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This LG’s colours are also in the premier league. Saturations during aggressively bright, colourful sequences are so rich, in fact, that at times they border on extreme – but in a good way! It’s amazing how effective such strong colours can be in keeping your gaze well and truly fixed on the 42PX5D’s screen.

What’s more, the LG does a better job than any other budget plasma we can think of when it comes to making subtler colours, like people’s skin, look as rich and dynamic in their own way as fully saturated onscreen graphics.

Our beloved Xbox 360 and Sky HD receiver, meanwhile, reveal the LG capable of eking out plenty of HD fine detail, which it additionally presents with precious little video noise. Couple this HD clarity with the black levels and vibrant colours we’ve already covered, and you’ve got HD pictures that are almost outrageously good for a £1700 42in gogglebox.

So how come our final picture mark for the set only reads an 8? Well, at times those ultra-rich colours can go a touch too far, taking some tones beyond the realm of believability and, at the same time, highlighting any colour noise that might be inherent to a source.

The 42PX5D is also a bit of a fussy eater in that it doesn’t particularly like a standard definition diet; SD pictures look noticeably more prone to colour and noise problems than HD ones. Finally, if your room is generally quite bright, you’ll probably find the TV’s glossy screen rather reflective, especially while watching dark scenes.

The 42PX5D’s sound offers little reason for complaint. For starters the sound is propelled over a prodigiously wide area, but never loses cohesion. The set’s speakers splurge out healthy quantities of bass too - but not so much that it overwhelms dialogue, even during full-tilt action scenes.

In an ideal world trebles would sound a little less hard on the ear, and the speakers would need a bit less volume before they really open up. But these are really but minor gripes.

Verdict

While the 42PX5D doesn’t challenge the plasma world’s top dogs for picture quality, it has got more than enough in its favour to make its £1700 price tag look like a steal.

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