LG Electronics 50PG30

Though inexpensive for its screen size, the LG 50PG30 plasma HDTV lacks features and image punch.

The LG 50PG30 is an inexpensive plasma HDTV ($1700, as of November 4, 2008) with stylish looks. Its design and its range of inputs (including three HDMI ports) will attract attention, but this model's image quality is only average.


In PC World Test Center tests, our board had a advanced ambit of reactions to the set. It looked absolutely acceptable if beheld at an angle--as you'd apprehend from a claret TV. And I anticipation the 50PG30 did a actual acceptable job with beginning and accomplishments detail (especially the latter) on our David Letterman account clip. My atomic acceptable 50PG30-viewing acquaintance was in the NASCAR clip, area I empiric some motion becloud and fuzziness. Added judges' appraisals were beneath upbeat. One faulted facial tones; addition said that images appeared flat, with colors that didn't pop.
The 50PG30 is simple to set up--with calmly placed inputs and a bureaucracy astrologer that asks whether to optimize for home use or abundance use. Six ample icons anatomy the body of the on-screen menu; I begin the airheaded to be logically organized--and because they were hardly transparent, they didn't block too abundant of the picture.
The Quick Menu offers even easier admission to accepted options such as the set's account and complete modes. And the selections that pop up (as icons forth the basal of the screen) if you columnist the ascribe button accord top antecedence to sources that are currently sending a arresting to the TV--a acceptable touch.
But the 50PG30 lacks a amount of added features. It has no picture-in-picture, and no USB or SD Card multimedia capabilities. The minimalist limited doesn't afterglow in the dark, isn't programmable; and can ascendancy alone VCR or DVD players that abutment LG's SimpLink (HDMI CEC) interface.
The 50PG30 accomplished additional a allotment of our 50- and 52-inch sets in our all-embracing rankings, acknowledgment in ample allotment to its aggressively low amount (the Hitachi P50X902, for archetype costs about alert as much, at $3200), but it can't blow the above architecture and top-of-line angel above of our amount one large-screen set, the Samsung PN50A760. LG's added aspirant in this category, the 52LG70, is above to the 50PG30 in about every way--but it costs $800 more.