LG 32LG40

Color Temperature (5.26)

Just like starts that glow red when they're relatively cool and blue when they're relatively hot, so too do televisions have color temperature. For this test, we want to TV to have a color temperature that's close to 6500k, which should be an optimal white. We then reduce the intensity of the white to see if color temperature varies. Ideally, it should not, and the graph below should look quite boring, with just a gradient in the background and a thick horizontal black line that represents ideally consistent color temperature. Instead, however, we get some fringing on top of the black line, which means the color temperature gets a bit hotter than it should at some points.

As you can see the 32LG40 has some issues with blacks: namely, they are blue. You will find this verified by some of our other tests in this section. Before the low end, the little forays above the black line probably won't be noticeable, but that bit towards the end is atrocious.

In this next graph, the center represents the color of white at its maximum intensity. The red circle indicates the smalles color difference that our eyes can perceive. For absolute perfection, every measurement would be at the center. For awesome performance, all the little black dots should occur within the red circle. The dots outside of the circle represent an area where the whites get tinted towards some color or the other.

Again, the 32LG40 didn't impress us. There are a lot of dots running around outside the red line, some by significant margins. This means there are noticeable shifts in white, which users have a strong chance of noticing.

RGB Curves (7.83)

If you're anything like we were before we got into reviewing TVs, you probably thought the three primary colors were blue, red, and yellow. This is because that art teacher you had was teaching us about finger paints, which isn't quite analogous to how light interacts. On TVs, the three primary colors are red, green, and blue; mix them together and you get white.

Since the RGB of a TV dictates every other color its capable of, we run a few tests on our calibrated TV to see how each color is acting under realistically ideal conditions (this means not amping up the blue settings to measure blue, then swapping them to measure red).

The 32LG40 does well here. It doesn't have the best RGB responses we've ever seen, but they're on the better side of average. The main issues we ran into were towards the low end of both the reds and the blues. Ideally the curve should taper down until all you're left with is pure black. This isn't the case, however, and most blacks will contain some small part blue and an insignificant amount of red. This isn't great, but it isn't the worst trait to have.

If you'll notice, none of the colors peak at all. Peaking refers to the TV's inability to differentiate between different colors once they reach a certain intensity. For example, if the greens were peaking, a bright bunch of foliage might blur together into a big green blob with no differentiation. When you're looking at a color response curve, you can tell peaking is occurring when the intense end of the graph suddenly plateaus; even though the TV is supposed to be displaying even brighter shades of the color, it is unable to.

Color Gamut (5.78)

A TV's color gamut isn't some arbitrary spectrum the manufacturers create on a whim. There is actually an international standard called Rec.709. All TVs are supposed to adhere to this standard, even though some don't. This standard makes our job easy since it provides us with a very clear ideal to measure a TV's performance against. The graph below shows how closely the 32LG40 adheres to Rec.709. The solid lines represent what the 32LG40 is actually displaying, while the dotted lines represent what it should be displaying. 

As you can see, the 32LG40 is a bit off here. Normally 'a bit off' isn't a bad thing, but all TVs are supposed to follow this guideline to the T, which means the 32LG40 has failed to live up to the standard. Overall, while it might lean a bit towards green and away from red, the difference still won't be something to totally annoy the average viewer.