or worse. Have any questions? Feel free to ask.
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|Excellent Few-Frills TV,
The LG 42LV4400 LED HDTV performs well overall, but lacks some important features you may see in competing televisions.
==Menu==
The menu is the same one LG has been using for a few years now. Pushing the “home” button brings up selections for changing picture/audio/parental/time/channel settings etc. These sub-menus are easy to navigate thanks to pictures and large text. While the organization of the menus are great, the breadth of the options available is disappointing.
==Picture==
The picture on most LCD’s is rather good these days. The 42LV4400 ranks right up there with any mid-range HDTV. The blacks could be much better, but with some good tweaking in the regular menu settings, you can achieve fairly decent color accuracy and ‘pop’ (the sensation of depth and realism). As with most LCD’s, the brightness is more than abundant, making it a good TV for any room. It also has a matte finish, which makes it difficult to see reflections.
==Aesthetics==
The bezel of the TV is 1″ on top and sides but almost 3″ on the bottom. The bezel and stand are a high-gloss black with very simple contours and slightly rounded edges. Overall, it looks plain but also attractively understated. It would be a good choice for a professional environment as well as a home.
==Build==
The LG 42LV4400 is fairly light, making it easy to setup by oneself. The stand seems sturdy enough, but a little more weight would have been comforting. The stand doesn’t offer any tilt and doesn’t swivel too well. The inputs are…streamlined: there is one component input and no composite inputs besides; no dvi. The three HDMI inputs are ample though and the USB port is a good addition. The buttons on the TV are not in the most convenient place, being recessed on the side by 2.5″. The buttons feel cheap, but are responsive. Most people will use the remote anyway, which is more of the same. The remote feels cheap as well, but looks okay and works fine. Since there aren’t a ton of features on this TV, the remote is simple enough. There is no ethernet nor wi-fi.
==Motion Handling==
One option I always look for right away is smoothing out motion (sometimes separated into blur and judder). Most LCD’s have issues producing clear, smooth, flowing video of motion. This is a major disadvantage vs. plasma, which does not suffer the same problem. The refresh rates (120Hz or 240Hz instead of 60Hz) are used to adjust the way your eyes see the motion on the television. In the best TV sets, the video is processed so that there is no stuttering and also no “Soap Opera Effect,” a problem introduced when there is too much processing that can make any video look unnaturally smooth as the processing tries to correct the normal variations in speed that us living things tend to do so much when we move about. Unfortunately, with the 42LV4400, you have almost no control over the motion handling, aside from selecting a picture mode (Cinema, Game, Sport, etc). In Game mode, the motion handling is turned off to reduce input lag. In Sport mode, it is turned all the way up, so you can see a football gliding from the quarterback to receiver without too much choppiness.
==Calibration==
If you plan to calibrate this TV yourself, you’ll be sorely disappointed. My older 42LH90 has settings for 10-point IRE gray scale and color/tint settings for primary and secondary colors. Such features as those may only interest videophiles with a spectrometer at their disposal, but the 42LV4400 completely lacks the ability to adjust the gray scale. Most other TV’s I’ve come across in the last few years at least have a 2-point IRE gray scale adjustment. I assume more calibration settings are available in the service menu, but I haven’t found how to access that, despite reading through the manual on the included CD.
==Other Features==
The picture menu lacks some important settings, but does let you create a fairly convincing picture overall. See the end of the review for my settings (though every panel is different). Parental controls are well laid out. The Game mode seems to work well enough to play FPS, though a game like Rock Band may still need some adjustment in-game. Sound is okay, but I’d recommend using external speakers with any TV. Unfortunately, the USB access will only let you view pictures. You can’t view movies or listen to music from the USB port like you can on some other LG models. Also, I did run into a peculiar issue where this TV failed to input any signal from my DVDO video filter. Both functioned normally when paired with other devices.
==Conclusion==
The 42LV4400 lacks the features necessary to be considered a high-end TV, but it is capable of producing an excellent picture that will rival any mid-range TV. I’d recommend this model to anyone trying to get the best picture for the least amount of money. It would…
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|Very Good Picture Quality, A Basic Feature Set, Poor Quality Control,
The LG LED LCD TV is a fairly basic set with very good picture quality, but some unfortunate quality control problems.
The LG is very simple looking in its design. It has a piano black bezel and a swiveling base that is also done in piano black. There is a small piece of opaque gray plastic trim that runs along the bottom and a very discreet LG logo on the TV. On the bottom of the set are the stereo speakers. The set is very thin and is about 1.75″ at its thickest part, not including the base. The set is very light in weight and easy to move for one person. Construction quality and materials are good, but the swivel base allows the TV to move a few degrees in either direction easily. I find this quite annoying as the swivel base on my two Panasonic flat screen TVs have no play at all.
The only assembly required is to attach the swivel stand, if desired, and that was a very simple procedure that I was able to do myself and took no more than 5 minutes.
On the left hand side of the set from the front, hidden behind the bezel, are the Power, Menu, Input, Channel and Volume buttons along with 1 USB port and 2 HDMI ports. One the back left hand side of the set are 1 RGB PC, 1 Composite or Component (it’s either used for one or the other, not both), 1 digital and 1 analog audio out, 1 RF cable and 1 HDMI port.
Using the set is very simple. The on-screen menu system and the remote are both easy to use. Feature wise the set offers and few different picture presets (with individual setting saved for each input), a sleep and schedule timer, closed captioning and the ability to view photos on a USB jump drive. One feature I really like is the ability to turn off the screen but still hear the audio, which is nice if you like to fall asleep to the sound of the TV, but the screen’s light bothers you. The set does not have 3-D capability, nor does it have access to any streaming web services such as Pandora, Netflix, or Amazon Video On Demand. Also, there is only a basic printed owner’s manual included with the TV. If you want the detailed manual you have to view the PDF on the included CD.
Picture quality is the highlight of this reasonably priced LED set and indeed the high definition picture is sharp and clear with nice color, smooth motion, and detailed bright scenes (I get my HD picture by hooking the TV directly to my cable using the RF jack). The SD picture looks good as well, but it is a lot softer than the HD picture, as expected. Where picture quality falters, however, is in the shadows and during dark scenes. Compared to my 50″ 3-D Panasonic plasma the darker sections of the LG’s picture lack contrast and detail. Watching high definition TV I was able to compare the picture on the two sets directly. In one scene where the actor was standing in front of a black wall with a floral pattern in a slightly lighter shade of black I was able to easily make out the pattern on the Panasonic Plasma, but on the LG LCD the wall was a solid black. For an LCD TV the picture is great, but for true videophiles a high-end plasma set is a better bet. For reference I have the picture settings on the LG set as follows; Backlight: 90, Contrast: 85, Brightness: 48, Sharpness: 35, Color: 40, Tint: R4, Color Temperature: Medium, Gamma: Medium, and all the other adjustments set to off.
Another area where the LG disappoints is in its viewing angle. If you sit directly in front of the TV it has great contrast and saturation, but when you start to move a couple of feet off center the contrast and saturation drop dramatically and the picture starts to wash out. The effect is more dramatic the closer you are to the TV, since your viewing angles are more acute. Compared to my plasma, and even to an older Panasonic 32″ LCD, the LG has a very narrow viewing angle. I will admit that the LG is much better than a 26″ Sharp LCD I used to have in this regard. Still, if your viewing area is arranged in such a manner that people will be at an extreme angle from the front of the set, you might want to look into a plasma, or an LCD with a wider viewing angle.
Sound quality is good, with plenty of volume to fill a room, but to get the true big screen experience you’ll want to hook the set up to a surround sound system.
The last, and most important thing I want to mention about the LG is that there are two small specks of plastic stuck behind the screen. They are both black plastic triangular shaped slivers. One is about the size of a pixel and barely noticeable, and the other is about three pixels long, and depending how close you are to the TV, can be picked out without too much trouble. They are a manufacturing defect and cannot be removed without ruining the screen. The specks aren’t enough to ruin the viewing experience, but they do speak a bit to a lack of quality control on LG’s part. I will say, however, that the screen has no dead…
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