LG Link: LG OLED55BX TV Review: A Genuine OLED Bargain

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Later this week I’ll be sinking my teeth into the first from LG’s 2021 OLED range: The OLED65G1. Before that, though, there’s a bit of unfinished business to clear up from LG’s current range in the shape of the 55-inch OLED55BX.

This is LG’s cheapest TV to date - a ‘bargain’ status given extra poignancy at the time of writing by the fact that it’s currently getting heavily discounted. It can currently be found for as little as $1,299 in the US, and just £990 in the UK until an extra 10% off deal ends on March 17. This puts the self-emissive joys of LG’s OLED technology tantalisingly within reach of far more living rooms.

It’s maybe worth bearing in mind, too, that while LG has confirmed a B1 replacement model for Europe, LG told me last week that it isn’t yet confirming B1s for the US. So if you live in the US and fancy the B series’ appealing combination of price and features, you might want to jump in fast.

The LG OLED55BX — The OLED55BX is the most affordable OLED TV to date from LG.
Photo: LG

While many screens in LG’s current X series of OLED TVs sport essentially the same picture technology and features, differing chiefly on design and sound, the OLED55BX’s entry-level price does come with a few stings attached.

For starters, while all four of the HDMIs on LG’s CX and higher OLED TVs support 40Gbps data speeds capable of handling 4K/120Hz/HDR feeds from the latest consoles and PC graphics cards, only two of the OLED55BX’s HDMIs can do it. Being able to accommodate a couple of the latest gaming sources will still likely be enough for most households, though. And even two HDMI 2.1 ports is more than the vast majority of rival TVs currently offer.

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The other big difference between the BX series and its step-up siblings is its video processing. It uses the less powerful Alpha 7 Gen 3 processor rather than the more expensive models’ Alpha 9 Gen 3 processor. There are some significant differences between these processors that do, as we’ll see, impact aspects of picture quality.

Critically, the Alpha 7 Gen 3 processor only provides LG’s AI Picture processing engine, not the AI Picture Pro version powered by the Alpha 9 Gen 3 processor. This means, for starters, that the BXes are denied the assistance of AI processing for their 4K upscaling engine, and don’t get the Alpha 9’s system optimized upscaling algorithms for enhancing the look of onscreen text.

The OLED55BX also doesn’t get the dedicated source quality management, quad-step noise reduction, frequency-based sharpness enhancement, and contrast enhancer systems provided by Alpha 9, and its colour management/mapping is significantly less sophisticated.

The Alpha 9 processor’s Auto Genre analysis can also spot SDR and HDR content alongside Dolby Vision, while Alpha 7 can only handle Dolby HDR.

Finally, the OLED55BX doesn’t get the Pro version of LG’s clever AI Sound processing system. This means it ‘only’ provides a Virtual 4.0 up-mix of stereo sources rather than the Alpha 9’s 5.1 up-mix, and doesn’t get the Alpha 9’s Clear Voice technology, which can provide extra emphasis to vocal tracks.

So to the million dollar question: Just how much do all these on-paper differences really matter when it comes to real-world performance?

Let’s start with very dark images - the sort of images that OLED is traditionally most at home with. Compared with LG’s CX models, there’s slightly less finesse and nuance in dark colours. Georgie’s face near the end of the basement scene in It, for instance, looks a little more plasticky and less natural.

There’s also a little more noise in dark scenes than you get with the CX. Though on the upside, shadow detailing is much better than it was on the previous B9 OLED model, and there’s greater black level stability. By which I mean there’s hardly any sign of the sudden noticeable shifts in the image’s baseline brightness and black levels that occasionally appeared on the B9.

The BX’s peak brightness is a marked step down from that of the CX. The most I could get out of it, using its Standard or Vivid picture presets, was 625 nits. And in its more accurate Cinema Home and Filmmaker Mode presets, this drops to 587 nits and 550 nits respectively. These figures are more than 150 nits down on the brightness figures recorded on the CX. As a result, HDR images inevitably don’t look as vibrant or as dynamic on the 55BX as they do on the CX models. HDR peaks aren’t quite as intense, either.

This does not mean the 55BX can’t still look very lovely with HDR, though. The way OLED’s self-emissive properties allow pretty much completely black pixels to sit right alongside peak white pixels without either compromising the other still leads to some ridiculously lovely imagery that still looks entirely HDR. Yes, the HDR feel is not as intense as that of the CX screens, but OLED’s local contrast advantage still delivers handsomely.

Similarly, while the reduced brightness takes a little of the intensity out of the 55BX’s colors versus the CX models, they still generally look natural in tone and well balanced. It’s arguable, actually, that had the BX run brighter, it might have exposed more strongly the reduction in its color subtlety versus the CX’s Alpha 9-driven palette.

Even as it stands, the BX’s reduced color processing likely explains why it suffers slightly more than the CXes with striping effects over subtle blends.

One other side effect of the 55BX not running as brightly as the CX is that the Cinema Home setting is a less satisfying preset - for both Dolby Vision and standard HDR sources - on the cheaper model. Certainly if there’s any significant brightness in your room you’ll probably find you need to stick with the Standard preset.

Another area where the BX comes up short of the CX is upscaling. The BX’s upscaled HD images look generally grittier, and there’s a slightly exaggerated look to source grain. This suggests the Alpha 7 processor isn’t quite as clever about spotting the difference between grain and regular noise as the Alpha 9. And if you try to tame this upscaling ‘grit’ with the BX’s noise reduction processing (which you should never set higher than Low), the picture starts to look quite soft - especially in picture areas that contain the most fine detail.

Switching to Cinema Home from the Standard picture preset reduces the upscaling grittiness too, but again the resulting image looks much softer. So for me the best approach for HD playback is to stick with the Standard preset, but reduce the sharpness setting down to around its 22 or 21 level. Even in this configuration, though, the 55BX’s upscaled pictures aren’t on a par with the CX’s.

Even native 4K images look a little softer and less defined on the 55BX than they do on the CX. Especially when it comes to skin tones and heavily detailed areas of the image, such as a leafy tree, a lush meadow or a sun-drenched desert. This again is likely at least partly a result of the cheaper model’s reduced color refinement.

At this point, all the negativity needs to come to a screeching halt. It was pretty much inevitable in a review focused on the picture quality differences between LG’s BX and CX models that the cheaper model would come off worse. Otherwise the CX might as well pack up and go home. It is very much not the case, though, that the OLED55BX isn’t still a spectacularly good TV for its money.

There’s no other TV for the same money that can compete with it on either black levels or local contrast. There’s no other TV for the same money that can handle 4K HDR gaming at 120Hz nearly so well - if at all. Not to mention support for all three flavours of variable refresh rates (AMD Freesync, Nividia G-Sync and the standard HDMI VRR format), and input lag of just 14.9ms with 1080p/60 sources and 6.9ms with 4K/120Hz sources.

There’s no other TV for the same money that can be watched from pretty much any viewing angle without color or contrast reducing. The excellent black level and local contrast performance contribute to arguably the richest, most accurate and most balanced colors you’ll find at this price level.

In some presets, at least, 4K images look sharp, clean and natural. Motion is handled excellently at high frame rates, and while judder can be a little intrusive with 24 and 30fps sources, the relatively low-strength settings of LG’s motion processing can reduce the judder’s impact pretty handily without causing too many ugly side effects.

You can find substantially brighter LCD TVs for around the same money as the OLED55BX. Sony’s 55X950H/XH9505, for instance, can hit brightness peaks of nearly 1200 nits. Some TVs can upscale HD sources better for the same sort of money too. The fluctuating and shifting gamma issues during VRR gaming found on the CX series are also still present on the BX series.

Plus, as ever with OLED technology, there’s the issue of permanent image retention to think about. Certainly you should try to handle the OLED55BX with care when it comes to how many hours you expose the screen to static image elements.

Overall, though, to say the OLED55BX’s picture pros outweigh its cons would be the understatement to end all understatements.

Despite being LG’s current entry-level OLED TV, the OLED55BX carries a built-in Dolby Atmos-capable sound system - and in some ways this works quite nicely.

It produces a strikingly wide soundstage, for instance. In fact, it spreads so far to the left and right that there are times where you can almost persuade yourself that you’re hearing stuff from down the sides of your seating position, rather than merely in front of you.

The speakers have enough projection and the audio processing has enough astuteness, too, to deliver a palpable sense of layering to dense object-based sound mixes, keeping everything clear and clean; building a sense of a three-dimensional audio space; creating a reasonable amount of vertical height to the soundstage; and filling your room with sound surprisingly well for a TV without visible forward-facing speakers.

Specific audio effects are placed fairly precisely and clearly in the soundstage, and trebles don’t typically sound harsh or ‘trapped’.

As with other LG TVs over the past couple of years, the OLED55BX actually sounds much better in its AI Sound mode than in its Dolby Atmos mode. The AI Sound option, which is designed by LG to try and optimize incoming sound to the known capabilities of the BX’s speaker array, sounds much louder, more dynamic and more ‘forward’ than the Atmos mode, which tends to sound strangely muffled and hemmed in.

There are a couple of quite significant problems with the OLED55BX’s sound, though. First and worst, the speakers can break down badly with heavy bass lines. The deep drone that underpins much of Chapter 5 of 1917 on 4K Blu-ray, for instance, causes the speakers to suffer with nasty crackling at almost any volume. The bass drops at the start of Blade Runner 2049 causes similarly (especially in Dolby Atmos rather than AI Sound mode), but these are far from the only examples I witnessed. And every time the speakers break down like this it can seriously distract you from what you’re watching.

The other issue is that the speakers tend to back off under pressure rather than building up a suitable head of steam. So just when you want a scene to hit hard, it often actually retreats into sounding quieter and flatter.

Verdict

Yes, the OLED55CX is better than the OLED55BX, if you can afford it. That is, though, no more than you would expect, and doesn’t remotely stop the OLED55BX from being a fantastic ‘gateway’ into OLED TV technology.

Real OLED bargains don’t come round all that often, but at its current prices, the OLED55BX definitely classes as one.

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Monday, March 15, 2021

LG OLED55BX TV Review: A Genuine OLED Bargain - Forbes

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