While OLED TVs have seen price drops recently, they remain too expensive for most people, and limited in variety compared to LCD TVs. Which is why LG, who continues to invest heavily in OLED, still churns out new LED LCD TV series on a very frequent basis. Available in 65, 79, and 84-inch screen sizes, the UB9800 is LG's flagship 4K TV, and so naturally, it packs top-end specs and all the bells and whistles that the company can come out with, including an Ultra Clarity Index of 1,300, sound co-developed with Harman Kardon, a maximum 5.2-channel, 120W speaker system, a built-in 8-megapixel camera, support for 4K HEVC 60p decoding, and WebOs.
Now, the Ul refresh brought about by WebOs is obvious right from the get-go. From tuning the TV channels, connecting to your Wi-Fi network, to pairing with the LG Magic Remote, you're guided by an animated character named Bean Bird. All of a sudden, boring and technical configurations now seem fun and easy. And it goes deeper: there's also a new launcher, a left-to-right scrollable straight line menu that runs along the lower portion of the screen. The idea is to allow you to browse through service or content options without having to navigate away from the existing view, not to mention letting you watch a show, play a game, or browse the Internet while searching or downloading other content at the same time.
WebOs will also know when you plug in an external device and recognize what kind of device it is, and then pops up a menu with all the relevant options. And there's a Live Menu with channel and recording options that you can open and keep within easy reach while watching TV. The ability to resume playback (say, of a YouTube video) after you've switched inputs and come back to it is also delightful. All in all, even as a 1.0 release, we already like how WebOs has panned out on LG's TVs. We're excited to see how this year's WebOs 2.0-based TVs fare.
Design-wise, we're fans of LG's hardy 'stable screen', though not so much of the protruding stand that runs the wide of the panel. Connectivity-wise, you're pretty much covered by 4 HDMI ports (of which 3 support HDMI 2.0) and 3 USB ports. Along with support for Intel WiDi, Miracast, and MHL, you've got all the tools to get content on your mobile device onto the big screen at your disposal.
PERFORMANCE - LG UB9800
Decked with the best technologies that LG has to offer, the UB9800 mostly excellent image quality came as no surprise to us. The IPS panel went pretty bright in our tests, and that bodes well if you're the kind who enjoys plenty of sunlight in the living room. But be careful of positioning to avoid reflections.
With over 8 million pixels, the UB980T shone when fed with properly done 4K content. Case in point: the sharp footage and natural-looking colors of the dishes in the Food Odyssey 4K documentary that came in this 500GB hard drive that LG used to give to buyers of select 4K TV models couldn't be more lifelike. The Wolverine movie (also in the hard drive) also hardly put a foot wrong, and to quote our own notes, "the red strands of Yukio's hair were impeccably rendered".
With plenty of details, depth, and sharpness, 3D images also looked amazing on this passive 3D TV. If you love watching 3D content, the UB980T is the TV to get.Coupled with the 90W, 5.2-channel front speakers of our 79-inch test unit, we truly had a cinema-like experience.
| That said, the UB9800 wasn't without faults. Comparing out of the box performance, we found colors on the UB9800 a tad muted than those on the Samsung HU8550. This is largely due to the IPS panel LG uses, which although improves viewing angles, also makes colors 'pop' less than rival panels. That said, the TV offers plenty of image controls (including a 20-point white balance control), so advanced users can tweak to their heart's content. For the average user, the ISF Expert 1 mode is a good preset for critical viewing; and It gave us accurate colors from the get-go. Unfortunately, the dreaded backlight blooming was present across all LED Local Dimming settings, but we managed to lessen the effect by lowering the backlight intensity. Lastly, resolution in fast- moving scenes remained good with TruMotion engaged. Source : HWM Singapore magazine. |
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