Full HD, an HD digital tuner and a matte screen: it seems to us that LG is targeting mid-range consumers with its LG7500 series, whose 42'' model we tested.

We honestly can't imagine it being aimed at anybody particularly discerning given that it's finished with sequins.

No, we're not joking: LG has lined the edge of the frame of the whole TV in silvery beads.

Disco Time!

To make things worst, they're set inside a bright blue plastic frame which it's very difficult to miss.

In general, we try to remain neutral when it comes to design--it's a subjective, thing, after all--and just tell you what we think of the hardware.

In this case, though, we find it hard not to question why LG has gone for such an incredibly kitsch look for this line of TVs.


Looks aside, the TV itself isn't very good, with a very poor contrast ratio of 420:1--a long way fro; the 2000:1 that the very best of the competition offers.

With brightness levels of around 161 cd/m², blacks are far too bright at 0.39 cd/m².

Color handling isn't much better, with the DeltaE score, used to measure the discrepancy between the colors the TV should show and those that appear on screen of 5.1.   Better TVs average between 2.8 and 4 on this measure.

Unstable Configuration

But the real problem with the LG7500 is the fact it's impossible to get it to stay in Cinema mode.

Every time we set it up the way we wanted it, the TV seemed to flip back to its default settings of its own accord.  And every time, we chose Cinema mode from the menu again, only to see the standard settings return fifteen minutes later.

This very strange behaviour makes it effectively impossible to use Cinema mode for anywhere near long enough to watch a film!

Indeed, the fault is so bad that we're forced to award two stars because we couldn't even test this TV out with any of our test movies.

The unresponsive menus, the absence of a volume indicator, the badly-adjusted default settings and the poor lab scores only reinforce the impression that this is a mediocre product.