In the very competitive TV segment from 40 to 49 inches, LG have come out with a model which offers excellent value for money. For less than 700 pounds, the 42LH5010 gives you TruMotion 200 Hz and has some interesting multimedia features. This attractive pricing can be explained in part by the fact that there’s no LED in the backlighting, just standard fluorescent tubes. Of course, this isn’t incompatible with good quality images.

Design and build

Before taking a closer look at image quality lets get some more detail on what the LH5010 offers in terms of hardware.

The Full HD 1080p panel comes with an effective anti-reflective matte coating. Connectivity has been kept to a strict minimum: no S-Video socket, no analogue audio out except the headphones socket. The only other solution is to get your sound through one of the two scarts. Note however that there is a USB connector for key or hard drive connection.

There's a respectable multimedia player. Don’t expect miracles in HD, for which it is limited to about half of existing formats - mainly AVC-HD in MKV of TS containers - but all our DIVXs worked fine, both in SD and HD. The LH5010 also accepts external subtitles and can even resynchronise them if necessary. The USB socket is compatible with NTFS formatted drives, which means you have access to larger files - a good thing when it comes to HD! Note that there’s no Ethernet socket so you can’t access files on a network.

The OSD menu is clear, simple and accessible. It’s well presented and allows easy access to contents whatever the level of user competence.
The remote is easy to use but it has a really cheap finish. What’s more, it isn’t backlit though this is usually the case for TVs sold in this price range.

Default image quality
This rating isn’t included in the overall rating

While manufacturer default settings are often rather suspect, you have to say that this TV offers a nice image straight out the box. It’s far from perfect but colours are acceptable notwithstanding the fact that there’s a slightly blue tinge. The luminance curve, though irregular, shows no obvious faults. Sharpness is however pushed a little too high which makes the image hard. Again, it's acceptable overall, especially in comparison with what the competition is offering.


Image quality in cinema mode

Simply switching to Cinema mode gives you the best available settings. You might want to increase backlighting because it is set really low and requires a completely dark room – putting it at 45 means it’ll be fine in most lighting, so don’t hestitate if you’re in a light room.

You’ll then get a very natural image with excellent colours and good distribution of brightness between different tones. The contrast is however a little weak as blacks are not as deep as they could be. Back levels are stuck at around 0.25 cd/m², while the best TVs score as low as or less than 0.1 cd/m². This doesn’t show up too much in a bright room with backlighting pushed into the upper half but in a completely dark room you notice that the blacks onscreen aren’t as dark as the walls of the room.
Upscaling is a little soft from SD sources and benefits from increasing sharpness a bit. With HD, the results are simply excellent except for the lack of contrast that we mentioned above.


This TV has the great advantage of TruMotion 200 Hz which limits jumps considerably without creating too many artefacts around moving objects. Right now this is one of the best of this type of image processing. Ghosting has practically disappeared thanks to the high refresh rate.

The viewing angles are some of the best we’ve seen on LCD TVs. You’re still far from what you get with a plasma but the colours don’t get too much worse when you’re off to one side. Blacks do get a good deal brighter but overall the LH5010 is far from being the worst of LCD TVs.

Audio quality

The sound from the speakers is powerful and full. It does however lack detail and reverberates a bit. You have to say that no speakers point forwards and the sound suffers in terms of detail as a result.

Energy consumption

On standby the LH5010 consumes a little more energy than the majority of TVs we test. At 0.2 W however it’s still low and when turned on it does even better at only 109 W.