Customer Reviews

LG 32LB9D 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I researched LCD TVs via Consumer Report, CNET, Amazon's customer reviews, and technology blogs for over a month before buying this TV (LG's 32" lineup is curiously absent from CNET and Consumer Report). In the end, it came down to two things: image quality and appearance of the panel; price was not a concern for this purchase. I went with 32" based on the size of my room (I live in a studio apartment).

Picture
The case was pretty much settled as soon as I saw the LG in the store. True, Sharp and Samsung had deeper blacks, but Sharp's became oversaturated and even their 1080p 32" set lacked detail under bright light (my living room is very bright). Samsung had strong detail, but the response time on most of their 32" models is 8ms and my eyes could see blurring. The LG had tight, crisp images with extremely accurate color and fairly dark blacks. There was no blurring or ghosting and dark scenes were rendered in excellent detail.

Design
Both Sony and Panasonic had comparable image quality to the LG and a few extra bells and whistles, but their casing had exposed logos, buttons, speakers, lights, etc. Furthermore, their panels were much thicker (the LG is only about 3" deep). Since I don't have a TV cabinet, an LCD has to be a piece of furniture in my living room and that tipped the scales in favor of the LG... thin, smooth, and shiny. It's almost discreet and will not dominate a room.

Experience
I almost fell over when I plugged in a set of cheap rabbit ears(!) and picked up the local broadcasts in HD. I could see the pinstripes in the weatherman's suit, the bag's around the newscaster's eyes, and Judge Judy's frown lines. But plugging in my AppleTV made me a believer... the quality is SHOCKING and my friends tend to crowd around the TV to inspect the detail. The menu system is very simple and I figured I would have to calibrate the picture settings, but LG has an "intelligent eye" mode where a light sensor built onto the front of the TV detects the conditions in the room and automatically adjusts the brightness and contrast on the screen. So far, I have had no complaints about the TV's judgement.

Value
The TV came with some welcome extras in the box. The remote is universal and works with almost any device (programming codes are in the manual). The base is detached by default for easy wall-mounting, the owner's manual is on a CD and is searchable (I hope other manufactuers follow suit), and LG even threw in a wiping cloth to keep the glossy black frame clean. There is also a cable restraint and an extra cable to attach to your antenna/cablebox.

By far and away, I feel I got an exceptional value for my money and would highly recommend this panel.

This TV is absolutley stunning. It is one of the best 32" I have seen, including Sony and Samsung. The black cabinent is gorgeous and the picture is awesome, and I'm not even viewing in HD. (Dorm Cable). I have a Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii hooked up to it and they both look amazing. The TV accepts 1080p input, but displays it in 720p. This is fine because you cant tell the difference in TVs under 40". I have friends with Samsungs which I was looking at, but this TV was so much better. You will not regret this purchase!

I've had this set for about a week, and so far I'm very pleased. I got it at a local department store for a price competitive with some of the third tier brands such as Olevia, Vizio and Polaroid. (I consider LG to be a second tier brand - not as well known or as popular as Samsung, Sony or Panasonic, but with a longer history and track record than the third tier brands.) The picture is outstanding with good color rendition and great black level. The setup offers a lot of opportunity to adjust the color level, and it remembers the color adjustments separately for each input on the set. This is important because the proper color adjustment for the picture can vary widely depending on the source. The remote and controls are fairly easy to understand, and I was able to program my Dish Network remote to operate the basic functions of the TV, including Power, Volume, and input source. Speaking of input source, this set has another great feature: like many TV's, the remote has a single button that toggles through the various inputs. But this is the first TV I've used that ignors any unused inputs - so you don't have to toggle through a lot of black screens just to get to the three inputs you are really using. It also has a really cool feature called "Media Host." The TV has a USB port on the side that allows you to plug in a flash drive. If you load a flash drive with pictures and MP3 music files, you can then select individual pictures to display on the TV, or set it to display all of the pictures as a slide show. It will also play your MP3 music files. You can even setup a music play list to play at the same time your slide show is running! (And my digital pictures look much better on this screen than they did on my computer screen.)
I have also tried connecting an antenna to the TV. It does a good job of picking up my local digital TV stations off air, and the picture looks great.
Finally, this set has 3 HDMI inputs, and 2 Component inputs - which is much better than many bargain priced sets. The only downside is that most of the inputs face the back of the set - which could make wall mounting more difficult.
Overall this is a very good TV for the money.

Image Quality
I have to admit we were not in the market for a new TV, however I wanted my wife to see BrandsMart USA as it's like no other electronics store in town, it's kinda like the Vegas of big box retail. So we are making our way around the store and spotted this LG which stood out over all the other TVs. Being a tech guy myself and having previously owned a Samsung LCD I knew a thing or two about resolution, image processing and all the other geek stuff. So the image was what first impressed us then the sales guy states he's having a pre-Thanksgiving sale and the model was only $698, my wife then turns to me and says we have to take it at that price, we'd be foolish not to. Well we get it home and hook it up to our standard definition satellite service and we are completely blown away buy the image. Needless to say my first call was to DirecTV to come install an HD receiver and dish.

Value
We picked this up for $698 at BrandsMart USA so for us the value was unbeatable and at the price even if the build quality turns out to be bad, we can by two for the price of one Samsung or $ony.

Build Quality
Can't say at this point as we've only owned it for two days. I can say that I used to own a Samsung and the processing board died after two months and I experienced the worst customer service of my life, it took them 8 months to finally replace the TV and that was only after I emailed every Samsung Executive I could find and email address for on the web.

If you experience bad customer service for any company, here is a little trick for you, find a company's email address format such as firstname.lastname@company.com then go out to a financial site that discloses all the top executive names then send a mass email to every executive you can find, eventually one will go through. For me, my email reached Samsung's Sr. VP of Marketing for North America and things started to happen but that was after 8 months of fighting with their customer service department.

Sorry about the guy's who broke down. Stuff happens. From what I can see this is an amazing set. The contrast ratio is insane and the low 6ms refresh rate make the xbox 360 and wii I have hooked up to it look amazing. Just make sure you set the respective machines to widescreen and HD (wii does 480p). The 3 HDMI inputs are excellent and also 2 component. The finish is fantastic too. This LG also has an amazing viewing angle that really plagued earier LCD's. You can actually see the screen perfectly at virtually a 180 degree angle. Great thing that I like LCD's over plasma is they are super light and don't run hot. Its also an Energy Star set.

So I've had this unit for a few months now and I think I have a pretty good grasp of its capabilities and quality.
First- Set-up was a breeze, the manual, though sparse was pretty detailed in the picture. It was easy to follow the directions from the diagrams or just figure it out on your own.
Secong- Picture quality is amazing, black is truly black on this unit. the contrast and and the sharpness is great. I attached an HDDVD unit to it and it looks great.
Third- After a few days of using the built-in speakers at mid volume levels the sound quality starts dropping off. I opted to using my home external sound systems to save the speakers, besides it sounds better that way.

I love this set. I found it at a local pawn shop, perfect condition, and obviously got an excellent deal. I've used a couple of other HD sets, and this one's by far my favorite.

First and foremost: Gaming. I see another review on here was bashing the gaming on this set, but the PS3 run through HDMI at 720p looks beautiful. I've played CoD4, Battlfield: Bad Company, MGS4, Motorstorm, GTA4, and Warhawk on this set, all intense action oriented games. No blurring, no artifacts, looks realll good. The only thing that looks slightly bad is the edges on everything are a little pixellated, but it did this on the other sets as well (an $800 Sharp and $900 Sony of the same size). I'm not really sure what set he hooked it up to that looked better, but I'd like to know.

Second, SD cable. Like a lot of people, I haven't made the switch to HD programming yet. But SD channels look as good as you can expect. The Zoom1 ratio is really nice, doesn't look stretched at all, but it cuts things off sometimes (it's really only noticeable when there are words on screen - credits, titles, logos, etc.) Stuff I really don't care about seeing anyway. I'm not a fan of having big black bars on the side of my screen, so I really like this ratio. Image quality seems to vary a lot between channels, but it never looks bad.

Third, as a monitor. I was, in fact, so impressed when I hooked my laptop up through VGA that I've decided to build an HTPC to use with the LG as a monitor. Granted, I'm going to use a video card with DVI/HDMI output with a DVI to HDMI cable so I can pass HDMI sound to my receiver, but anyway. It looked good. I'm probably going to buy a long VGA Cable so I can hook up the laptop to the monitor and use it in a Dual Monitor set-up, as well. The max resolution supported on the tv is 1366 x 768, which is perfect for me, but I bet PC gamers will be wanting a much higher resolution... It's definitely not for playing Crysis at max settings. Still, it's not gonna look bad, either.

There are an absolute load of inputs, 3 HDMI, 2 Component, VGA, etc. I don't think you'll ever find yourself not being able to connect something you want to. There's also a Digital Out for audio.

The Remote can't program my Sony Receiver... irritating. I'm trying to find a universal remote that will let me switch inputs on the LG and control the volume of my receiver. There are 8 or 10 codes for Sony Audio, but none of them work. My receiver is a STR-K790, by the way.

(I can't comment on the speaker quality of the TV, since I haven't used it at all.)


All in all, it's a definitely a great set, and arguably the best budget HDTV around. The only issue at all I have with it is black-levels, but really it's minor. (see the 24 and 165 in the top left corner here? http://research.stowers-institute.org/efg/R/Color/Chart/ColorsChart2.jpg
The 165 is the black level on my set, with the gloss frame as the 24. You CAN get it darker, by adjusting the backlight level and such... I'm not much of a videophile so I'm not worried about it. For a casual user, you're only gonna notice it in pitch black scenes where people have the lights off, and the little black bars on the side. I just suggest using Zoom1.)

I ordered this TV based solely on the reviews posted here and other websites. What a great TV!! The picture is crystal clear, even when I just plugged the cable into the wall while waiting for my DirecTV to be installed for HD.

The HD channels are even better than on my 37" plasma in the basement. I put this TV in my living room, which gets a lot of sunlight in the late afternoon. Absolutely minimal sun glare off the screen and the picture wasn't degraged at all!

I've had the 32LB9D for about 9 months now, and I have to say I am constantly amazed by its quality! Especially when comparing with my friends' Sony, Panasonic, and Sharp TVs.

First off is the picture quality. Out of the box, the "Intelligent Eye" mode is quite interesting ... for me it sufficed for a few weeks, after which I delved into the more detailed picture adjustments. Do yourself a favor: get a copy of any DVD that has picture adjustment features (I used ratatouille) and take the 10 minutes needed to adjust brightness, contrast, and color. With these adjustments, this TV looks better than just about any other I've seen in any nearby price range (I got the TV for $600 at the time).

In addition, I often connect this TV as an additional monitor to my MacBook Pro via HDMI, and man is the quality amazing! All text is VERY clear to read even from across the room, and my friends are always commenting on how nice it is to watch youtube videos & online TV shows on this TV.

Next up are the connection options, of which we all know this TV has PLENTY so not much more needs to be said about that. However, I have found one caveat. The digital audio output of the TV will only output Dolby signals; it will NOT output DTS signals! I found this out the hard way: my Blu-ray player was connected via HDMI to the TV, and TV digital audio output to surround sound receiver. When I played a disc containing DTS audio, my receiver only reported getting stereo audio from the TV. Of course, the simple solution to that is to send audio directly from the component to the receiver, which is why I didn't take off a star for this (I would take off 1/4 of a star if I could) :)

Which leads me to the TV's own audio system. To be honest, the built-in speakers are underpowered. If you rely on your TV as the audio source, you'll find yourself raising the volume to very high levels at times, and even then the speakers will sound kinda blown. This would cost the TV another 1/4 star in my review, so I guess we're down to what, 4.5 stars? :D One nice thing about the TV's audio is the simulated surround sound that it can do, which can be pretty cool to hear at times.

Overall, I've had no regrets about this TV at all. The lack of DTS audio output was a bit annoying at first, but any traditional home theater setup has audio going from the component directly to the home theater receiver anyway. The underpowered speakers aren't that much of an issue either; they'll definitely work in a medium sized room if you don't have a better audio setup.

The kids just can't seem to stop exploring the numerous features.
They have just discovered a whole new level to television viewing.