Overview
If there's one thing you can usually rely on LG to deliver somewhere in its TV range each year, it's groundbreakingly low pricing. The brand has already exploded the pricing of active 3D plasma technology with its PW450 series, including TVs such as the LG 42PW450T.
Now it seems as if it might be trying to do the same thing for edge LED, courtesy of the LG 42LV450U. This 42-inch edge-lit TV costs only a trio of tenners over £500, and is selling for slightly less than this at times.
However, it quickly becomes apparent that the LG 42LV450U might not be the bolt-on bargain it first appears. While it's a decent-looking, nicely built TV for the price, with its slender rear and glossy, glamorous bezel, it's certainly not overburdened with features.
When it comes to multimedia support, for instance, the absence of a LAN port means you're restricted to playback of photo, music and MPEG-4/DivX movie files from USB flash drives. There's no DLNA PC connectivity or access to LG's online features.
The lack of a LAN port also reveals that the TV doesn't even have a Freeview HD tuner.
It does have one or two tricks up its sleeve, though, including LG's so-called 400Hz MCI motion processing, and enough picture set-up tools to earn the endorsement of the Imaging Science Foundation.
Also available in LG's LV450U range are bigger brother the 47-inch 47LV450U, little sister the 37-inch 37LV450U and the baby of the range, the 32-inch 32LV450U.
If you fancy adding Smart TV functionality and a Freeview HD tuner to your LG mix, you're looking at stepping up to the LV550T range and the LG 42LV550T model.
Below the LV450U series are the LV355U models, which remarkably still use edge LED lighting despite being even cheaper. Even more startlingly, they also have a Freeview HD tuner built in. They don't, however, have the LG 42LV450U's 400Hz engine.
Features
There seems little choice but to kick off this section of our review by talking about things the LG 42LV450U does NOT do.
Tough to take, even at the LG 42LV450U's deflated price point, is its lack of a Freeview HD tuner. Such tuners are increasingly considered standard issue on all but the most utterly basic of TVs. This point is underlined by the fact that the next model down in LG's LCD TV range carries a Freeview HD tuner.
Also missed is any sort of Smart TV functionality. LG's 2011 online service has come a long way from last year's fairly insubstantial NetCast platform, so it's a shame not to have access to even a small section of its many charms.
But then the LG 42LV450U doesn't even have a LAN port, so going online with it was never likely to be an option.
The absence of a LAN also means there's no facility for streaming files from a DLNA PC – another feature LG has got rather good at with some of its other TVs, now that it's ironed out teething troubles with its PLEX multimedia server system.
For form's sake, it should be pointed out that the LG 42LV450U also doesn't support 3D playback, be it active or LG's preferred passive flavour. But this is no surprise on a sub-£550 TV, given that 3D technology is still generally commanding a fairly significant premium.
Despite lacking a couple of fairly commonplace tools, the 42-inch LG 42LV450U's feature cupboard isn't completely bare.
Its edge LED lighting is arguably a feature in itself when put in the context of the screen's low price – and it inevitably helps the TV look very slender and attractive.
Also, while its connections don't run to a LAN port, they do include at least a little multimedia support in the shape of a single USB port through which you can play JPEG photo, MP3 audio and DivX video files. The DivX support extends to HD files too, although overall file compatibility is some way short of that enjoyed by LG's DLNA-capable TVs.
Alongside the USB port are a respectable three HDMI ports and, unexpectedly, an RS-232 port with which the TV can be integrated into a full home cinema system.
It's a bit surprising to find that many of the LG 42LV450U's connections face straight out of the TV's rear rather than allowing you to insert your cables from the side, since this means it's going to be much harder to mount the TV on the wall. Mind you, research suggests that precious few of us actually bother to put our flat TVs on the wall anyway.
Finding motion processing on a TV of the LG 42LV450U's lowly price is a boon – even if the 400Hz MCI system LG uses doesn't actually deliver a 400Hz refresh rate. Rather the number is derived – in what's becoming an increasingly common if unhelpful practice – from a combination of native refresh rate, scanning backlight and frame interpolation processing.
The LG 42LV450U's on-screen menus offer an impressive degree of image manipulation for such an affordable set.
But then you'd expect this, given that the TV's been officially endorsed by the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF). This endorsement means that you can pay one of the ISF's trained representatives to come around and calibrate the TV with separate night and day settings specifically designed to suit your particular room environment.
Key among the adjustments available – and doubtless playing a big part in the ISF endorsement – are a reasonably full colour management system, a number of different gamma settings and fine-tuning of the white balance.
The set also provides plenty of more minor processing tools, such as an edge enhancer, black level booster and noise reduction systems.
But we strongly urge you to only use most of these smaller processing tools under extreme circumstances, especially if you're watching HD TV, because – as is so often the case – many of them can actually reduce the quality of a strong source image rather than improve it.
Picture quality
Given its relatively low feature count, the LG 42LV450U really needs to nail the picture quality section of this review if it's to follow through on its on-paper bargain potential.
Unfortunately, though, while it tries hard in some ways, its picture quality doesn't ultimately stand out from the budget hordes as much as it needs to.
The TV is at its best, predictably, when showing bright high-definition sources; especially animated stuff such as the Blu-rays of Toy Story 3 and Rango. With this sort of material, the customary rich colours and high brightness associated with edge LED technology are able to shine – literally.
Given that many cheap flatscreen TVs tend to carry slightly wan colours and muted brightness levels, this edge-LED fuelled dynamism will likely win the set quite a few fans among people perusing the crowded shelves of their local high street electrical store.
It also makes the TV a potentially winning option for rooms that tend to be quite bright. However, the dynamism and brightness also seem to be hiding weaknesses elsewhere – more on this in a minute.
First, though, there's another surprising strength of the LG 42LV450U's pictures to report: their sharpness, at least when showing HD pictures.
Fine detail levels are high, edges are crisp without using the optional edge enhancement system (this tends to over-stress edges, in fact) and motion reproduction is pretty solid by budget TV standards.
There is certainly some loss of resolution over moving objects, but it's not bad at all, and doesn't tend to get so severe that the picture becomes overtly smeary.
You can reduce this slight resolution loss via the HD TV's TruMotion processing option. However, be prepared to pay a price for this in the shape of processing-related side effects such as smudging around the edges of moving objects, and the appearance of what look like 'skipped frames' if the action is particularly fast paced.
Because of these sorts of issues, you're probably best to leave the TruMotion system off for most of the time. These things boil down to personal taste, though, so don't be afraid to try the processing out for yourself. LG has provided the facility to fine-tune TruMotion's activities by manually adjusting the relative 'power' of its separate judder and blur components.
While the LG 42LV450U's strengths initially make it an engaging TV to watch, if you look a little deeper you start to see some problems behind the surface gloss. The biggest of these by far concerns the set's black level depth.
Using the TV's default presets, dark scenes tend to look greyed over and, as a result, rather flat and hollow.
You can get a more convincing black colour if you really crank down the set's brightness and backlight settings. But by the time you've taken so much brightness out of the picture that blacks look black, shadow detail has been crushed into oblivion, and the rest of the picture has become too dull for use in all but the darkest of environments.
There is a little good news concerning the LG 42LV450U's dark scene reproduction, though, in that the backlighting seems pretty even across the whole screen; there aren't the pools of extra brightness towards the screen's edges that characterise an unfortunate number of edge LED TVs.
The TV doesn't have local dimming, either, which is actually a good thing, since it means you don't get the blocks of light inconsistency around bright objects that you can get with locally dimmed edge LED models.
Another area where the LG 42LV450U's low price can be seen in its picture performance is its standard definition playback. The 42-inch TV's upscaling doesn't do a particularly good job of either suppressing noise in low quality standard definition sources or adding sharpness, especially as there's a slight increase in the amount of resolution lost over motion.
This all makes the TV's lack of Freeview HD tuner feel all the more painful, of course.
One last negative of the pictures finds the TV screen's contrast reducing quite dramatically if you have to watch it from any significant viewing angle. But to be fair, this is true of almost every other LCD TV, too.
Sound, value and ease of use
Sound quality
Ultra-slim TVs tend to struggle where audio is concerned, due simply to the lack of space available for inbuilt speakers. Unfortunately the LG 42LV450U follows this trend, with extremely limited amounts of bass extension, and a distracting tendency for the TV's bodywork to start 'humming' with certain pitches of audio content – especially male voices.
It's not all bad news, though, because the mid range is actually quite open and clear, except for when those tricky chassis-bothering tones pop up. There's also a good amount of treble clarity and detail, although this treble information can become too dominant during action scenes.
Value
The LG 42LV450U's £520 price is certainly eye-catchingly low for a 42-inch TV using edge LED processing. Especially one that can, given the right sort of source material, pump out vibrant, appealing pictures.
However, its lack of a Freeview HD tuner or any online features together with some pretty average handling of dark scenes ultimately harm the TV quite severely. Especially when you consider that you can get LG's massively better specified 42LV550T for only £40-£50 more.
Ease of use
Not having any Smart TV features means that the 42LV450U doesn't have LG's impressive Smart Hub on-screen menu system. It's still incredibly user-friendly though, thanks to the extensive use of attractive, large and well thought through icons and sensibly organised option lists.
The remote control doesn't look particularly swish – it's plasticky and seems cluttered. But the longer you use the LG 42LV450U for, the more you come to appreciate just how well laid out the remote control is, with all the major buttons falling easily to hand and its slender design fitting comfortably into your hand.
Verdict
Casual buyers strolling into their local electronics store might very well find themselves wandering out clutching an LG 42LV450U under their arm. Its combination of a low price, pretty design and rich, bright colours give it serious shelf appeal.
Get the TV home, though, and you might wonder if you've done the right thing. You'll likely be upset not to find a Freeview HD tuner, for a start. You might also wonder why such a futuristic-looking TV doesn't have any online Smart TV features or enable you to stream in multimedia stuff stored on your PC.
Even the brash pictures that may have looked so attractive in a brightly lit shop lose some of their lustre in a home environment, as you clock the TV's rather average black level response and uninspiring standard definition upscaling.
The LG 42LV450U does have its moments, for sure. But with less than £50 more getting you a Freeview HD tuner, better pictures and full Smart TV functionality from LG's own 42LV550T, the LG 42LV450U looks like a compromise product that the brand's range doesn't really need.
We liked
The edge LED lighting in the LG 42LV450U helps it deliver an attractively slender and glossy design. The TV is extremely easy to use, too, and its price seems reasonably aggressive if considered in isolation from the rest of LG's range. It also produces some pleasingly sharp and colour-rich HD pictures.
We disliked
The LG 42LV450U's lack of a Freeview HD tuner is a huge disappointment, despite the TV's aggressive pricing. It's also a bit of a shame that there are no Smart TV features.
In performance terms, the HD TV struggles to produce a good black level response, and is only an average standard-definition performer.
Ultimately, with these negatives taken into account, even the LG 42LV450U's price no longer looks particularly attractive, given what LG has on offer for only a few quid more.
Final verdict
The LG 42LV450U is unfortunately a great example of an increasingly common problem with current TV ranges as prices keep being squeezed.
If you consider it on just its own merits, it's a respectable if hardly awe-inspiring effort – provided you can live without a Freeview HD tuner, at any rate.
Put it in the context of LG's wider TV range, though, and it struggles to justify its existence. That's when you consider that spending not much more cash at all could get you the LG 42LV550T, from a series that gives you both much better specifications and a superior performance.
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