LG LM6700 review: LG LM6700

Last year one of our most recommended mainstream LED-based LCDs was the LG LW5600 series, which combined very good picture quality with solid features at an attractive price, especially toward the end of the year. As the spiritual successor to that TV, the 2012 LM6700 should be just as good, but it's not. This TV takes a step or two backward from its predecessor in picture quality, with grayish black levels and a glossy screen that hampers its image in bright rooms. Yes, I do like the 2012 feature set better and its styling is an improvement too, but neither of those factors can overcome its flaws.

Series information: I performed a hands-on evaluation of the 55-inch 55LM6700, but this review also applies to the other screen size in the series. The two sizes have identical specs and according to the manufacturer should provide very similar picture quality.

Design
Metallic silver skin makes the futuristic LM6700 stand out among the black-clad TVs common today. Whether that's a good thing depends on your tastes; I didn't care for it much, while my colleague Ty Pendlebury liked it a lot. It's worth seeing the new LG designs in person before deciding to stick one in your living room.

LG thinned the bezel around the screen and the TV is more compact than any I've seen, aside from Samsung's thin-bezel sets. It's also thin in profile, despite the wider swivel stand.

The most striking area lies directly below the screen, where a couch-bound viewer can see a relatively thick bar of metallic plastic hanging above the unique U-shaped ribbon pedestal stand. The upper portion of the set is subtler, consisting of a thin ring of silver framing a black strip adjacent to the screen. The obsessive-compulsive in me was mildly annoyed that the the black strip was narrower along the bottom edge of the screen than along the top and sides.

LG's cool Magic Motion remote is the only TV clicker on the market that's actually fun to use. The company doesn't include a normal remote with the LM6700; the little wand replaces a standard multibutton remote's cursor with Nintendo Wii-like motion control. You wave it at the TV and an onscreen cursor follows your movements precisely, allowing quicker selection of menu items and easier navigation in general. Responses were swift and the motion control effortless.

The company's new interface makes compelling use of motion control with multiple "cards" on the home screen: a live TV window and an ad below, a non-customizable Premium card of the best Smart TV apps, one card for 3D World, and another for LG Smart World. You can also create customizable cards with shortcuts to various menu items (but not individual apps). There's also a My Apps bar along the bottom of the screen where you can place shortcuts to menus, functions, and certain apps in any order.

The remote also has a scroll wheel that's a good idea with poor execution. It won't work on the settings menus, and scrolling during live TV while watching an external device caused an annoying message asking whether I wanted to change to the TV/antenna input. People who actually use the antenna might miss having actual numeric keys on the remote, but I didn't.

But until Magic Motion can actually control other devices, like the necessary cable box, it's just an extra remote to clutter your coffee table with. I have a Harmony 650 at home, for example, and I don't want to go back to using more than one remote. In case you're wondering, the LM6700 does accept standard IR codes too, so it works fine with universal remotes.

Features
The LM6700 is LG's least expensive LED to include its LED+ local-dimming scheme, so you'd think it would offer better black-level performance than non-dimming sets like the LG G2. You'd be wrong; see below for details.

The main difference between this LG and the step-up LM7600 series is refresh rate: 120Hz on the 6700 and 240Hz on the 7600 (the latter also gets a dual-core processor). According to LG, the LM6700 uses a 60Hz panel with a scanning backlight for what the company calls "Black Dimension Insertion" and claims is a 120Hz effect. The LM7600 has a 120Hz panel, which combined with a scanning backlight equals, per LG, 240Hz.

Unlike other 120Hz sets like last year's LW5600, the LM6700 does not offer smoothing (dejudder) processing. I didn't miss it, but some viewers might. The LM7600 does have a smoothing option and requisite TruMotion control that adjusts the effect. Based on those specs differences, I don't think the LM7600 would be worth the extra money (about $250 right now).

LG's passive 3D system means the company can afford to include more pairs of 3D glasses than its active competitors, so the LM6700 comes with six, count 'em, six. On the off chance that you need more, most cheap polarized glasses should work.

Smart TV: LG revamped its Smart TV interface again this year, and while we prefer the simplicity of Panasonic's menus, LG's outdo Samsung's and Sony's in terms of customization and making apps easy to access. I also appreciated that the motion remote worked with Netflix, YouTube, and Vudu (I didn't test other apps).

The company's content selection is solid aside from two missing staples: Amazon Instant for video and Pandora for audio. The major apps I'd characterize as worthwhile are grouped in the Premium section (don't worry, they're free). The "3D world" section has a few demos, clips, and full programs -- nothing you've heard of, but more content than most such add-ons offer and nearly all of it free.

The app store, separate from the main Premium section, is now called "LG Smart World" for some reason, and as usual it holds mostly junk, with a few useful additions like NBA Game Time/Game Center and XOS College Sports. Unfortunately, downloading even free apps from the World requires you to create an ID and password. LG includes a Social Center with Twitter and Facebook feeds placed alongside the live TV image. There's also a search function that hits apps, DLNA sources, and YouTube, but the only Premium service it hits is Vudu (not Netflix or any others).

I took the browser for a spin and actually found it more impressive than Samsung's, which I had previously called the best TV-based browser so far. The combination of motion remote and scroll wheel worked like a charm, and even bulky Web pages like CNET loaded quickly enough to not be completely annoying. It was still slow, though; also, videos failed for lack of Flash, pages requiring JavaScript were DOA, and I experienced a crash notification informing me the TV's memory was full, so as usual any decent phone, tablet, or PC will provide a better browsing experience.

Picture settings: LG offers its usual scads of picture adjustments, with two Expert modes in addition to numerous other adjustable presets. The 20-point grayscale adjustment is overkill in my opinion (I prefer 10 points) and didn't work well in testing. While the color management system worked OK, it wasn't as accurate as last year's. Full control of picture options is available for streaming-video sources.

Connectivity: The jack pack is par for the course, with four HDMI and three USB ports. You'll have to choose between a single component or composite video source, available via included breakout cables, and VGA-style PC input (no breakout required) also makes the cut.

Picture quality
The LM6700 performed worse than last year's LW5600, with worse black levels, a more reflective screen, and inferior video processing. Color is its strong suit, but with its lighter black levels and gamma that's not saying much.

Its 3D performance was typical for passive 3D TV: excellent in terms of crosstalk, but with some visible artifacts.

All told it's tough to recommend the LM6700 to anybody who cares a lot about picture quality, especially for the price.

Click the image at the right to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV's picture controls worked during calibration.

Black level: Although not quite in the same pitiful league as the black levels of the Panasonic DT50, the LG LM6700 was the least impressive in our comparison. For example, in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," black areas in dark scenes such as the letterbox bars and shadows in the park at night (5:31) were washed-out and robbed the scene of any punch and contrast, even more so than the next-worst offender, Sony's HX750. Meanwhile last year's LW5600 trounced this year's LM6700, as did the rest of the sets, including the relatively inexpensive 60-inch Sharp.

The Sony's letterbox bars were actually about as dark as the LG's, but the latter's brighter shadows hurt its picture in comparison. Getting full shadow detail is a prerequisite for a good calibration, but doing so on the LM6700 caused near-black areas to brighten significantly, for a washed-out look in spots like Oskar's shirt (3:22). The alternative, exemplified by the default Cinema setting, was to dim the picture considerably and crush details in black. Both choices made the picture look worse than on any of the other sets in the lineup.

In its favor, the LM6700 didn't show the blooming or brightness fluctuations that can be seen on some local-dimming TVs. I'd gladly accept a few of those to get better contrast and black levels, however.

Color accuracy: The LM6700's strongest suit, color, looked relatively natural compared with our reference Samsung plasma in areas like Oskar's skin tone (3:41) and primary and secondary colors like the green of his shirt and the red of the homeless person's jacket (4:25); both the Sharp and Sony looked technically less accurate (a bit bluer) in comparison. The issue wasn't accuracy so much as saturation: colors on the LM6700 lacked the vibrancy and depth of the other displays.

Video processing: Fed a 1080p/24 source with the Real Cinema mode engaged, the LM6700 behaved properly, preserving the cadence of the pan over the Intrepid in "I Am Legend," for example. On the other hand the TV delivered only 300 to 400 lines of motion resolution, which is uncharacteristic for a 120Hz television. I don't consider that a big deal, however, since I didn't notice any obvious blurring in program material.

Uniformity: My LM6700 review sample showed some brighter areas along the edges of the screen, particularly the top edge and lower left side. On a completely black screen the Sony's and Sharp's imperfections (which appeared as slightly brighter blobs) were more noticeable, but in program material, particularly the letterbox bars, I found the LG's bright spots more distracting. I also noticed very slightly darker vertical bands in some scenes, such as pans over the sky, that were again more noticeable than on the other edge-lit LEDs (albeit relatively minor and invisible in most scenes). Last year's LW5600 was better than all three in this area, and as usual the plasmas were perfect.

From off-angle the LG's image washed out to a seemingly lesser extent than did the other LCDs. That's not necessarily a compliment, however, because they all started with deeper blacks. When seen from either side, the LG LM6700 still had the worst contrast of any of the compared sets aside from the Sony. It did preserve color accuracy well, however.

Bright lighting: In a bright room the LM6700's glossy screen is a liability. Compared with the matte-screen TVs in our lineup, including the Sharp, the Sony, and, yes, last year's LG, reflections were brighter and more distracting in its screen. The Samsung plasma and Panasonic ST50 also did a better job of reducing reflections. In terms of preserving black levels the LM6700's screen was about average, but the contrast was hampered by its lighter blacks even in a bright room, so it still showed weaker punch and pop under the lights than all but the Panasonic UT50.

3D: The LM6700 exhibited similar 3D picture quality to the LW5600 from last year. I still prefer the 3D image of the best active 3D displays, but LG's passive system has some distinct advantages. In fact, the LM6700 and LW5600 tied for my second-favorite 3D TVs in the lineup, outdoing all three plasmas and the Sony; they fell short of only our reference 3D TV, the Samsung UN55D8000 (which I subbed in for the 2D-only Sharp).

The strength of passive 3D is lack of crosstalk. On the plasmas, I saw obvious ghostly double images of objects in many scenes from "Hugo," such as Hugo's hand as it reached for the mouse (5:01), the tuning pegs on the guitar (7:49), and the face of the dog as it watches the inspector slide by (9:24). In each of these areas the LGs were pristine and crosstalk-free, and while the UND8000 was much better than the plasmas at reducing this issue, it was still worse than the LGs.

On the flipside, the artifacts I've grown to expect from passive 3D were also there. I noticed faint line structure along the edges of bright faces against dark backgrounds, for example on Hugo himself at 6:11, 11:06, and 13:16, and the face of Isabelle at 17:06. It was also visible along other edges, such as the sleeve of Méliès at 4:58. Moving lines were rarer than in some other films, on the other hand; the first example I saw was the bright edge of Uncle Claude's bowler (22:41) as he spoke to Hugo. I also saw an instance of jagged lines a bit later along the diagonal edge of the tombstone next to Hugo's father's (23:16).

I saw these issues seated about 8 feet from the 55-inch LG. They were less obvious or invisible on the 47-incher from the same distance, with the exception of the moving lines on Claude's hat. As usual, sitting further away or watching on a smaller screen will make the artifacts inherent in passive 3D TVs less of an issue.

Black levels were OK on the LG, although the plasmas did get darker. On the other hand color purity was not an issue; near-black areas remained relatively neutral instead of tending to blue or green, and skin tones looked good.

I appreciated the fit of LG's new aviator-style glasses; they're lightweight and comfortable even over my prescription lenses. I found them even easier to wear than Panasonic's 2012 active specs, which in turn outdo Samsung's SSG-4100Bs.

Test	Result	Score
Black luminance (0%)	0.0278	Poor
Avg. gamma	2.5954	Poor
Near-black x/y (5%)	0.2924/0.3158	Average
Dark gray x/y (20%)	0.3085/0.3282	Average
Bright gray x/y (70%)	0.3158/0.333	Average
Before avg. color temp.	5996	Poor
After avg. color temp.	6404	Average
Red lum. error (de94_L)	0.5887	Good
Green lum. error (de94_L)	2.0914	Average
Blue lum. error (de94_L)	3.5202	Poor
Cyan hue x/y	0.2314/0.3368	Average
Magenta hue x/y	0.3328/0.1636	Poor
Yellow hue x/y	0.4181/0.4998	Good
1080p/24 Cadence (IAL)	Pass	Good
1080i Deinterlacing (film)	Pass	Good
Motion resolution (max)	300	Poor
Motion resolution (dejudder off)	300	Poor

LG 55LM6700 CNET review calibration results

Read more about how we test TVs.