LG's Ultra HD OLED Curved 65" Beast - My Experience
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,215 words · ~11 min read
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today's topic is a big one one so big
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that it actually doesn't fit on the set with me yes friends LG sent me both a 65
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in 65 EG 9600 UHD curved OLED TV and an
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ano receiver to go with it to hook up and give my thoughts on the movie and
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gaming experience so this isn't a review
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per se since I don't have much to compare it against but rather my
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Impressions on the experience of moving from a 1080p flat LED backlit LCD to a
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bigger curvier sexier OLED model so here
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we
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go the master case 5 by Cooler Master gives you the freedom to truly make your
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midtower PC case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories check
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out the link in the video description to learn more so let's kick things off with
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some specs and physical observations about the 65 eg9600 the first thing
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you'll notice pulling it out of the box is that the screen is curved this was
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the big thing at CES this year but even
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as someone who has been using a curved display as my daily driver on my work PC
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for the better part of a year now I'm just not sold on it in the living room I
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mean to be clear it's not bad in fact an
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unexpected side effect was that I get less notice not able glare off of the
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display than I did with my old flat one so right on there but I'm just not
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convinced that until we're putting 120in
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TVs in our living rooms that the curve affects immersiveness in any meaningful
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way and I basically forgot about it 30 seconds into whatever content I was
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enjoying the next thing you'll notice about this TV is that it is wayfer thin
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both in terms of the thickness of the panel a fairly meaningless ego measuring
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contest that all the TV makers and no one else seem to care about since your
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attempt to mount the thing flush against the wall will be limited by the thicker
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lower half that contains all the power delivery processing and inputs
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anyway and in terms of the bezel size
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which is a completely different story and combined with the clear acrylic
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stand that didn't really impress me on the 3495 monitor but makes a ton of
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sense here makes this TV feel more like a floating piece of technology science
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fiction and then just another TV but no
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one tunes into to lonus Tech tips for my style tips so let's move on to the next
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thing you'll notice when you turn it on the screen this OLED panel is absolutely
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mind-blowing I mean I'm a pretty techsavvy guy I was already aware of the
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fact that oleds do not emit light at all when they receive a black signal but
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seeing it in person in your living room
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white text or bright objects on dark or black backgrounds look so crisp thanks
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to the 4K panel and sextastic infinite
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contrast between the pierced white and deepest black making it an absolute
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sight to behold rounding out our tour of
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the TV it features one each of RF component and composite Legacy inputs a
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digital audio pass through three USB ports a landan port for if your Wi-Fi
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sucks and 4 HDMI 2.0 ports with hdcp 2.2
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compliance making this one of the first Ultra HD TVs that's suitable for both
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movie enthusiasts who want support for 4K Blu-ray discs when those start
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showing up and Gamers who want their PC
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to be able to Output at 3840 by 2160 60
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htz for a less According to some people
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who unfortunately don't seem to know any better cinematic but objectively way
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better gaming experience thanks to the higher refresh rate which leads us
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pretty well to the gaming experience at 60 milliseconds of display leg even in
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game mode you're behind by about four frames at 60 HZ as a best case scenario
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this number would be considered quite poor for a Competitive Gaming monitor
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but I should probably put it in the appropriate context playing games like
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Super Meat Boy while slightly trickier timing wise than on a 144 HZ gaming
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monitor wasn't just possible but actually still fun and for games that
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are less reliant on Pixel perfect timing like arcade Racers or 3 person action
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games the vast majority of people won't
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even notice and the crisp moving images like seriously motion blur not a thing
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helped it feel more responsive to me than it ended up actually being when I
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objectively measured it with my Leo Bodner leg tester so overall I had a
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blast playing games on this TV with the Highlight being the Battlefront beta
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with my nerdy Tech couch Master with pretty much the only thing that could
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make this scene better being some Doritos and some Mountain Dew
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let's move on to movies now though the first movie I watched on this TV
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actually after I watched my Faulty Towers uh remastered collection which
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obviously being standard definition didn't look that great the first HD
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movie I watched on this TV blew my mind
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just for the sake of thoroughness I ordered a 3D Blu-ray of How to Train
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Your Dragon even though I'm not that into 3D to watch with my son for the
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first 15 to 20 minutes I had that pressure sensation that I get in the
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front of my brain even in the theater then actually after that it was gone the
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passive alternating horizontal line stereo 3D approach that LG has taken
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with this TV works like a charm image
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Clarity is only noticeably reduced on small background objects and I got none
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of the headaches that I typically experience due to slow pixel response
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times on LCDs with active shter glasses
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and even my wife reported having a positive 3D experience for the first
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time ever thanks to the lightweight polarized glasses and clipons and
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outstanding stereo separation it's a fantastic 3D movie watching experience
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which I guess leads us back to gaming again where things were not quite as
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rosy I grabbed the trial of NVIDIA's 3D TV play software package that allows you
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to use your TV's glasses and game in 3D
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and once again stereo separation fcking
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awesome but because interleaved passive
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3D requires the signal to use frame packing you're limited to AV resolutions
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and refresh rates so while try 2 was a
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sight to behold in glorious 3D having to choose between 4K in 2D at 60 HZ 1080p
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in 3D at 24 htz or
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720p in 3D at 60 HZ I opted for 4K not
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necessarily because it makes a huge difference in sharpness from couch
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distance compared to 1080p but because compared to 720p since I'm not going to
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play at 24 Herz it is much much better
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so I'll go for gold there which brings us back to movie watching I guess so
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let's talk about the benefits of 4K many of the evaluations of 4K TVs center
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around the 4K content that's available to us right now so unless you bought
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that asinine Sony 4K player we're basically talking about stream content
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from the likes of Netflix or YouTube and I've seen reviewers compare the jump
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from 1080p to 4K to lifting a blurry
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Veil off the screen the issue here is that they're comparing web 1080p to web
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4K and as we explained in our does 4K
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matter on the web video which you can check out here the reason that 4K
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YouTube videos look better than 1080p is
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nothing to do with the higher resolution and everything to do with the higher bit
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rate or or dat rate that YouTube is allowing for Content that identifies as
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4K so for the sake of thoroughness I
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decided to confirm that our YouTube findings were also applicable to Netflix
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by purchasing House of Cards season 1 on Blu-ray and running that on my PC then
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streaming it in 4k on my NVIDIA Shield console and switching between them
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impressively the Netflix stream was difficult to distinguish from the
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Blu-ray experience in brightly scenes and pretty much impossible from a normal
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viewing distance but getting close and
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peeping at the pixels you can tell that the Blu-ray copy is just playing better
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in spite of being 1080p which doesn't
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mean I'm poo pooing 4K content in
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general it just means that the little 4K
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icon in the bottom of the screen is not
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ample justification for a 4K TV purchase
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and for me if that's what it's about for you native 4K content then you might as
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well wait until 4K Blu-ray arrives which
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I guess brings us nicely into our conclusion I'm not saying that a 4K TV
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particularly in OLED is a terrible investment at this point early 4K TV
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buyers sorry y'all got hosed you paid a
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fortune you're stuck with 30 HZ maximum refresh rates and you're rocking a panel
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that by the time any content arrives to actually legitimately make use of the
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extra pixels will have been absolutely crushed by even a 1080p OLED panel that
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delivers a more vibrant picture with stunning contrast which in my mind is
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more important than sheer resolution but
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based on my experience with this model folks shopping for a premium 4K TV in
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late 2015 don't really have to worry
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about any game-changing technology shifts before they can properly take
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advantage of it I mean 4K Blu-ray is almost here the 3D experience is refined
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to the point where I would call it excellent we've gotten to the point
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where the size of your TV is limited more by your living room than by what
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you can afford the choice of curved versus non-curved is totally up to you
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with plenty of options out there panels are thinner than will ever matter and
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while I wasn't that impressed with outof the-box color accuracy on this
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particular TV after a little bit of color calibration something you should
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probably be factoring into a $55,000 purchase the 65 eg9600 delivered a movie
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watching and gaming experience that I feel like I could enjoy for a very very
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