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Manufacturer description

With the introduction of the LC32LE700UN, Sharp combines its legendary AQUOS LCD panel technology with a newly developed, proprietary Full Array LED backlight system to create picture quality that is second to none. The LC32LE700UN illustrates Sharp’s LCD technology leadership while also demonstrating its LED engineering advantages. Sharp’s Ultra Brilliant LED system illuminates the TV to extremely high brightness and contrast levels and enables significant environmental benefits such as longer life expectancy, no heavy metals and lower power consumption. At the same time, the new XGen LCD Panel utilizes an ingeniously devised pixel design that permits more light to pass through even while minimizing light leakage, with the result being the deepest black levels that AQUOS has ever achieved. Overall, the LC32LE700UN shows that with Sharp, it’s not just LED… it’s AQUOS LED.

Features

• 32″ Full HD 1080p HDTV LED-TV with 120Hz Fine Motion Enhanced
• 10-Bit processing and Crystalucent coating Technology
• UltraBrilliant LED System
• 4 HDMI terminals, PC input, RS-232C Input
• 4ms response time

User Feedback

I’ve been on Amazon for years and seldom write reviews.

However, I spent about 30 minutes watching and generally checking this set out at a local dealer, about a week ago.

The image you see here is misleading. Misleading in that the set itself is surprising more beautiful than this image shows. And there is a blue light V-shaped symbol in the center of the bottom horizontal frame. That might strike some as tacky but in fact, it’s a rather nice understated touch. Another surprise is just how light it is. You can easily pick it up and move it with no strain. Try that win an old Trinitron CRT set.

The picture stunned. I was completely surprised by how great it is. It has deep rich color, uniform brightness and as critical as I am (Only the Sony XBR8 RGB LED Sony has impressed me, until now) I have to say for the price, it tells me that full-array (LEDs completely cover the back, instead of just being around the edges) can be done well and at a price that will sell.

Assuming the set proves reliable, with no negative surprises, it’s going to cause Sony and Samsung a real price headache. The 32″ Samsung edge-lighted (Not Full-Array either) is around twice the price of this set and I see no difference in picture quality.

Check it out.

This is a wonderful TV. The picture is outstanding and the Home Theater Store in Houston not only came up with an outstanding price but excellent service. Try to buy from this store. They are the best.

Yes, the tuner is a little slow but 99% of us are going to use this set with HDMI sources like a HD cable or Satellite box – right? No flaws in the display but you have to open the little door on the remote and find the A/V mode that suits your environment. This set has a huge number of “knobs to turn” as far as setting up the picture so be careful and find the mode and settings that you need. Once you get it set – it will blow you away.

Yes, the sound isn’t what you got out of the 250# “console” TV that you just replaced. It has small speakers because it’s a flat panel TV. They are all that way. So stop complaining and go buy yourself a little 5.1 channel sound system that has an optical input. Hook it to the optical output of this set and the Cable or Sat box (see below) and it will be the best show you have ever heard or seen. Better yet, go buy yourself one that has a DVD upconvert or Blue Ray DVD player in it. The LG LHT854 on Amazon is a good example (for less than $200). Buy your optical and HDMI cables here on Amazon too and save a lot of $$. All the hype you read about certain cables being better is wrong. They don’t need to be gold or start with “M”. Speaker cables don’t need to be big, fat and hard to work with. Unless you are running 2000 watts or more, 18 or 16 gauge wire is just fine. It’s all digital data so there is no way the optical or HDMA cable can effect the quality of the sound or video. Be sure to connect your optical sound cable from your cable or Sat box directly to your sound system so you don’t pick up a delay from the TV processing it. IF your sound system has only one optical input, buy an optical splitter/combiner on Amazon for a couple of dollars and combine the optical sources from the TV and cable or Sat box. This all works.

Sharp has taken the most appropriate road on LED backlighting in my view,simply replace the florescent system with proven technology that was developed for the laptop industry by leaders like Apple. It’s very bright and even.

Since writing the above review, I have become even more sold on this product. Sharp has a fairly small market share in this field so they try hard to support their users. They offer a program called Aquos Advantage. It includes 3 mo.of warranty extension and a newsletter with info on using their products. It also includes a REAL help line you can call to get help if you don’t understand something or can’t make a feature work. If you are new to HDTV this may be of value to you. They also have a Facebook page and are very responsive through that site. The bigger manufactures may have these contacts as well but Sharps people seem to care about each customer.

The other thing I have noticed is the quality of the graphics engine. I connected my 3 year old standard def (480P) DVD player to the set using the “component” connection and the picture is as good or better than from an HDMI-connected Up-convert player. This indicates that the graphics engine in this set is outstanding.

When you get yours, open the little door on the bottom of the remote control and check out the different preset video modes. You will find them very helpful as you try different sources or types of material.

The first TV I looked at in the store was the Samsung LED. After doing more research I found this Sharp. It had all the features of all the higher priced TV’s at a much lower price. I’m glad I purchased it it’s an awesome TV. The picture is beautiful.

At first I thought I’d be the last person to ever buy a flat-screen TV, much less an HD. I took one look at the picture on this and was jaw-drop stunned! And that was just the analog channels. Once I figured out how to work the digital channels access I realized that I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m a previous owner of many Sharp appliances of all kinds over the years, (“from Sharp minds come sharp products”), and trying the Aquos on for size paid off once again. Keep all the Sonys, the more expensive Samsungs, the Panasonics, toss the plasmas and the so-called 720′s too… if you like the most brilliant color, sharp, clear, “jump-into-your-living-room” definition, a huge range of adjustability, and surround-sound to boot, look no further! I added the extended-warranty for peace of mind, and it was only 90 bucks for 2 extra years–not bad insurance for an item like this..AND it’s covered for service “in-home,” so there’s no annoying packing/shipping to fuss with. My recommendation: BUY this TV. Or a wider-screen version if you have the living room for it. This 32″ replaced my old Sharp 27″ and THAT had an excellent picture too. I’d give this 6 stars if I could.

What I liked:

1) slim, black, minimalist design enclosure. It looks cool.

2) The picture is the best, a notch or two above my
Samsung LCD. The image is sharper and the tonal range
is wider. Blacks are really black and whites are really
white. The millions of colors in between look good too.

I’ll start out by saying that I’ve only had this TV a few days. I will also say that I could be wrong about the possible options for changing what I dislike about this TV, or in my description of what causes it- but in my research so far I haven’t found any reason to believe so. I’m always interested in hearing more information if I don’t have the full picture though.

All that said- I personally just don’t like this set so much. I bought this to replace a broken Sony XBR6 (also 32″), and this has been my experience so far, the good and bad.

Good:
- Picture quality: The picture quality on this thing really is amazing. Very deep blacks, crystal clear image. I had to tweak the settings a bit (I’ll get to my thoughts on that shortly), and never quite found a setting that I thought was perfect, but even with that being the case the picture was stunning and I can tell that with proper calibration it’s probably one of the best 32″ sets you can buy as far as PQ goes right now.

-Picture settings. I’m actually kind of split on this. The picture definitely needs to be tweaked from store settings, and the good thing is that this set provides probably the most extensive set of options for calibration than any other set I’ve seen- so chances are you CAN get it where you like it. It’s kind of a double edged sword though because there’s so many settings that unless you really know your stuff it’s difficult to figure out how to get the perfect balance.

Bad:

- Sound: Sound on 32″ flat panels has never been known to be that great, but I almost immediately felt that the sound was very hollow and tinny compared to the xbr6. I messed with the audio settings- turned on the surround simulator and upped the bass a little bit. That helped, but I still found it lacking.

-Build quality/Styling: This is something that may just come down to opinion (styling is for sure), but I was rather unhappy with both of these things compared to my xbr. The build quality feels cheap and not very sturdy by comparison, and the styling in general I just felt was bland. The same feeling extended to the system menus for me- I like the design and look of the Sony’s much more, whereas the Sharps feel more like a 90′s computer menu or something.

-Remote: Weird choices for how they laid the remote out… the button to switch ‘av modes’ (basically profiles for picture settings etc) is enclosed in a little drawer so you have to open that whenever you want to switch between your movie/game/custom modes etc. In general I also feel the remote is just kind of ugly…

-Motion processing: This was the big one for me. Everyhing else being as is (although the styling still bugs me), I would have been willing to keep this set just for it’s image quality. But this was a deal breaker. I’ve read on other sites that the Sharp ranks low in this area, especially compared to Sony, and I completely agree. Now this is where I believe it’s possible i’m missing some information but I haven’t found it yet. With TV based content it looks fine, but what seems to be the case is that you cannot turn off the ‘film mode’ image processing for any progressive signal based content (480p/720p/1080p). You can see the setting in the menu, but it is disabled (along with one other setting for the black levels I think)- and YES I am in ‘dot by dot’ mode.

What this effectively means (at least as far as my eyes can tell), is that there is no way to turn off the ‘soap opera effect’ on blu-ray content (and probably progresive-scan dvd as well I haven’t tried that yet). I looked this up on forums and messed with every setting possible and I just could not get rid of it. Some people don’t mind that effect, some like it, some say it’s not even noticeable, but to me it sticks out like a sore thumb and I just hate it. So for me, I think this set will be going back in favor of the xbr9 or un32b6000 (hoping that doesn’t have any similar issues).

So I’m giving this set a 3 stars- if I could I’d probably give it 3.5. I’m not that concerned with the fact that it’s led or not, or that it doesn’t have local dimming- all I care about as far as that stuff goes is picture quality, and this set is extremely high up when it comes to that. Unfortunately I just found almost every other aspect of the set, most notably the inability to turn film mode off on blu-ray content, to be unsatisfactory. It’s a great value for the price, but at the same time, I can see why the price is much lower than the competitors in it’s class.

UPDATE:
I’m going to bump this up to 4 stars, for a reasons that ultimately led me to keep it. First off, I found he game mode turns all processing off (even though the film mode is inaccessible with progressive content, I believe it is stuck ‘off’ in this mode instead of stuck ‘on’), which I didn’t know at first. And while I stand by my belief that the extensive picture controls may be intimidating for those that are less tech savvy and just want to be able to turn on and sit back, the controls were really great for doing a calibration with DVE. I actually picked up an xbr 9 and compared the two because I was having such a hard time choosing a set, and I was able to get the DVE disc calibration settings PERFECT with the sharp, while the xbr’s limited controls wouldn’t allow it. With the calibration settings set on the game mode profile, things are looking a lot better for me.

I still stand by everything I said before though. The build quality, sound, remote layout, and the fact that the other profiles are pretty much useless to me with progressive content are all downers, but with the picture this thing puts out side by side with the xbr9, it was absolutely no contest… I had to stick with the sharp, and I’ve actually been very happy with the decision (the xbr9 also has several other factors that I think were a step down from the xbr6, so that might have helped) 4 stars!

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