Sharp LC-LE745U review: Sharp LC-LE745U

Earlier this year I lauded the Sharp LC-LE640U as potentially one of the most popular big-screen TVs of 2012. That opinion arose from its mix of good-enough picture quality and killer pricing. Now that I've reviewed its more expensive brother, the LC-LE745U series, I'm even more confident in my positive evaluation of the 640. The 745 is a rare creature in TV land: a step-up model that actually has worse picture quality.

6.9

Sharp LC-LE745U

The Good

The <b>Sharp LC-LE745U series</b> delivers relatively accurate color and a matte screen that works well in bright rooms. The no-nonsense black metal design has a higher-end feel. Its feature set includes excellent help and support options, built-in Wi-Fi, and a remote with three programmable keys to easily access favorite apps.

The Bad

This Sharp performed worse overall than its less-expensive linemate, with lighter black levels and less even lighting across the screen, both especially obvious in dark scenes under home theater lighting. Itc picture controls didn't work properly. The Sharp also failed to properly handle film-based (1080p/24) sources, causing slight stutter in certain scenes. 3D glasses cost $50 each and are not included.

The Bottom Line

Although priced well for a large 3D TV, the Sharp LC-LE745U series can't muster the 2D picture quality to earn our recommendation as a good value.

Sharp endowed the 745 with the same pair of prodigious screen sizes as the 640 -- 60 and 70 inches -- and added 3D compatibility and a handful of apps, namely Hulu Plus and Skype. The 745U also has a more aggressive contrast ratio specification, but that spec doesn't translate into deeper black levels; in fact, along with color, they're worse.

At press time that worse 2D picture will cost you at least $200 more at the 60-inch size, making my recommendation of the 640U even easier. Unless you really want 3D (and I doubt you do), go with the Sharp 640U series, which remains one of the best big-screen values around.

Sharp LC-LE745U (pictures)

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Series information: I performed a hands-on evaluation of the 60-inch Sharp LC-60LE745U, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series. All sizes have identical specs and according to the manufacturer should provide very similar picture quality.

Design

Although not quite Elite level in its seriousness, this Sharp TV is likewise all business. I appreciate the narrow frame around the image -- which does thicken up a bit along the bottom--and its matte black coloring. That frame is, unusually, made of actual metal, for a higher-end yet still understated feel. The corners have little plastic bumpers that unfortunately spoil its shape a bit, but are probably there to prevent freak accidents caused by the sharp corners.

Unlike the stand of the 640U, the 745U's has a swivel on the 60-inch version (not the 70-inch, however) and a textured matte finish, not glossy on the base. The 745U is definitely a nicer-looking TV on the outside, but the improvements are subtle.

Thinner and longer than most clickers, Sharp's wand is plagued by lack of backlight and insufficient differentiation between the mostly too-small keys. One great feature, however, is the trio of programmable buttons that provide instant access to your favorite apps. Another, new for 2012, is the big red Netflix button.

Features

Compared with the entry-level 640U, the main step-up on the 745U reviewed here is 3D and an improved Smart TV suite. Meanwhile the yet more expensive 847U gets the extra yellow pixel of Quattron, which in past reviews did nothing to improve picture quality, and a 240Hz refresh rate. Given these differences, spending more for the 847 doesn't seem worthwhile. Note that unlike last year, the 70-inch Sharps for 2012 are all edge-lit, not full-array.

Sharp doesn't include the active 3D glasses necessary to view 3D sources on this TV, and since it lacks compatibility with the full HD 3D standard, your most economical recourse is Sharp's AN3DG20Bs, which cost $50 each.

A couple of other extras are unique to Sharp. IP control is designed to interface with custom installation remote control systems, such as Control 4, AMX and Crestron, that can operate over Ethernet as opposed to RS-232. Aquos Advantage Live is Sharp's excellent live help feature, which I described in 2009. I appreciated the full onscreen manual--a carbon copy of the PDF version, complete with table of contents. Many makers today skimp by not including a full paper manual as well, but not Sharp.

Smart TV: The 745U series offers a couple more apps than the step-down 640U models--namely a web browser, Hulu Plus, Skype and Film Fresh. Sharp told me the 640U would not get these apps, nor would it receive the browser or gallery mode.

If you're comparing by content, Sharp falls short of most major-name competitors, missing Amazon Instant, sports services like MLB.com, and even Pandora and Napster (the latter two were available on 2011 Sharps). There's no streaming audio at all in fact, and miscellaneous apps come courtesy of Vudu Apps, where Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, and Flickr are the standouts.

The interface is clean and simple, although navigation felt slow by today's standards. Hitting the Smart Central remote key summons a launcher bar along the bottom listing all of the "favorite" apps -- I liked that I could order them at will and delete unused ones. There's also a Gallery mode that lists all of the apps by category and allows you to add or delete them from the launcher.

The browser is, as usual, worse than any tablet, phone or PC browser, and Sharp's is worse than the TV browsers used by LG and Samsung. Load times were long and formatting was often incorrect, but the most annoying part was having to use the normal TV remote control to navigate. Not fun.

Picture settings: Five tweakable picture modes, a gamma slider, a full color management system and both two-point and 10-point grayscale controls make the 745U match the adjustability of LG and Samsung, and outdo that of Sony and most Panasonics. Unfortunately both the CMS (unusually for Sharp) and the 10-point system didn't work well. New for 2012 is the ability to tweak the strength of dejudder, but it just goes from really smooth to even smoother.

Connectivity: I have no complaints on this front. Four HDMI ports is plenty, and the analog connections (one component, two composite, one VGA for computers) are as complete as I'd expect. A pair of USB ports, one facing the side and one the bottom, rounds out the package.

Picture settings:
Sharp LC-LE745U

Picture quality

I was frankly surprised that the 745U didn't deliver as good of a picture as the less expensive 640U I tested earlier. The higher-end Sharp showed a lighter shade of black, worse uniformity, and less accurate color overall, with marginally better shadow detail being its only advantage over the cheaper set. Its matte screen is a plus for bright rooms but on the flipside 3D was just so-so.

Click the image 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: Watching the dark "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2," the LE745U didn't produce as convincing a shade of black as most of the other TVs in the lineup. In dark scenes, like the view over the sleepy snowbound town at the beginning of Chapter 8 for example, its letterbox bars and shadows appeared lighter than nearly all of the others; the only exception was the Sony HX750.

The difference in perceived contrast or "pop" -- a product of deep black levels -- between the two Sharp TVs was significant despite their nearly identical 0 percent black measurements (see the Geek Box below). The cheaper 640U looked noticeably better in this and other very dark scenes, thanks to its darker letterbox bars and shadows. Yes, the difference narrowed in brighter scenes as usual, but the 745U never looked better than its line-mate in terms of black level.

Details in shadows on the 745U were solid, with little crushing or overly-bright highlights to speak of. This is the one area where it held a slight advantage over the 640U. The black robes of Snipe and the students in Chapter 10 (35:20) looked natural, for example; better than the PND8000 and slightly better than the 640U, both of which showed some crushing of detail.

Color accuracy: The 745U again fell short of the cheaper 640U in this area, with slightly blue-looking skin tones and a bit less saturation than its line-mate. The bluish cast was most obvious in darker areas, such as the shadows in the pillars and marching statues in Chapter 11 (42:32) In brighter areas, like the faces of the two ladies in the same scene, the difference between the two Sharps was difficult to discern. Compared to our reference Samsung the bluish look was even more apparent, as was the less-impressive saturation and richness to color. That said the 745U's color wasn't bad even given the issues we experienced during calibration (see the notes above).

Video processing: The 745U performed basically the same as the 640U in this category, which is to say not very well. Unlike last year's models such as the LC-830U series, both 2012 Sharps were not capable of passing the correct 1080p/24 film cadence in my test. Instead, the deck of the Intrepid from "I Am Legend" showed either the choppy stutter of 2:3 pull-down or the too-smooth look of dejudder. The former occurred when I set Film Mode to either Off or Advanced (0), while any of the other Advanced values caused dejudder to kick in.

Despite the presence of 11 smoothness settings, the adjustable dejudder basically toggled between Off (at 0) and Really Smooth (+1 or higher). We'd like to have seen a greater range of visible effect, such as Samsung's system provides, or even a single setting that keeps some judder, like Sony's Standard setting.

One video processing bright spot was the Sharp's ability to preserve its full-motion resolution -- about 600 lines in this case, typical for a 120Hz TV -- without introducing dejudder.

Uniformity: Like the 640U and most other edge-lit sets the 745U suffered from irregular brightness across the screen. I noticed a brighter corner on the lower-right of the letterbox bar and, in very dark scenes like the walk through the tunnel in Chapter 9 (31:41) , faint blobs of brightness in the shadows on the middle-left of the screen. These kinds of irregularities looked worse on the Sony HX750, but the ones on the 640U were less noticeable.

Seen from off-angle the 745U preserved black levels better than the Sony HX750 but not as well as the Sony HX850, and I saw a corresponding color fidelity shift toward blue that was worse than on the 640U. Aside from the initial difference in black level, which affects just about everything, I'd say the two Sharps behaved the same when seen from a seat cushion or two to either side.

Bright lighting: The Sharp's matte screen was very good at rejecting reflections from ambient light, matching that of the 640U and surpassing both Sony LCDs with their brighter reflected light. It didn't preserve black levels as well as the glossy Sony HX850's screen, however. The 745U was still better than both plasmas in bright rooms, although the difference between it and the ST50 was surprisingly small.

3D: To evaluate the 745U's 3D image I used the comparison lineup above, minus the 2D-only 640U and plus the Samsung UN55D8000 -- my reference 3D TV -- and the LG LM9600, a passive model.

In short, the Sharp 745U is a mediocre 3D performer. In the crucial area of crosstalk only the ST50 performed worse in our lineup, although the HX750 was about the same. The 745U showed an obvious ghostly outline around many objects in "Hugo." During one of my favorite test sequences, for example, the outlines were particularly obvious and distracting around Hugo's hand as it reached for the mouse (5:01) and the tuning pegs on the guitar (7:49).

Sharp's glasses seemed to darken the image more than most of the other sets, obscuring some of the details in shadows. That issue should be easy enough to fix with a tweak of the brightness control, however -- note that all of our observations were done in the default settings of the Movie (3D) picture mode.

Sharp didn't send us a pair of current 3D glasses in time for review so we used the company's AN3DG20EL specs, the same ones that came with the Elite review sample (Sharp told us they're the same as the AN3DG20B models). They're not as light as the Samsung or Panasonic specs -- not to mention the LG's -- but easier to wear than the bulky Sonys and much sturdier than the Samsungs.

Note that this review originally published with an incomplete Geek Box and no calibration chart. These sections were updated on June 13, 2012.

Sharp LC-60LE745U CNET review calibration results