OLED TV Reviews

Test Bench
For the control settings used here go to soundandvision.com. The manual calibrations were made using Calman measurement software from Portrait Displays, together with X-Rite i1Pro3 Plus and Klein K-10A color meters and a Fresco Six-G test pattern generator from Murideo/AVPro.

SDR/HD
Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: 60,300:1

In ISF Expert (Dark) Picture Mode with OLED Pixel Brightness at 65, Adjust Contrast at 85, Screen Brightness at 55, Auto Dynamic Contrast Off (set to Low in post-calibration viewing), Peak Brightness at Low, Gamma at 2.4, and Black Level in Auto, the G1's post-calibration peak white level was 60.3 foot- Lamberts (206.6 nits) and its black level 0.001 foot-Lamberts (0.0034 nits).

With no changes to the set's White Balance controls in ISF Expert (Dark) Picture Mode, the LG's grayscale Delta E values from 20% to 100% ranged from a low of 0.76 at 20% to a high of 1.68 at 100%. Pre-calibration color Delta E values ranged from a high of 2.32 (red) to a low of 0.39 (blue); post-calibration the high was 1.49 (blue) and the low 0.27 (red).

(Delta E is a figure of merit indicating how closely the set follows the ideal grayscale white point (D65) across the brightness range, or the accuracy of the primary (red, green, blue) and secondary (cyan, magenta, yellow) colors. Values below 3—some experts allow for 4—are generally considered visually indistinguishable from ideal.

On a post-calibration color checker—a test that accounts for a wide range of real-world colors and not just the primaries (red, green, blue) and secondaries (cyan, magenta, yellow)—the Delta E averaged 1.5 with a peak of 2.9. A Rec.709 Saturation Sweep, a test that analyzes all primary and secondary colors at saturation levels from 20% to 100%, produced excellent results with an average Delta E of 1.64 and a maximum of 2.94.

Ultra HD/HDR
Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: 38,979:1

Test results here were obtained in HDR10 Cinema (User) mode with OLED Peak Brightness at 100, Adjust Contrast at 100, Screen Brightness at 55, Auto Dynamic Contrast at Low, Tone Mapping On, and Peak Brightness at High. Peak brightness measured 744.5 nits at 90% and the black level 0.0191 nits. If I dropped the Screen Brightness to 50 the black level dropped to 0.0005 nits for a full-on/full-of contrast ratio of 1,489,000:1. Setting Screen Brightness to 50, however, also resulted in the visible black crush noted in the main review. (Brightness measured 86.8 nits at the 50% luminance level.)

Before calibration the grayscale Delta Es ranged from a low of 0.4 at 20% to a high of 4.1 at 80% to 100%. At 60% and below it was 1.7 or less. After calibration, it was a maximum of 2.48 at 50%, and never above 1.88 at any other level. Pre- calibration the maximum Color Delta E (at 50% stimulation) was 3.2 in green. After calibration it was 2.7 in red, but under 1.4 for all other primary and secondary colors.

HDR peak white levels with varying-sized 100% luminance windows measured 740 nits at 5%, 710 nits at 10%, 580 nits at 25%, and 160 nits at 100%. (The lower percentage window sizes are significant since that's where most bright highlights reside with typical HDR sources.)

The G1 averaged a 1.48 (3.84 maximum) Delta E with luminance and 1.07 (2.01 max) without luminance on an HD Color Checker test. P3 and BT.709 saturation sweeps inside BT.2020 were both good but not exceptional (we've yet to measure ideal HDR saturation sweeps during manual calibrations). The LG G1 measured 73.1% of BT.2020 and 98.6% of P3 color using the 1976 standard and passed our full suite of video processing tests.—TJN