Note: This article was first published on 26th August 2017.
A cut above the rest
I’ve said it way back in January, and I’ll it again: 2017 is a fantastic year for OLED TV fans. That’s because we’ve not one, not two, but three TV manufacturers - LG, Panasonic, and Sony - peddling their OLED wares this year.
Not surprisingly, the company that came with OLED guns a-blazing is LG, with no less than eight models spread across four series. While I’m taking a closer look at the two flagship models here, the Signature W7T and G7T, if we’re just ticking checkboxes, you’ll notice that LG’s 2017 4K OLED TVs share many features in the video and audio departments. So here's a quick recap:
- Brighter, more colorful than the 2016 models - According to LG, peak luminance for its 2017 OLED TVs tops out somewhere between 900 to 1,000 nits, which is great news if you’re into HDR (high dynamic range). Overall, the new TVs are about 25% brighter than their 2016 siblings.
For color gamut, LG says the new OLED TVs have no problems hitting 99% DCI-P3 coverage. Along with similar panel tweaks and processing applied across the board, in theory, you can expect similar picture quality across all models.
- Four HDR formats - All of LG’s 2017 OLED TVs support four HDR formats: the open HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) out of the box, and Advanced HDR by Technicolor with a firmware update coming later this year. Now, HLG is designed to easily enable live HDR broadcasts, but such broadcasts aren’t expected anytime soon. So until then, this is more of a future-proofing feature. The same can be said for Advanced HDR, a format based on Technicolor’s HDR distribution system.
There’s also something new called Active HDR, which is LG’s own dynamic metadata generating and processing tech, and tied to the Dynamic Contrast setting. In theory, this in-TV scene-by-scene processing will improve HDR10 and HLG’s HDR quality further.
- Dolby Atmos - Another major addition to LG's OLED TVs this year is support for Dolby Atmos object-based surround sound. The TVs also support Atmos-enabled Dolby Digital Plus streams over the HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) connection, which means you can pass DD+/Atmos soundtracks from TV apps (e.g., Netflix, VUDU) to an Atmos-enabled AVR (audio/video receiver) over HDMI ARC.
- No curved models, no 3D - LG’s 2017 OLED TV lineup has no curved models. While last year’s C6T is a curved TV, this year’s C7T is flat. Also, none of the new TVs support 3D.
When you see this logo at the top right corner during playback, congrats, you're watching Dolby Vision content and listening to Dolby Atmos audio.
Signature W7T vs. G7T
If the TVs aren't so different from one another, why are there so many series then? Well, if you’ve been paying attention, their similarities mostly center around picture quality and HDR support. Which leaves plenty of room for LG to differentiate via the finer and touchy-feely aspects, such as design, material, and screen size. The Signature series, which talks a lot about bringing a sense of “exclusivity” and “state-of-the-art living experience” through design and “eliminating unnecessary elements”, is a prime example.
To W7T or to G7T, that's the LG Signature OLED TV question.
Between the two Signature OLED TVs, the W7T is a two-piece system that relies on a separate upward-firing sound bar for audio. On the other hand, the G7T’s foldable sound bar is still integrated at the bottom of the set. Really, unless you get up close to look at the labels or check the system menus, it’s hard to tell the 2017 G7T and 2016 G6T apart.
The W7T’s standalone sound bar is also made for another reason, and that’s to allow the creation of an OLED TV that’s even thinner than the G7T. Indeed, with the 'offending' speakers, processor, input/output jacks, and power supply out of the way, the W7T’s OLED panel measures a mere 2.57mm thin.
To have such a thin TV propped up by two feet on a tabletop is a waste. As such, the W7T can only be wall-mounted, and it comes with a proprietary magnetic wall-mount bracket. When done properly, the end result is a TV that sticks no more than 4mm from the wall.
In short, LG made the W7T to one-up its own G7T. The flagship of flagships, if you will.
Finally, if I had any misgivings with the W7T’s aggressive design, it’d be the flat but broad ribbon cable that comes out from the back of the TV and which you’ve to connect to the back of the sound bar. For one, this cable is quite stiff, so you’ve to take care when handling it. And while you can paste it on the wall and paint over it, the best look is achieved if you can hide it behind a feature wall or bury it right into the concrete wall. That last bit is tricky: since the cable carries power, you can’t just drill a path, shove it in, and plaster over it. It’s highly recommended that you hire a contractor to do a proper in-wall installation that adheres to local building and electrical standards.
The W7T protrudes only about 4mm when wall-mounted.
There are two upward-firing speakers on the W7T's sound bar (one on each end) to better assist in Atmos surround sound reproduction. Check out how the speakers get stowed away within the sound bar body after powering down the TV in the below video.
Here are the ports behind the heavy, do-it-all W7T sound bar. LG didn't exactly say, but since the TV supports HLG HDR, the HDMI ports should adhere to the 2.0b standard.
As the W7T strives for the screen-on-wall look, the G7T continues with its screen-on-glass look.
Powered by WebOS 3.5, controlled by Magic Remote
All 2017 LG OLED TVs run the WebOS 3.5 smart TV platform. With a faster SoC, the TVs are quicker to turn on and have all the horsepower needed to handle the various HDR formats and processing smoothly.
Everything I liked about WebOS in its previous forms are still there, of course, including the horizontal scrolling bar that lets you quickly get to your favorite apps and inputs. The usual fare of modern smart TV features, such as web browsing, smartphone control with a remote app, media playback from a USB stick or beaming your phone’s content onto the big screen, and surfacing related content based on what you’re watching currently, are all present. If you so desire, you can also fire up the OLED Gallery app to turn the TV into a giant photo frame. The effect is actually quite convincing, especially for an ultra-thin W7T that’s “pasted” on the wall. Last but not least, Magic Zoom, which allows you to enlarge objects on the screen, now gains a recording function.
This year’s Magic Remote gets a few extras too, key of which are the dedicated Netflix and Amazon Prime Video buttons. You can also program a few of the buttons to act as shortcuts for other apps (e.g., YouTube), use the remote’s built-in microphone to optimize the TV’s sound, and explore a 360-degree video using the remote’s arrow keys.
WebOS is arguably the most approachable smart TV platform at the moment.
If you chose to, the OLED TVs can double as a giant photo frame.
To make you feel like you're getting your money's worth, the Signature models' Magic Remote (which is nearly identical to the one for the E7T) has an additional LG Signature logo printed at the bottom. Little touches, people.
Key TV settings
Since I tested the OLED TVs in a dark room, I mostly alternated between the Cinema and ISF Expert (Dark Room) picture modes. The TVs didn't throw up the ISF presets when they detected HDR/Dolby Vision signals, but thankfully, I found Cinema mode to also work well for HDR. (There's a separate Cinema Home mode that you can try if you prefer a brighter HDR picture.) For what it’s worth, when I turned on all the lights and raised the blinds to simulate daytime viewing, I had to crank up the OLED Light setting from 30 to about 50 to overcome the stronger ambient light.
Additionally, when watching regular SDR content, there's an HDR Effect mode that you can use to generate a more HDR-like image. Frankly, I’m not a fan of this mode because I found the color saturation boost to be overzealous at times.
I kept OLED Light level at 30 for most of my non-HDR viewing on the W7T and 33 on the G7T. For HDR, I left it at 100 on both.
Perhaps it’s just luck or LG has upped up its quality control game, but my W7T and G7T review sets didn't require drastic calibrations out of the box. I was glad to find both 20-point and 2-point white balance controls (even in HDR mode), but minor tweaks in the latter were all I did to get an accurate grayscale. I barely touched the color management system’s controls either; in fact, when I first tried to remedy the very slightly underpowered green on the W7T, I ended up with a worse picture with unnecessary artifacts. The Color Gamut setting should also be left at its Auto setting as the TVs are able to automatically adjust their color tracking based on the input signal.
Out of habit, I also hunted down various picture enhancement settings to turn them off. In LG TV’s case, these are things like Sharpness, Dynamic Contrast, Super Resolution, Edge Enhancer, Color Filter, Noise Reduction, MPEG Noise Reduction, and Motion Eye Care. While I typically do this to get an image that’s as unadulterated as possible, I won’t call it a must-do because different people have different preferences. If you did the same and found that you dislike the softer or more grainy look, try reverting to the original sharpness and noise reduction settings and adjust to taste from there.
In short: stick to Cinema mode for both SDR and HDR viewing and Game mode for gaming.
Play with the TruMotion controls if you noticed any motion-related problems when watching 24p content. You can try 0 for both settings.
Ultra HD Deep Color should automatically kick in when HDR sources (e.g., HDR UHD Blu-ray players) are detected. If you want to play it safe, come to this page to confirm.
Turn on PC mode if you want to do 4:4:4 chroma.
You can fix (improve?) image retention issues yourself.
Performance
For 4K testing, I used various clips I’ve amassed through time, played from either a custom PC or a USB drive connected to the soundbar’s USB port. Samsung’s UBD-K8500 was the player used for UHD and HDR Blu-ray movies, which included the The Lego Movie, The Revenant, and Life of Pi. I also spent some time with 1080p Blu-ray movies, such as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Casino Royale, mainly to observe the upscaling performance (spoiler: it’s great). Naturally, to test out Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, I did quite a bit of Netflix and chill. Finally, a bit of time was reserved for some console gaming and input lag testing to find out how viable it is to use the TVs as gaming displays.
Picture quality
Well, what can I say? Overall, the LG W7T’s and G7’s picture quality is excellent. Since they use OLED technology and not LCD with a backlight system, there’s no local dimming issues (like halos following moving bright objects or blooming into darker portions of the picture) that even the best LED-LCD TVs have problems dealing with. The inky blacks and high contrast are what made OLED TVs so desirable, and the W7T and G7T are no different. Visually, the W7T is the more striking of the two: in a dark room, the TV simply melts into the wall like no other TV I’ve used. After a few episodes of Game of Thrones, even my most TV-disinterested colleagues gave their thumbs-up.
While the W7T and G7T never got as bright (at best: 700 nits) as the Samsung Q9 QLED TV, I never found them to look dim for the stuff that I watched, be it regular SDR or HDR content. Yes, technically, specular highlights in HDR content can go brighter and look more realistic on LCD TVs with a high peak luminance (e.g., Samsung Q9, Sony Bravia Z9D); but realistically, such fleeting differences in a moving picture are unlikely to be noticed by most people. Again, people are more likely to be enamoured by the OLED TVs’ deep blacks and infinite contrast because these apply to all content and are more immediately obvious.
The OLED TVs are capable of a bright picture with rich colors and boatloads of details. (Scene from: Breathtaking Colors of Nature in 4K - Birds & Flowers by BaLu - Relaxing Nature.)
Thanks of OLED’s self-emitting nature, I didn't get washed out blacks or brightness dips when viewing the OLED TVs at an angle. Blacks also remained… erm… black in a bright room, and I didn't have to deal with any glare or reflections. In sum, either of two OLED TVs will make for a great family TV.
The OLED TVs’ handling of wide color gamuts is also excellent, with DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 coverage coming in at about 98% and 70% respectively. (We've covered more about color spaces in this article for further info.) In short, if you’re an HDR fan, you can expect deeper and richer colors, especially for the greens and blues. To be clear though, in a couple of very bright test scenes, some colors didn't look as vivid or bright as the Samsung Q9, but that never posed any problem during regular use. A couple of dark scenes also exposed slight color banding on the G7T, but it was so minor that I won’t consider it a deal breaker.
I'm not exactly a fan of Life of Pi the movie, but I can't deny it looks great in HDR on the LG OLED TVs. (Scene from: Life of Pi.)
Like last year’s G6T, when I disabled TruMotion (which governs motion interpolation), motion sharpness took a hit. That improved considerably when TruMotion was turned on, but that also caused 24fps material to look smooth (i.e., soap opera effect). Eventually, I used the User preset and left the De-Judder and De-Blur controls at 0 and 6 respectively. Your sensitivity to motion artifacts and judder is likely to be different from mine, so adjust these settings to taste. The Real Cinema setting buried in the Picture Options should also be left on when watching 24p content.
Crushed blacks seem less of a problem this time round. I kept my gamma at 2.2, by the way. (Scene from: Exodus: Gods and Kings.)
The OLED TVs are capable of true blacks. If you've the means to dim your room, you should.
Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos performance, and some notes regarding audio
At this point, it’s worth reminding that the OLED TVs support Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos video and audio formats. I sat through the whole of Okja, an action-adventure movie from Netflix, and came away hugely impressed by the great array of tones whenever the titular super-pig roamed its bright and beautiful forest world. The 3D sound field enabled by Atmos pushed the immersive scale up a notch, too, but it’s still no match for a proper Atmos setup with separate speakers. The W7T did sound better to me than the G7T because of the former’s two upward-firing speakers, but only just.
Okja is the first movie on Netflix to support Dolby Atmos. More titles such as Blame!, Death Note, Bright, and Wheelman are promised the Atmos treatment.
Now, I get that some advanced users may poo-poo the idea of integrated sound bars and prefer to use AV receivers or sound bars of their own choosing. All I can say is that while LG’s 2017 OLED TVs support Dolby Digital Plus (with Atmos) over an HDMI ARC connection, the bigger problem is in finding sound bars that support Dolby Digital Plus passthrough or AV receivers that do Dolby Vision passthrough. Put simply, using the LG TVs’ own streaming apps and integrated sound bar is still the surest way to get both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. And lest I forget, Dolby Atmos playback over Dolby TrueHD through Blu-ray (e.g., titles like Transformers: Age of Extinction) isn't supported on any of LG’s 2017 OLED TVs at the moment, but the company did say this will arrive via a software update.
Atmos performance from the Signature OLED TVs could be better, but that's mainly due to the limitations of a sound bar setup. Still, kudos to LG for offering both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos in a single package. (Scene from: Okja.)
A very decent gaming display
Finally, the OLED TVs are as good a gaming display as the Samsung Q9, with input lag at about 22ms using the Game picture mode. Alternatively, if you want to force 4:4:4 chroma (even in HDR) because you’ve a powerful enough gaming PC, you can engage PC mode by going into the inputs menu and changing the input label of the corresponding HDMI input to PC. I’m a fan of this trick because this means I’m free to use my preferred picture modes rather than having to stick to the Game mode and still get a low input lag.
Conclusion
The list of things going for the LG Signature W7T and G7T OLED TVs is largely similar to last year’s G6T: perfect black levels, accurate colors, wide viewing angles, great HDR support, and low input lag. In fact, LG has managed to better some of these areas this year. For one, the TVs can now go brighter. Throw in an improved color accuracy and responsiveness, these are two exceptional TVs for watching both SDR and HDR content and playing games on.
Speaking of HDR, the OLED TVs support HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) HDR formats out of the box, with another Advanced HDR format by Technicolor coming via a future firmware update. While HDR10 and Dolby Vision are the two HDR formats that really matter right now, from a future-proofing standpoint, it’s great to know that TVs can accommodate so many HDR flavors.
That said, the Sony Bravia A1 OLED TV also supports HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG. So to up its game, the LG OLED TVs now support Dolby Atmos object-based surround sound. If your main source of 4K and HDR content is Netflix, then this bonus may have you lean towards LG’s offerings. My only complaint is the ARC (Audio Return Channel) implementation. Ideally, I’d want the TVs to do full Dolby Atmos over ARC instead of a lossy Dolby Digital Plus-based Atmos stream, but that would probably mean the TVs need to support HDMI 2.1 and eARC, which aren't out yet. This is more likely to happen in LG’s 2018 OLED TVs, which is another way of saying that I’m not optimistic this could be achieved with this year’s hardware.
W7T or G7T?
The answer to whether you should go for the G7T or W7T is actually quite simple. With the same picture quality, your decision should solely be based on the TVs’ design and how fat your wallet is.
In case I wasn't clear enough earlier, the W7T’s stunning screen-on-wall look comes with some inconveniences, mostly pre-purchase. For example, you need to find a wide enough wall to mount it and a sturdy platform to put the heavy and long sound bar on, as well as explore ways to hide the rather flat but conspicuous cable that connects the two pieces. Know too that if the screen or sound bar requires any repair works, there’s a good chance that both pieces have to be sent back to LG. According to LG, to prevent placement-related hiccups, it'd send a team to your home to survey the site after you placed an order but before delivery.
The pragmatic choice
Ultimately, regular folks like us can’t afford an S$10,888 or S$12,888 TV. On paper, since LG is using similar tech throughout its 2017 OLED TV lineup, there’s a good chance that you’ll get a largely similar image performance if you opt for a model further down the range. You’re mostly giving up on things like design and build quality here, which are nice to have but not exactly critical.
If that’s the route you’re taking, here’s the spec sheet comparing the different models:
