LG Link: LG OLED65G1 OLED TV Review: Walk On The Bright Side

lg.indah.link

The arrival of any new LG OLED TV is always a big deal for AV and, increasingly, gaming fans. The excitement levels for LG’s 2021 G1 series, though, hit a whole new level when the brand revealed in January that this premium OLED range would be getting a serious hardware as well as software upgrade.

The G1’s so-called ‘evo’ panel upgrade was promised to deliver a potentially massive improvement to the area of OLED performance that’s often (not necessarily fairly/accurately) cited as the self-emissive screen technology’s biggest weakness: brightness. What’s more, it’s become clear in recent weeks that the way the evo panels are made should also deliver a marked color enhancement.

You wouldn’t know from the $TBC/£2,999 OLED65G1’s outward appearance, though, that it’s a potential OLED game changer. It’s attractive enough; its slim, wall hanging-friendly Gallery design is elegantly understated and futuristic. The Gallery design has been refined for 2021, too, with a clever new inset wall mount fitting. The G1s are not, though, a radical aesthetic departure from 2020’s GX models.

LG OLED65G1 — The OLED65G1 uses new panel technology to deliver LG's best OLED performance yet.
Photo: LG

Let’s move swiftly on, then, to looking more closely at the new evo panel. It’s based around a new, more efficient ‘luminous element’ that enhances brightness, reduces the wavelength of its blue and red colors by almost half and a third respectively, improving peak performance for both; and introduces a new green layer that properly puts the G in RGB in a way LG’s previous OLED technology has not.

The evo hardware upgrade is partnered with a new Alpha 9 Gen 4 processor, some handy new gaming-related features/adjustments, and the most radical redesign of LG’s webOS system since it debuted back in 2014.

MORE FOR YOU

Special sauce?

With Panasonic having deployed premium, high brightness OLED panels for a couple of years now, and Sony also joining the brighter OLED hardware party this year with its A90J range, LG is keen to claim that the OLED65G1’s Alpha 9 Gen 4 processor has been specially designed to make sure that content is always optimised to take advantage of the new hardware’s capabilities. Though unsurprisingly, Panasonic and Sony make the same sort of claims for the processing systems in their own ‘next-gen’ OLED TVs.

The OLED65G1 does, though, undeniably have a pretty healthy roster of processing improvements to boast about - especially within LG’s AI Picture Pro automatic image optimization system.

A new Scene Analysis feature, for instance, is able to identify and apply specific rules to three different types of image content: scenery, buildings, and night views. So where a shot of scenery is detected, for instance, the processing can enhance colors while also applying local detail improvements in areas of the image that contain particularly heavily textured elements such as trees or pebbly beaches.

With a night scene, the processing can locally enhance the brightness and clarity of areas of shadow detail in parts of the picture that might otherwise look murky. And with cityscape shots, the processing can enhance detail and edges to deliver a sharper finish along with a better sense of depth and scale.

Continuing the theme of being able to identify and apply different processing rules to particular parts of the picture is a new Body and Object system. This is able to pick out and identify different image content such as skin tones, clothing and other highlight elements, and then manipulate local detail levels and brightness to give such ‘focal points’ more clarity, definition and emphasis.

We’ve come across similar features before - both AI and object-based processing are well established in premium TV circles these days. It’s not just having such features that counts, though; it’s how well your processing and AI implements them. And as we’ll see, the OLED65G1 implements them outstandingly well.

All about AI

The AI Picture Pro system is joined by a couple of other automatic picture options that can add further refinements to the AI-based system: Auto Genre selection, which utilizes a deep learning neural network algorithm ‘trained’ to spot the difference between animations, movies, news and sports, and an AI Brightness Control system that optimizes brightness with SDR and tone mapping with HDR to compensate for room light conditions.

LG has also thankfully greatly improved the ability of its motion processing algorithms to distinguish between moving and static image elements in dark scenes - so K’s spinner should no longer glitch in and out of the picture as he flies behind tower blocks on his way back to LAPD HQ near the start of Blade Runner 2049.

Most of the OLED65G1’s picture presets also default to a new Natural motion processing setting that reduces judder substantially. This has apparently been developed in response to consumer demand, confirming my suspicion that many consumers, even of high-end TVs, don’t necessarily agree with film industry luminaries that all motion processing is the work of the devil.

That said, serious home cinema fans will likely be more drawn to a new Cinematic Movement option. This increases the ratio of real to interpolated image frames as it goes about its ‘frame merging’ business, resulting in reduced judder without the so-called ‘soap opera effect’ of too much fluidity. You can also still go for a Custom motion setting, as usual with LG TVs, with blur and judder reduction levels set to suit your tastes.

Upmix advance

It’s not just the OLED65G1’s pictures that LG claims will benefit from it’s AI-related improvements. The latest AI Sound Pro system has a couple of new tricks up its sleeve too. One is a 5.1.2 upmix system that adds a pair of height channels to the Virtual Surround 5.1 upmix system found on 2020’s TVs. The other is a new automatic volume levelling feature that doesn’t just work across different channels on the TV tuner, but also across every content source, including different apps and external devices.

Aside from the new evo panel, the most interesting feature of the OLED65G1 for many will be its new Game Optimizer system. This automatically fires up as soon as the TV detects a game source, and provides a handy mixture of simple picture option information and useful new image tweaks. I think the best way to explain the sort of flexibility the Game Optimizer offers is to look at each feature’s impact and success in a dedicated section on the 65G1’s gaming abilities later.

This leaves the revamped webOS 6.0 operating system as the last big new feature to talk about on the OLED65G1.

The first thing that strikes you about the new webOS is that hitting the remote’s Home menu now brings up a full screen interface in place of the previous ‘strip’ of content icons along the bottom of the screen. Initially I found this disappointing, as I’ve always liked the way the previous overlaid menu approach let you continue to watch TV as you browsed for other content.

It doesn’t take too long using the new menus, though, to reflect that the sheer quantity of potential content sources out there these days probably makes a full screen approach more flat-out usable, if less slick, than the previous menu bar approach. In fact, I have raised the issue myself in previous LG TV reviews of just how long and unwieldy the old scrolling menu bar was becoming, so I can hardly complain now that LG has taken such a substantial step to address that problem!

WebOS moves home

I am not currently convinced about some aspects of the new home screen, though. For instance, while I appreciated the efforts of the box in the middle of the top row to introduce links to snart features you might want to explore, dedicating the sizeable top left box to just service notifications and weather reports seems like a questionable use of so much prime screen real estate.

I initially thought the big Search graphic to top right was rather a waste of space too. However, the new search results page it takes you to is so impressive in its presentation and scope that it’s ultimately only right that webOS 6.0 layout shouts about it.

The Personalised for you/Trending Now section in the center of the new home screen is really the heart of LG’s latest smart interface. This gives you a dynamic selection of content tailored to your proven viewing habits that effectively creates a curated ‘sit back’ viewing experience every time you switch the TV is switched on.

The only catch, as ever with these sorts of system, is that the recommended content feels a bit random when you first get your TV, as it hasn’t initially got any significant viewing data to work with in trying to give you a bespoke service. It’s worth noting, though, that if you have previously owned a recent LG TV and signed up for an LG Account, then the G1 will be able to use the viewing profile information built up in that account.

If like me you initially find yourself pining for the old LG app strip, you’ll be pleased to see that it still appears at the bottom of the new home screen. It remains, too, a tidy, eminently customisable way of quickly getting to your most used apps, so I’m glad LG hasn’t done away with it completely.

Scrolling down from these initial home screen options brings you to a selection of further content ‘shelves’. Starting with a synopsis of LG’s Home Dashboard, which tells you what AV devices you’ve connected to the TV both wirelessly and via the TV’s inputs.

Below that are a ‘frequently viewed’ tuner programme shelf, and further shelves offering direct links to content from various key streaming services. The exact nature of these lower shelves will vary from territory to territory, but as an example, in the UK I get shelves for the BBC iPlayer (the promised Freeview Play app doesn’t seem to be up and running yet), Rakuten TV, YouTube, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video. Netflix, strangely, does not currently get its own shelf.

Surprisingly you can’t rearrange the running order of the home screen’s scroll-down content shelves, and overall I couldn’t help but feel that while the new interface is probably travelling in the right direction, it hasn’t yet arrived at its final destination.

It does score strongly, though, for its connectivity with mobile devices - including a cool new feature allowing you to share the TV’s pictures on your phone, and the TV’s audio with up to three mobile devices at once.

Some territories get a fun new Magic Search feature, where long-pressing the select button on LG’s Magic Remote can bring up detailed and interactive supplemental information on the film or TV show you’re watching.

Talking of the Magic Remote, this has been redesigned for 2021. It now features a slimmer design that’s more comfortable to hold, and a roster of direct app open buttons for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Rakuten, and the Google Assistant and Alexa voice recognition/control systems (if you prefer those to the default (and very good) LG ThinQ platform).

LG has even changed its TV settings menus for its 2021 TVs. Hitting the Settings button now initially gives you the familiar (now editable) row of adjustment shortcuts down the screen’s left side. Choose the Advanced Settings option at the bottom, though, and the old black and white, text-heavy menus are replaced by much more streamlined, white on see-through grey menus. While the ambition here of making the menus feel less overwhelming is good, again it feels more like a step towards a better future rather than the finished deal. Not least because the organisation of the picture adjustments currently feels rather confusing.

One final niggle is that despite carrying much less text, the new menu graphics occupy a large chunk of the screen. This can be pretty unhelpful when you’re trying to make some picture adjustments.

Well connected

The OLED65G1 carries four HDMI connections, all capable of handling data rates of up to 40Gbps and the 4K at 120Hz, HDR and variable refresh rate features the latest gaming platforms can deliver. While other brands are looking set to do improve their gaming support for 2021, LG still looks set to be the most consistent brand in this increasingly key TV feature area.

Xbox Series X gamers might also be attracted by the OLED65G1’s support for the Dolby Vision HDR system, which Microsoft has said it will be delivering on Xbox Series X games at some point this year. Samsung’s TVs, by comparison, support the HDR10+ ‘dynamic’ HDR format, which is not currently on any gaming roadmap.

Picture quality

There are three key elements of the OLED65G1’s picture quality I want to focus on: general picture quality, taking into account the ‘evo’ panel; gaming performance including the new Game Optimizer feature; and LG’s latest AI Picture Pro system.

First things first: the all-important extra brightness and colour performance promised by the G1’s new panel does make a difference for the better. But it’s maybe not quite as dramatic a difference as I’d hoped for.

Brightness on a white HDR window covering 10% of an otherwise black image measures around 778 nits in the Standard preset, around 767 nits in the Cinema Home preset, and around 760 nits each for the Cinema and Filmmaker Mode presets. The Vivid mode does get to a pretty impressive 872 nits, but the overall aggression this preset is way too strong to deliver a natural, engaging picture.

The 77GX from 2020, by comparison, produced 754 nits in Vivid mode, 744 nits in standard, 741 nits in Cinema Home, plus 683 nits in both Cinema and Filmmaker Mode presets.

Cross referencing these measurements suggests that LG has only explored the outer reaches of the new panel’s brightness for the Vivid mode (colours in this mode, too, are extremely intense versus previous LG OLEDs, especially when it comes to reds and greens). It’s only delivered quite modest brightness increases for the Standard and Cinema Home presets, but ramped it up reasonably handily again for the more accuracy based Cinema and Filmmaker Mode presets.

In search of brightness

Nothing I could do with its settings got the OLED65G1 closer to the 1000 nits or more figures I’d hoped we might see from this new LG OLED hardware. Though that’s not to say that the relatively small increases don’t still make a difference.

The Cinema and Filmmaker Mode presets certainly look brighter and more intense than they have on previous LG OLEDs, making them for me much more satisfying options with HDR content. The color gamut appears gently improved in these modes too, with a little more presence and richness present in relatively pure red, green and blue image elements - such as the red, white and blue balloons and garish costumes on show during the Derry carnival sequence in ‘It’.

As with the extra brightness, the enhanced color is perhaps not the massive step-change improvement we may have dreamed of. But again, especially in conjunction with the mild brightness boost, the enhancements to color do make enough of a difference to make the two most accurate picture presets feel like a more dramatic HDR experience than we’ve seen before from LG OLED TVs.

Even the popular default Standard preset gets more benefit from the evo panel than the minor step-up in measurable brightness might lead you to expect. Small highlights, such as the light in the projector lens in Chapter 8 of ‘It’, look phenomenally potent, giving the HDR effect a boost that feels beyond the 30 nits or so of measured luminance difference between the G1 and GX.

Full-screen bright HDR images also look more luminous and intense than they have on previous LG OLED screens, further boosting the sense that actually, once all the various improvements of the evo panel and LG’s latest Alpha 9 Gen 4 processor are working hand in hand, the OLED65G1 can deliver net picture results that perform beyond mere ‘measurables’.

And just to be clear, aside from the gaudy Vivid mode, none of the enhancements introduced by the OLED65G1’s evo panel do any harm to the picture. Nothing feels over-cooked or out of balance. It just looks better.

Crucially, too, none of the evo panel improvements do any damage to the black level and local contrast strengths we’ve long associated with LG OLED TVs. There’s no need, therefore, to worry about hues losing their purity or naturalism in dark scenes, since there’s literally no greyness hanging over dark tones that might erode their richness. Nor is there any need as there is with LCD TVs that use local dimming backlighting for the brightness of dark colors to be reduced dramatically in a bid to avoid backlight haloing effects.

Maybe the best news of all about the OLED65G1’s brightness and colour enhancements, though, is that LG has managed to accomplish them without damaging the stability of its near-black handling. So very dark scenes still benefit from those impeccably deep, greyness-free black levels we’ve come to expect from LG OLEDs without an increase in the likelihood of such scenes falling prey to distracting brightness shifts or flickers.

In fact, far from being made worse by the panel’s extra brightness, near-black instability with video content has become pretty much non-existent on the OLED65G1. Especially when the image has been calibrated, or you’re using the Cinema or Filmmaker Mode presets.

Nor has the new evo imaging system had a negative impact on shadow detail. Subtle shades and details remain abundantly evident in even the shadiest corners.

Covering all the angles

The way OLED technology works also means you can watch the OLED65G1 from essentially any angle without the picture losing either color saturation or black level/contrast. Though I did notice a slightly magenta tone creeping into bright picture areas from really severe angles - around 70 degrees off axis.

The glassy screen’s a bit reflective compared with some LCD models, too, but I suspect that many people willing to pay as much as the 65G1 costs to own a 65-inch TV probably won’t mind doing it the honor of making their room as dark as possible when watching the TV in ‘earnest’.

That said, the OLED65G1’s brighter picture arguably makes it LG’s most living room-friendly model yet.

The extra dynamism of the OLED65G1’s pictures is given slightly more rein if you can feed it a Dolby Vision source. The only exception to this, oddly, is the Dolby Vision Cinema setting, which looks too dark for comfort, and loses some shadow detail in the process.

If outside of Dolby Vision viewing you feel the image is getting too dark when watching it in a dark room, you might also want to make sure the TV’s AI Brightness feature is turned off in the AI Service menu. Though with non Dolby Vision sources - be they HDR or SDR - I’d suggest you at least give a proper try out to another AI option: the AI Picture Pro processor.

AI Picture Pro

I realise that automatic picture optimisation systems like AI Picture Pro can raise the hackles of some AV enthusiasts. Including, in particular, the sort of AV enthusiasts most likely to be considering splashing out on a premium TV such as the OLED65G1. I realise, too, that I was none too complimentary about the first generation of LG’s AI Picture technology a couple of years ago. Thanks to its latest AI-driven enhancements, though, AI Picture Pro is now, for me, an invaluable tool in LG’s picture quality arsenal. A setting that can genuinely but sensitively enhance pretty much every aspect of the OLED65G1’s picture quality while generating practically none of the distracting picture quality nasties that made it more or less a non-starter just a couple of generations ago.

With HDR10 content, activating AI Picture Pro clearly introduces more dynamism and brightness to ‘lift’ the image. There’s more punch, more emphasis on key picture elements, more life-like skin tones (aside from rare occasions where a little too much red creeps into them), richer and more vibrant colours, less black crush, and more sharpness (though this helpfully appears to be applied locally, to specific objects and areas, rather than uniformly to the whole image).

The combination of all these factors helps AI Picture Pro make HDR10 look more three-dimensional and immersive, too.

LG’s latest AI picture application yields improved upscaling of sub 4K sources, too. The upscaling adds genuine detail and texture, rather than just making the pixel count look denser. The extra detail is added intelligently enough, moreover, to ensure that different areas and objects in the picture benefit from different amounts of noise reduction and detail enhancement. The result is a more natural upscale, again with enhanced depth and three-dimensionality.

There is a limit to the quality of sources the OLED65G1’s upscaling handles well. Heavily compressed standard definition digital broadcasts aren’t very pleasant to watch, and there remains clear evidence of grey blocking noise and posterisation during the infamously tricky for OLED TVs to handle Peeping Tom sequence at 35.35 in Vikings Season 5 Part 2 Episode 2 on Amazon Prime.

It’s likely, though, that most people buying a TV like the OLED65G1 will be well armed with decent quality HD and, hopefully, native 4K sources.

Well adapted

Another impressive aspect of the new AI Picture Pro system is how well it adapts itself to different types of shot and content. Dark scenes, high contrast scenes, bright daylight exteriors, muted interiors, night footage, town and cityscapes… All are enhanced differently and, as a result, more effectively. And crucially the enhancement is delivered without causing really any negative side effects.

In some ways, the AI Picture Pro feature now feels more like a further refinement of dynamic tone mapping, with added extra refinements to color and sharpness as a bonus.

Some will argue that the enhancements AI Picture Pro introduces are all steps away from the idea of recreating images ‘as the director intended’. I personally don’t really buy into that, though. For starters, nothing the AI Picture Pro system does feels out of control, random or unbalanced. In fact, it works so intelligently and organically that I’d say it delivers the best all-round non-Dolby Vision presentation of ‘It’ (a very difficult 4K Blu-ray in many ways) that I’ve ever seen.

In fact, for me AI Picture Pro could even be argued to bring the OLED65G1’s picture closer to the look of a pro grade OLED panel, rather than further from it.

In any case, the simple fact is that AI Picture Pro frequently produced pictures that truly took my breath away on a level that the OLED65G1’s ‘regular’ pictures did not. Even though, to be clear, the G1’s pictures without AI Picture Pro active are also never short of outstanding.

Of course, AI Picture Pro is just a choice. You can turn it off if you really don’t want it to ‘interfere’ with the TV’s picture quality. But by working so well, and generating so few unwanted distractions and side effects in the process, it’s a system I think genuinely expands on what LG OLED TVs have to offer.

Gaming

For the most part the 65G1 is a sensational gaming display. Not least because the brightness and color enhancements the evo panel provides suit HDR gaming graphics to a tee.

LG OLED65G1 Game Optimizer — The LG OLED65G1's Game Optimizer.
Photo: LG

The typically sunny, outdoor environments of COD Cold War, for instance, look much more lifelike, while the extra dynamic range and highlight intensity make everything from your weapon to the characters and objects in the environment feel more three dimensional and immediate.

Especially since, as with video, the OLED screen’s black levels have not been damaged at all by the injection of a little extra light.

Games that support 120Hz frame rates look and feel fantastically smooth and responsive, with no hint of judder, blurring, dithering or any other artefacts. Especially if the game you’re playing supports VRR.

The gaming experience also gains the most from the 65G1 evo panel’s gentle colour enhancement, making game environments feel stunningly vibrant, exciting and, where that’s the intention of the game makers, realistic.

Gaming pro

I’m not saying LG’s C1 range when it appears won’t likely also deliver a mesmerising gaming performance, enhanced by the new Game Optimizer features I’m about to run through. I’m sure it will. My expectation, though, is that great though the C1 will likely be, gaming will be the area where the 65G1’s advantages most clearly shine through.

Let’s run through the Game Optimizer tweaks one by one.

First up, you can simply turn the whole feature off if you wish, and play in one of the OLED65G1’s regular picture modes. So good do pictures look in Game Optimizer mode, though, that I don’t honestly see much argument for turning it off.

Below the toggle for turning the Optimizer on or off is a box informing you which game genre you’ve got the image management switched to, and whether you’ve got variable refresh rate support active.

Then comes the option to choose which Game Genre you want the graphics set-up to favor. Alongside a Standard mode are presets designed to suit first person shooters; RPGs; and RTS games. The FPS mode clearly increases the visibility of shadow details in dark areas without ruining overall black levels, to help you spot lurking (or camping) enemies. It does also increase the intensity of bright images too, though, which can result in a little clipping with very aggressive HDR games. I still found I liked to use it, though - at least when gaming in online multiplayer modes.

Let’s focus on you

The RPG mode is designed to focus on enhancing contrast and putting the image focus on characters and your presence within the wider world. It’s actually quite uncanny how bringing the image emphasis a bit closer to your character makes you feel more connected with that character while also making the game world feel larger.

The RTS setting makes sense too, as the extra emphasis it places on object edges and HDR highlights helps you pick out individual units and enemies on the battlefield.

All in all, the Game Genre picture feature that I’d anticipated would likely be merely a gimmick ends up being a feature I used routinely.

The next Game Optimizer options are so-called Black and White stabilizers. Of these the black stabiliser has much more impact, and lets you substantially alter how dark or light/grey dark parts of the image look. This is done, too, while impacting bright parts of the picture less than the FPS Genre setting does - so you may prefer to set the Game Genre to Standard and tinker with the Black Stabilizer rather than choosing the FPS Genre mode.

The White Stabilizer’s effect, meanwhile, seems so subtle that I didn’t really see a great deal of point in it.

OLED Motion Pro is next on the list (though it’s greyed out if you’re gaming in 120Hz), and is provided for people who want to introduce a more cinematic look to motion in the game you’re playing. It inserts black frames into the images to create a 24p movie effect - though in doing so it noticeably dims pictures down. Couple this fact with the ultra-high frame rates becoming commonplace in today’s gaming world and I can’t really imagine many gamers feeling the urge to use the OLED Motion Pro feature.

A bit more interesting is the Game Optimizer’s Reduce Blue Light option. This increases the warmth of the picture to reduce the eye strain that can be caused by cool/blue image tones. Personally I felt games typically looked their best with Reduce Blue Light off. Its Level 1 setting, though, is at least quite mild regarding the color temperature change it introduces, so if your eyes do start to feel a bit tired after your 24th consecutive hour of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, it’s a worthwhile option to have at your disposal.

I confess to being a little puzzled by the next ‘Prevent Input Delay (input lag)’ option. There are two choices here: Standard and Boost. Contrary to what you would expect from these labels, though, the Standard mode delivers an input lag measurement with 1080p 50/60Hz feeds of just 12.4ms, while the Boost option clocks in actually slightly higher, at 12.7ms! Odd. Though the key point, of course, that both these figures are outstandingly low.

Sound decisions

LG’s latest AI Game Sound feature is up next, which, as its name suggests, uses AI analysis to calculate the optimal use of its 5.1.2-capable audio processing to suit the sound of the game you’re playing. This typically opens up the soundstage, casting the sound further to the left, right and above the screen, and placing sound details such as distant shooting enemies more precisely relative to your onscreen view. While this is handy, especially for FPS games, the soundstage expansion does cause bass and impact sounds to take a hit.

Last but certainly not least among the Game Optimiser’s features, we get to the 65G1’s variable refresh rate support. This includes support for Nvidia G-Sync, the standard HDMI 2.1 VRR system, and AMD FreeSync Premium. All of these options can be turned on or off in the Optimiser menu.

Note that as with last year’s LG OLED models, activating AMD FreeSync Premium oddly causes the image to lose its native 3840x2160, pixel by pixel ‘lock’, resulting in it expanding slightly so that its edges are pushed off the screen. To fix this, you have to manually choose the ‘Just’ option instead of Auto option in the G1’s aspect ratio menu.

As you may know if you’ve owned a recent LG OLED or you follow my articles on Forbes, LG’s 2020 and 2019 models have suffered with a couple of issues related to variable refresh rates. One is that the image’s gamma profile shifts slightly when you activate VRR, resulting in dark areas looking brighter/slightly greyer than they did before. The other is potential flickering/instability in dark scenes.

While the flickering issue is still present on the OLED65G1 (though it didn’t seem to show up on my review screen quite as often as it did on last year’s X series), LG has come up with a solution of sorts to the gamma shift issue. Basically a new Fine Tune Dark Areas option that’s only available when VRR is active lets you adjust with impressive granularity the brightness of dark areas in gaming images. This really does only significantly impact dark parts of the picture, leaving the rest of the content looking exactly as it should, and so is a realistic way of at least trying to counter the innate VRR gamma shift.

Sound quality

The first thing to say here is that the new AI Sound Pro feature is surprisingly effective at adding a sense of verticality to sub 5.1.2 sound sources.

The second thing to say, though, is that while the OLED65G1 sounds pretty good overall, it’s not without its problems.

One of these problems is that Dolby Atmos playback is seriously disappointing. It works well enough with relatively restrained soundtracks, delivering lots of detail and convincing dialogue, as well as a fairly widespread sound stage. However, whenever a Dolby Atmos soundtrack builds up a serious head of steam, such as during the amazingly mixed sequence with the projector in Chapter 8 of It on 4K Blu-ray, the sound actually becomes smaller, more swallowed and less impactful on the OLED65G1 as the crescendo builds. The exact opposite of what you’d expect to hear. This completely robs climactic moments of their impact in a most unAtmos-like way.

Fortunately, if you counter-intuitively turn off the Dolby Atmos support and activate the AI Sound Pro setting instead, the OLED65G1 becomes a vastly more satisfying performer.

LG has designed this mode to get the optimal performance in terms of volume and dynamic range from the TV’s speakers, and the result is a much more forceful, forward, impactful and dynamic sound that has plenty of room for expansion to meet even the ‘It’ projector scene’s truly extreme demands.

The OLED65G1’s AI Sound Pro system usually achieves this, moreover, without succumbing to significant speaker distortion or drop out. Unfortunately, though, it does have another Achilles Heel in the shape of deep and sustained bass lines, such as the one that underpins the soundtrack in Chapter 5 of 1917 on 4K Blu-ray. In these situations the OLED65G1’s bass/mid-range drivers can start to buzz quite distractingly.

The buzzy bass is much less likely to happen with Dolby Atmos mode switched back on - but of course, then you’ve got the relatively muted nature of the Atmos sound profile to worry about.

Basically it would have been better if LG had been a little more realistic about the capabilities of its bass drivers, and not tried to push them to places they can’t comfortably go.

Verdict

LG’s first big OLED hardware evolution for generations hasn’t perhaps yielded quite as much of a quantum leap in performance as I’d optimistically hoped it might. Panasonic’s 2020 HZ2000 and 2019 GZ2000 OLED TVs both produce slightly more brightness than the OLED65G1, in fact.

The G1’s color and brightness hardware improvements over previous LG OLED models do nonetheless go beyond the scope of LG’s usual, chiefly software annual tweaks. And they’re joined, crucially, by a much improved processing system, and some genuinely thoughtful and helpful new gaming features.

At £2,999 the LG OLED65G1 is also much more affordable than that of any of Panasonic’s high-brightness 65-inch OLED panels to date. And from what we’ve heard so far it seems possible that Panasonic’s JZ2000 high brightness model for 2021 may not support the latest premium gaming features. Plus, of course, there’s the small matter of Panasonic TVs no longer being readily available in the US.

So what we’re left with is not only comfortably LG’s finest OLED TV yet, but one that I anticipate will also deliver a noticeable picture performance bonus over LG’s upcoming C1 range for those who demand - and can afford - nothing but the best.

—

LG OLED55BX TV Review: A Genuine OLED Bargain

PS5 Vs Xbox Series X 4K Blu-ray Player Showdown

The Link Lonk

March 19, 2021 at 10:48AM
https://ift.tt/2P53m88

LG OLED65G1 OLED TV Review: Walk On The Bright Side - Forbes

https://ift.tt/3eaxdmA
LG

LG Link

Rechercher dans ce blog

Friday, March 19, 2021

LG OLED65G1 OLED TV Review: Walk On The Bright Side - Forbes

No comments:

Post a Comment

Featured Post

LG updates its 2021 OLED TVs to support 120Hz Dolby Vision gaming - Engadget

Popular Posts

Archives du blog

Libellés