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  • The Looks

  • The Experience

  • The Picture

  • The Verdict

  • Behind the Screens

  • Picture Dynamics

  • Color Integrity

  • Viewing Angle

  • The Looks
  • The Experience
  • The Picture
  • The Verdict
  • Behind the Screens
  • Picture Dynamics
  • Color Integrity
  • Viewing Angle

Imagine the LG Display team and a host of robotic assistants creating a fusion of science and magic. Think of the years of research leading up to; the careful measuring specifically for; the cutting, handling, and assembling of... one single, pristine panel. Hear the symphony of hyper-precise, nano-second-timing, specially-engineered automatons working without pause.

LG's 55LA6900 is one direct result of that magnificent process: A 1080p LED LCD that's smart, 3D, and—at an MSRP of $2000—quite expensive, too. I found that this TV produces rich, accurate colors—LG's 3D tech and smart content are always pretty top-notch, too.

Unfortunately, the LA6900 simply cannot produce a respectable black level, which really hurt its score. It's a fine product in every other way, but a TV's main selling point is truly the ability to provide rich, realistic shadows. Two-thousand bucks is too much to pay for just a flashy design and fancy features without the core performance to back them.

The Looks

LG's TV design is still evocative of future times.

Some time ago—way back in 2012—we got our first LG of the year. Forgetting all about the looming apocalypse, we were immediately impressed by its unique design. Enter 2013: LG still designs some of the sleekest, sharpest, sci-fi-iest tellies around.

The LA6900 is handsome, slim, and forged in sexy, liquid black.

This upper mid-range unit perches sturdily upon a single metal arm, which hoists the narrow-bezeled panel in effortless balance. This product is handsome, slim, and forged in sexy, liquid black.

The TV's branch stand also allows it to swivel a few degrees to the left and right, shifting upon mechanically sliding pieces attached to the bottom. For $2000, you're also getting four pairs of LG's passive 3D glasses—light, comfortable, and pre-assembled, which is a nice touch. This year's iteration of the Magic Remote is included as well, a gunmetal wand that uses infrared tech to produce a motion-based, Wii-like cursor.

As for usability, the LA6900 offers living room legends and home theater hosts plenty of ports. On the side of the TV, you'll find 3 HDMI inputs and 3 USB inputs, smartly clustered and labeled. Within a recessed area on the rear of the panel, LG includes further connectivity options: A shared component/composite input, a coaxial cable jack, digital audio out, LAN (ethernet) in, and an analog audio out for headphones.

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The Experience

A wealth of features and awesome smart content

LG makes a great smart platform, though the company's partnership with Google is even better. You'll be glad to know that LG's 2013 smart platform is in full working order on the LA6900, offering users a huge horde of quick-loading apps and streaming content from big names like Netflix and Hulu Plus.

The Magic Remote features a dedicated Home Menu button, which will transport users right to the smart content.

Startup sees networking a wireless or wired internet connection. I found that the LA6900's WiFi range is pretty solid; it picked up networks from Mordor to Rivendell (yes, those are both networks in our area). Once a connection is established, getting at all that juicy smart content is as simple as pushing a button. The Magic Remote features a dedicated Home Menu button, which will transport users to their personal smart content HQ, all the while maintaining a helpful PIP of whatever you're watching in the corner of the screen.

The LA6900 is also capable of controlling a set-top box or Blu-ray player through a quick setup process. Simply search out your STB manufacturer, and HDMI-CEC controls do the rest, allowing you to change channels/operate various devices that are connected to the TV via HDMI. It's quite helpful, consolidating a potential basketful of clickers into a single omnipotent remotent. My one gripe is about the Magic Remote itself: While fun at first, it can grow tedious to use for longer, subtler tasks. Typing in a website URL or calibrating the TV's specs in finer detail would benefit from a traditional controller.

Speaking of calibrating, picture purists will be glad to know that the LA6900 includes a full suite of calibration controls. Both 2- and 10-point grayscale balancing are available, as well as a full CMS (Color Management System). The LA6900 includes a host of Picture mode pre-sets, including two ISF Expert modes for dedicated Day and Night settings, I'd wager. This allows those with the experience and equipment—or simply the will to hire a calibrator—the option of tweaking the LA6900 into perfection, via HDTV standards.

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The Picture

Solid color accuracy, but little else to redeem it

Like so many LGs before it, the LA6900 tested with entirely predictable results. I've dabbled with LG's LCDs for some time now, and thus had two expectations for this one: A poor black level, and very accurate colors. I was, unfortunately, correct. Black level is our highest-weighted test category, and this TV's was closer to gray, a result which heavily squashed its overall score. Grab the hard data on the Science page.

The 55LA6900 is capable of producing very accurate, rich colors.

On the plus side, the 55LA6900 is capable of producing very accurate, rich colors right out of the box. Within the Cinema picture mode, with a brief calibration, its color production is very accurate. Primary and secondary colors will look both balanced and properly hued.

Unfortunately, that is where my praise must end. Other test results—backlight uniformity, motion performance, audio, and viewing angle—proved entirely mediocre. The LA6900's 120 Hz panel does a sub-optimal job of preserving detail in moving content, even with motion processing modes enabled, which is a real turn-off for film buffs and gamers. Overall, the LA6900 makes a better media-hosting device than it does a traditional television. Cartoons look awesome! Films on Blu-ray? Not so much.

The Verdict

This TV has a few strong points, but they're overshadowed by some glaring drawbacks.

The 55-inch LA6900 retails for about $2000, though you could likely find it for less online. That said, I really don't recommend purchasing this TV unless you find it at a serious discount. I had high hopes for this LG, but its core performance just isn't strong enough. It has all of the usual weaknesses attributed to LCDs: A poor black level and blurry motion handling.

That's not to say it's without uses. As far as pure color production goes, the LA6900 is great. It's also a very feature-heavy display, hosting up one of the best smart platforms on the market right now. It's a quick, stylish machine—the 3D isn't half-bad, either. Unfortunately, a slew of cool add-ons don't make up the value lost in performance.

Behind the Screens

In many ways, this LCD would make a better computer monitor than a TV. Our highest-rated testing category is black level—as it stands, producing rich shadow tones is what TVs do best. Unfortunately, the LA6900 simply cannot produce a good black level, leaving it with a very ho-hum contrast ratio. This is going to render most content somewhat flat and lifeless, by film standards. On the other hand, this TV produces very accurate color, but that's not going to sell by itself.

Picture Dynamics

Steeeeeeee-rike!

We use two methods to determine a television's picture dynamics. One of them involves taking a reading of a 20% APL (average picture level) white rectangle on screen, and its inverse black rectangle, to determine static contrast performance (20% is roughly the amount of screen that's at peak white for most content). The other is the standard ANSI checkerboard pattern, which gives a more realistic representation of light pollution within black areas on screen. Unfortunately, this TV is so thin and bright that its black production suffers from light bleed. Try as I might, I simply couldn't wrench an acceptable black level out of the LA6900, though its peak brightness is commendably bright.

The average black level I found was 0.319 cd/m2 , which is not very dark. Plenty of modern LCDs can hit at least 0.1, and those of finer stuff even reach as deep as 0.05 or 0.07. Comparably, 0.319 is more gray than dark, and this was with local dimming activated. Sheesh. The LA6900's peak brightness of 332.80 cd/m2 means plenty of light output. It's great that you could watch this TV in the sun, but film content on DVDs and Blu-rays, and moody, atmospheric games are really going to lose their shadowy sweetness. With a contrast ratio a little over 1000:1, you may as well buy a high-end computer monitor and sit a little closer.

Color Integrity

Handsome color adherence, but what's with these temperature fluctuations?

The first thing I noticed after running our exhaustive color test on the LA6900 was that its adherence to the Rec.709 color standard is spot-on. While not exactly perfect, its error is so wan as to be dismissed with the wave of your remote. This is the result after a brief calibration within the TV's Cinema picture mode (ISF Expert modes are available, but for the sake of testing consistency, had to be ignored for the moment). This gamut means that red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and white are going to look the way they should, preserving picture detail and luminance balance.

The next thing we check is the gamma of red, green, blue, and the grayscale from steps 0-255. This is an especially long-winded test, as it checks every single step along the intensity spectrum. The results we gathered proved this TV's quality, revealing a balanced RGB input within grayscale components, with curves ramping up smoothly together, and in a linear fashion. This is a great result, promising a staunch colorimetry.

Finally, we analyzed the LA6900's correlated color temperature across the same intensity input. Correlated color temperature, or CCT, refers to the relative temperature of a TV's gray/white points along its grayscale. Generally, it is more important to adhere to the proper x- and y- coordinates, but color temperature deviation from a neutral point can reveal how well a TV maintains its particular "version" of white, even if it's not precisely calibrated to the D65 standard. The LA6900 produced some oddball results: Starting at peak white, the TV's CCT drops at steady intervals down to black, cooling off, which—confusingly—adds more and more of a "warm" orange tint to whites and grays on screen. Errors ±200K from the starting point are imperceptible to human vision, but the LA6900's errors quickly grow visible as it dips in high middle-gray, growing most severe in shadow tones.

Viewing Angle

Not great, but not terrible

The LA6900 tested with a wholly average horizontal viewing angle. Viewing angle is especially important to TVs 42 inches or larger, as the general idea is that they're going to be placed or wall-mounted in a larger room and watched by various people, doing various things. Maybe you want to stalk around your kitchen sampling cheeses while you watch the news; maybe you just have a weird habit of watching dog shows from the bathroom while you brush your teeth. This is a judgment-free zone.

LCDs tend to have worse viewing angles than their plasma counterparts, due to the nature of their construction. I tested a total viewing angle of ±42°, or 21° from the center of this TV's screen to any one side. Beyond those limits, the TV's already feeble contrast ratio falls below 50% of its head-on value. Depending on your field-of-view, that could offer enough viewing flexibility, but you're not going to have much. The TV swivels upon its stand slightly, but really, you're going to want to use it head-on (again, kind of like a computer monitor) most of the time.

Meet the tester

Lee Neikirk

Lee Neikirk

Former Editor, Home Theater

@Koanshark

Lee was Reviewed's point person for most television and home theater products from 2012 until early 2022. Lee received Level II certification in TV calibration from the Imaging Science Foundation in 2013. As Editor of the Home Theater vertical, Lee oversaw reviews of TVs, monitors, soundbars, and Bluetooth speakers. He also reviewed headphones, and has a background in music performance.

See all of Lee Neikirk's reviews

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