The Sharp LC-46 LE 700 E TV is a Full HD, 46-inch LCD TV, available since summer 2009. Sharp lists the device for 1,599 GBP, but it’s available through online retailers from just 1,100 GBP.

Florian Friedrich, tested on January 26, 2010

Decent 24p.
Excellent contrast.
Energy-efficient.

Violet and pink tints.
Low motion clarity.
Imperfect detail resolution in HD signals.
Picture depends strongly on viewing-angle and lacks uniformity.

The Sharp’s biggest plus point could well be its affordable retail price — just 1,100 GBP! User-friendly operation and low power consumption add to the list of positives, making the Sharp an excellent everyday TV. For more advanced home-cinema tasks, however, this Japanese TV isn’t top of the ‘yes’ pile — its shortcomings become especially relevant in this environment: pronounced viewing-angle dependence, average motion clarity, and weaknesses in HD detail resolution.

Most important connections:

4x  1x  2x  1x

Multimedia

Oh dear. You can play back JPEG photos and MP3 music via USB, but that’s where the Sharp stops shelling out.

Other Features

You’ll search in vain for an S-Video socket, but you can at least input these signals via Scart.

Practical: The remote control provides an eco button to allow users to adjust the brightness and, therefore, the power consumption. The menu also provides controls for varying how much energy the TV uses. But even when the 46-inch screen is set to its maximum brightness, it never draws more than 120 watts anyway. We’re quite unimpressed, however, with the lack of aspect-ratio switching for HD signals, the lack of a swivel stand, and the poor multimedia features discussed earlier.

Operation

Although it looks a bit outdated, the remote control fulfils its purpose well.

The Sharp is well equipped for everyday TV viewing, thanks to its many practical functions — there’s a back button, for example, for flicking between the current and last-viewed channels.

The channel lists also impress: During digital reception, you can choose to exclude pay-TV channels from the list, and the Japanese TV will optionally display the title of the current broadcast along with the channel name. On top of that, the well-designed menu informs the user of the current frame rate and resolution.

The Electronic Program Guide (EPG), on the other hand, uses too-small text and therefore looks unclear. Unfortunately, the TV cannot store picture settings separately for each video input, meaning you often have to readjust settings when you switch between inputs, for example.

Picture Quality of Standard-Definition Signals

Skin tones show a pink tint; black-and-white images look slightly violet.

As is often the case with TVs, the Sharp’s “Movie” preset offers the most natural colours and sharpness. The HDTV-compatible hybrid tuner cannot, however, tease much detail out of analogue cable signals — the picture is noisy and looks washed out. Digital reception via cable or satellite looks better, but the colours still generally show slight deficits: Skin tones look too pink, and black-and-white sequences — in the thriller “Thirteen Days”, for example — show a slight violet tint. Still, there are plenty of picture controls to combat these problems — good news for advanced users.

There’s no saving the poor motion clarity — dark areas of the picture blur despite the Sharp’s 100-hertz technology. The signal processing, on the other hand, works accurately: Both Scart-RGB and HDMI-576i signals show good detail definition and suffer from no flicker during camera pans.

Picture Quality of High-Definition Signals

With Blu-ray discs, the Sharp shows a few slight weaknesses: Fine patterns fail to resolve perfectly, for example, and intricate menu text shows slightly jagged edges. These aren’t major problems on a day-to-day basis, however, since you’ll barely notice such errors in movie images. In “Casino Royale”, for example, the 46 LE 700 E displays the wide-angle shot of St. Mark’s Square in its full glory. Even 24p signals display authentically, although we should mention that the average motion clarity means you lose some of the typical film judder. If you want it back, all you have to do is switch off the motion smoothing in the “Film Mode/Advanced” submenu.

The Sharp processes dark areas of the picture accurately, and the 2,600:1 contrast ratio is impressive for an LCD TV without local dimming. The gamma setting, at 2.4, is slightly darker than that of other TVs, but suits the Sharp well. Unfortunately, however, the lack of uniformity and strong viewing-angle dependence mean the picture lacks depth. If the viewer moves their head during dark film scenes, for example, they’ll see the screen quickly become brighter as their viewing angle increases. And no matter where you’re sitting, the left side of the screen shines a bit more brightly than the right.

Sound Quality

The built-in speakers turn out to be something of a catastrophe — they’re hoarse and tinny during speech and make music sound strongly discoloured. The Sharp’s saving grace, therefore, is its analogue and digital audio outputs.

AV Mode: Movie

Contrast: +30

Brightness: +2

Colour: 0

Tint: +5

Sharpness: 0

Colour Temp.: Low

100 Hz: On

Film Mode: Standard

Active Contrast: Off

Gamma Adjustment: 0

DNR: Off

Monochrome: Off

Picture Size: Dot by Dot

* These settings apply to realistic playback of HDTV/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations may necessitate slight adjustment.