Korean TVs shine in year-end awards

LG Cinema 3D Smart TV

LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics received top honors from the U.S. magazine Consumer Reports in its New Year edition.

The magazine awarded the LG Cinema 3D Smart TV the top spot on its “Hot List” in the “60 inch or bigger” television category. In the “55 inch to 59 inch” category, LG Google TV beat out its rivals to top the chart.

Samsung Electronics finished second in both categories with its 60-inch plasma HD TV PN60F8500AF and 55-inch LED TV UNES8000.

Japan’s Panasonic and Sony trailed the Korean companies in each of the categories.

LG also took the first, second and fourth spots in the 30-inch single-gas oven category.

As for laptop computers, Samsung received top honors in two categories: 13 inch and 15 to16 inch.

In a separate overview of the year 2013, Consumer Reports awarded six Samsung products the “Best Buy” prizes. For recommended products, Samsung topped the list with 24, followed by Panasonic with 16 and LG with 10.

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics said yesterday that it will showcase a 2014 Smart TV with enhanced usability at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

The TV, the company said, allows the users to change channels just by saying the channel number.

“Samsung’s 2014 Smart TV models deliver significantly improved voice interaction and motion control features so that our consumers will be able to enjoy our Smart TV more intuitively,” said Lee Kyung-shik Lee, Senior Vice President of the Service Strategy Team of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics.

BY Moon Gwang-lip, SOHN HAE-YONG [joe@joongang.co.kr]