Introduction
Tour & Design
The LG 47LD4500 is a relatively attractive screen, if you don't mind a highly glossed, piano black finish. The bezel is thick, and we've certainly seen less visually heavy stands, but we've definitely seen far uglier. In fact, it's a decent looking TV. Perhaps we're getting a little tired of this look.
At the bottom right of the bezel is a bright blue power indicator light. If you find this distracting, you can disable it in the menu.
The back of the TV panel is mostly unadorned, except for the ports gathered in the lower right corner. For information about the ports on the back of the LG 47LD4500 see our Connectivity section.
From the side, you can see that the older CCFL backlighting technology is not exactly the thinnest, at least compared to some LED-lit TVs. The benefit of a little thickness here is that the onboard buttons can be hidden on the side rather than front.
The ports that you see on the other side are tucked back several inches from the edge of the panel, so you won't even see them if you're looking at it from the front. For information about the ports on the sides of the LG 47LD4500 see our Connectivity section.
The LG 47LD4500 has a swivel base that allows the TV panel to turn about 20-30 degrees in either direction. The base seems to screw in very securely to the panel, and it's plenty wide, so we have no fears that your TV will fall over.
The LG 47LD4500 has a series of buttons on the side for basic control over the TV: power, source, menu, volume, and channel up/down. We like that these are physical buttons with a click response, rather than touch sensitive areas on the panel (such as Samsung uses) that can be unresponsive and leave fingerprints.
The remote control that ships with the LG 47LD4500 is very good, by most regards. The buttons feel good, like they're located exactly where your fingers want them to be. The d-pad, in particular, has a great, smooth feel. We did notice some lag in the menu response – you won't be speeding through options here. The remote control is not universally programmable, but it can be used for controlling select LG devices.
The LG 47LD4500 ships with the stand & screws, remote control & batteries, instruction manual, and assorted documentation. A 47-inch LCD panel isn't necessarily lightweight, but a single person with strong arms should be able to set this up themselves. Otherwise, get a friend.
Blacks & Whites
The LG 47LD4500, like nearly every LG we've reviewed, did not perform well at all in our black level test. For whatever reason, under our calibration settings the LGs have a much, much brighter black than LCDs from competing TVs. The LCD TV we picked for comparison, the Sony KDL-46EX700, far outstripped the LG 47LD4500. The Panasonic and Samsung are both plasmas and (rather naturally) trumped the LCDs. (More on how we test Black Level.)
The LG 47LD4500 did manage a good peak brightness, no matter how the black level looked. It couldn't beat the Sony KDL-32EX700, but both the LG and the Sony, as LCD TVs, produced a much brighter white than the plasma TVs from Panasonic and Samsung. (More on how we test Peak Brightness.)
Due to the poor showing in our black level test, the contrast ratio of the LG 47LD4500 was not very good, measuring 951:1. Anything under 1000:1 is certainly no great. As you can see in the chart, the Sony 46EX600, another LCD, had over four times the contrast ratio. Both plasma TVs, the Samsung and the Panasonic, beat it as well. (More on how we test Contrast.)
So, what does this mean for you, the viewer? In truth, some people may not notice it. In a dark room, the contrast looks decent. Of course, if you put a TV with great contrast ratio side-by-side with the LG 47LD4500, those differences might become more stark. Fortunately, even though the black level isn't very deep, it does produce a lot of detail in those shadows.
The LG 47LD4500 has no problem maintaining a consistent black level, whether the screen is all-black, or just a little black box surrounded by bright white. (More on how we test Tunnel Contrast.)
The LG 47LD4500 has no problem at all maintaining a consistent peak brightness. (More on how we test White Falloff.)
The LG 47LD4500, unfortunately, has rather poor screen uniformity. We're looking for a smooth and consistent illumination across that whole 47-inch expanse. Instead, we saw brightness in the corners of an all-black screen, and darkness in the edges of an all-white screen. If can't be distracting if you're watching a darkly-lit movie, because the backlighting will creep out from the edge of the screen. (More on how we test Uniformity.)
The greyscale gamma measures how well a TV transitions from black to white along the greyscale. A look at the chart below will tell you several different things about the performance. First, we're looking at the shape of the curve. This is a good, smooth line that moves steadily upward from left to right. We expect that theLG 47LD4500 can ably resolve detail in the shadows, midtones, and highlights. We're quite pleased, because a number of TVs we review flatten out in the shadow details – no such problems here. ( More on how we test Greyscale Gamma.)
Secondly, we're looking at the slope of the curve. An ideal slope is somewhere between 2.1 and 2.2. The LG 47LD4500's slope measured 2.63, which is a little steeper than we like. You can expect that the TV may be missing some of the finer gradients. Overall, though, we're more than satisfied.
Color Accuracy
The LG 47LD4500 did a good (but not perfect) job of maintaining a consistent color temperature. There's a gradual cooling as the signal intensity decreases. It takes quite a while before it passes into the realm of human perception. In other words, you probably won't notice. (More on how we test Color Temperature.)
The LG 47LD4500, like most of the LGs we've reviewed recently, produced an excellent color performance. A look at the graph below shows you just how good. The red, green, and blue channels – each tested individually – move in a uniform fashion. The lines are quite smooth, so we don't expect to see many instances of color banding. If you look at the last bit of the upper-right edge, you'll see that the lines taper off into a horizontal bit. That indicates that the LG 47LD4500 has a bit of trouble with showing detail in the brightest portions of the signal. It's a very minor problem. Overall, we're very impressed with the LG 47LD4500. ( More on how we test RGB Curves.)
The strips below are digital recreations of the RGB color curves, compared against three similar TVs and an ideal color response.
The LG 47LD4500 did much better than the average LCD when we matched its color performance up to the rec. 709 standard. The red, green, and white points are awfully close to ideal. The blue point is just a little off. This is far better than most TVs we're reviewed. (More on how we test Color Gamut.)
The table below has all the hard numbers.
Motion
The LG 47LD4500 produced a pleasingly smooth motion performance. Sure, there's some of the normal judder that we see with almost any TV, but the fine detail retention is pretty good. The TV showed a lot more trouble with certain kinds of patterns, like high contrast, high frequency patterns (think of black and white stripes). But as smooth as the motion was, we couldn't ignore some of the more obvious artifacts. High contrast objects left long, discolored trails in their wake. We also saw bad, blocky artifacts rearing their heads sometimes. Overall, the motion performance is about average for an LCD. There are no special processing features for motion smoothing. (More on how we test Motion.)
The LG 47LD4500 has few problems with native 24fps content, like what you get from a lot of Blu-Ray movies. For the best performance, make sure you find the feature in the menu called Real Cinema and put it in the "On" position. (More on how we test 3:2 Pulldown and 24fps.)
The LG 47LD4500 has a native resolution of 1080p (1920 x 1080), but a lot of content you'll be sending the TV will be of a lower resolution. It's up to the TV's internal processing to rescale that information to fit its screen. Overall, the TV is quite good at this task. Let's take at look at each resolution. (More on how we test Resolution Scaling.)
480p
When we looked at 480p content, the LG 47LD4500 lost 1% of the TV on all sides due to overscan. We saw no other problems.
720p
The 720p content we tested showed no overscan problems, and only a very slight problem with high contrast, high frequency patterns.
1080i
The LG 47LD4500 has the hardest time rescaling 1080i content. High contrast, high frequency patterns resulted in some discoloration, as well as some electronic "breathing," phasing in and out as the TV constantly tried to resolve the pattern.
Viewing Effects
The LG 47LD4500 has a native 1080p (1920 x 1080) display, but is capable of playing all standard NTSC content types.
The LG 47LD4500 has a better than average viewing angle, for an LCD TV. Typically, LCDs are marred by a poor viewing angle, while plasmas have an almost perfect viewing angle – all of this being a result of the screen materials used in the different technologies. The LG 47LD4500 managed a viewing angle of 64 degrees (32 degrees from center on either side) before losing a significant amount of contrast. As you can see, the Sony (another LCD) was nearly as good. The Samsung and Panasonic plasma TVs were far, far superior. (More on how we test Viewing Angle.)
The LG 47LD4500 does not do a great job with strong ambient light. It creates a wide, diffuse glow. There's also several long, rainbow-colored streaks – obviously the artifacts of an attempt at deflecting the incoming light. We don't think it's working. However, it's only a bad problem on very dark or all-black screens. During normal TV viewing, you may not even notice it. (More on how we test Reflectance.)
The LG 47LD4500 has a number of video processing features, most of which we recommend you leave disabled.
Calibration
[
](http://www.displaymate.com/)Once you put the LG 47LD4500 in Cinema mode, a lot of the calibration has been done for you. We bumped up the backlight and lowered the sharpness (which was set much, much too high), but all those pesky video processing features were already disabled in this mode. A complete listing of our calibration is below.
Note that the LG 47LD4500 has an RS-232C port for those that wish for more precise control over the calibration, as well as more advanced AV modes to help you control picture quality.
The LG 47LD4500 has a number of video modes for simple, one-touch changes to image quality.
Connectivity
The LG 47LD4500 is definitely not a champion when it comes to connectivity options. There are just two HDMI ports, which falls well short of the standard outfit of four for most big-screen TVs. There's also just a single component AV input. It's certainly enough to get your HD home theater started, but it doesn't give you much room for expansion down the road.
Notably, the LG 47LD4500 also includes a USB port for viewing photos and listening to music clips from thumb drives and other USB mass storage devices. There's also a headphone jack for those late night creep show viewings that won't wake mom.
A complete list of the ports is in the table below.
The LG 47LD4500 doesn't have that many ports, but those it does have are well-labeled and easy to access. The ports on the side are there for quick-swaps like the composite AV cables for a camera, or the USB port for a thumb drive. The rear ports are also fairly easy to reach, thanks to a swivel base.
Audio & Menus
The LG 47LD4500 has decent speakers, at least by the low standards of a TV. It was better than the 32-inch version in the LD450 / LD4500 series, which may be because the speakers are different, or because the larger chassis allows for more resonance.
There are five audio preset modes that you'll find in the menu: Standard, Music, Cinema, Sport, and Game. There's no equalizer, just a bass and treble control, which don't give you much leeway for tweaking the performance. Of course, there's the standard surround sound emulator, here called "Infinite Sound.' It didn't seem to do anything. There's also a feature called Clear Voice II that enhances the portion of the vocal range in the audio track. It doesn't do any favors to the overall sound quality, but it definitely lets the vocals cut through the mix.
The LG 47LD4500's menu is designed for simplicity, and should be very clear for those that normally shy away from the getting involved in picture quality settings. When you hit the Menu button on the remote, you'll get the screen you see below. All the submenus are laid out simply, and it's usually clear where your intended setting lies.
The submenus take on a more familiar look, with items listed in a vertical menu. Fortunately, the remote control has a great d-pad with an intuitive feel. You'll be making changes like a pro in no time.
The manual that ships with the LG 47LD4500 is comprehensive... a little too comprehensive, in fact. For some unfathomable reason, LG choose to publish a single instruction manual that covers eight different series and 34 separate models. They didn't even bother to make different manuals for LCD and LED TVs. As a result, the manual is constantly breaking up information with little explanations that a feature is only found on such-and-such a model. A look at the image below gives you a sense. It's very hard to parse the information you need because it's so clogged with information on other TVs. You can find the LG 47LD4500's manual online here.
Multimedia & Internet
The LG 47LD4500 has no internet features, no access to streaming content, and no DLNA support.
The LG 47LD4500 supports the playback of photos (JPEG only) and music (mp3 only) from USB mass storage devices, like a thumb drive. When you insert one into the USB port on the side of the TV panel, a little menu will pop up asking if you want to access photos or music. If you choose photos, you'll be presented with a screen of thumbnails. You can view the photos one at a time, or create slideshows.
The music playback is much the same. Note that the xxLD4500 / LD450 series does not support video clip playback from the USB port, but the more expensive series do.
The LG 47LD4500 does not support any other type of media.
Power Consumption
The LG 47LD4500 has an slightly higher than average power consumption for an LCD of this size, at least compared to an LED-lit TV like the Sony EX700. (More on how we test Power Consumption.)
A look at the chart below tells you how the LG 47LD4500 compares. Notice how much more power the plasma Samsung and Panasonic require compared to the Sony and LG LCD TVs.
Vs Sony KDL-46EX700
Value Comparison Summary
The Sony KDL-46EX700 costs about $700 more than the LG 47LD4500 – not an insignificant amount. You're buying some big upgrades, though. The contrast ratio is much wider, and the color performance is nearly as good. There are many more input ports, making it a more viable choice for a home theater. Among those ports is an ethernet jack and optional WiFi, which gives you access to Sony's excellent selection of streaming content movies, music, and apps. That's a big list of features, but certainly not things that every TV buyer needs or wants. Figure out your "essentials list," then decide.
Blacks & Whites
The LG 47LD4500 was far, far outperformed by the Sony 46EX600 in producing a deeper black and brighter white, and consequently, a much wider contrast ratio.
Color Accuracy
The LG 47LD4500 showed excellent color performance. The Sony EX700 was good, but the LG was slightly better.
Motion
The Sony produced a smoother motion performance with less artifacting. This was due in large part to the optional MotionFlow processing feature. It's not without bizarre side effects, but the processing definitely smooths out the lost detail from objects in motion.
Viewing Effects
The LG 47LD4500 managed a wider viewing angle than the Sony KDL-46EX700.
Connectivity
The Sony EX700 series is better choice for a home theater setup due to its possession of twice as may HDMI ports and component AV inputs. While the LG 47LD4500 has an inch larger screen, it's simply not equipped with enough ports for a higher-end home theater. The Sony EX700 also has ethernet and optional WiFi for streaming content.
Other Comparisons
The Sony EX700's big feature upgrade compared to the LG 47LD4500 is access to Sony's excellent collection of streaming content, chock full of video and music selections. If you're already content with the Netflix support from your Blu-Ray or game console, or you simply don't care about streaming content, maybe this isn't such a big difference for you.
Vs Samsung PN50C550
Value Comparison Summary
The Samsung PN50C550 is an entry level plasma TV. For two hundred dollars less than the LG 47LD4500, you get a big 50-inch screen, and that's going to entice a lot of people. Before you leap, though, know what you're getting. The screen can't get very bright, though the black levels are far deeper than the LG. The Samsung's color performance was disappointing, an area where the LG excelled. If you're looking to create a home theater, the Samsung has more ports and DLNA support. Overall, the LG offers a better picture, but the Samsung has the lure of being larger and cheaper (and good enough performance). The Samsung won't wow you.
Blacks & Whites
The Samsung PN50C550 is a plasma TV, so we expect it to have a better black level than an LCD TV like the LG 47LD4500. OF course, that's not always the case. We've seen some great black levels from LCDs before, but it definitely not the case here. The LG 47LD4500 did terribly.
Color Accuracy
The LG 47LD4500 was a far better color performer than the Samsung PN50C550. Sure, the Samsung did a better job maintaining a consistent color temperature, but the color curves fell apart and showed a real problem with the brighter portions of the signal.
Motion
Frequently, we've found a smoother motion performance with less artifacting on plasma TVs. That was the case here: we preferred the Samsung over the LG 47LD4500.
Viewing Effects
No LCD TV, even one as good as the LG 47LD4500, is going to beat a plasma TV at viewing angle. There's no contest.
Connectivity
The Samsung PN50C550 is another competing TV that's better equipped to be a home theater hub, due to the presence of far more AV inputs.
Vs Panasonic TC-P50G25
Value Comparison Summary
While the Samsung PN50C550 (see previous page) had a larger screen and was cheaper than the LG 47LD4500, the Panasonic TC-P50G25 is the same screen size but more expensive. And what do you get for your money? Not a whole lot more. The contrast ratio and black levels are far better than the LG, but it can't beat the LG's color performance. As a plasma TV, the Panasonic has a wider viewing angle, but we found the picture a bit noisy, overall. It's hard to recommend this particular plasma over theLG 47LD4500, if only because the higher cost doesn't buy you any worthwhile features.
Blacks & Whites
The Panasonic TC-P50G25 has a far, far deeper black level than the LG 47LD4500. Even though the Panasonic's peak brightness was disappointing, its contrast ratio ended up being much better than the LG's.
Color Accuracy
The Panasonic could maintain a more consistent color temperature, but the LG 47LD4500 beat it by a mile in our RGB color curve tests.
Motion
The Panasonic TC-P50G25, like many of the plasma TVs we've reviewed, had a slightly better motion smoothness and less artifacting than most LCD TVs.
Viewing Effects
The Panasonic, as a plasma TV, offered a far, far wider contrast ratio than the LG 47LD4500, or any LCD TV.
Connectivity
The Panasonic G25 series offers just one more HDMI port than the LG 47LD4500, but it also has an additional component AV input, as well as an SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot and a second USB port. This gives you a little more flexibility and room to grow your home theater system.
Conclusion
Series Comparison
xxLD4500 (also known as xxLD450) Series
The LG xxLD4500 series is a special line manufactured specifically for Walmart (apparently). In other circles, they drop the last zero and simply call it the LD450 series. There are four models, ranging from 32 inches to 47 inches. The focus is clearly on keeping the price down, with low MSRPs few features. The TVs are short on connectivity options, use the older CCFL backlighting, and don't offer any internet or DLNA support.
Meet the tester
David Kender oversees content at Reviewed as the Editor in Chief. He served as managing editor and editor in chief of Reviewed's ancestor, CamcorderInfo.com, helping to grow the company from a tiny staff to one of the most influential online review resources. In his time at Reviewed, David has helped to launch over 100 product categories and written too many articles to count.
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