LG claims the 50PG6000 offers the blackest ever blacks on a plasma TV. Pioneer’s £4,000 ‘Kuro’ 50in plasma promised a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, whereas this sumptuous plasma giant claims to top that by 50 per cent.

The 50PG6000 also boasts four HDMI inputs – one more than Pioneer’s flagship PDP – and sells for a quarter of the price. Chuck in a depth of just 80mm and a design that does away with a bezel for a visually striking ‘single-layer’ glass look and you’ve got quite a proposition.

Is LG's newest TV too good to be true?

So is there a catch? Well, yes. Unlike pretty much every other big-screen plasma available, it does not use a Full HD panel. This is a 720p product. So does that make it a non-starter with Full HD sources such as Blu-ray and HD DVD?

Amazingly, the answer appears to be ‘No’. I’ve been long convinced that Full HD is the only way to go if you want to enjoy every ounce of available HD goodness, but this modest monster blew my preconceptions asunder.

A striking plasma

Visually the set is a wow. With no bezel, edge-to-edge glass plate and rounded edges, the 50PG6000 looks unlike any other flatscreen. There’s no extruding frame or speaker grille; LG’s engineers have managed to shield them completely from view.

The only sign of life when the set is switched off is an elliptical design on the TV’s lower lip, which lights-up in an unusual, but understated, lime green LED strip. The most obvious user-friendly feature of this plasma is its plethora of ins and outs.

Four HDMI inputs is as many as I’ve seen on any telly. As they are v1.3 it allows DeepColor support and can accept 24 frames-per-second 1080p video – although the latter is, of course, wasted on this 1365 x 768 resolution panel.

User-friendly set

Thanks to an excellent user interface and a lightweight less-is-more remote control, the 50PG6000 proves a piece of cake to calibrate. Aping an Apple Mac’s use of simple and colourful icons, the eight-category-strong menus ‘float’ over most of the screen.

From there it’s a short hop to the ‘advanced’ menu where black level, white balance, gamma, red/ green bias and the all-important noise reduction can be tinkered with and saved under an ‘expert’ setting.