It will be some time before we will be able to buy roll-uppable televisions or T-shirts with screens in them, and though OLED is theoretically capable of doing this it is so expensive it's out of the reach of most of us. Until OLED gets cheaper, the LED-backlit TVs are about as advanced as you can get right now. The Sharp LC40LE700X is the Japanese company's first attempt.
Design
The LE700X is Sharp's most stylish television yet: it features a two-tone bezel with a gun metal and piano black finish. The centrepiece, both literally and figuratively, is the striking blue power light — very stylish. From afar the TV looks quite austere, but up close we were less enamoured by it. We found the plastic bezel to be quite flimsy and it came off all too easily, exposing the panel underneath. From the back and side, the design is also a little boxy though we were impressed by the side-mounted ports — too many place them close to the edge meaning that you have a great hulking cable visible at all times. The Sharp sensibly recesses the ports just enough so that with a bit of tucking you won't see the wires.
By contrast, the remote control is the grey one they've had for seemingly yonks. While functional, it's drab and not in keeping with the design of the TV. Rivals Samsung and Panasonic put more thought into their remotes.
Features
What's in the box? Well, you get a 40-inch New "X-Gen Panel" with a 1920x1080 resolution, and a claimed "3,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio". In feature terms, LED backlighting is the star here. Unlike competing solutions, the Sharp features an RGB backlight (not edge) which should give the screen a broader colour palette than white LED models. If you're concerned that LEDs will "burn out" after a while then you'll be happy to know that the backlight on this screen is rated at 100,000 hours — or 11 years if left on all the time.
The screen is pretty light-on for fancy extras, though like competitors the Sharp features its version of 100Hz called Fine Motion Advanced which is designed to reduce motion blur — and not judder as everyone else tries to.
For all your connectivity needs the Sharp includes three HDMI ports with "Instaport", which automatically detects and switches to HDMI sources. Other connections include two components, three AV inputs, S-Video, VGA, and an optical digital output.
Performance
In use, the Sharp was a fairly consistent performer and we found that the majority of sources were shown to their full potential. However, we did notice that the TV was a little soft at default settings, and we had to tweak it a little. By adjusting the sharpness by a single step we found that detail levels improved significantly. We found this unusual as many TVs these days ship with hyperactive over-sharp pictures, so a little cautiousness is probably a good thing.
With the screen calibrated, we fired up the on-board HD tuner. Images were bright and detailed, and when viewing sport on One HD we found the TV was able to keep a handle on fast-moving action with little ghosting or blurring — though these problems did show up from time to time with other sources.
The television is capable of high black levels in normal lighting conditions and this was well demonstrated with the King Kong DVD. The climactic scene above the streets of Manhattan begins with a shot of the sunrise and the creature's fur blowing softly in the wind (it's breezy on top of the Empire State Building). The Sharp was able to discern the detail in Kong's pelt with deep black levels, and display it as black, and not dark green as some other TVs do. The sunrise was also painted realistically and movement and image quality received high marks.
The television performed well with our HD synthetic tests which gauge the screen's ability to handle mosquito noise, "jaggies" and different source types. Over the past year, we've found most manufacturers are capable of high-quality image processing and the Sharp proved itself as well. Though, like some others, the Sharp did fail the Film Resolution test, which means that its support for 24p is not as finely tuned as it could be.
This 24p wonkiness was also on display when we played the Mission Impossible III disc, with a strange jerkiness appearing during the Bridge Scene fly-over. However, with a little tweaking of the Film Mode settings — ie, changing this to "Standard mode — we were able to make movement behave less erratically. As a result, the rooftop scene in the same movie was also rendered without judder. Black levels were as proficient as before and colour was natural.
Despite a generally good showing the TV isn't without a couple of minor problems, and they're ones shared by other TVs in the same price bracket. Despite a superior lighting system, the panel is still subject to a loss of contrast when viewed off-axis. Also, the TV's gloss coating can also be a little distracting — especially on dark discs like Batman Begins. You'll also find in discs like these that backlight "clouding" (where blacks aren't consistent but dark grey in some patches) is still an issue in the corners. But the biggest issue we found was with some occasional ghosting regardless of the source — while it was mostly "blink and you'll miss it" stuff it detracted from scenes with a lot of movement making them seem less "real".
Barring one notable example, sound quality has been one area that Sharp televisions have always been strong in. We found there wasn't much difference in volume levels between 50 per cent and maximum — at least the television didn't rattle. The speakers had a good grip on stereo effects, though the sound was lacking in bass a little.
Conclusion
Having spent some time with the LC40LE700X we were left with a generally favourable impression. Image quality was very good, and the sound was a lot better than we had any right to expect — particularly after the execrable Sharp home cinema we saw recently. However, something niggles at us. While the price is good and the technology is cutting edge, we just didn't get the pay-off in terms of performance we were expecting. Perhaps our expectations were too high, but we think that in the end Samsung is just doing it better.
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