Sharp Aquos LC-60LE925UN 3D LED LCD HDTV First Impressions Review

Display Size & Technology

The Sharp Aquos LC-60LE925UN has a 60-inch screen and offers Full HD display at a 1920 x 1080 resolution. The TV has an LCD screen with LED backlight technology that is designed to boost brightness (particularly when viewing 3D content).

The 3D capability of the LC-60LE925UN is definitely its most exciting feature, but you have to remember that the TV functions perfectly fine when watching 2D content as well (as is the case for all 3D TVs). You don't have to watch 3D on the TV, but the capability is there if you want it.

Formats & Resolution

The LC-60LE925UN is a Full HD television, so it can display video at a 1920 x 1080 resolution. This is also called a 1080p display (as opposed to the lower-resolution 720p), and it is essentially the highest-resolution available on the consumer market.

Brightness, Blacks and Contrast Ratio

Sharp lists the contrast ratio on the Aquos LC-60LE925UN as a ridiculous 8,000,000 to 1. We usually find the contrast ratio to be much lower than what is reported by the manufacturer when we actually test the television in our labs, so you should take this number with a grain of salt. Manufacturers use special settings to come up with their contrast ratio numbers and they don't always reflect real-life viewing situations. When we get the model into our labs, we'll give you a better idea about the actual black level and contrast ratio for the LC-60LE925UN.

Color

Sharp's Quattron quad pixel technology adds the color yellow to the traditional RGB (red, green, blue) television pixel structure. According to Sharp, this enables the LC-60LE925UN to display colors that have often been difficult for LCD models to reproduce. The example they give is the golden-brass color of musical instruments (like saxophones). Sharp also claims its Quattron technology allows more light to pass through the panel, which makes 3D images brighter when displayed on the TV. We can't say we noticed much of a difference between the LC-60LE925UN when we compared it to other models on the floor at CEDIA, but, then again, we weren't watching video content that was full of brass-colored musical instruments.

Motion & Refresh Rate

The LC-60LE925UN has Sharp's AquoMotion 240 technology, which is a fancy way of saying it has a 240Hz refresh rate. 240Hz is an impressive refresh rate considering many high-end TVs still utilize 120Hz rates and most entry-level models have refresh rates of 60Hz. Does it make a difference when you watch motion, though? Well, that's a debatable question. Sharp claims the AquoMotion 240 technology improves fast-action imagery by reducing the amount of blur and artifacts, but we've rarely noticed much of a difference between 240Hz and 120Hz refresh rates on HDTVs.

The LC-60LE925UN also has Sharp's Vyper Drive game mode, which is meant to reduce picture lag so you can twitch headshot with the pros. We didn't see this feature in action, so we can't tell if it actually works, or if games look better on the 60LE925UN than on other models. All we know is Vyper Drive sounds pretty radical (to the max).

Viewing Angle

Sharp lists the viewing angle on the LC-60LE925UN as 176 degrees, but this is a much wider angle than we're likely to measure in our testing. When we test viewing angle, we record a measurement at the angle where the TV's contrast ratio has fallen to 50% of its maximum (an average viewing angle for an LCD is around 30 degrees in our test). It is unknown how Sharp measures its viewing angle, so it is likely that their numbers don't reflect real-life viewing conditions.