Loewe Individual 40 Compose Full-HD+ 100 DR+ review

The Compose can also play music and photos from a USB drive or via your home network. Playing from USB is simply a matter of plugging a drive into the back of the TV. To connect the TV to your network and access media, all you need is something like Windows Media Player sharing your files, and the TV will happily find and play them back. It's all very slick, and easy enough for non-techies to cope with.

Performance
At around £6,300, we would expect this package to perform brilliantly, and indeed it does -- for the most part.

Freeview picture quality, however, is a little disappointing. We're never thrilled with the quality of standard-definition over-the-air broadcasts, but we don't think the Compose does everything it could to help. By way of comparison, our reference TV, the Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 does a much better job with Freeview and is nearly two-thirds cheaper -- a comparative bargain.

Hooking up Blu-ray to the TV, though, illustrates that the Compose really is an incredibly capable machine. We found that there was plenty of detail in HD movies, with strong blacks, decent contrast and excellent, vivid colours. Movies such as The Dark Knight made us drool with excitement and the start of Serenity is well worth catching in 1080p too, if only to appreciate how well this set handles motion and black levels.

On the subject of motion in films, Loewe includes its own judder-reduction mode in this TV. Unlike such processing on other TVs, the Compose seems quite well balanced. There weren't too many occasions where we noticed artefacts resulting from the mode, and motion retained enough of its film quality to keep us happy.

Running HQV benchmarks on the TV led us to some interesting conclusions. For example, the TV's noise-reduction, de-interlacing and motion handling are all excellent. The TV did, however, fall down in one area -- the film-resolution test. This will not affect Blu-ray material, nor should it be a problem for most DVD material. In certain rare circumstances, NTSC DVDs may not look as good as they should do -- generally, they will have half the resolution in moving scenes. But that's unlikely to be a major problem for most people.

Functions like the built-in personal video recorder all work like a dream. The user interface for the menus is so well thought-out and stylish that it's impossible not to enjoy using the TV. PVR recordings are scheduled through the TV's EPG, and played back through a customised menu. This system is also designed to handle video, pictures and music from network sources such as Windows Media Player.

Conclusion
As much as we like the Loewe Individual 40 Compose Full-HD+ 100 DR+, we can't see past the price. It's very hard to justify spending nearly £4,000 on a 40-inch TV when you could have an amazing 60-inch Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX6090, and all the benefits of plasma, for about the same price.

That's not to say that this isn't a great TV, because, in many ways, it is. If you're in the position to buy one, we think you'll be getting a terrific package and one that offers everything you're likely to need in a TV.

Edited by Charles Kloet

Update: Some minor changes were made to this review to reflect some information provided to us by Loewe. We previously stated the TV was covered with a plastic screen -- in fact, this is specially coated glass. We also suggested that the stand was mandatory with the Loewe speaker system. This is not the case and other options are available.