Introduction and features
The LG 55EG920V is one of the Korean display giant's best-value OLED TVs – and when we're talking about a telly which still costs some £2,200 that should give you an idea of where the advanced screen technology sits in the grand scheme of things. We're still in premium-land right now.
However, compared to the new £8,000 Panasonic TX-65CZ952 and the competing £4,000 LG 65EF950V sleek 55-inch OLED TV, it's a positive steal.
At the risk of lapsing into cliché, OLED is genuinely one of those technologies you have to see in the flesh to really get.
Describing it in terms of absolute blacks, great colours and incredible contrast performance is all well and good, but that doesn't get across just how big a difference there is between OLED and standard display technologies.
Even checking out OLED TVs at different events and demos isn't really enough. Showreel demo footage is keyed in to look as awesome as possible on the specific screens it's tuned to, and you have to take such things with a grain, or several thousand grains, of salt.
Seeing is believing
But getting this EG920V review sample home, and out of the box and into the realm I'm used to watching TV in really made it stand out. Even the sort of low-rent broadcast signal we watch on a daily basis can look many times more stunning thanks to the extra fidelity and depth of an OLED display.
In short, I'm now utterly sold on the tech, and disappointed that it's no longer sitting in my lounge with each of its eight million or so pixels shooting light into my eyeballs.
That's the biggest thing about OLED itself – the fact that it needs no LED backlighting because of its self-emissive pixels. As well as being able to deliver almost unprecedented contrast by having the brightest and darkest pixels cheek-by-jowl, it means you can have beautifully slim panels – a fact that this curved 55-incher takes full advantage of.
In fact it makes the EG920V feel insanely delicate when you're trying to extricate it from the packaging. I was terrified the thing was going to snap in two, but it's well engineered enough that I shouldn't have worried.
Hell, I dropped the thing down the stairs and it was mostly fine. Mostly. Jokes, LG. Jokes…
In addition to the curves and the OLED tech this is an Ultra HD display too, offering four times the resolution of your standard 1080p Full HD TVs. And because of that OLED panel, and LG's efforts to help broadcasters and content distributors create the various high dynamic range (HDR) standards, the EG920V is all ready and waiting for the wonderful world of HDR to land in our homes.
Turning to the less exciting but ultimately important subject of connections, we're talking three HDMI 2.0 ports (with the all-important HDCP 2.2 protocols in place), one USB 3.0 and a pair of USB 2.0 sockets, as well as the usual array of ethernet, RF, component, composite and audio ports in the rear.
Performance
So to reiterate, this screen has me utterly sold on OLED. Throw in the fact that the depth of its blacks and the range of its colours makes it almost the perfect match for HDR content at Ultra HD resolutions, and you can see why it would be a wrench to give up such a screen.
And this isn't even the top of LG's TV stack.
Amazon Prime Instant Video is the only place you can pick up HDR content right now, but its range is growing. All of its latest Pilot Season shows come with the HDR metadata attached to the 4K versions, and thanks to the brilliant webOS software it's incredibly quick and easy to get running on the EG920V.
That metadata tells the TV to switch to HDR mode, locking down the picture settings to deliver the best image. And it really does look fantastic. The bright lights of New York in Mozart in the Jungle are pinpoint sharp, like stars in the night sky, and the detail achieved in the dark audience scenes looks stunning.
The 'perfect blacks' of the OLED screen really are made for the HDR format. But even standard 4K Ultra HD content looks stunning, with the OLED contrast levels making Daredevil stand out.
I'm not entirely sold on LG's upscaling technology, however; the 1080i picture from my Virgin box looked a little less distinct than I've seen on more powerful UHD displays. But it's most definitely not bad – and the extra contrast performance you get from the OLED pixels almost entirely offsets any upscaling issues too.
The classic contrast test, Gravity in 1080p, shows just how much extra benefit those self-emissive pixels are when it comes to reproducing fine, bright details on a dark background.
Less than perfect
All is not perfect though. There are definite brightness issues with LG's OLED panels if you try and squeeze any more brightness out of them in general. Pushing the settings above the stock 50 point completely blows the LG 'perfect blacks' – suddenly they're faded and grey, lacking that depth which is the hallmark of OLED awesomeness.
And because the EG920V isn't at the very top of LG's TV tech tree the processing inside the box isn't the most powerful. Navigating the settings in the otherwise excellent webOS software is a slick experience – especially with the bundled magic wand remote – but when you're taxing the system with 4K or HDR content things become far more sluggish.
Shifting between menus becomes stuttery, and selecting an option introduces some definite pauses to proceedings.
The audio performance is necessarily understated too. That svelte chassis is never going to be able to produce the same sort of aural excellence you can get from a soundbar, or from Sony's stunning wide-boy TVs with beefy speakers.
But the speakers are clear, and retain a surprising level of clarity and depth too. You'll want a more impactful sound system for that home cinema experience, but for general day-to-day watching the EG920V's speakers are acceptable.
Verdict
We liked
It's all about that OLED screen for me. The picture quality, contrast and black levels are seriously impressive. And any source picture benefits from the OLED advancements, not just the top end 4K HDR content.
And speaking of HDR, LG's TVs already support the HDR 10 standard used in Amazon's HDR content, and which is expected to be used when Netflix introduces support early next year. They also support the Hybrid Log-Gamma standard which the BBC is creating for high dynamic range broadcasts.
The webOS software is quality too – it's probably my favourite smart OS around for the simple fact that it's the most supported. Netflix is almost standard for any smart TV, but adding both native NOW TV and Amazon Video apps makes webOS stand out from the rest.
It's also slick, mostly, and very user friendly. It's also a resolutely TV-oriented OS, never trying to dominate proceedings and only dragging you away from the content you're watching when you dive deep into the settings screens.
The design is worth a mention too. That slimline chassis with its absolutely minimal bezel is quite beautiful. And, while we may not spend too much time looking at the rear of our TVs, the EG920V has got quite an attractive derriere too.
We disliked
I'm really not sold on EG920V's curve, especially after having lived with it for a while. The sweep is too subtle to really draw you into a scene in any particular way, and when you're sitting off-axis it can lead to strange reflections and odd geometry too. TV-watching is seldom a solo experience, so you want everybody to have an equally good view.
It may be an issue peculiar to me, but while the curve added nothing to my movie experience, it made watching snooker rather unpleasant; and I really like watching snooker before you get unnecessarily snarky.
The rigid rectangle of the table gets broken into curves across the expanse of the screen, especially when you're looking top-down onto a full, single shot of the baize. This may be a very particular example, but when the curve detracts more than it adds, then I'm out.
It also seems odd even bothering to have a brightness control in the settings when just nudging it up a couple of notches utterly destroys the beauty of the OLED blacks. And while that advanced screen tech does add to non-native sources, the upscaling performance of the EG920V isn't the greatest.
Final verdict
At around £2,200 the LG 55EG920V represents one of the best-value Ultra HD OLED TVs you can buy, and shows the direction in which the cost of this advanced screen tech is going.
Ignore the somewhat artificially inflated price of the Panasonic OLED (likely born of buying in the OLED panel from LG); the cost of OLED is dropping on an almost monthly basis.
And this TV will deliver on pretty much all the promise of the technology too, thanks in part to LG's updating of its televisions to support the latest HDR standards out of the box.
The LG 55EG920V is a great-looking panel, whether it's turned on or off, although that curve may be somewhat divisive in the final reckoning. For me I'd rather have a flat screen; but now I also know that whatever I do, I need to have OLED in my life.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1Swq4wd
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