LG 32LG40

Ease of Use (6.5)

The main problem we had with the menu structure is that none of its items are explained outside of the manual. Many TVs include onscreen descriptions of a highlighted item, but the 32LG40 throws you to the wolves (by 'wolves' we mean the TV's horrible manual, because, much like a wolf, it lacks an index section). is that its initial screen is totally superfluous. When you click the button, a 3x2 grid of icons pop up: Channel, picture, audio, time, option, and lock. Clicking on one replaces the 3x2 grid with a window. The main area on that window is a subsection of the chosen icon. The left side of the window holds the six icons for easy navigation. Our question: why bother with the initial screen if the submen provides, among other things, the same functionality?

The controls you'll need to navigate are exceedingly simple. You use the d-pad to move around, the select key to select things or back up a level (depending on context), and the menu key will exit. If you have used another TV's menu before, this one shouldn't give you much trouble.

The menu itself looks fine and the icons used therein look better than average. 

Selecting anything from here will bring you to a different section of the same tabbed menu. There is no reason for this screen.

Picture Controls (7.0)

The 32LG40 has a good array of picture controls. Just select the Expert picture mode and you'll gain access to brightness, contrast, color, and tint for blues, reds, greens, cyans, and magentas. Since these controls are slightly nebulous in terms of their actual effect, we would have expected them to come with some onscreen descriptor. Just like every other menu item, however, there was no information available.

In this menu you can choose one of the TV's picture modes.

Audio Controls (4.0)

There weren't much in the way of advanced audio controls. It has a  'Clear Voice' option that presumably boosts mid-range frequencies, but we didn't notice a significant difference when it was turned on. Also, like previously mentioned, there are no descriptions for any of the menu items.

The audio menu lets you enable surround sound and fiddle with the bass/treble settings.

Other Controls (8.0)

The 32LG40 doesn't have many other controls. The main menu has a 'Clock' subsection that will let you easily set up a sleep timer. In the options menu, you can set input labels, so if your PC is perpetually connected to HDMI3, you can rename HDMI3 to 'Computer.' You can also toggle the behavior of the screen's power LCD, by enabling the standby or power light.

This is a list of possible inputs. You can rename these.

This is the lock menu, which includes V-Chip-type content locks.

Manual (4.0)

The TV's manual really isn't great. The table of contents is a bit vague, it doesn't have an index at all, it has some basic tabs on the pages, the font size and pictures are small, and the entire menu looks like it was printed on the same quality paper as a second-grade penmanship workbook. Further, the information contained therein isn't particularly elucidating. The back does have a small table of common errrors and their corrections, but only the overly basic, 'make sure product is turned on' solutions.