LG 55LE5400 55Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED LCD

3 Comments

1. Chris H. says:

   June 15, 2010 at 9:57 pm

   Picture Quality Stood Out vs All the Others
   Rating:5 out of 5 stars
   I’ve had this TV for just over 24 hours and so far I’m pleased. I chose the LG 5400 after visiting the local blue and yellow store as they were changing over their 2009 models to the 2010s. I was initially impressed by the Samsung LED LCDs and was getting close to buying the Samsung 7100 (7000 everywhere else with a red ToC vs. Grey at this store) when on my third trip to the store, they had just put the LG up on the wall. The picture stood out right away from the Samsungs and the Panasonic Plasma above it. The other decidng factor over the Samsung was the matte screen on the LG. The Samsungs have a high gloss screen just like a Plasma which is a problem for the room that I planned to put the TV in. It has multiple windows and lots of light so a high gloss screen would reflect way too much. As for the Pro’s and Cons, here’s what I have noticed so far:

   Pro’s: Picture quality with deep blacks and sharp contrast, picture adjustment wizard and ability to tweak it to the Nth degree including judder, sleek case appearance, internet widgets (haven’t played with these too much yet so they might just be toys to brag about but, not too useful), Solid build
   
   Cons: missing some features that others in the price range have like local dimming LEDs, PIP/POP, room light sensing, and a universal remote, 120hz instead of 240hz (not that I’ve noticed a problem yet).

   Lastly, a note about mounting this TV on a wall; all of the permanent hook-ups are on the back surface (i.e not recessed into the case) so if you plan to use a low profile mount, you’ll need right angle adapters for everything (HDMI, Component Video, VGA, etc). You’ll need at least 1.75″ of clearance from the back of the TV to the wall to get all your connections made. You’ll also need to use a recessed outlet. I ended up scrapping the low profile mount and using a tilting mount that gave me 2.5″ of clearance. Made life alot easier at the sacrifice of some sleekness on the wall. This shouldn’t have been a big surprise given how thin the TV is but, I made the mistake. Oh well. After I’ve lived with this TV for a while longer I’ll post an update but, so far so good.
2. J. Davis says:

   June 16, 2010 at 1:08 pm

   Almost perfect
   Rating:4 out of 5 stars
   This is written from the perspective of a first-timer in the world of HD and large screens. I held off until I was satisfied with the picture quality, thickness, and price of LCDs. After more than a year of research online and in person, LG won out over all others, for the above reasons and the matte screen. Our TV faces a wall of windows.

   We had a tough time deciding on a 47″ or 55″. Our viewing distance is only 10′, and we didn’t want to overwhelm the room with an obnoxiously sized TV. In my exhaustive research on TV viewing distance, several points kept repeating, namely that 1) few people regret getting a TV that is too large, but many regret getting a TV that is too small; and 2) if a TV seems too large at first, it will rapidly become “just right”. Ours didn’t seem too large at first, and I’m VERY glad we didn’t get anything smaller, and we could even go a bit larger for HD material and more of an immersive feel. The only possible problem as I see it is there is more work involved in watching movies on a larger screen – your eyes have to move more. This is especially obvious when a scene cuts back and forth between two people talking, with one of them on one side of the screen, the other on the opposite side. It’s something to get used to.

   Non-HD material: as expected, it doesn’t look as good as it did on a CRT TV. With some material, such as cartoons, it’s not just a TV size/resolution issue – there are compression artifacts everywhere that look awful up close. This is a function of the digital source, though, not the TV. The TV just makes it more obvious. Regular DVDs look better once you adjust the picture – the “Standard” setting is vivid but unrealistic.

   HD material looks spectacular. I thought Avatar would look great, but it’s better than I hoped it would be. HD picture quality is a no-brainer with the LGs and you can see them in person compared to other sets at any time, so I won’t go into more detail than that. The matte screen diffuses light and it’s perfect for the room.

   Now for the dreaded audio sync issue. The TV I received does have it, badly with the blu-ray player, very slightly with HD cable (you can’t tell unless you really look for it, and some channels are worse than others). There seems to be a lot of misinformation about this, and people everywhere are returning TVs and blu-ray players, getting technicians to come out and update their firmware and even replacing the mainboard in the TV, none of which seems to help.

   Here’s the scoop – it’s a problem with the TV, not the blu-ray player, at least in the case of this TV. Apparently the HDMI input circuitry slows down the audio, causing it to fall behind the video. This has been a problem with several manufacturers’ LCD TVs for years, including some from Samsung. There is no fix available from LG for this, and I don’t think there will be until enough reviews complain about it. There are a few solutions, however:

   1) Use component video cables for blu-ray instead of HDMI, which was my permanent solution.
   
   2) I was able to eliminate the problem with HDMI/regular DVDs by setting the DVD player’s output to 24hz (cinema) instead of 60hz. There’s no flickering or loss of picture quality that I can detect. This trick didn’t work with blu-ray DVDs, so I went with the component cables instead.
   
   3) Use an A/V receiver that has a delay feature, and route your HDMI through that. I don’t have one, so I don’t have any more information on this.

   I’m giving it 4 stars for the outstanding HD picture quality, low price, and the thin matte screen. If it wasn’t for the audio sync problem, it would very easily be 5, but I can’t reward LG for something that has been an issue with their sets for so many years.
3. Ron D. Troy says:

   June 16, 2010 at 7:56 pm

   An amazing TV for the price
   Rating:5 out of 5 stars
   I’ve just acquired the 55LE5400 as a service contract replacement for a rear projection CRT 50″ set. I was trying to get the best 55″ set I could for a certain price level (around $2k) and after going through what was available this one jumped out. That, and good reviews on the web for it, even though the CNET review was kind of down on it.

   This is an LED edge lit set, so as CNET points out, it will not be as effective at controlling brightness of certain scenes as one with a full back panel of LEDs. Sure, a year from now that will likely be common at this price level, but not yet.

   The set was a bit of a pain to put on its stand (took 3 people), but once done it was very easy to hook up and get going. The MENU is a bit strange but is easily learned. It does not seem to allow for manual channel labelling, and input labelling is limited. Like most sets today, it does not have S Video (still useful if one has an S VHS deck or a Laser Disc player (not all LDs have DVD replacements still), and the only audio outputs are headphone (which cuts off the speakers) and Toslink. We have someone in the house at times with poor hearing, and we want to hookup a set of analog headphones so that person can set the volume to what he needs while others watch and listen via the TV speakers. To do this I’ll need to spend about $130 to get a Gefen Dolby input digital to analog converter; it would have been nice to have a simple analog audio output that was independent of the speakers (without turning the speakers off); this is also a common problem with today’s TVs.

   The remote is a bit annoying; it is easy to hit the picture button (changing video attributes) when one wants to change inputs. One then has to go in via the menu to fix the error. Other then that it’s easy to handle, and the codes for it were easily found for the TIVO remote by using the appropriate TIVO menu setup item.

   Once I finished the basic setup and ran through the picture wizard, I looked at a number of programs; directly through the QAM tuner, via a TIVO Premiere XL, a Toshiba HD player with HD DVDs, and a Sony Blu Ray player with BD discs. I realized something right away; that what I was looking at seemed amazingly real in a way I’ve never before experienced on TV. My 16 year old daughter complains that on crime shows the blood and gore is now to scary to watch!

   I’ve heard complaints about the audio; I’ve not heard any problems so far on my set. One cute thing; it seems there is a way to turn off video while leaving the audio active, thus cutting power usage to under 40 watts, presumably while one takes a nap. Even with video on the rated power use is under 200 watts; this is an Energy Star set. It probably uses a quasrter or less of the power needed by the TV it replaced. The TV has timers to turn it on and off as well as a sleep timer; this is a nice combo.

   The set is amazingly thin. Its screen is reasonably glare resistant; we can see glare in our room with many windows and lights, but it is normally hardly noticable.

   If one can afford 3D and / or full LED back lighting, great. If not, and one wants a 55″ set, this appears to be an excellent choice.