LG BH6220S review

The BH6220S loads a Blu-ray in 11 seconds, so the BH6220S is certainly fast in that respect, but because it lacks a quick resume function you must navigate to the point at which you left a film manually. We had no trouble playing both 2D and 3D films, although you have no control over the type or strength of the 3D effect used. Three picture modes (standard, Vivid and Movie) let you tweak the image, along with a fourth user mode that gives you control over brightness, contrast, sharpness and colour. Unfortunately, these presets leave the picture far too dark and some detail is lost. DVD upscaling is fairly basic, having minimal edge smoothing and a significant amount of noise. Reducing image sharpness helps slightly.

In our testing, the BH6220S was just about loud enough to fill a small room, and it produced a very clear mid-range. At maximum volume, the high end became too sharp, but even the most explosive action sequences should stay free of distortion if you keep the volume below two thirds of maximum. At half volume, it was also considerably quieter than competing systems, which meant we had to increase the volume to compensate.

At its default setting, the subwoofer generally produced a small amount of bass and we only felt a lot of rumble during the most action-packed scenes. We also felt that the centre speaker was overly dominant, often drowning out detail from the front and rear satellites until we adjusted the levels.

Because it doesn’t have HDMI inputs, the BH6220S isn’t ideal for anyone looking to add surround sound to a games console or set-top box. It’s a competent Blu-ray player with great multimedia support and Smart TV features, even though you do need an Ethernet cable to use them, and the price is right. Ultimately, if you’re primarily a film fan and don’t need 5.1 for your games, this is a great budget option.