LG 47LK520 Review

Introduction

Design

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Though not straying far from the norm, this LG looks great and contains hints of style.

You wouldn't think that there's much you can do to make a black box look pretty, but an obviously attractive television emerges from the box of the LG LK520. This TV is not an avante garde romp into new age design, but rather an elegant and recognizable device with touches of style. A shiny thin bezel with a faint red border wraps around the 47 inches of screen. The stand is of the same plastic, yet very unobtrusive with rounded edges that seem to disappear into its platform.

The LG LK520 offers easy connections to older devices with two component and composite connections each, meaning you can have several analog devices attached at once without having to swap cables. There is also space for three HDMI connections for newer devices. You can skirt the smart TV market by connecting a computer directly to your TV via the LK520's VGA input.

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Smart TV Features

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LG's standard menus aren't the easiest to manage and look through.

The main menu system is called Home on the remote. Home proves to be an extensive look at the settings you can change, but it is not organized as well as we hoped. Finding certain settings, like the TruMotion mode, can be difficult only because they are not where you would expect them to be. There are tons of menus nested in other menus, and as you dig deeper they take up quite a bit of screen space.

When you plug into a USB port, the television asks you if you are looking for movies, pictures, or music. The three are separated into individual interfaces—all of them are easy to use, with the option to switch to another easily. There are many options for slide shows, including the ability to play your own music with your photos. Without the built-in connectivity of newer sets, this provides for some nice multimedia flexibility.

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Picture Quality

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Overall, this LG is a high-quality performer.

The LK520 tested with highly accurate colors, though it did struggle a bit in maintaining a consistent color temperature—we'll spare you the particulars and go into more detail about that in the science section of this review.

In the tradition of many LG televisions this year, the LK520 tested with a fairly unimpressive contrast ratio. Its results weren't bad, but they were notably lackluster; there's just nothing about its black/white performance to get excited about, unfortunately.

The most impressive thing about the LK520, though, is its excellent motion performance, which is bolstered into wowie-zowie range by LG's motion processor, called TruMotion. This clears up any and all motion-based issues while set to low or medium, accurately generating content to provide a sharp picture for moving subjects like sports or movies. We'd advise steering clear of setting it to high for anything other than sports, however, unless you want to make Citizen Kane look like General Hospital.

Conclusion

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The LG 47LK520 ($899 MSRP) is a large, 1080p LCD television with excellent motion processing for its class.

The price is a little burdensome, considering the lack of 3D or internet features, but you can find it for about $700 on several websites. Particular points of quality include a set of accurate colors, the TruMotion mode, and a very functional USB media port. Color performance was strong, particularly in matching the standard gamut and the transition of color from dark to light.

All together, though, this TV is a little above average with an uninteresting set of features. The price is high for what you get and it's important to consider that the best functions—the USB port and the TruMotion mode—are available on other LGs for less money. It's a decent overall value with performance that won't impress, but won't disappoint. If you can find it for under the MSRP, then it might be worth considering.

Science Introduction

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This LG showed off particularly accurate colors across the entire spectrum of light output. Its color temperature tested with some notable flaws, but nothing so major that it's worth discussing in detail. The same can be said of its contrast ratio, which isn't super wide, but is not narrow enough to be a drawback. Perhaps the most interesting aspect about the LK520's overall performance is its motion processing.

Motion

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With TruMotion mode, this LG did really well on our motion tests.

To better display moving objects, the LG 47LK520 comes equipped with a great overdrive processing feature called TruMotion. This setting is fully customizable with four levels: off, low, high, and user controlled. High puts both the judder and blur up to 7, while user mode lets you put it all the way up to 10, which is what we did to score this test.

We liked the user control aspect of the TruMotion Effect. Being able to control the intensity of the interpolation is a great response to the Soap Opera Effect we see with many similar functions. You can get smoother motion without it looking cheap by controlling the extremity to which this function is switched on. You can get your picture smooth up to the point where you do not like it and then back it off one or two points for an optimized picture in every way. Good job, LG.

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Color

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The LG LK520's color gamut adherence was very impressive.

A color gamut is a visual chart representing the millions of colors a particular TV can display. There is an international standard for high-definition televisions, set forth in a document colloquially called Rec. 709 (formally, ITU-R Recommendation BT.709). The current edition, standardized in 1990, simply states (in complex terms) where a television's red, green, blue, and white points should lie.

By this standard, the LK520 is a very accurate TV. It doesn't adhere perfectly to Rec. 709, but its gamut is very close to perfect, which is a quality result from our standpoint. Basically, if a content provider wants to display something in a certain color, you're very likely to see it appear that way on your set. This isn't as noticeable with broadcast television, but can make a big difference for movies that are carefully color graded.

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Other Tests

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