LCD TV Reviews

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: 4,700:1

The measurements were taken in the Movie picture mode.

For the above result, the Backlight control (small c) was set to 48, the Contrast to 60, the Brightness to 51, and Adaptive Luma and Backlight Control (capital C) both off. The mea- sured peak white level under these conditions was 32.9 foot-lamberts, and the black level was 0.007 ft-L—the latter one of the best readings we have yet seen from an LED-lit LCD set without local dimming. Increasing the Backlight control to its maximum, with the other settings unchanged, produced a peak white level of 73.8 ft-L. In the Vivid picture mode’s default settings, the peak white level mea- sured 90.9 ft-L.

Delta E is a figure of merit that indicates how close the color comes to the D65 HD color standard. Values below 3 are generally considered visually indistinguishable from ideal. Pre-calibration, the set’s gray-scale Delta E averaged 3.75, peaking at 6.27 at 100 percent brightness. The pre-calibration color Delta E averaged 4.53, with red the biggest offender at 7.11. As noted in the review, how- ever, our sample’s pre-calibration color was, by eye, quite respectable. Post calibration, the average gray- scale Delta E dropped to 0.88, with a maximum of 2.43 at 100 percent brightness and no value higher than 0.96 at 80 percent or below. The post-calibration color Delta E averaged 2.26, with red, at 5.24, the only color above 2.78. You can see from the post-calibration CIE chart that the red was the furthest off. Nevertheless, the set’s color, visually, was outstanding. (Though the set has no color manage- ment system, color gamut improvements were possible by careful adjustment of the set’s Color and Tint controls; the main benefits were in color luminance, while the actual color positions remained unchanged on the 2D CIE chart.)

Post calibration, the gamma averaged 2.19, though with a slight downward tilt from 2.3 at 20 percent brightness to 2.05 at 100 percent. Recommendations for optimum gamma vary somewhat but gener- ally range from 2.2 to 2.4.—TJN