LG 47LW550T review

When watching live TV, standard definition Freeview channels suffer from being shown across the large 47in screen. Higher quality channels such as BBC One coped reasonably well, but still looked slightly lacking in detail. Low-quality channels looked much worse, with most facial detail missing from the presenters on BBC News, for example. High definition channels fared much better, producing sharp images that looked very detailed.

Full HD content on Blu-ray looked even better, with LG’s TruMotion frame-creation system managing to remove jerky motion during fast-moving scenes. The backlight was even across all scenes and colours were incredibly vibrant. LG is also one of the only TV manufacturers to really push passive 3D technology, so it comes as no surprise to see it here. While other TVs use battery-powered active shutter glasses, the LW550T comes with a single pair of passive glasses that don’t need charging and weigh much less. Although passive 3D halves the resolution seen by each eye, the glasses don’t dim the image as active pairs do, so we could watch Avatar in a well-lit room and see the 3D effects more prominently. We could also watch from a wider angle, which would make this an ideal 3D set for use in a wide room.

Because it uses LCD with edge-lit LED backlighting rather than a Plasma panel, we would expect the LW550T to be cheaper than the equivalent plasma model from Panasonic. However, compared to the excellent [A HREF=”http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/reviews/1285465/panasonic-viera-tx-p42gt30b” target=”_blank”]Panasonic Viera GT30 range[/A, there’s actually very little difference in price. Considering the image quality is much better on the GT30, your choice will depend very much on how much you plan to use your TV for 3D content. LG’s passive glasses are cheaper and more convenient than the active shutter alternative, but for 2D content, the LW550T can’t match the competition.