Insanely thin without compromising on picture quality, LG's latest OLEDs are the ultimate television for movie night.
The battle for pride of place in our lounge rooms shows no signs of abating, with LG betting on OLED screen technology while rivals Samsung, Sony and Panasonic continue to back LED-backlit LCD (let's just call it LED). It's a war of words, fought as much between marketing departments as it is between engineering teams.
In a nutshell, the difference is that LED televisions start with a bright backlight and shine it through pixels to create colours, while OLED starts with a dark screen and lights up the individual pixels. This means that LED screens tend to be brighter than OLED, but in return LED struggles to match OLED's really deep blacks.
To be fair, the gap between the top shelf OLED and the best Full Array back-lit LED television has closed to the point where your average punter would struggle to notice the difference. It's also interesting to note that Sony and Panasonic are starting to dabble in OLED again.
Those with an eye for detail still tend to agree that OLED has the upper hand over LED, but OLED has also come with a hefty price tag because it's fiddly to manufacture. The trouble for the LED camp is that LG has honed the art of making OLED screens to the point where it's now selling phenomenal Ultra HD OLED televisions for similar prices to its LED rivals.
A good spread
That brings us to LG's new 2017 OLED range. Just to complicate things, they're available in four series and a range of sizes; C7 (55-in $4099, 65-in $6899), E7 (55-in $5199, 65-in $7999), G7 Signature (65-in $9099) and W7 Signature (65-in $13,499, 77-in $??? – it's not sold retail).
They're not cheap, but those prices still stack up well against the top shelf models from Samsung – even though, as I explained last week, Samsung's QLED range relies on "edge-lit" LED which struggles to match OLED's overall picture quality.
The good news is that LG's OLED picture quality is identical across the entire 2017 range. This year's 4th-generation OLED panels pump out more than 900 lumens brightness, making them roughly 25% brighter than last year's top shelf OLED. LG has also added a "Neutral Black polariser" to the screen which helps it look better in a brightly lit room.
They're not as bright as the brightest LEDs, with Samsung's top-shelf Q9 QLED pushing 2000 lumens, but the benefit of OLED is that it can achieve absolute black and the darkest shades to reveal more fine detail in the shadows.
The Heart of Darkness
If you'll only ever watch your television in a brightly lit room then the benefits of OLED over LED might be lost on you, but when you dim the lights for movie night OLED's phenomenal black levels make themselves felt – for example the letterboxing above and below the picture is pitch black to the point where it becomes invisible in a dark room.
Put to the test the 65-inch W7 Signature Ultra HD OLED looks phenomenal. Fire up a movie like Gravity on Blu-ray and you can see more faint stars in the background during the scene where Sandra Bullock spins away from the shuttle, just like when you look up at the night sky when you're out in the countryside and see a new layer of background stars which are lost in the city lights.
As Bullock spins the inky black of space doesn't fluctuate as her bright helmet turns to face us, as it tends to do on LED televisions, because with OLED there's no backlight to fight against. The viewing angles are also excellent, unlike some LED televisions which tend to let more of the backlight bleed through when you're viewing from the side.
Switch to The Martian on Ultra HD Blu-ray and the benefits of High Dynamic Range shine through in the panning shots of the Martian surface, with the shadows on the rock faces still full of fine detail. OLED isn't just about contrast, it also does the wider colour gamut of HDR justice.
If you've an eye for detail you might notice that these panning shots aren't as smooth as they could be, because LG's Cinema mode completely disables TruMotion motion interpolation by default and there's no screen blur to smooth things over. The rise of 60-frame per second content will help with this, but meanwhile you might choose to set TruMotion to Smooth and then tweak to taste.
The default Ultra HD and Full HD Cinema modes look impressive but, as with any television, you might want to give them a tweak such as adjusting the colour temperature and maybe taking down the sharpness a notch.
While OLED is the star of the show, I also spent some time with LG's edge-lit Ultra HD LEDs and the top-of-the-line SJ850 actually looks pretty good with impressive blacks. At $4799 for 65 inches it stacks up well against its LED competitors and is certainly worth considering if you're determined to avoid OLED.
Playa
All this testing was done with LG's first Ultra HD Blu-ray player, the $599 UP970, which is set to go on sale in April. Support for Dolby Vision HDR will be added via a firmware upgrade later this year, for now Netflix is our best source of Dolby Vision HDR content but Dolby says we should see Dolby Vision-enabled Ultra HD Blu-ray discs by the end of the year.
As part of the war of words, LG has decided to call HDR10 "generic HDR", but it's more than marketing speak and with the right content you can clearly see Dolby Vision's improvement. The player also supports Dolby Atmos surround sound.
Sound and vision
Like I said, LG's $6899 65-inch C7 offers picture quality every bit as good as the $13,499 65-inch W7 Signature series. The price difference is due to the design, speaker configuration and post-sales support.
The top-shelf LG Signature W7 wallpaper design is only 2.57mm thick, basically clinging to your wall like a fridge magnet, with all the electronics in the soundbar which includes upwards firing speakers and Dolby Atmos support. It's obviously not going to sound as good as true surround sound, with speakers spread around the room, but it still does a surprisingly good job of adding an element of height to the sound stage. There's no stand, the television has to be wall mounted.
The Signature W7 and G7 come with free home installation and access to a premium customer service number. The difference is that the W7 is razor thin, with no buit-in speaker, whereas the G7 and E7 go for a "Picture on Glass" design and the entry level C7 is designed more like a traditional television. The quality of the speaker configuration also improves as you move up the line.
So what's the verdict?
While LED has gone from strength to strength, OLED is still king of the lounge room if you care about picture quality after dark. As the price gap between OLED and LED closes, it's harder not to justify spending that bit extra to embrace OLED if you have an eye for detail.
To be honest I don't care too much about super-thin design, to me the Signature W7 wallpaper television is a fashion statement which belongs in a display home. Personally I'd be tempted to go for a cheaper OLED model and then put the savings towards real surround sound, rather than relying on the Atmos soundbar, but you might think otherwise depending on your tax bracket and the layout of your lounge room.
If you're absolutely sure that you're not interested in adding extra speakers to your room then you might consider it worth stepping up to the improved sound of one LG's more expensive OLED models. Whichever model OLED suits your needs, you won't be disappointed with the picture when you dim the lights, fire up the popcorn machine and kick back for movie night.
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