Sharp LC-60LE820UN
- Category: Home Video & Entertainment
April 5, 2011
Editor's Rating
- Stylish design
- Very good audio quality
- Average image quality
- Expensive
- Poor port placement
- No built-in Wi-Fi
- Slightly dim edge-lighting
The 60-inch LED-backlit Sharp LC-60LE820UN has Sharp's Quattron quad-pixel technology that delivers good image quality as well as very good audio quality. There are also many different streaming Internet services supported, but there is no built-in wireless networking.
The design of the Sharp LC-60LE820UN is quite nice looking, especially a sharp silver edge that runs around a thin, black bezel. The stand features a glossy look that really makes it look sharp (no pun intended) against most tables on which it might sit. In total, it measures 56.7 x 1.6 x 36-inches (wdh) and weighs about 90-pounds, which is quite heavy. Over all the TV is extremely thin from the side (only 1.6-inches) and looked very futuristic in an impressive fashion.
In terms of ports, you'll find four HDMI, one composite, VGA, analog audio in/out, digital optical audio out, Ethernet and a USB port. The ports are in a recessed area on the back that makes them a little difficult to access and it oddly enough, required two people to help get the cables connected primarily because they had to be bent 90 degrees to get the cables to lay into a cable channel. There are also coaxial and component inputs in another area on the back with the ports facing down, which made screwing in a coaxial cable an unnecessarily painful experience.
Once everything is plugged in, the setup wizard takes you through the first few basic steps like language setup, and then it does a full channel scan. After that, you're free to tweak video and audio settings to your content. The remote control included with this TV is very long and skinny and offers multifunction device support. The numeric keys are very large as well as the volume and channel up/down buttons.
Specifications of the Sharp LC-60LE820UN include a 60-inch LED edge-lit backlight, 1920 x 1080-pixel native resolution (1080p HD), a widescreen 16:9 native aspect ratio, a viewing angle of 176-degrees, a 4-milisecond response time and a built-in QAM tuner for over-the-air HD broadcasts. Disappointingly there is no built-in wireless networking, which means you'll have to connect this TV to your network via wired Ethernet.
Pressing the Aquos Net button on the included remote brings you to the Aquos Net page that allows you to launch several Internet applications, like Yahoo! Widgets, but access to the Netflix streaming application is found through the Dock button on the remote, which is counter intuitive. There is also a Sharp Media Player, which lets you play MP3 audio files and view JPEG images from a USB thumbdrive.
The image quality of the Sharp LC-60LE820UN in subjective testing was good overall. There was some issues with fast-motion shots and some jagged edges in some shots while watching a DVD. The edge-lit LED lighting left the picture a little dim, especially during dark scenes. The color quality seemed good, however, and well represented.
Audio quality from the two 10-watt speakers and 15-watt subwoofer was very good and produced a very high-quality sound for a mid-sized room. It was rather surprising how good the sound was from a built-in speaker system.
