LG's Ultra HD OLED Curved 65" Beast - My Experience
LG's Ultra HD OLED Curved 65" Beast - My Experience
2015-10-25
today's topic is how big one1 so big
that it actually doesn't fit on the set
with me yes friends LG sent me both a 65
inch 65 VG 9600 UHD curved OLED TV and
an Onkyo receiver to go with it to hook
up and give my thoughts on the movie and
gaming experience so this isn't a review
per se since I don't have much to
compare it against but rather my
impressions on the experience of moving
from a 1080p flat LED backlit LCD to a
bigger curvier sexier OLED bottle so
here we go
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description to learn more so let's kick
things off with some specs and physical
observations about the 65 eg 9600 the
first thing you'll notice pulling it out
of the box is that the screen is curved
this was the big thing at CES this year
but even as someone who has been using a
curved display as my daily driver on my
work PC for the better part of a year
now I'm just not sold on it in the
living room I need to be clear it's not
bad in fact an unexpected side effect
was that I get less noticeable glare off
of the display than I did with my old
flat one so right on there but I'm just
not convinced that until we're putting
120 inch TVs in our living rooms that
the curve affects immersiveness in any
meaningful way and I basically forgot
about it
30 seconds into whatever content I was
enjoying the next thing you'll notice
about this TV is that it is wafer thin
both in terms of the thickness of the
panel a fairly meaningless ego measuring
contest that all the TV makers and no
one else seem to care about since your
attempt to mount the thing flush against
the wall will be limited by the thicker
lower half that contains all the power
delivery processing and inputs anyway
and in terms of the bezel size which is
a completely different story and
combined with the clear acrylic stand
that didn't really impress me on the 34
um 95 monitor but makes a ton of sense
here makes this TV feel more like a
floating piece of technology science
fiction than just another TV but no one
Tunes in to Linus tech tips for my style
tips so let's move on to the next thing
you'll notice when you turn it on the
screen this OLED panel is absolutely
mind-blowing I mean I'm a pretty tech
savvy guy I was already aware of the
fact that ol LEDs do not emit light at
all when they receive a black signal but
seeing it in person in your living room
white text or bright objects on darker
black backgrounds
look so crisp thanks to the 4k panel and
sex tastic infinite contrast between the
purest white and deepest black making it
an absolute sight to behold rounding out
our tour of the TV it features one each
of RF component and composite legacy
inputs a digital audio pass-through
three USB ports a LAN port for if your
Wi-Fi sucks and four HDMI 2.0 ports with
hdcp 2.2 compliance making this one of
the first Ultra HD TVs that's suitable
for both movie enthusiasts who want
support for 4k blu-ray discs when those
start showing up and gamers who want
their PC to be able to output at 3840 by
2160 60 Hertz for a less according to
some people who unfortunately don't seem
to know any better
cinematic but objectively way better
gaming experience thanks to the higher
refresh rate which leads us pretty well
to the gaming experience at 60
milliseconds of display leg even in game
mode you're behind by about four frames
at 60 Hertz as a best-case scenario this
number would be considered quite poor
for a competitive gaming monitor but I
should probably put it in the
appropriate context playing games like
Super Meat Boy while slightly trickier
timing wise than on a 144 Hertz gaming
monitor wasn't just possible but
actually still fun and for games that
are less reliant on pixel perfect timing
like arcade racers or 3d person action
games the vast majority of people won't
even notice and the crisp moving images
like seriously motion blur not a thing
helped it feel more responsive to me
then it ended up actually being when I
objectively measured it with my Leo
Bodnar lag tester so overall I had a
blast playing games on this-tv with the
highlight being the battlefront beta
with my nerdy tech couch master with
pretty much the only thing that could
make this scene better being some
Doritos and some Mountain Dew let's move
on to movies now though the first movie
I watched on this TV actually after I
watched my Fawlty Towers
remastered collection which obviously
being standard-definition don't like
that great the first H
the movie I watched on this TV blew my
mind just for the sake of thoroughness
I ordered a 3d blu-ray of How to Train
Your Dragon even though I'm not that
into 3d to watch with my son for the
first 15 to 20 minutes I had that
pressure sensation that I get in the
front of my brain even in the theater
then actually after that it was gone
the passive alternating horizontal line
stereo 3d approach that LG has taken
with this TV works like a charm image
clarity is only noticeably reduced on
small background objects and I got none
of the headaches that I typically
experienced due to slow pixel response
times on LCDs with active shutter
glasses and even my wife reported having
a positive 3d experience for the first
time ever thanks to the lightweight
polarized glasses and clip-ons and
outstanding stereo separation it's a
fantastic 3d movie watching experience
which I guess leads us back to gaming
again where things were not quite as
rosy I grabbed the trial of in videos 3d
TV play soft ware package that allows
you to use your TV's glasses and game in
3d and once again stereo separation
frakking awesome
but because interleaved passive 3d
requires the signal to use frame packing
you're limited to AV resolutions and
refresh rates so while trying to was a
sight to behold in glorious 3d having to
choose between 4k in 2d at 60 Hertz
1080p in 3d at 24 Hertz or 720p in 3d at
60 Hertz I opted for 4k not necessarily
because it makes a huge difference in
sharpness from couch distance compared
to 1080p but because compared to 720p
since I'm not going to play it 24 Hertz
it is much much better so I'll go for
gold bear which brings us back to movie
watching I guess so let's talk about the
benefits of 4k many of the evaluations
of 4k TVs center around the 4k content
that's available to us right now so
unless you bought that asinine Sony 4k
player we're
simply talking about stream content from
the likes of Netflix or YouTube and I've
seen reviewers compare the jump from
1080p to 4k to lifting a blurry veil off
the screen the issue here is that
they're comparing web 1080p to web 4k
and as we explained in our does 4k
matter on the web video which you can
check out here the reason that 4k
YouTube videos look better than 1080p is
nothing to do with the higher resolution
and everything to do with the higher
bitrate or data rate that YouTube is
allowing for content that identifies as
4k so for the sake of thoroughness I
decided to confirm that our YouTube
findings were also applicable to Netflix
by purchasing house of cards season 1 on
blu-ray and running that on my PC then
streaming it in 4k on my Nvidia shield
console and switching between them
impressively the Netflix stream was
difficult to distinguish from the
blu-ray experience in brightly lit
scenes and pretty much impossible from a
normal viewing distance but getting
close and peeping at the pixels you can
tell that the blu-ray copy is just
playing better in spite of being 1080p
which doesn't mean i'm pooh-poohing 4k
content in general it just means that
the little 4k icon in the bottom of the
screen is not ample justification for a
4k TV purchase and for me if that's what
it's about for you native 4k content
then you might as well wait until 4k
blu-ray arrives which I guess brings us
nicely into our conclusion I'm not
saying that a 4k TV particularly an OLED
is a terrible investment at this point
early 4k TV buyers sorry y'all got hosed
you paid a fortune you're stuck with 30
Hertz maximum refresh rates and you're
rocking a panel that by the time any
content arrives to actually legitimately
make use of the extra pixels will have
been absolutely crushed by even a 1080p
OLED panel that delivers a more vibrant
picture with stunning contrast which in
my mind is more important
Finch shear resolution but based on my
experience with this model folks
shopping for a premium 4k TV in late
2015
don't really have to worry about any
game-changing technology shifts before
they can properly take advantage of it I
mean 4k blu-ray is almost here the 3d
experience is refined to the point where
I would call it excellent we've gotten
to the point where the size of your TV
is limited more by your living room than
by what you can afford the choice of
curved versus non curved is totally up
to you with plenty of options out there
panels are thinner than will ever matter
and while I wasn't that impressed with
out of the box color accuracy on this
particular TV after a little bit of
color calibration something you should
probably be factoring into a $5,000
purchase the 65 eg 9600 delivered a
movie watching and gaming experience
that I feel like I could enjoy for a
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