Top 5 42-Inch HDTVs

Our Best Buy, LG Electronic's 42PG25 Plasma, boasts an attractive price ($1000) and impressive features. Image performance ratings run very close in this category, so be sure to check out our chart.

You can bung just about annihilation into the 42PG25. It boasts eight inputs (four HDMI, two composite, and two component), S-Video, and two optical outputs, additional a USB anchorage for examination your photos and alert to your MP3s. All of those plugs are simple to get to; some face apparent on the aback of the set, others are army on the side.
Once you've set up the TV, you can about-face calmly amid inputs. Press the ascribe button on the remote, and ample icons apery anniversary ascribe arise at the basal of the screen. The alive inputs--those that are currently sending out a signal--are aggregate calm at the alpha and are highlighted.
The added on-screen displays and airheaded are able-bodied designed, too, with large, easy-to-read icons. The remote's Q Card button brings up an abbreviated account of items that you're acceptable to use frequently, such as Aspect Ratio, Video Mode, and Audio Mode. Regrettably, though, the card items abridgement descriptions, so you accept to assumption what 'Clear Voice' agency or you accept to attending it up in the manual. Another drawback: The absence of a Display button on the limited prevents you from calmly blockage the accepted channel, program, and abstruse specs.
Surprisingly, the 42PG25 had a harder time with motion than the 42-inch 120-Hz LCDs that we akin it against--the LG Electronics 42LGX, the Toshiba 42XV545U, and the Vizio SV420XVT--which suggests that 120 Hz absolutely agency something. One adjudicator begin "motion becloud actual noticeable" on our NASCAR test, appraisement the 42PG25's becloud as "probably [the] worst" a part of the 42-inch sets. Two board noticed a "slight clashing bricks" in Mission: Impossible III's Vatican bank climb. And anybody on the console gave it a low account on our Jaggies analysis from the HD HQV Benchmark. Despite these angel quirks, however, our board rated its images Good overall; I frequently rated it Actual Good if motion wasn't an issue.
Though not the fanciest HDTV you can buy, nor the one with the best angel quality, the 42PG25 is an adorable set--and its low amount enhances its appeal