Who can forget the TV with a hole which made waves across the country, not to mention our labs? Apart from the radical new design the television featured an impressive contrast ratio, USB function as well as 'invisible' speakers. But when it came to performance, it fell flat with unnaturally sharp images and speakers that just didn't sound right.
LG aims on improving the shortcomings of the Scarlet with its latest offering, the Scarlet 2.0. Sporting the same IPS (In Plane Switching) panel for superior picture quality, the Scarlet 2.0 has also slimmed down a bit with a much leaner looking frame and a revamped bezel. The main attraction of the Scarlet 2.0 is its Bluetooth capabil
ity, which is the first of its kind in India. This lets you pair Bluetooth headphones, as well as play music from your phone on the TV. The rest of the features are pretty much the same, like 100Hz motion plus, DivX playback through USB, 3x HDMI and a fast response time of 2.4ms.
Both the TV's are priced very close, so if this one
turns out better, then it's definitely a better pick as compared to the old one.
Bundle
The TV includes the following in the bundle;
- Instruction manual
- Remote
- Cleaning cloth
- USB Extension cable
- Power cord
The remote is a standard one that comes with all LG televisions.
Design and Construction
The Scarlet 2.0 that we received is a 42-incher and features a matt screen. The bezel is glossy with a red tinge running all through the bottom edge like the Samsung L6. This gives it a very nice look against the black bezel. The hole still remains the power button but is covered up with clear plastic that's touch sensitive.
All the ports are located on the back, which include 3x HDMI 1.3 jacks, USB 2.0 jack, 2x Composite, 2x Component, 1x VGA, 1x PC Audio input and one AV-out. This is pretty much the standard set of connections we can expect from a 42-incher, however, I still feel LG should have placed some ports on the side for easy access, like the USB port, which you'll be constantly swapping. Thankfully, you get a USB extension cable, which makes life easier.
There are no speaker grills either as LG has opted for the 'invisible' speaker technique used in the first Scarlet. The vents are actually under the bezel at certain points so as to give you a wider audio spectrum. This didn't work out too well before, so let's see if they've improved upon it.
The stand has a full chrome finish with a red tinge at the border as well. But all's not well, the stand is solid and balances the TV well but the point where the TV and the stand meet is very wobbly. You can swivel the TV from left to right but just a slight push and the TV rocks from side to side.
Just below the TV, on the right side, is a physical power switch to completely turn off the TV. Even on standby the TV consumes hardly 1W of power but if your power switch is tucked away in the back then you can completely kill the power with this switch.
The circular power LED
Performance
As usual we started off with the HQV Benchmark to test the video processor of the TV and these are the results we got.
We first ran the HQV DVD to check how the TV handles regular 480p video. The panel didn't fare too well here scoring 33 points out of 80, which is just about average. The major areas where it lost points was in the jaggies test, where fast moving horizontal bars were not smooth like they should be. The other two places were in the Noise reduction, where the amount of noise did reduce but not by a big margin, and in the Detail test where the bricks on distant buildings were not that distinguishable.
HQV BluRay
Things were very different when it came to the HQV BluRay as it scored a lot better as compared to the DVD. Here the LG scored 65 out of 100, which shows that it handles HD content very well. When it comes to HD noise reduction, it's very close to the Sony LED TV where the noise is completely eliminated. Everything's not perfect though as it still fails the Film Resolution Loss test where there is noticeable strobing and moir pattern visible in the test images.
TV Viewing
Watching cable television is just about average on this TV. The picture quality is good but only if viewed at a distance of around eight feet or more. Still, fine detail in the video is not clearly noticeable. For example, people standing in the background have blurry faces and are not distinguishable. Noise reduction does help a little in clearing up the picture but not by much.
Features
Bluetooth
The highlight of this TV is the Bluetooth function, so let's see how it performs. The menu has an option for Bluetooth that lets you either pair a Bluetooth headphone or pair your phone with the TV. We first tried an iTech Sport headphone that didn't sound all that great, so we used the iTech Clip-D radio module with Creative EP630, but that too didn't help. The main problem is that after pairing the headphone you can't toggle the volume of the TV. I even tried maxing out the volume before connecting the headset but the sound level remained the same. This is a major drawback as you're limited to the volume boost in the earphones, and if you don't have a volume switch, then there's no way you can increase the volume, which is quite low itself.
Another major setback is that you can't use the Bluetooth headset in USB mode; it simply won't let you as you have to disconnect the headset first before accessing the USB drive.
To use the TV as a speaker you have to search for it using the phone. Once it's paired you can then play your music from the phone using the television's speakers. Once paired, you have a visualization cum screen saver, which lets you know if Bluetooth streaming is enabled. It would have been great if it could read the ID3 tag as well, but sadly it doesn't.
The USB slot accepts the NTFS file format, so plugging it in a larger hard drive should not be a problem. Strangely it refused to read a FAT32 4GB pen drive, but read a NTFS 16GB drive perfectly fine. Just like all LG TVs, you have to choose between Picture, Video and Music before you can access the pen drive. On the left side you get a preview of the selected file before playing it.
The TV played all the current AVI files without any problem with the exception of some older formats. But that's ok as long as it plays what LG claims.
Power Consumption
For saving power we have Eco mode that lets you switch between various power states to conserve power. This is the result we got.
Off - 164W (Standard Mode), 220W (Vivid Mode)
Min - 155W
Med - 107W
Max - 57W
Screen off - 28W
Sound
Since the TV does not use any dedicated vents for the speakers, the clarity of the sound is lost. Vocals and highs are clear and the sound is nice and loud but the mids are a little weak with poor bass. Overall, the sound is just about decent and it would help if you connected the TV to your home theater setup.
Connection wise you have plenty of options and you'll never fall short of connectors. Plus you have Bluetooth and USB to complete the package. Regular TV viewing is just about average and so is the sound. But when you play any HD content the TV really shines. The color reproduction and clarity is simply great with deep black levels and zero ghosting.
However, there are some minor flaws. Your Bluetooth headset will not work with a USB drive, which is a big disappointment since that's the easiest way of playing your movies and music. Also, the TV wobbles a lot on the stand. Overall, you are paying a bit of a premium for the design and style of the TV, as the Bluetooth technology is not implemented very well. If LG can fix the Bluetooth/USB issue then there's nothing like it.
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