LG UF850V review (60UF850V)

LG might be turning its attention towards OLED technology and curved screens, but that doesn’t mean it has forgotten how to make a great flagship TV using normal LCD panels. The UF850V is the company’s latest: a 60in, 4K model that looks great even before you switch it on.

For this review we tested the 60in model in the UF850V range, but it’s also available in 49in (49UF850V), 55in (55UF850V) and 65in (65UF850V) screen sizes. All models have identical specifications except for their dimensions and power usage. We’re confident that image quality will be practically identical across the range.

With near non-existent bezels around the top and sides of the display, brushed metal trim around the bottom and a curved metal stand, the TV is undeniably sleek, and at less than 3cm at its thickest point it’s rather svelte too. That being said, the design of the stand, with a flat bar at the front and hind legs that point out at the back, means it has a rather large footprint. If you’re upgrading from a much smaller TV, or need to put it on top of a speaker base, you’ll want to make sure you have enough room for it.

The brushed metal extends to the remote control, too. LG has finally stopped including two remotes in the box, opting instead for a hybrid Magic Remote. This has all the important buttons you’d want at your fingertips, plus motion-based cursor controls for navigating through the colourful WebOS interface.

LG has given its card-based Smart TV UI a minor overhaul for 2015, but the most important tweaks are behind the scenes. The entire system starts up much faster than on last year’s model, letting you jump quickly into menus, change inputs and open catch-up or on-demand services. Some of last year’s smart TVs were basically inoperable for up to a minute after switching on, so we’re very pleased to see this speed increase.

Even better, you can jump out of online streaming to catch something on live TV, and then return to where you left off without having to re-load the entire app. WebOS is overflowing with content, too, making it the obvious choice for on-demand fans. Samsung’s Tizen TVs might have 4OD and ITV Player, but LG still has exclusive access to Sky’s Now TV catch-up service. This is on top of BBC iPlayer and Demand5 terrestrial catch-up, and Netflix and Amazon Instant Video on-demand. Both can stream in 4K as long as you have a 25Mbit/s or faster internet connection. Throw in Wuaki.tv and Blinkbox, and there shouldn’t ever be a moment when you have nothing to watch.

There are plenty of ways to get your own content onscreen, too, with DLNA support to let you browse audio and video from a server or to render content sent to the set, and Intel WiDi screen streaming from a compatible device – all three worked flawlessly during our testing. One of the HDMI inputs supports MHL for directly connecting a smartphone or tablet, and one of the three USB ports uses the faster USB3 standard to help with uninterrupted playback of 4K content. The second HDMI port is version 2.0, meaning it can accept a super-smooth 4K 60p source as soon as such devices and content arrive, meaning you won’t need to upgrade again any time soon.

Picture quality

Like the rest of LG’s 4K TV line-up, if you can feed the 60UF850V a 4K video source the level of detail on display is simply stunning. It’s possible to make out the logos on the tiny bank of microphones in front of Kevin Spacey during a press conference in House of Cards on Netflix, and Better Call Saul looks even grittier than it does in Full HD.

1080p content is of course a lot easier to come by, and thankfully the 60UF850V does a great job upscaling to 3,480×2,160, with few visible digital artifacts. Standard-definition content was another story, as low-bitrate Freeview channels such as Dave and BBC News looked fuzzy and pixelated. Noise reduction and MPEG noise reduction did little to improve matters.

We also used our colour calibrator to measure the TV’s out-of-the-box image quality. The 60UF850V wasn’t overly impressive in terms of raw numbers: the IPS panel was displaying just 92.8% of the sRGB colour gamut in the Standard picture mode. This is a little on the low side for a top-end TV, meaning you’ll have to make quite a few tweaks to get as close to a perfect picture as possible.

We saw much higher than average brightness levels, though, at 355.5cd/m2. Black levels take a hit as a result, with our calibrator measuring 0.4cd/m2. Most high-end TVs have black levels around 0.2cd/m2, so this was a little disappointing, but given the high brightness levels there’s plenty of room for adjustment to get the contrast you want.

Image settings

Digging into the settings menu, we changed the picture mode to Cinema, lowered the backlight, tweaked brightness and contrast, and switched the colour temperature to Neutral. We also switched off dynamic contrast and dynamic colour in the Advanced menu. It’s here where you can adjust the aggressiveness of LG’s Super Resolution upscaling, so you can dial it down to reduce display lag when playing fast-paced games.

Finally, the Expert Control menu is only available in Cinema and ISF picture modes, but gives you access to comprehensive (20-point) white balance options, and a full colour management system for really fine-tuning colour accuracy. Changes here can make a big impact to picture quality, but the settings are far from user friendly; if you don’t know what you’re doing it’s best to stick with the basic colour slider in the main Picture menu.

After making our changes, Blu-ray films looked vibrant and full of detail. We measured a respectable 876:1 contrast ratio, which was reflected in the clarity of darker night scenes of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Camera pans were free from judder with LG’s TruMotion frame interpolation set to Clear, adding extra artificial frames to the picture to help it look smoother. The Smooth option looked a little unnatural, and enabling Clear Plus significantly dimmed the backlight, but a User option lets you get the best of both settings.

With the 60UF850V set to Game mode, our Leo Bodnar lag tester measured an impressively low reading of 48ms. While this isn’t the fastest we’ve seen from a TV, it’s perfectly suitable for console gaming without any noticeable input delay. The two pairs of passive 3D glasses included in the box can be used for splitscreen multiplayer games as well as 3D Blu-rays, letting both players see their half of the game across the whole panel.

Conclusion

The UF850V is undoubtedly a full-featured TV, with all the content, connectivity and features you would expect from a flagship set. 4K still carries a price premium over 1080p, but the incredibly sharp picture and delightfully easy-to-use WebOS interface make it as much a joy to use as to watch. Out-of-the-box image quality might not be class-leading either, but it only takes a little tweaking to get an excellent picture. If you’re after a TV that can become the focal point of your living room, the 60UF850V is a brilliant choice, but Panasonic’s VIERA TX-55AX902B is a worthy alternative if you particularly value deep blacks and accurate colours.

Buy Now: LG UF850V

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