LG 23LS7D 23" HDTV LCD TV

After trying a similarly priced 23" LCD from Samsung I was convinced it was impossible for a TV to get any worse. Yet somehow LG managed to outdo even that piece of garbage.

It is hard to select the single most offensive "feature" of this TV. It is probably a tie between the non-existent contrast and the "dolby digital" designation on the set. The first is self explanatory - despite a published 800:1 rating, this TV's contrast is probably the worst I have ever seen on any display device, including my PDA. Cranking up the contrast makes everything too sparkly, turning it down, renders the image dull, boring, and with a gray tint.

The "dobly digital" designation was one of two false advertisements I had with this model. Since there is no digital output, there is practically no way to experience the DD sound even if the on screen display says that it is available.

To be fair, the other wrong advertisement was courtesy of Best Buy and not LG. Their shelf tag said the TV had 2 HDMI inputs, which is why I decided to give it a try instead of the cheaper Insignia, a brand that Best Buy's employees keep insisting is made by LG. Oh right! If you haven't guessed, the TV only has 1 HDMI input.

With the poor contrast, non-existent black level, and extremely limited adjustment options, I have very little patience with the TV. But because I manged a price for it of about $200, I kept on trying and hoping I can reach an acceptable performance.

Regrettably all my best efforts were completely wasted. I was even considering living with the poor contrast, because my main use for the TV is playing my PS3.

The misery was made even worse by the sound. I hate to repeat my analogies, but the built in speakers also sounded worse than my PDA's speaker.

If you recall there is no digital output. Even better, there isn't an analog one either. The only way to get audio out from the TV and in to some better sound system (which would be any other one) is the headphone jack. Using that, however, turns off the built in speakers completely and the only way to get sound back to them is unplugging the headphones jack. Now normally people would prefer to not subject themselves to the LG's speakers anyway, but every now and then I do like to just turn the TV on and not mess with my receiver.

I truly hope that I've already managed to convince anyone reading against buying this TV. But if anyone is still considering even remotely, here are a few more points to think about.

The TV needs all the help it can get to make it even semi-acceptable. Unfortunately, it feels like the designers at LG were set on making it useless. The remote control is just one more source of frustration. It has a very basic layout and only controls the most essential features. It doesn't even have a dedicated aspect control - the function is buried in the menus. I guess they decided that since there aren't that many aspect choices to begin with, might as well save some space. The only options are: 4:3, 16:9, and "set by program". Normally that might be enough, but given the overall picture quality, a few stretch and pan options would've been helpful. There is no program guide either.

Initially I thought that at least the tuner would provide some benefit to this model. It has an unusual reception system. By the looks of it, it appears that it's possible to connect both an antenna and a cable feed through a signal combiner to the single RF input. When running the channel scan the tuner goes through all the options. Most TVs ask for selection first - TV or cable. This one just scans all - analog/digital antenna/cable. Because of this I thought I'd be able to run both feeds at the same time, but after the scan completed the TV only found my cable channels, and none from the antenna. After I disconnected the cable, it found the antenna channels. I guess what I thought was a cool feature, turned out to be just another flaw in the system menus.

One area where the TV is somewhat successful is the design, it's very light, pretty attractive, and thin. I guess all that ads up to a good bit of heat though, more than from other LCD TVs.

I am trying hard to find anything good to say here before I finish, but the more I try the more flaws I remember. This TV truly is the worst one I've ever tried. At least the Samsung had a somewhat acceptable image.