John Lewis 55JL9000 review

Usability

As mentioned in the feature section, the 55JL9000 uses LG's revolutionary webOS-driven smart TV interfaces. Everything is so crisply, colourfully and logically presented in this interface that you instinctively know right from the off what you need to do to access different content and features.

Subtle animations provide welcome visual confirmation of the navigational choices you make, and the whole system seems designed to make even the most technophobic users feel empowered and in control.

It's not just the quality and layout of the menus that makes the interface so engaging, either. For your relationship with the 55JL9000 is also bolstered by the inspired point and click remote control the set ships with, which lets you just point at the part of the screen containing the option you want to select. This is a much more intuitive and direct navigational approach than any normal remote control.

The way you can quickly and easily switch between multiple content sources and apps is also greatly appreciated.

Overall I can't help but feel that one day all smart TVs will use interfaces that look a bit like the one on the 55JL9000.

Sound Quality

The sound bar in the 55JL9000's stand predictably helps it deliver an audio performance comfortably better than anything you'll hear from the majority of rival LCD TVs. But at the same time it's no rival for a good quality external sound bar.

Its chief strength is the directness of its sound. Its forward-facing speakers help vocals and details in a complex movie sound mix sound clearer and more natural than they do with typical flat TVs that use down-firing speakers. You get a feeling of the high 50W output too, in the way you're able to push the TV to high volumes without the speakers collapsing into phutting or other types of distortion.

The main area where the 55JL9000 could have done better, though, is bass. Despite the rear woofer, bass sounds less potent than the rest of the audio frequency range, leaving action scenes sounding a bit thin.

Sometimes it also sounded to me as if voices were coming from below the screen rather than the actors' mouths, and during 3D playback the 55JL9000's audio occasionally slipped slightly out of sync with its pictures, leading to spoken words not fitting totally accurately to onscreen mouth movements.

Value

This is a tricky one. At the time of writing the 55JL9000 is being sold for £1300 as part of a special offer saving you £400 off the set's original price. Even better, if you buy the set before September 4th 2014 you can also get a free LG GPad 7.0 Tablet worth £130.

At this price the 55JL9000 can be considered good value for the level of picture quality and features on offer – especially if you're looking for an easy way to start experiencing smart TV for the first time.

However, if the TV ultimately returns to its original £1700 price I'd say that's pushing its luck a bit, given you can get good 4K TVs now for that sort of money.