LG 42LG6000

Author's product rating:   

How is the Picture Quality?	Excellent
How is the Sound Quality?	Good
Ease of Installation	Very Easy
Range of Features	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great picture quality for price .  Sound not too bad either
Disadvantages:	Poor control layout and long - winded EPG operation

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Let's clear up one thing, I consider myself to be a very astute and meticulous consumer when it comes to AV equipment, and a purchase like this I consider important. I thoroughly researched all the TVs in this price catagory and size, wanting an upgrade from my 32" Samsung LCD. I have heard the guff about Plasma being better quality, but can only assume from my first hand experience that the people praising this technology are either paid by the one's building them or are just plain blind. After much delving, I still believe LCD is the only choice.

This LCD was one of the best pictures (and lets face it, that's all that really matters) for this price band. You could go slightly better with one of the new Samsungs which individually light each pixel so that the black levels are as black as anyone needs, but I was not prepared to pay an extra £1000 for that privelage.
Okay, on with the points:

Picture:
As mentioned, for this price, I'd have to give full marks. The black levels impressed me very much in the shop, however, upon a few weeks of X-box gaming, I have noticed the blacks look more and more grey. I have also noticed that the screen has a reflective silvery quality about it, which gives a very washed out specular effect along the sides of the screen when viewed at a slightly off centre angle and with the energy saving up high, with your lights off. Admittedly, putting the thing on Intelligent Sensor mode goes some way to prevent this, but it does baffle me why the screen has this reflective quality. I would have happily paid an extra £100 to have a matt coating, and when you are buying a 1080p 100hz beast with so much clever technology to be proud of, it's a shame to fall at the last hurdle on cheap materials.

Sound:
Adequate. 4 speakers which do a nice job of surround sound and very clear even without the clear-voice feature turned on. Bass is deeper than most LCDs. I had to play with the sound a lot to get it just right.

Features:
Wow. So many features. You will never want to so fully explore every minute setting. Thankfully some presets are not so in-depth and give you the rawness of settings such as contrast and colour. This TV gives you control over pretty much every aspect of the picture. Things that you will likely not even understand (I didn't). Not only the picture, but the sound has the basic graphic EQ, plus a speech booster (something that we would all appreciate when watching a film with too much bass and whispering voices). I simply don't have enough space here to go into the depth of features, but can say it's the best control I've ever seen over a TV, and I am someone who loves to tinker. The picture presets are also good at retaining individual energy saving presets which dim the pixels in a low lit room. I found that the intelligent sensor was better than me in most cases as at setting the picture up to the environment.
Oh yes, and the PC input seems to have issues. When I change to the highest resolution, it sometimes (but not always) says "invalid format". Strange.

Software:
Some good points: It looks nice, and isn't the slowest to respond to user input. There are some nice touches to the EPG, and it has the all important channel hopping button, which jumps back and forth between your last channels selected (a great invention to compliment double digit digital TV channels that you don't care to remember).
Bad points: (and these are unforgivable) Oh dear. Why didn't LG learn from Samsung and most others, where to set a reminder for a program in the EPG, you should just have to press the centre button, yes? No. They've made this the most cumbersome walk with one leg on hot coal I have yet to fathom. Where was the focus group pleading for simplicity? - after navigating to your program in 30 minute increments (where's the page skip button???) you then have to search the other end of the remote for the tiny fingernail sized yellow button to switch to a page which then prompts you to select Remind or Record (even though they both do the same thing!) then press Ok, then try to find the Back button to go back to the page you were just on, and then again to close it....aaaaaarrrrrrrgh!! I'd rather miss the damn program.

Controls:
While there are much shabbier remotes out there (Panasonic are pretty dire), and the response isn't too slow, the layout is pretty unhelpful. There is nothing intuitive and everything is a hassle to find. I've lost count of the times I've pressed the wrong button and changed channel when I only wanted to call up the program list or press mute. I even turn it off accidentally when I'm trying to press the menu button. Please LG, let me design your next remote... just for the greater good of mankind....

Design:
And by design I mean asthetics. Well, it looks nice, that's for sure. It's very very thin, and glossy red on the back. The downside is, it is a dust magnet like all the other high gloss finish LCDs out there. One wipe of a jay cloth will make it more dusty than it already was.

All this said, it ticks a few damn important boxes: The 1080p upscaled DTV image is up there with the best, for a super price. The 100hz trumotion is something you will get used to quickly, but never look back (one of the reasons I bought a new TV was it HAD to have 100hz). Also, the noise reduction engine (great for watching DIVX content and DTV) does a fine job of preserving sharpness without unwanted image artefacts. With a 5ms response time, games and films are smooth. The best thing is HD content and upscaled DVDs, which can look like HD with the right image settings. I would reccomend this TV, but only if picture quality is more important that ease of use. I would have scored 5 stars if this had been the case.