FEATURED Sharp LC-40LE550 40-inch 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV
- Full 1080p LED Display
- 4M:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio
- Thin Bezel Design
- Powerful 20W Audio,3 HDMI
- TV without stand (Width x Height x Depth): 36-3/8′ x 23.0″ x 9-1/8″, TV with stand (Width x Height x Depth): 36-3/8″ x 21-1/2″ x 3-1/2″
The LC-40LE550U TV features the a 1080p LED Display for breathtaking HD images and a 4 million: 1 dynamic contrast ratio. This AQUOS TV delivers a clear picture quality and is housed in a beautiful thin front bezel.
Comments
3 comments
M. Paganini
January 16, 2014
Nice TV. Good HD image quality but poor SD quality,
Note: Please look at the end of this review for important updates.
This unit is very similar in features to most sets in this class and price range. I paid $349 for it at a local store and believe that the sweet spot in terms of price/features for this TV would be somewhere under $400. I’ll add details on the various features of this unit below.
Appearance
Externally, this TV has a nice appearance with a glossy finish and thin bezels. It uses LED backlighting, which allows it to be thinner and lighter than the older LCD/fluorescent based units.
The TV has some controls on the side of the unit (a nice touch, as it allows you to perform quick actions while setting it up). Another positive point (in my opinion) is that some of the HDMI connectors are on the back of the TV, allowing shorter HDMI cables and consequently less excess cable dangling from the back of your A/V rack/unit.
Inputs & Outputs
This set has 3 HDMI inputs and a “mixed” component/composite input (meaning you can only use one or the other.) It also comes with a PC Input (D-Sub 15 pin), the usual RF input, two audio inputs and two audio outputs, being one of them optical.
Of note is the USB connector input: When plugging a USB stick, the TV will read its contents and allow the playback of movies, music and photos. I normally don’t use this feature on my TVs, but a quick test revealed that it cannot deal with H.264 content inside Matroska (MKV) containers (most TVs can’t anyway.) I haven’t tested music or photos, but assume it can play MP3s and display JPG files without problems. The USB connector is on the side of the unit, right next to some of the HDMI connectors.
Image Quality
Image quality for HD is pretty good, and viewing angles are very decent. However, SDTV sources display horrid images (blurry, with all kinds of saturation problems. I couldn’t understand why this is so and tried pretty much every setting without much success. In short, if you use HD only, you’re all set. For SDTV use (over composite cable, at least) I’d suggest another TV.
Another interesting quirk is the display of closed captions: No matter what settings you try, it always displays text as if “half a space” exists between letters (in other words, the spacing between letters is too large.) It bothers me a bit, but I think I can live with it. Your mileage may vary.
By default, the TV comes with the image settings set to “Standard”, which has power saving mode turned on. This makes the image darker than it needs to be and is a somewhat silly setting in a unit that consumes only 11W of power. One of the first actions after the initial setup should be to configure your video to “User” and manually set backlight to 75% which should be good for most light levels without being excessive. This is, of course, a matter of personal taste. I also like to turn off all automated methods of adjusting brightness according to local lighting. I think most if not all TVs get this wrong and this one is no exception. Fortunately, this set provides a way to turn it off.
Sound
Sound is somewhat tinny like most LED TVs (the case is too thin for powerful speakers.) This TV is somewhat better than the average and comes with two 10W speakers which should improve things a bit. I haven’t tried to pump the volume up all the way to see where distortion starts yet.
Remote
The remote has decent sized buttons with a rubbery feel to them. I’m sure the lettering will rub off in a year or so, but I normally don’t use the factory remote — instead, I configured an old Harmony to use this TV (Logitech had no codes for this specific TV, but it allows you to “teach” the remote rather quickly.) I haven’t tried it with the all too common DirecTV “universal” remote yet.
Interesting features
The TV is very standard for its class and has no “smart” apps or network connectivity. It does however has a “smart contrast” feature which improves the display quality of certain programs (it can be disabled if desired.) It also can turn itself off in the absence of signal and has a “Freeze” button that will freeze the image on the screen until it’s pressed again. This feature, despite interesting, is somewhat useless in these days of DVRs.
60Hz only?
Yes, this is a 60Hz TV only, and that’s a good thing. If you never saw a TV with a refresh rate above 60Hz, believe me when I say it that anything above 60Hz is “interpolated motion” and will make all your movies look like camcorder made soap operas. If you don’t believe me, google for “LCD Soap Opera Effect” and see what I’m talking about. 60Hz to 120Hz (and beyond) interpolation causes all kinds of horrible artifacts in the image and only improves certain programs for certain people. I have this feature on other sets and make sure it remains disabled at all times. If…
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|Jim1978
January 16, 2014
Good Budget Buy,
There aren’t many reviews for this set for whatever reason, so I figured I’d add whatever I can to help people out. Let’s start with the design of the TV. Aesthetically it won’t win any awards but it does have a pleasing look with the typical black matte finish. The most pleasing thing about he overall look of the tv is the thin bezel, which is harder to find in a tv of this price range. The stand is easily assembled with 4 screws and feels very sturdy. The screen isn’t gloss but it does have some light reflection in bright rooms so proper placement and lighting can effect the picture more than other LCD/LED’s I own.
The picture quality on the set is really the most important aspect, and it’s also where some points of contention might rise. I read numerous reviews of sharp tv’s and some are known for having slightly off colors, most notably muted reds and deep blues. One review I read said this model does that exactly, and it may very well be the case, but in all honesty I can’t notice it. The picture looks very vivid and once calibrated the colors seem quite good to me. If you’re into perfection you may notice color issues more then me but honestly for the price the picture and color saturation is quite good. I had no problem getting flesh tones to look good and keep everything within a balanced spectrum.
The biggest surprise I noticed on this tv was it’s contrast ratio. It’s amazingly good for being an LED tv let alone the price tag attached. It has some of the best blacks I’ve seen outside the high end plasmas and the whites reach a nice bright sparkle when needed. The tv has an “active contrast” feature that is sort of hit or miss to me. On some content it does make the picture jump that extra notch of realism, but overall I found it rather distracting and the greyscale color saturation seemed off on some scenes. Shadow detail also drops greatly with the active contrast on, so overall for the best realistic picture I’d disable it, but some might find it useful for certain content.
The tv is 60hz and at 40 inches you are pushing the limits of where motion blur and judder really start to show more. This tv has the typical blur and judder you find in any ~37-42″ 60hz tv, and while some do handle this better than others, they will all suffer from it to an extent, so to me it’s not really a fault of the tv or manufacturer. I can say gaming content etc.. is fine on this and I don’t personally notice much judder or artifacting on fast moving scenes, but some people are more sensitive to this than others.
As for the sound it’s surprisingly good for the price. The two downward speakers put out a pleasing sound which can fill a room easily. So if you do have to use the tv’s built in speakers and that is a concern then know they are are pretty good.
So to conclude I feel this is a good budget tv for the price. You get amazing black levels, strong color saturation, and good sound. If you can snag this tv on sale for under 400 I think it’d be hard to do better. The closest competition there is the LG 39″ LN5300 and while it is a strong tv also, it suffers from the same motion issues this one would. The difference may be in the color rendition. There are no perfect tv’s for this price range, but I can honestly say this is a good set for the price.
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|Bill McAfee
January 16, 2014
Great low price set,
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