As part of our test for the 42LG7500, we’re also testing the 42LG5500 today, a Full HD LCD mid-range TV which among other things doesn’t have the 100 Hz and TruMotion setting.

For this reason, there still isn’t a USB socket or SD-Card to read photo or audio files. However, the rest of the connectivity is sufficient for other usage, with, for example, 3 HDMI sockets and a digital optic audio out. You’ll also note that the LG5500 has a much more sobre design than the LG7500, with an entirely black casing. The remote is identical and has the small rapid brightness settings button. The HD compatible digital tuner gives access to any new broadcast channels.


As we said further up, the panel is a full HD format (1920x1080) and covered in a sheen to limit reflections.
ANSI contrast is around 900:1 once the TV is set on film settings in a room with low lighting. Black levels of 0.16 cd/m² aren’t bad at all and up there with some of the best currently on the market. To get this image quality however you need to modify the default settings and reduce backlighting to 18. Obviously you’d need to increase it again in a well lit room. Brightness and contrast levels were set at 47 and 85 respectively. The colour temperature, as on all TVs, is best when you set it to “Warm”. We disactivated all the interference filters and all the other artificial settings that often spoil the a natural image. We should also say that SD performance is not as good as it could be. You lose quite a bit of detail and it is better to carry out the upscale directly on the DVD player which can then be set to give 1080p.

Strangely, when connected to a PC, the 42LG5500 loses a great deal of colour saturation and you almost get a black and white image. The deltaE of 8.9 clearly shows up the problem. What’s worse is that it isn’t possible to adjust the saturation when you use a PC as an image source. Then only the brightness, contast and backlighting are adjustable. You really can’t use this TV properly with a PC. This is a pity because the image itself is well-framed without misplacement or loss of area.


We do insist on the fact that these washed out colours and the deltaE of 8.9 only result from the PC image source. Images from the tuner TV or external sources such as DVD or Blu-ray are entirely normal.

To conclude our evaluation of image quality, we also tested ghosting and jerkiness. Because of the lack of 100 Hz and TruMotion settings, it’s no surprise to see a bit of both. You can see these faults on characters or detailed objects that slowly exit the screen. In 90% of cases they aren’t perceptible.

Lastly, and this is something you get with almost all LCD and plasma TVs, the sound quality is pretty poor. It’s flat and not really that clear. It is however something that is pretty much to be expected in TVs currently on the market.