LG 42LE8900

LG's 2010 collection of Full LED TVs has begun arriving in our lab for testing.  And it's just any old model we're looking at today, but the 42'' version of the high-end LE8900 range.

Build Quality and Design

It's hard to find fault with the hardware on offer here.  The LE8900 has everything you'd expect from a top-of-the-range TV, including a rotating stand, two USB ports, four HDMI inputs, a DLNA-compatible Ethernet port and a backlit remote.  This last marks a change in design and now looks a lot more modern.  It's a treat to use, although we still prefer the remote that comes with the Samsung UE46C7000.
One of this TV's real strengths is actually how thin it is: just 3.5 cm!  It looks stunning from the side, but again, it isn't quite as slim as the Samsung.  That said, it does use Full LED backlighting, with a grid of white LEDs spread out across the whole screen, rather than Samsung's Edge LED, where the LEDs are clustered around the outside.

Like most high-end TVs, the LCD panel has a glossy finish.  It's attractive and produces good results in a darkened room, but as soon as a window or a light are in between the viewer and the screen, the situation worsens and the reflections become annoying.

The onscreen menus also look modern, with animated icons that make them easy to use.  The only downside is that they sometimes take a while to respond, but overall, the whole thing works well.

Another feature that the LE8900 shares with a lot of its competitors is the ability to decode multimedia files found on external peripherals.  But what makes LG's different is the fact that it can access content stored on drives formatted as both FAT32 and NTFS, meaning it can access files larger than 2 GB.  During our tests, the majority of HD video files we tried worked without any problems, whether they were encoded as AVC (x264) or encapsulated as MKV.  On the other hand, M2TS and MTS files still aren't supported.  If you like watching a lot of foreign films then you'll be glad to hear that subtitles work well if they're not in the same file as the video track.  If, however, you include them in a container, then you won't be able to get them onscreen.

Image Quality: Factory Settings

With the default settings, the contrast is excellent, thanks to the dynamic backlighting provided by the local dimming LEDs.  The downside is that the relatively low number of LEDs was visible in certain tests, like the one below.  Especially with largely dark images, some lighter objects end up with glowing halos around them, meaning we can't describe the overall results as 'perfect'.  To avoid this problem, you need to turn off the local-dimming backlighting.


Other problems include an uneven gamma curve (with brightness not correctly distributed across different shades of grey).  At one end, whites aren't far from being burnt, while dark greys all merge into black.  The colours, meanwhile, are too cold.  Overall, that's a pretty poor result, but it matches what we find on the vast majority of the TVs we review.

Image Quality: THX and ISP Expert Mode

Moving into Cinema or ISP Expert mode, which gives access to more complicated settings, corrects the problems with gamma, producing a much more natural picture.  The colours are also a lot more accurate, with the deltaE94 falling to 2.0.


The measurements we took at a 45° angle from the screen in every direction were pretty bad, with blacks looking far too pale.

Turning off dynamic backlighting increases the brightness to 0.26 cd/m², which is one of the worst results we've seen: other TVs get this value down to 0.05 cd/m².  That leaves the LE8900 with one of the lowest contrast ratios of just 770:1.

HD content looks good if you don't stray too far from facing the screen.  SD content is upscaled pretty well, but your DVD player will do a much better job.

Finally, the TruMotion 200 Hz filter does improve the fluidity of fast-moving objects without introducing too many artefacts, but it does give films a strange B-movie look, which is disappointing.

Sound Quality

As a general rule, the thinner the TV, the worse the quality of the sound.  For once, that isn't the case, by which we mean the sound is more or less acceptable.  The frame just isn't big enough to give bass enough room to resonate, but both the mid-range and treble are pretty reasonable.  However, if you want something that's really worth listening to, then you'll need to add a decent Home Cinema speaker set.

Energy Consumption

The LE8900 has amongst the lowest energy consumption in all of reviews with just under 0.1 W on standby, which works out as an extra 12 p a year on your electricity bill if you leave it like that all day every day.  It's just as impressive while switched on, with our equipment showing a consumption of 91 W from this 42'' version.