LG 47LW6500 Cinema 3D LED TV

The LG 47LW6500 is the first 'Cinema 3D' panel we've had the chance to take a look at — LG is the only manufacturer in Australia opting for passive rather than active 3D in its LED TVs. The technology promises to get rid of headaches while offering a cleaner and better tri-dimensional experience, and it has cost advantages as well thanks to much cheaper glasses. We loved the 2D picture quality of the LG LW6500 — it's a great TV for watching Blu-ray movies, although digital TV did seem a bit noisy at times — and 3D has some legitimate improvements over a Samsung or Sony 3D TV. It's not all perfect, though, with a significant deficit in 3D detail compared to other 3D TVs.

LG LW6500: Design, connectivity and setup

The LG LW6500 is a reasonably attractive LED TV, but its build quality is noticeably inferior to a Sony or a Samsung. The television's plastics just feel a little cheap, although when you're looking and not touching this isn't a big deal. Thankfully the screen of the LG 47LW6500 is not as glossy as previous LG TVs or current competitors, which makes viewing in a bright room or in direct light less of an ordeal.

Being a reasonably high-end TV the LG LW6500 has a comprehensive range of digital and analog video connectors — we used HDMI for all of our testing, but the TV also has single component and composite video inputs. There's also VGA for connecting older PCs, and a digital audio output for connecting a set of home theatre speakers. Two USB 2.0 ports mean you can connect a portable hard drive or USB flash drive to play back a range of video, audio or image files — DiVX HD, JPEG and MP3 files are officially supported.

Running through the setup of the LG 47LW6500 is a simple procedure — connect power and antenna cables, turn the TV on, run through a (quick) TV channel scan, and you're ready to go. We also took the extra time to set up the LG LW6500's integrated Wi-Fi networking, so we could use the TV's Smart TV Web features. You can also use the LW6500's wired Ethernet network port to access the Internet, but Wi-Fi cuts down on tangled cables without compromising connection speed.

LG LW6500: Picture quality and performance

We were really impressed with the picture quality of the LG LW6500 when it came to watching 1080p Blu-ray video. For a panel costing several hundred dollars less than an equivalently sized Samsung LED TV like the Series 7, the LG 47LW6500 was able to display a good deal of fine detail in our Terminator: Salvation and The Dark Knight test Blu-ray discs. Being an edge-lit LED TV we found that if any bright white areas were being displayed on-screen, blacks tended to be a little bright and grey. However, this issue is common to almost all LED TVs. Similarly, the screen's colour accuracy is reasonably realistic without sacrificing vibrancy or outright brightness.