LG 50LF652V review

We managed to improve things by using TruMotion’s manual settings, but even this wasn’t perfect. The only decent workaround was turning on Noise Reduction to High, which seemed to get rid of most of the artefacting. This still comes at the expense of finer details, though, such as freckles and dirt on characters’ faces, but it’s an acceptable compromise.

Elsewhere, broadcast TV channels looked good for the most part. SD content has its drawbacks, but this is the case with most large TVs. HD TV naturally performed better, but we found the MPEG noise reduction and general noise reduction made next to no difference to the quality of the image.

Blacks were dark and inky, but when the LF652V doesn’t come with multiple backlighting zones, you don’t get those same deep, dark colours when other bits of brighter content appears on screen. Nonetheless, contrast was still very reasonable at 1075:1, and in Standard colour mode, the 50LF652V covered 85% of the sRGB colour gamut, which isn’t brilliant but about par for the course at this price range.

The Game image preset is easy to access from the image settings, and the TV will remember which external sources you have selected Game for. Without Game activated, the TV has sky-high input lag of 98ms, which makes gaming nearly impossible. With Game mode switched on, it tumbled to 47ms. This isn’t fast enough for mouse-driven games and online first-person shooters but it should satisfy more casual gamers.

Its 10W speakers were rather underwhelming, though. They’re capable of filling a room, but they lack bass presence and midrange performance is only middling. Switching to the Movie sound mode made a marked improvement, giving speech and music more impact, but we’d recommend factoring in a soundbar for a better audio experience when watching films.

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The LG 50LF652V isn’t perfect, and its image enhancement and de-judder quibbles are minor annoyances. However, as is so often the case with TVs at this price, it’s still a reasonably decent set for the money. Not one for cinephiles, but it’s more than acceptable as an everyday TV for broadcast television and the occasional streamed film.