Verdict

Pros

• Gorgeous space-saving design
• Excellent multimedia support
• Satisfying, family-friendly 3D pictures

Cons

• Backlight bleed at the image's edges
• Some other backlight inconsistencies during dark scenes
• Rather high input lag

LG 55LM760T Design
If the LG 55LM760T could speak, it would probably say ‘Well, hello boys’. Or ‘girls’. For if ever a TV was unashamedly designed to inspire lust in all who behold it, it’s this one.

For starters, the frame wrapped around the 55-inch screen of the LG 55LM760T is unfeasibly thin. With a picture playing it’s barely 1cm across, while in standby the cunning way the black bezel blends into the darkness of the screen means the frame appears to be barely 1mm wide, where a sliver of silver outer trim kicks in.

Basically LG has out-Samsunged Samsung this year with the extraordinary slimness of its TV designs – a move that will surely bag the brand plenty of extra sales in these design-obsessed times.

It’s not just the main TV bodywork that’s striking, either. The shiny silver ‘outline’ stand adds another layer of glamour for people not intending to wall hang the set. There is a downside to the stand’s shininess, though, as the angled bar along its front can distractingly reflect the light coming out of the screen.

LG 55LM760T Connectivity
In keeping with most mid-range and higher TVs with LG branding, the LG 55LM760T is bristling with features. These kick off with its connections, which cover all the AV and multimedia bases. For video the most important discovery is four v1.4 HDMI connection ports, while multimedia users get three USB ports, a D-Sub PC input, a LAN port and built-in Wi-Fi.

The USB ports can play back an expansive list of video, photo and music file formats from USB storage devices, while the LAN and Wi-Fi options allow the same sort of content to be streamed from networked computers – be they Macs or PCs.

The LAN and Wi-Fi options also, of course, enable the LG 55LM760T to go online with the latest LG Smart TV platform. And a very impressive service this is. For starters, LG has given its Smart Hub interface a major overhaul, making it full HD so that more content gateway icons can be placed on a single screen without making that screen look cluttered. LG has also improved the organisation of the interface, so that it can accommodate the service’s large amounts of content more efficiently.

Rather too much of this content is rubbish; LG and Samsung both seem more interested in simply boosting the number of apps their online TV services offer than applying any heavy-duty quality control. However, at least LG’s latest interface does a fair job of keeping the chaff separate from the wheat, so that you only get ‘invaded’ by the welter of pointless gaming, infotainment and trivia apps if you really go looking for them.

In terms of worthwhile online content – predominantly video streaming services – LG is now a force to be reckoned with. Among the highlights are LoveFilm, NetFlix, AceTrax Movies, the BBC iPlayer, blinkbox, Livesport.tv, knowhow movies, Euronews, RedBull TV, iConcerts, Youtube, LG’s 3D ‘channel’, and Viewster. There’s also the inevitable Twitter and Facebook social media support if you’d rather use a TV for such services than your personal tablet or phone.

LG 55LM760T Specs
The LG 55LM760T pleasingly ships with one of LG’s Magic Remotes. This offers an alternative means of controlling the TV whereby you point the remote at the part of the screen you want to select. We have no doubt that many people will find this magic remote much more intuitive than the normal remote, so it’s a very welcome inclusion.

The LG 55LM760T’s spec sheet makes for impressive reading. It uses edge LED illumination in conjunction with local dimming, where segments of the LEDs can be controlled individually to boost the image’s contrast.

Also potentially crucial to the LG 55LM760T’s performance is its ‘800MCI’ setting. MCI stands for Motion Clarity Index, and refers to the screen’s combination of a native 200Hz refresh rate, scanning backlight and motion interpolation processing. This will, hopefully, save the LG 55LM760T from the blurring and judder issues quite common in the LCD world – including the company’s own (but still impressive) LG 42LM670T model.

Further areas of the LG 55LM760T’s ‘story’ that continue to impress include its built-in Freeview HD tuner, and passive 3D playback complete with four standard pairs of glasses; a pair designed to clip onto existing prescription glasses; and two pairs of ‘dual play’ glasses, designed to support the TV’s ability to show two different full screen gaming images to two different players simultaneously.

The LG 55LM760T continues LG’s fine tradition of providing truly extensive suites of picture calibration tools. Colour management, gamma adjustments, black level controls, the ability to set different levels for almost all aspects of the video processing – if you like to tinker, then the LG 55LM760T has got your back. Indeed, the set even sports the endorsement of professional calibration group, the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF).

LG 55LM760T Picture Quality
As with its design, the LG 55LM760T’s pictures sure know how to make a great first impression. In their out-of-the-box state they look nothing short of radiant, thanks to LG’s talent for producing massively vibrant colours, extreme brightness levels, and also in this case a pretty dynamic contrast range.

Look closer, though, especially if you’re watching standard definition TV, and the initial settings do also cause a few problems. Colours look so vibrant they tip into being unnatural at times, and the aggressive brightness can exaggerate source noise.

Fortunately it doesn’t take much effort to get the LG 55LM760T’s pictures looking much more balanced and effective. Taking the backlight down to around its 60-70 level (or even lower for watching films in dark room environments) and its contrast down to its 75-80 level has an immediately beneficial effect.

There’s also plenty to be gained from playing with the set’s various colour and black level features, and you should definitely treat the noise reduction systems with suspicion, especially when watching HD.

With the picture ‘calmed down’, the image loses a little of its initial aggressive appeal, but starts to appeal on a deeper, more long-term level. Colours look more consistently believable, for instance, while still producing a very wide but subtly delineated palette. The LG 55LM760T’s standard definition upscaling starts to look very respectable, adding noticeable density and sharpness to even quite low-quality broadcast feeds without making the picture look excessively soft or noisy.

The LG 55LM760T also makes a great first impression with HD. Both HD broadcasts and Blu-rays look phenomenally crisp and textured, with the effects of this extreme clarity looking all the more pleasing thanks to the large size of the screen.

Colours look even better too, thanks to even more finesse in the way the screen portrays colour blends.

It’s also easier with 2D HD footage to appreciate the mostly impressive motion handling capabilities of this relatively high-spec LG TV. Judder isn’t an issue at all, and while there is a marginal trace of motion blur during fast-paced scenes, it’s never really severe enough to be distracting.

We should add here that we elected to use either the Clear setting of LG’s motion processing system or its User mode, with the De-Judder and De-Blur elements set down to their four or five levels. The Smooth setting the TV uses by default makes sources look a little over-processed, and leaves films looking more like cheap video.

Most if not all of the LG TVs we’ve looked at so far this year have come a cropper with dark scenes, so it’s no great shock to find the LG 55LM760T following the trend.

If you’ve got the local dimming engine active – which for the most part we recommend that you do – you can sometimes see subtle ‘blocks’ of light around any bright objects that appear against very dark backgrounds. These ‘blocks’ don’t crop show up on bright scenes and are hard to see in bright room environments. But you certainly can become aware of them at times when watching high-contrast films. Especially if they’re presented in a Cinemascope, 21:9 aspect ratio, with black bars above and below.

So maybe you can just turn the LED Local Dimming off? Actually no. For if you do that the LG 55LM760T’s black level response takes a heavy hit, leaving dark scenes looking disappointingly greyed over.

There are other problems with the LG 55LM760T’s dark scene handling, too. First there were numerous areas around the edge of our test sample’s screens where you could clearly see light ‘leakage’ sneaking into very dark scenes. Dark scenes also tend to exhibit slight illumination level and tone differences when they should appear with more or less uniform black colours.

What’s more, even with local dimming active and the backlight setting knocked down to around 50%, the LG 55LM760T’s black level response isn’t all that profound. Certainly when compared with the efforts of the game-changing Sony KDL-40HX853 and subsequent HX853 series this year.

The set’s apparent struggle to deliver a convincing black colour also results in a shortage of shadow detail in dark corners of the picture.

Overall, it’s impossible to shake the impression while watching dark material on the LG 55LM760T that maybe LG’s quest for a slimmer bezel has resulted in a few picture quality compromises.

The LG 55LM760T further suffers with a more familiar LG problem: input lag. We measured a 68ms delay between pictures arriving into the TV and them finally appearing onscreen which, while actually not as high as some previous LG TVs, is still potentially enough to negatively impact your gaming performance with some types of game.

LG 55LM760T 3D
Allowing us to finish on a more upbeat tone, thankfully, is the LG 55LM760T’s 3D performance. You seldom see any of the crosstalk ghosting noise so rife with active 3D screens. There’s none of active 3D’s flickering issues at all, even if you’re watching in a bright room. Depth reproduction is profound but natural. There’s far less brightness and colour vibrancy loss with the set’s passive glasses on than you get with active glasses. And perhaps best of all, you can watch the 55LM760T’s 3D images for much longer than most active ones without feeling fatigued.

Even the set’s black level problems are less obvious in 3D than 2D, thanks to the (slight) brightness reduction induced by donning the 3D glasses.

This isn’t to say that 3D looks perfect, mind you. First, as usual with very large passive 3D TVs, you can certainly routinely see evidence of the horizontal filter lines that lie across the front of the screen. Also, curved edges and small objects tend to look a bit jagged, and even if you use the set’s Smooth motion processing option, horizontal pans can – as they do with many 3D TVs – look a bit jerky. Still, overall the LG 55LM760T presents an extremely family friendly and relaxing 3D experience.

It also delivers a reasonably decent audio effort considering how skinny its bodywork is too. The only bulge on the TV’s rear comes at the bottom, where LG has sensibly sacrificed a little thinness to incorporate some reasonably robust speakers. There’s still no real sense of bass to be heard, but soundmixes at least sound decently detailed and reasonably rounded with their mid ranges.

LG 55LM760T Verdict
For much of the time the LG 55LM760T is a dazzling TV, with its extraordinary designer looks, joyfully aggressive approach to pictures, outstandingly flexible multimedia playback and content-rich, beautifully presented online services.

These strengths will be enough in themselves, no doubt, to win the set many friends and fans among relatively casual users. Which is why we’ve awarded the set an overall score of 8.

However, we haven’t felt able to add a Trusted Reviews Recommends badge to that 8 score. For as well as serious gamers potentially finding it hard to live with the TV’s rather high input lag, serious film fans will likely struggle during dark scenes to see past the set’s numerous backlight flaws.

Finally, despite the fact in some ways its £1,499 price doesn’t look bad for such a gorgeously designed and feature laden TV, there’s no doubt that the similarly priced Sony 55HX853 is a superior all-round picture performer.

Trusted Score