Kogan 1080P40 LCD television

The Kogan 1080P40 is a 40in LCD television with a low price of $699. It is aimed at budget-conscious buyers who still want a screen with a reasonably large size and high resolution. For most viewing it serves well, and it only falters when displaying fast motion or high contrast video.

Kogan 1080P40: Design and connectivity

The Kogan 1080P40 LCD television has a rather uninspired design, with a black bezel. The black glossy plastic is attractive though, and it matches the glossy finish of the LCD panel. This gloss finish makes colours pop on screen, but viewing is compromised by reflections if you’re in a bright room. The stand of the Kogan 1080P40 is solidly constructed and we appreciate the fact that it swivels. If you’re choosing a new TV for a large room, a swivelling stand is a must.

The inputs of the Kogan 1080P40 are arranged along the lower back in a no-nonsense fashion. Two HDMI ports display 1080p content from digital sources, component handles older high-definition devices, VGA can be used for PC connection and a few composite connectors are useful for connecting low resolution devices like iPods and older camcorders. You can also connect a device like a flash drive or external hard drive to a side-mounted USB port to watch videos, looking at pictures and playing music.

Kogan 1080P40: Picture quality and USB input

The Kogan 1080P40 displays, as its name suggests, a Full HD 1080p picture at its native resolution. When viewing content on a PC connected via VGA, or during a bright scene of a Blu-ray movie, the Kogan 1080P40 displays good detail levels. We found it slightly too sharp in default settings — reducing sharpness slightly made the screen easier to watch without sacrificing clarity. Similarly the Kogan 1080P40 benefited from slightly higher saturation levels and a slight reduction of backlight brightness to enhance black level detail.

For the most part, the Kogan 1080P40 displays good detail from both high and low quality sources. When it’s presented with something difficult, like our oft-used test footage from The Dark Knight — the opening sequence’s bright pin-pricks of white light on a dark background — the Kogan 1080P40 does struggle to maintain detail. Both highlights and dark regions aren’t able to display the same detail that LED and plasma televisions like the Samsung UA55C7000 or Panasonic TH-P50VT20A. Granted, these televisions are much more expensive than the wallet-friendly Kogan.

The USB input of the Kogan 1080P40 can play a range of formats including DivX and MP4 video, MP3 and WMA audio and JPG image files. It’s useful for an impromptu slideshow of holiday photos, watching downloaded videos or for playing back a ripped music CD.

Kogan 1080P40: Motion control and 100Hz mode

The Kogan 1080P40 has a 100Hz panel refresh rate, using a frame-doubling method of interpolation to smooth out video playback. It works well with TV and DVD content, but fast motion scenes on our Blu-ray test discs occasionally introduced a small amount of blur and flickering. It became more evident when a fast-moving object on screen was situated against a static background. We also couldn’t find a way to disable the 100Hz mode.

Conclusion

The Kogan 1080P40 offers good picture quality given its low price tag. The inclusion of a USB input and swivelling stand are also useful extras that increase ease of use. We weren’t thrilled with the occasional problems with the 100Hz mode, but for most users it won’t be a problem. For its $699 price, the Kogan 1080P40 generally impressed us.

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