Customer Reviews

LG 32LE5300 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED LCD VA Panel HDTV, Black

5 star:		(129)
4 star:		(57)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Well I saw this tv on sale and I just couldn't let it slide. I had been looking for a second tv mainly for ps3 and computer use. I currently own a 23" samsung px2370 which is amazing however its just not big enough for me so I decided to try out this bad boy. First off I went to go check it out at my local box store and it looked great 3mil:1 contrast, 2.4 ms response, led backlit, usb 2.0, and its super slim with a nice cabinet. The main thing I noticed when I was at the store was how nice and uniformed the color looked and the angles of the tv were great. I bought the tv off of amazon straight through them with free 3-5 day shipping I believe it was and I actually received it in two days. I plugged in the tv and connected my playstation and head on it seems okay but not what I remember seeing in the box store and the viewing angles are horrible. If I am not right in front of the tv the colors almost look washed or worn out. I did some research on it and figured maybe it was something I was doing wrong maybe I had to calibrate the screen or something? No sir, unfortunately what I found out was that LG put different panels in these tv's some have what are called IPS Panels (IPS Panels are the nicer panels and is what I saw in the box store) and some have VA Panels (what I bought on Amazon, not saying its Amazon's fault its just LG not putting the same panels in all the le5300's). I am very displeased with the way LG could do this. Thats like porsche making there cars with hyundai parts. It just doesn't make sense that they could do that, I mean there should be some kind of regulations council to prevent companies from doing stuff like this.I am now hoping that Amazon will let me return the tv and refund me all my money. I would have love to gotten the one at the box store when they had their sale, given it was about 50 bucks more but at least I would have known I was getting the one I wanted. I also found out that the tvs that have the IPS Panels have a W in the serial number or if you have a magnify glass or a camera you can zoom in and see that the pixels of the IPS panels are shaped like this < while the VA panels are shaped like squares. The IPS panels are superior, offer better viewing angels, and better coloring. So all in all this tv is a steal if you can get it with IPS panel.

I've purchased two of these sets. Both of them were equipped with VA panels (there is a D in the serial #). Apparently LG uses a high quality S-IPS panel in some of their sets (has a W in the serial #) & some with the inferior VA panel. The input lag of a VA panel & horrible picture quality / viewing angles are not acceptable. AMAZON's customer service, as always was exceptional. They couldn't guarantee me IPS panels so the sets ended up going back & refunds were issued. AMAZON gets five stars, but LG would get 0 stars. If you are one of the lucky ones who received an IPS panel, congratulations. This would explain why the reviews are so varied.

This is an excellent TV, especially for the price point - beautiful, sharp colors, great viewing angle, very thin LED design, and light weight as compared to traditional LCDs. While I would generally prefer a larger screen, the space I bought it for - Armoire in a bedroom, would only accommodate 32in. This is a perfect size for a bedroom or smaller living space. I compared this TV against a leading brand 32in LED at a local store and while this LED was slightly thicker and heavier, the colors on the screen were much brighter and facial features much more defined than the competition - and best of all its less expensive. The design is very modern - sharp lines, thin LED. It states Silver Grey in the description, but the bezel and stand are glossy black. I like it so well, I just ordered another one on Amazon.com!

LG32le5300

Pro -
* Excellent HD picture quality
* Bright clear image
* High contrast (LED backlight)
* Good off axis viewing angle - the farther from direct 90 deg you go the lighter the image becomes as contrast drops off, but still watchable at large angles.

Con (ish)-
* Lower quality SD picture (Less than 720p is noticeably inferior to other sets)
* Sound from onboard speakers marginal
* Colors look artificial out of the box (Requires several tweaks to gain realism)
* Too much white in some areas (blooming) until you really knock back the backlight and white levels.

Overall impression - For the money, if you feed the LG a good signal (720p or better), and tweak the colors and white levels, it's hard to beat the image quality.


I started by looking at everything in the stores. I ruled out Samsung because of the price even though I really like the quality of their image.
I had the LG32le5300 and the Sony KDL32ex500 in my office for direct comparison.
I chose the LG due to the higher HD image quality and overall good picture after a lot of tweaking and turning off some of the whiz bang features. SD images are lower quality than the Sony, but content is only getting better from all sources, not worse. For the money, if you feed the LG a good signal (720p or better), it's hard to beat the image quality.

I got the tv yesterday. The picture is fantastic. The facial features of actors are extremely clear.
I used a digital optical connection and cable to connect the tv to my stereo. The stereo is just an 85 W sony a/v with two speakers.
When operated this way, the sound is as good as the picture.
The paper owner's manual is a bit of a negative. A disc is included, but I haven't tried that yet.
I would definitely recommend this tv.
Amazon had the lowest price and free shipping.

Definitely one of the best TVs I have ever used. Actually it is the best, but this is the first LED TV I have ever owned so it is not fair to the others. Great picture, great features, and good sound. I don't know if the sound is good enough to call great, but it is definitely better than all my previous TVs.

The only bad thing about this TV is that the holes on the back of this TV for a wall mount are very close together. The wall mounts that work for the other 8 or 10 TVs in my house will not fit this one. The only wall mounts that work for this TV are small ones that I don't like. Also the manual is confusing because it is made for several different models and the layout is poor. However, most of what is in the manual it common sense.

I am very impressed that so far this TV has got 5 stars on 5 out of 6 reviews here, and 5 stars on all 52 reviews on Best Buy!

UPDATE: By the way, I notice people saying that truMotion is bad, garbage, etc. It actually is not. I found out that sometimes it is choppy and sometimes it is not. For me it is only choppy if I am watching something that is not HD or if it is an old movie that was made before HD existed and converted to HD. But, for shows that is true HD or for games like XBOX 360 it is a good feature. I have mine turned off on my HDMI 1 because it is where I watch TV shows. However, I have it turned on for HDMI 2 since I have my XBOX connected there.

I bought this TV on Black Friday (yesterday) for only [...] bucks. Ive been using it for a good 8 hours now and can honestly say this TV is well worth the money. At [...] bucks, you'll have a hard time finding a TV with these specs, I did anyways.
I bought this primarily for gaming, which in my opinion it does very well. There IS a teeny, tiny bit of lag but trust me, this is coming from someone who plays FPS', you will not notice it. My 360 looks amazing on this TV, and Black ops looks even better. Nothing quite like spotting an enemy across the map that I would have missed had I still been gaming on my old 27" SDTV.
My one and only complaint is the sound, which is downright horrible. Its passable, but unacceptable on a TV with these kind of specs (imo). My old CRT sounds better than this, and thats the truth.

And finally, this TV does have pretty bad input lag when using it as a monitor. Its about half a second delay, which may not seem like much, but after opening the wrong program because the cursor did not position itself correctly for the 10th time, it will be. I could easily blame this on my laptop which is two years old, but I've hooked it up to a friends 42" HDTV using the exact same cable and it was super smooth. If you want a large monitor, this is definitely NOT for you. Look elsewhere.

tl;dr Great for gaming, virtually no input lag. Bad speakers. Bad as a monitor.

Pros:
Nice looking TV
Vivid colors
LOTS of picture adjustments
Decent remote

Cons:
Spot lighting: Two obvious cones of light bleeding through along the top
Some cable channels judder and skip with Cinemotion off and/or on. Probably mostly due to the cable signal, but other TVs don't do it.
Some what difficult to assemble the stand

Major issue: From the start I received a prompt that told me something new had been connected to the 2nd A/V input even though nothing was ever plugged into that input. It would come up randomly and sometimes not go away until I pressed ENTER on the remote. Service technician indicated that a microprocessor would have to be replaced. Ultimately decided to return the TV to Amazon because I was still under the 30 day return policy.

The hardware issue combined with the above cons led me to go with a different TV. LG still seems to have weak TVs and LED technology may not be where it needs to be to replace regular LCDs back lights. Went with a SONY LCD and did not have any black light bleeds and the blacks were darker than this TV.

I probably got a bad set, but still: Buyer beware.


NOTE: The LG tech service was really helpful and I had a service technician at my house within 4 days of making the call.

First off, DO NOT BUY THIS TV! I will tell you why. Before I bought this TV I was reading some of the reviews & people were complaining about how they put VA panels in this TV instead of the IPS panels. At first, I didn't know what that meant. But, now I truly understand how big of a difference it makes. Since my TV came with the VA panels, the brightness & color got washed out if you were viewing the TV from the side. So, you almost have to sit directly in the middle of the TV to see the true color. Second, the picture quality was very gritty. At first, I thought it was just because my Antenna on my roof wasn't getting a strong signal. But, turns out that wasn't the case. Once I connected my Xbox 360 & Blu ray player (with my HDMI cords) I was astounded to see how crappy the picture quality was still. But, this time it was actually even worse. You could see all the little pixels on the screen. The text was really bad too. That's when I knew that the price of this TV was too good to be true. So, I had no choice but, to return it. It's funny because, I went to Best Buy, and was looking at the same exact TV I bought. But, the one at the store had IPS Panels in it. And let me tell you, it looked like it was supposed to look. In other words, the picture quality was great. But, it came with a price, about $400 more than what I paid for. But, it is well worth it. By, the way if you wanna know if your TV has the IPS panels it will have a "W" in the serial number. If it doesn't have a W than you most likely have the one with VA panels. Even though returning my TV was a pain in the butt, I learned a valuable lesson, don't buy flat screens with VA panels in them anymore. And if the price of something seems too good to be true, put more research into it. Don't make the same mistake as I did. I hope this review helped.

I just received the TV today. I must say it looks pretty good. Better than any other 32" LED LCD I could find except for the 5400 model. I will update later.

PROS:(so far) Great picture the colors are so beautiful especially after calibration, sound is okay, inputs, I like the remote, Menus are easy to use, picture wizard helps a lot, Amazon shipped promptly


CONS: The owners manual is ignorant. Its not organized well at all. There is a CD that came with it, but I would rather not have to deal with that. THE TV IS NOT SILVER GRAY! ITS BLACK. I wanted a silver gray finish since I was designing a room. Trumotion is garbage. Its choppy and gives me a headache. The TV looks great with it off. I noticed it watching the World Cup games and watching blu-rays :(

I would recommend this TV to anyone looking for a 32" LED. Best deal and picture that I've seen and I've researched for the past month now. In fact, all the LGs I viewed were to me and spec-wise best in their respective class.


*IF ANYONE HAS ANY PROFESSIONAL CALIBRATION SETTINGS PLEASE POST THEM HERE! I would appreciate it.*