Review The LC-52LE700E is the largest set in Sharp’s current range of affordable, LED backlit TVs. Many may baulk at describing a telly that costs £1,300 as affordable, but given the vast expanse of screen real-estate on offer here and the fact that it uses direct LED backlighting, the asking price actually falls towards the more reasonable end of the big screen spectrum.

The big picture: Sharp's Aquos LC-52LE700E

A telly of this size is bound to draw attention to itself, even if it’s sitting in the corner of a room switched off. And while it isn’t as pretty as some of the latest LED models from LG and Samsung, the glossy black finish and blue tinged panel, that runs across the bottom of the set, at least lift it out of design mediocrity. However, we’re used to LED models being exceptionally slim, but that’s not the case here as the LC-52LE700E is rather big boned, measuring a whopping 10cm deep.

With so much space on the back for various ports, it’s no surprise that the set is not found wanting when it comes to connectivity. You get four HDMI ports – with one side mounted for easy access – alongside two Scart sockets, a set of component connectors, a composite socket and a VGA port. There’s also a digital audio output, so you can feed sound from the Freeview tuner to your surround sound system.

Unfortunately, on the digital media front, the TV lags somewhat behind the times. The LC-52LE700E does have a USB port on the side, but it only lets you play MP3s or view slideshows of pictures. It can’t play any video formats at all, so you can’t even watch movie files captured on your digital camera. With no Ethernet port nor Wi-Fi support, you also miss out on Internet video services and media streaming from a PC.

With four HDMI ports, you shouldn’t have any problems hooking up your HD kit.

Setting up the TV is pretty straightforward although the tuner does take a while to grab all the Freeview channels. However, as you only really have to do this once, it’s hardly a big issue. When the channels are tuned, you’ll find that the LC-52LE700E’s menu system offers comprehensive control over pretty much all aspects of the TV. However, its structure could be improved and the presentation could do with a bit of a facelift, as it looks rather drab.

Also, I wasn’t really a fan of Sharp’s EPG. The predominantly grey colour scheme is visually depressing and, despite the high-resolution text, you can’t easily read the names of some programmes with short run times in the default layout. This can be alleviated somewhat by switching the EPG to a different zoom setting, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem.

The uncluttered remote is nicely designed

The LC-52LE700E’s picture presets are pretty garish too, so you have to do a bit of work to tone them down before you really see what the set’s capable of. However, at least the picture controls are comprehensive. Even the simple mode gives you control over the backlight level, while the advanced menu let’s you tweak more complex settings like colour hue and saturation.

LED backlit sets are generally better at rendering deeper blacks than other LCD screens, so you’d expect the LC-52LE700E to perform well in this area. Thankfully, it doesn’t disappoint as it delivers some of the deepest blacks I’ve seen this side of the very best plasmas.

The EPG looks rather drab and the names of shorter programmes are often hidden

What’s more, it manages to do this without toning down bright whites in the picture, as some lesser screens do. Colours also manage to look strong without becoming cartoony and it handles skins tones with impressive finesse.

However, this set is definitely at its best when it’s working with HD material, such as movies on Bluray, as this is when you get to see just how crisp and sharp its pictures can look. Unfortunately, its performance with standard definition content, such as channels on Freeview, was relatively poor.

The menu system offers comprehensive picture controls

Pictures look rather noisy and the set tend to draw attention to weakness in the signal rather than managing to hide them away. Also, although this telly’s 100Hz processing does a decent job of reducing judder, sadly, some motion blur does make it’s presence felt during sports, especially fast pans during footy matches.

Another slight problem area is sound. Usually, the bigger the set, the better the speakers. However, the speakers on the LC-52LE700E lack oomph compared to those in similar sized TVs from the likes of Sony and Philips. They’re not all that loud and the bass response, although never great on flat panels anyway, is rather poor for the size of the screen.

On the power front, however, the TV performs admirably. Running in Cinema mode it uses a modest 64W or so and while this does jump to around 143W in the Dynamic mode (largely due to the boost in brightness), it’s still not that bad for a screen of this size. It’s easy on the gas in standby mode too, where it draws just 0.9W.

Verdict

The 700E offers a lot of screen for the money and its performance with HD sources is impressive, thanks to its ability to produce natural colours and inky black levels. However, it has a bad habit of highlighting the negative aspects of standard definition broadcasts, rather than smoothing them over, and its sound performance is a little below par. ®

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