Happy Owner of 37LC7D

Category: Review on LG 37LC7D 37 inch LCD TV

Posted by: 18-Feb-2008

Strengths: Good picture, fast digital tuner lock-on, good sound, lots of input options, can rename input labels.

Weaknesses: Input selection is a little clumbsy. Auto ratio doesn't work very well (but can be easily changed manually).

After tossing up the pros and cons of the Sharp LC37PD5X and the LG 37LC7D, I eventually purchased the Sharp. That was a mistake. The Sharp engineers lost the plot with this model and managed to make a product that fails to satisfy some basic consumer needs, i.e.:

* Channel surfing using the preset up/down buttons is extremely frustrating. It takes up to 6 seconds to lock on to digital channels and display the channel information, during which time it wont respond to any further commands. Given that you can't 'skip' any channels during setup, this means that it takes the best part of a minute to surf through all of them. The 'favourite' feature can be used to streamline things a bit, but it's clumsy and has to be re-enabled after directly selecting a non-favourite channel.

* That 4-speaker sound is crap. Really crap. Like listening to iPod speakers. Like they're talking through a piece of pipe. Great treble, poor midrange and zero bass. Changing the settings can't compensate for the fact that the speakers are simply too small.

So I took the Sharp back and swapped it for the LG, which has:

* A good picture (Sharp has slightly better definition in dark areas).
* A fast tuner.
* Good sound.
* More input options.
* A better remote control.

Happy customer!