Customer Reviews

LG 42LD520 42-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV

5 star:		(79)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Might not appeal to the people who can afford a $2500 TV..aka the videophile, but I'm in love with this. For 95% of people this should be more than enough. After months of shopping around and doing my homework, I went against the grain and decided to try the LG. Purchased this set through Walmart site to store. It was $70 more than the LD450 model on the shelf. But in my eyes well worth paying a little extra and waiting another week for it. The extra hdmi port alone justifies the $$$$.

Picture Crisp! Bright. Color is deep! Pops off the screen when in high def. Nothing in 480 (standard) looks good on this though . Keep that in mind. Initially struggled with adjustments. In the end a couple of tweaks to cinema mode were all it took. Looks as good (maybe better) than the comparible Sony's and Samsungs.

A word of advice... I saw one of the 450 models on a store shelf...which basically has the same picture with a few less features. It looked horrible next to a Sony. Huh? The sales guy tried to tell me that the LG wasn't getting as good of a signal. Ummm...why does the 47" inch version way down on the other end also look bad next to the Sony? Or even the Sanyo? Why do I see the same thing when I visit the store down the road in fact? The answer? LG's 'store demo' presets are horrible. I'm not sure why they did this. But they badly misjudged something. Once you get the picture correctly adjusted, you'll see what I'm talking about. It's an "oooh and ahhhh" kind of thing when you see what it is supposed to look like.

Final Settings: Aspect Ratio 16:9
Energy Saving Off
Cinema
Backlight 30
Contrast 90
Brightness 75 (adjusted)
Sharpness 50
Color 50
Tint 0
Color Temp W50

Advanced Control

Dynamic Contrast Low (adjusted)
Dynamic Color Low (adjusted)
Clear White Off
Skin Color 3 (adjusted)
Noise Reduction Off
Digital Noise Reduction off
Gamma Medium
Black Level Low
Eye CAre Greyed Out/off
Real Cimema Off
Color Gamut Standard
xvYCC Auto
Trumotion Off

THOUGHTS:

Intellegent Sensor is useless. Makes the picture WAY too dim. It might have been good if they weren't so conservative with the energy savings. I could achieve 100% power savings by unplugging it, but what would be the point? Options to adjust Itelligent Sensor are greyed out too. The IS logo that pops up on the screen is also annoying. Blech! . Strongly recommend disabling this feature.

Trumotion=much ado about nothing. Doesn't add anything great to the experience and in many cases makes things worse. Thankfully it's easy to disable. Interloping of frames just creates an artificial feeling to everything. Even on low it's bad. If motion blur/judder is an issue to you, then you to look into Plasma. I really don't notice it though. NBA finals and World Cup matches looked amazing WITHOUT this feature enabled!!!!!

60hz vs 120hz: The difference is slightly noticable. Will 60hz ruin your viewing experience? No. But for the slight price difference it's worth it. You'll notice the difference with Blue Ray movies for sure.

Glare almost non existant. Good job!!!

Off angle viewing isn't flawless, but I don't notice issues unless I'm watching tv from the other room.

Reported 'lip-sync' issues: I saw it do this once and the issue never resurfaced. So I'm writing this off.

Remote control simple to use. Well done. Although I can make all adjustments I need to with my Directv remote, so it will go into mothballs.

Noticed a bit of uneven backlighting when I'm flipping channels, on a pure white screen. But don't let that scare you. You shouldn't notice it 99% percent of the time. If it does become an issue to you, then adjust the intensity of the backlight accordlingly.

Sound could have been better. Meh! Having speakers in the back was a bad idea. Asthetics aside..they shouldn't have done this. But I'll be getting a home theatre system soon anyway. So it's a minor issue to me.

The stand: I had heard rumbling about the stand not being very 'secure' on the LD450 models. Definitely not an issue with the 520 series. Seems perfectly stable to me. I've bumped it a couple of times and it barely moved.

Lack of an ethernet port: Would have been nice had LG included this feature just for pulling down firmware updates. But I can live without it

BOTTOM LINE:

This tv is great! You can't go wrong....as people have said...for the money. If you are looking for something better....wait a year or two for the next generation of led-backlit sets to hit the mainstream market at a reasonable price. But I can honestly tell you that this unit provides the best balance of all worlds. It's candy for the retinas!!!!!!!!!

I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.

Well done LG

-Rick

I spent close to an hour in the store comparing LCD TVs. This LG stood out with its sharp and bright colors. I used the store's Internet connection to check out the reviews but since it is a new model there wasn't many. The older model however was popular among gamers.

The speakers on this TV are hidden on the back and this gives it a neat look. The speakers also sound great. There are different sound options in the menu plus advanced picture controls. In "Intelligent Sensor" mode the TV adjust the brightness and color contrast according to the room lighting conditions. The picture quality is easy to setup using the picture wizard option.

This TV has three HDMI connections in the back to use with your laptop or desktop plus an RGB (VGA Cable). There is also a USB 2.0 port in the back. I connected a USB thumb drive and was able to listen to music and display my digital pictures on the screen.

Over all I am very pleased with quality of this LG model and recommend it to anyone who wants to buy a LCD TV for under $1k, and I mean not for picture quality but the size of the screen since this had as good, if not better, picture quality as other more expensive models in the store.

I bought this TV from the big box retailer that constantly rolls back prices. The TV was actually cheaper than online. Overall I like the TV very much and I think the value proposition is excellent. My local Bestbuy had this TV on display.

I have three recommendations for people who are not technically inclined - like myself - and get this TV to utilize the TV's full potential:

1. Make sure you use an HDMI cable to connect this TV to your cable box. You need to make sure that your HDMI cable is at least version 1.3.
2. Get HD cable or satellite. Having HD channels makes a huge difference.
3. Make sure your cable box is set at 1080p output signal. Our cable box was set at a much lower picture quality and it took me a while to figure this out. Some cable boxes might adjust the output signal automatically, but not all do that.

If you follow these three simple steps you should be able to enjoy the full potential of the TV. Also, think about getting netflix and one of the blue ray players that allows you to stream netflix. The quality of some of the movies is just awesome.

My last recommendation is to get an additional warranty. LCD TVs seem to be more prone to failing than CRT TVs. There are huge differences in the cost of these additional warranties. So account for these differences in your comparisons when you shop around.

Another reviewer stated that if I researched I would find that this is a 60hz TV and not 120hz. Ok I did the research and it's 120hz as advertised.

Picture looks great crisp contrast, vivid bright colors, excellent sound would recommend this TV to anyone. My only complaint is the lack of analog audio output connection.

Product arrived safe from California (we're in Illinois) in 4 days. Perfect condition. Took only minutes to install, replacing an old Sony set with CRT. Light enough to carry and exceptionally flexible. After channel scan (about 10 minutes), it was ready to play HDMI link to cable, HDMI link to laptop, DVD player, and videotape player. Picture quality is outstanding. Remote is self explanatory. Vastly superior to many other 42" sets that I've seen in stores and homes of friends.

I've had my eye on this TV for about a month now. I saw it at Fry's on sale for 499 about a month ago while I was just browsing around. I was tempted to buy it, but without permission from the wife... it could've been a bad idea. Went back two days later to get it but the sale was gone and the price was back to like 799. I was so mad. Last night I went again for some other things, to my surprise they had this TV on sale again for 499! Wife was with me, we talked- we got it.
This TV is all around great. We have it in the bedroom, and the thing I like best about it so far (besides the amazing value and great picture) is the intelligent sensor. It allows you to save power (and your eyes). When it's dark in the room it dims the screen to save power and not to be overkill on your eyes. AWESOME. Our plasma was so bright and a hassle to adjust settings all the time so I just dealt with the brightness. This power saving feature can be turned off, but leaving it on auto is the smart thing to do.
Other than all of that, speakers have come a long way in built in LCD TV's. I'll have to say these sound about as good as my 46" Samsung in my office- which was a pricier purchase. If this is going in a living room or game room, a sound bar or full surround sound would always be better- but for basic TV watching the speakers are more than adequate.
As most people will say the 120hz is iffy. At times people look to be moving faster than they should, or there are little distortions. I think it's best used on blu ray, but I generally have that turned off.
If you're in the market for a TV- go to Frys ASAP and grab this for 499. The price Amazon has is fair, but Fry's price was unbeatable and I couldn't resist....

It's been 4 days now and while the picture can be excellent and the 120hz can be used very effectively, it has terrible problems with ghosting and image retention -- probably the worst I've seen on an LCD tv in the last 4 or 5 years. If a graphic or any stationary scene is on for even just 10 seconds, it remains visible for up to a minute as the scenes/channels continue to change. (And yes, the all the picture settings have been turned way down as soon as I turned on the set)
I was watching the world cup for about 20 minutes today, and the station's logo and score ticker took about 5 minutes to completely disappear after I changed the channel...maybe mine is just a lemon - quite intolerable. It is incredibly disappointing considering the TV's potential. It's going back to the store in a few days....

I'd been looking for 42-inch LCD television for a while before I finally settled on this model. My price range was about $500-600, and I couldn't pass this model up when I saw it for $550 on Amazon. As soon as I got it, I popped in a DVD produced by George Lucas' studio Lucasfilm and used their video calibration tool to calibrate the TV, and I must say it looks great. A lot of these TVs come preset with some pretty harsh settings, so it's really a must to tone down the brightness and color a bit.

But for the money, this TV had all the features I wanted. It's 1080p, 120 hz and has a 100,000:1 contrast ratio. With the new LED televisions coming out recently, you can get an LCD television for a great price -- and I'd say they still look great.

One feature that is a must for an HDTV that LG surprisingly doesn't mention on this model is 1:1 pixel mapping. What this does is ensure your television gets you every single pixel the input device -- whether it's digital cable, a DVD player or your computer via HDMI. Many televisions will overscan the picture by default, meaning it "crops" the image you see by about 5 percent then stretches or scales it back out to fit the screen. What this does it distort the image in addition to cutting out a portion of your picture -- this is particularly annoying with football and other sports where the score is listed at the bottom. Under aspect ratio, select the "Just Scan" option, and you're set. It's not available on analog input devices like cable television via a coaxial cable, though, for obvious reasons.

When I was looking at this TV, there was a lot of discussion about the TruMotion feature. What this does is artificially increase the frame rate to (hopefully) give you a smoother picture with less blur during fast scenes. It's really a matter of opinion whether you use it or not. I use it for football games and other sports where the camera shots change often and there's a fast pace of motion. But if you have this on during a DVD or a cable broadcast, you'll notice everything looks like a soap opera and artificially rendered.

All in all, this is an amazing TV for the price. The picture is great when calibrated properly, it has all the HDMI inputs you'll need (three) and has great features. I bought a three-year warranty from SquareTrade for about $75, and they guarantee to refund the purchase price if anything goes wrong. All this considered, I expect this TV to last me a long time.

I did a ton of research looking for a new TV. There were a couple of items that were extremely necessary for this purchase. It had to be 40 inches or larger, 1080P, and 120 HZ. As I was reading reviews and comments I kept coming back to the LG 42LD550. After really looking at it I decided to go with the LG 42LD520 42-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV as I have a PS3 and stream netflix off of that. With only an optical audio out I wouldn't be able to run the internet apps through my surround sound. This made the internet apps less intriguing.

I am extremely happy with this purchase. I am not a professional TV watcher or reviewer but her are some of my feelings. First some Pros:

PROS:
Great Picture in HD
Easy menu controls
Plenty of inputs (for me)
Sleek looks
Very adjustable picture for the price
Swivel stand

CONS:
Picture in SD is a little fuzzy (Not unwatchable)(This could be settings as well)
Motion Blur is strange but can be configured to your liking or turned off
No Audio out
The sleek looks and gloss frame tend to show dust
Some light bleeding from the back of the TV Enclosure (Noticeable in the dark with dim colors on the TV)

This TV is on the swivel stand at the moment and i will eventually mount it on the wall. So far this TV is exactly what I was looking for and I am extremely happy with my purchase.