Sharp LC-52LE640U LED LCD HDTV Review

Contrast

We recorded a fantastic contrast ratio on the Sharp LC-52LE640U. This TV utilizes both ends of the brightness spectrum with a high peak brightness and a nice, deep, black level for an LCD screen. More on how we test contrast.

Color & Greyscale Curves

These color curves have a good shape and do not peak before the highest possible input brightness, but they do not get started until midway through the dark gray values. You can see that each of the lines, except for the blue line, stays flat at 0% luminance before starting to increase in a curve to the brightest luminance. This flatlining means there is no difference from one value to the next, and at 0% luminance, these colors will show completely black, instead of dark gray. This area of no distinction does not last long however, and mostly the shape of the curves looks right on target.

The granularity of these lines is another error. These lines should be completely smooth, which would show that for each input value, the LC-52LE640U is capable of producing a corresponding output value. When there are bumps in the lines, it means that this Sharp could not produce the proper input value, and instead showed something either brighter or dimmer than what was asked. These lines exhibit bumps all the way through the spectrum, resulting in incorrect reproduction throughout.

Taken all together, there are some color accuracy errors here, but they do not add up to an awful performance. Rather, the Sharp LC-52LE640U yields an average set of colors. More on how we test color performance.

Color Temperature

In the brightest whites, the color temperature is just where it should be. The rest of the values in the brightness spectrum show warming errors with a heavy peak in the dark values. You will probably see some orange tints to the picture in the darkest values, but not as much in the rest of the spectrum. When the errors are consistent, it would be hard to notice a warmish tint in relation to all of the other colors with the same error. Still, it's not great. More on how we test color temperature.

Color Gamut

The LC-52LE640U uses a set of colors that match the international standard set of HDTV colors, determined by the Rec. 709, in both the green values and the white point. The red and blue values are both undersaturated and skewed towards different colors. This is not a superb match. More on how we test color temperature.

Picture Dynamics

We test to see if the peak brightness or the black level is affected by the images shown on the screen. If the peak brightness dims when most of the screen is white, or the black level brightens when there is little black on the screen, we detract points from a television. This Sharp scored an almost perfect 10, meaning that these values stay consistent no matter what is shown on the screen. More on how we test picture dynamics.