LG’s 4K OLED Televisions have been so hyped, so eagerly awaited therefore repeatedly delayed which i was starting to think these were becoming yet another entertainment myth. Something just too good to actually be true ultimately, destined for the ‘what might have been’ shelf of AV background.
Amazingly, though, they have finally arrived really. There appear to be a few stock shortages around still, but the inescapable fact is that you can, buy a 4K OLED Television right now in the form of LG’s EG9600 (EG960V in European countries) series.
This series comes in 65-inch and 55-inch screen sizes, and I’m very happy to report that having prodded it and pinched myself repeatedly merely to be sure, I really do have a 55EG9600 sat before me personally really. In fact, I’ve been coping with it for most times now - and throughout that point it’s nearly managed to surpass the OLED buzz. At the very least it’s done enough to reassert OLED’s potential claim as the de facto TV technology into the future - if it can iron out a few staying kinks.
Design
The very first thing that strikes you about the 55EG9600 is that it’s beautiful. A front-to-rear depth of only a handful of mm at the TV’s edges joins pushes with a single-layer front finish, a glossy white rear panel and an elegantly curved screen to conjure up potentially the single most gorgeous tv the world has ever seen.
The idea a screen as incredibly thin as the 55EG9600 can carry all the technology had a need to create spectacular 4K UHD pictures feels almost magical - it hardware exact carbon copy of “Dynamo: Magician Impossible”.
Obviously, if the entire 55EG9600’s back was only a few off millimetres dense there wouldn’t be room for such prosaic issues as connections, video processors and integrated tuners. To get rounded this the TV protrudes a little further over its central back section. However, this area of extra depth is disguised in the display’s curve cunningly, so that it doesn’t significantly diminish from the 55EG9600’s physics-defying charm. Though I did so find myself wanting to know if it could have been better if LG got stuck most of its connections, tuners and processing into an exterior box like Samsung will with its JS9500 and JS9000 series.
Connections
The connections tick the majority of the current bins using their four HDMIs, three USBs and Wi-Fi network system with the capacity of both loading from external devices or discovering LG’s online smart TV services. The only capture - though as we’ll discuss later it’s a possibly significant one - would be that the HDMIs do not during writing appear to be they can receive high powerful range (HDR) 4K UHD content from the upcoming UHD Blu-ray format.
We’ve already protected the main feature appeal of the 55EG9600: specifically its use of an OLED -panel with a local 4K pixel count number. If you’re not yet determined on why OLED is undoubtedly a big offer in AV circles the primary point is that like now-defunct plasma technology - and unlike LCD displays - every pixel within an OLED display screen produces its luminance and colour. So you might possibly have a pitch dark pixel seated right alongside a white colored one, with all tones in between delivered with identical pixel-level accuracy.
This raises the chance of stunning contrast truly, especially when it would appear that OLED displays are better still at controlling each pixel’s light output than plasma displays were.
Incredible contrast
The star of the show, needlessly to say, is the 55EG9600’s dark level response. Right from the package dark moments and dark elements of shots look absolutely glorious thanks to black colours that truly look black. There’s no track of either the gray clean that hangs over dark picture areas to some extent on all LCD TVs, or the type of backlight inconsistency interruptions that plague LCD technology (if you don't intensely limit their brightness outputs again, anyway).
What’s more mesmerising - beautiful even, - about the 55EG9600’s wealthy even, deep dark level response is just how those inky blacks can sit down right alongside surprisingly punchy whites and rich colours with out a track of light bleed or luminance bargain. Not Samsung’s UN65JS9500 with its immediate LED light (where in fact the LEDs sit straight behind the screen) and local dimming (where clusters of the LEDs can deliver their own 3rd party light outputs) can get close to the light precision delivered so attractively by the 55EG9600.
The results of the precision make themselves felt most in shots which contain very small regions of brightness strongly, such as stars in space, or shiny lighting in the windows of faraway buildings during the night. Make no mistake, though: the advantages of OLED’s light accuracy make themselves felt somewhat in every solitary frame.
The 55EG9600’s self-emissive pixels also make it create a pretty sumptuous colour performance generally. With such pristine black levels to sit down alongside, colours have a tendency to look wealthy, dynamic and expressive exquisitely. Colour tones are extremely natural too - though as I’ll explain later often, there are many exceptions to the.
4K at its best
Indigenous 4K UHD materials looks sharp and comprehensive on the 55EG9600 meanwhile stunningly, consistently coordinating the sharpness and clarity of any 4K LCD TV and even, with certain types of very contrast-rich content, delivering degrees of detail I’ve not seen before. My prediction in the 55EC9300 review that OLED and 4K belong together has proved completely true just.
Worth adding it’s, having mentioned the 55EC9300, that the 55EG9600 mercifully suffers terribly with non-e of the noticeable pixel issues of its older HD sibling. Instead you get that lovely ‘home window on the world’ feeling we’ve come to associate with an excellent 4K UHD experience.
The 55EG9600 delivers on OLED’s viewing angle promise also, allowing you to watch it from almost any angle with no drop off in its contrast or colour performance. Actually, the only looking at angle restriction you have with the set is triggered by its curved display, which can result in distorted image geometry if you’re watching from an position greater than 35 levels or so.
HDR waiting around game
It'll be interesting to observe how well the 55EG9600 copes with HDR playback once that’s unlocked by the promised firmware update. The worry needs to be that the lighting needs of HDR may need LG’s TV to drive itself so difficult that the black level problems enter into play. But this is speculation at this time just, so let’s just leave it at ‘watch this space’ where HDR on the 55EG9600 can be involved.
There are a couple of other issues with the 55EG9600’s colours. Sometimes parts of pretty (instead of very) dark scenes suffer with wondering infusions of green or red. A blue tint can show up over the casual section of extreme fine detail in dark moments too, and the collection isn’t as simple with its color handling as a few of its competitors, exhibiting periodic ‘patchiness’ and banding, over skin tones especially.
It also works out that the 55EG9600 is a mediocre gaming monitor because of a measured insight lag shape (enough time the display screen takes to create pictures after getting data at its inputs) of around 55ms. The TV’s OLED screen also raises the possibility of image retention, where prolonged contact with a shiny, colourful, static image element as an in-game HUD might lead to a permanent ghostly remnant of this component. But I haven’t yet experienced this latter problem in my own time with the 55EG9600, despite investing in lots of video gaming hours. Perhaps this is one area where in fact the way you have to limit the 55EG9600’s brightness to retain dark level purity has an optimistic impact.
The 55EG9600’s motion handling is only decent than great meanwhile rather, despite OLED’s supposed advantage in this field - and LG’s movement processing will cause some quite noticeable artefacts if you try to utilize it on any apart from its lowest power setting.
Average upscaler
The upscaling of HD sources to UHD is solid too. Certainly we’ve seen upscaled images from Samsung and Sony 4K UHD TVs that look both less loud and more descriptive than those of the 55EG9600.
The 55EG9600 gets back the wowing business using its 3D playback, though. Using the screen’s indigenous UHD resolution readily available to combat the increased loss of quality from the passive 3D format you essentially get all the passive format’s advantages - no flicker, higher lighting, richer colors and minimal crosstalk ghosting sound - and never have to see the type of softness and jagged sides the format presents on HD Televisions.
As the 55EG9600 is really about its groundbreaking OLED pictures, it can still need to accompany people that have some kind of audio. And also it doesn’t sound almost as primitive as may have been expected given how extremely slim a lot of its bodywork is. Sure, there’s no great reach to the low end of the audio range and the mid-range begins to audio muddy during noisy, dense mixes. Nonetheless it noises fine for normal daily Television observing just, and I’d have thought there is a good chance a person with enough money to pay out $5,500 on a TV could add some sort of external sound system for movie viewing probably.
