LG 55UB950V

Passive

Two Freeview HD

Yes Yes 20W + 15W

£1,785, lg.com/uk

A great-looking TV for a great price, but not great for gamers

Let’s face it, when it comes to Smart TV, no-one does it better than LG. For several years now it’s been the best in class for telly smarts, and this year’s models come with a secret new weapon – webOS.

Yes, the super-popular operating system that once ran on mobile devices such as the Palm Pre and HP TouchPad is now owned by LG and powers the Korean brand’s 2014 TVs. It does an absolutely superb job, too, forming the basis for probably the most userfriendly television interface we’ve ever seen. It’s a pleasure to use.

It’s off to a pretty good start, then, and combined with its attractive metallic design, it turns out the LG is beautiful both inside and out. It’s also reasonably priced (costing £1,785), future-proofed with HDMI 2.0 and HEVC decoding, and comes with a very cool ‘magic’ remote control.

But the LG also has some problems that go some way, at least, to spoiling the party. The most serious of these is its below average native contrast performance. The panel inside this TV is not terribly adept at reproducing dark scenes, which can lead to some occasionally disappointing pictures. The built-in local dimming system tries its hardest to cancel this out, but the problem is built-in and there’s not much that can be done about it.

You will also find some fairly high input lag, which makes this TV not terribly ideal for gaming, but in all other regards it really is fantastic. Colours in bright scenes pop spectacularly without ever looking overblown, and the TV handles motion superbly, which makes watching sport a very enjoyable experience.

It’s so very nearly the perfect TV, then, so if you don’t game and don’t tend to watch moody movies with all the lights switched off, this is a great offering at a fair price. Love The design really is amazing. The webOS user interface is slick and very easy to get the hang of Hate Contrast performance is disappointing. Input lag will cause problems for online gamers T3 Sa ys A fantastic TV that’s slightly hobbled by poor contrast and input lag

LG SoundPlate

LAB540

As good as this TV’s speakers are, they aren’t as good as LG ’s excellent

soundbars – the SoundPlate has a built-in Blu-ray player, it’s discrete and sounds brilliant.

£400, lg.com/uk