LG Flatron L3000A review

There are times when size really does matter. Whether it's in your corporate reception or your home cinema, you can't afford to skimp on screens. Until recently, plasma technology has been the only cost-effective way of producing panels of 30in or larger, but it comes with problems. Compared to modern TFTs, plasma screens are heavy, power-guzzling beasts with relatively short life spans.

There's also the question of flexibility. With the 40in NEC-Mitsubishi weighing 26kg, it's around 15 per cent lighter than an equivalent plasma screen, although at 140mm thick it's about 50 per cent deeper. Both screens have stand options, although LG supplies the Flatron L3000A primarily for wall mounting. With a 30in screen and 90mm depth, but tipping the scales at just 18kg, it's an incredible amount of picture for the weight.

All this would mean nothing if image quality wasn't up to scratch, but thankfully neither of these screens disappoints - gone are the days of washed-out LCD colours. When a source is connected via the DVI-I inputs, the contrast and vibrancy are immediately apparent, particularly when compared with the fuzziness of many plasma panels.

The NEC-Mitsubishi offers three colour profiles, with an sRGB setting as well as Bright and Normal modes optimised for television and text displays respectively. There isn't much room for manoeuvre from these presets, but they function well enough for most purposes. The LG offers a wider range of colour temperatures, including a versatile user mode for greater control, accessible through the comprehensive OSD. Both menu systems are intuitive, with the LG's in particular offering clear groupings of parameters. For peace of mind, they're lockable from the front panel too.

Hooking a source up to the VGA inputs predictably produced less sharp images from both models, although they were still reasonably well defined, given the image size. A fly in the LG's ointment is that it fails to support any 16:9 aspect ratios over the DVI input, including its own 1,280 x 768 native resolution. This is a wasted opportunity for digital DVD playback, although for many applications it isn't critical. The NEC-Mitsubishi supports 16:9 aspect ratios over DVI, and also emulation up to 1,600 x 1,200 from the D-SUB. As with the LG its native pixel resolution is 1,280 x 768. This is ample for most text-based uses and more than enough to cope with HDTV or DVD at full resolutions.

Combined with a TV tuner card in your PC, a DVD player or even a good old-fashioned VCR, either monitor would make an excellent home-cinema display - at least as good as plasma. I can't find fault with the viewing angles - one area where plasma previously reigned supreme - with visibility over at least 160 degrees. With response times of around 25ms, both screens performed well with games and DVDs. The increased pixel size of the NEC-Mitsubishi makes DVD compression artefacts more obvious at close viewing distances, but they both cope with all but the fastest action.

Audio inputs and outputs are present on both screens - the NEC-Mitsubishi offers three separate audio inputs. Both have attachable speaker options, with the NEC-Mitsubishi even including 8-Ohm terminals for connecting an optional pair of 7W speakers.

Both panels sport S-Video and composite video inputs, and with flexible picture-in-picture arrangements these needn't go to waste. The NEC-Mitsubishi also has BNC input and output, making it a more attractive option for commercial installations involving long cable runs. It's also worth noting the LCD4000's removable front bezel, which will help aesthetically with custom installations such as video walls or reorientation into portrait aspect - something the LG won't do.