4K TV Reviews

LG includes its wand-like "Magic Remote" for operating the TV using buttons or voice commands via Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, or the voice control system built into the remote. The remote has never been one of my favorites because it isn't backlit, making it too easy to hit the wrong button in the dark, though I've become accustomed to it over time. I'm also not a big fan of LG's WebOS Smart TV platform but it's serviceable and, like the remote, I've become used to it even if I've never grown to love it.

Setup
A variety of picture modes are available on the G2, including ISF Expert Bright, ISF Expert Dark, and Filmmaker, which I used for viewing standard dynamic range (SDR) and HDR10 content. The Filmmaker and ISF modes are not selectable for Dolby Vision sources, so I used the default Cinema Home: Dolby Vision Select for those.

Like its G1 predecessor, the G2 includes LG's TruMotion feature, which offers several settings through a sub-menu that's easy to miss (you have to scroll down to at the bottom of the Clarity menu to get to it). There you'll find settings for De-Judder and De-Blur, both individually adjustable, and Cinema Movement, which is said to reduce motion blur while minimizing the infamous Soap Opera Effect that makes 24fps film-based content look like video. I'm sensitive to the effect, which was still visible with Cinema Movement switched on, so I left TruMotion off for all of my calibrating and critical viewing. Filmmaker mode boots up with TruMotion turned off, but you'll need to turn it off manually in Dolby Vision.

All of the G2's Picture Modes offer 2-, 10-, and 22-point White Balance adjustments plus LG's Fine Tune color-management settings. Out of the box, the LG G2 measured so close to ideal that no active calibration was required for either SDR or HDR10. That was totally unexpected—a first for us, in fact—but I wouldn't assume that every sample will test as well. See Test Bench for more on this. The program material referenced below was on either standard Blu-ray or Ultra HD Blu-ray

HD/SDR Performance
I was never a big fan of Avatar (it's basically Dances with Wolves with a bit of FernGully: The Last Rainforest thrown in), but no one has ever said it's a visually boring film—it popped beautifully on the LG. The fun starts with a bright spaceship travelling against a dark a star field. Star fields have always been eye grabbers on OLEDs and this one was no different. The exceptional resolution of the G2 occasionally underscored the film's 2009 CGI origins, but never enough to be off-putting. The planet Pandora was brilliantly captured on the LG. The dark night scenes, in particular, were rich, deep, and clear, with brilliantly glowing foliage suggesting that Pandora was at its visual best after dark—apart from the occasional pack of snarling, toothy wolves. The LG never shortchanged any of this. (Why has this film never been released in 4K/HDR? I suspect we'll find out when the sequel comes out later this year).

One of my favorite films is Anonymous, a visit to the Tudor England that gave us Shakespeare. Visually, it's mostly a very dark film, heavily overlaid with the sepia tones common to period movies. It was a difficult film to optimize on the LG. I had to do a little post-calibration juggling with some of the G2's various Brightness adjustments to minimize crushed blacks. This included increasing the gamma setting to 2.2 from the usually recommended standard, BT.1886. I eventually arrived at settings that made the film's extensive shadow detail and many candlelit scenes believable.

Moving to A Knight's Tale, a very different medieval film, brought a major leap in video performance. A story of jousting matches and finding your way, the film makes no pretense to period accuracy but nonetheless is brilliantly photographed and in some ways superior to Avatar, which was saddled with having to mix live action with 2009 CGI (no matter how brilliantly it was done). I experienced gorgeous imagery from beginning to end without having to futz around with controls. The picture was bright, crisp, naturally colorful, and detailed throughout. And the colors were dead accurate, particularly green foliage and skin tones, where it's easy to spot errors.

UHD/HDR10 Performance
Blade Runner 2049 is a favorite for evaluations and was ideal for showing off the LG G2's capabilities. I'm normally averse to features such as the Auto Dynamic Contrast control in the G2's Advanced Settings > Brightness menu. But as with last year's G1, the HDR10 images on the G2 looked a little crushed at first, a problem I was able to correct by turning the Auto Dynamic Contrast to Low (and sometimes Medium, though the latter looked only marginally different than Low).

With that done, Blade Runner 2049 was a treat on the G2. The movie is full of bright highlights that really pop with the higher peak brightness the set offers over most earlier OLEDs, including my own, now vintage, LG E7. And as with OLEDs in general, the G2 continues to offer dark-scene detail and absolute blacks that no other affordable type of display can currently match. As officer K and Deckard face off in the showroom of a gone-to-seed Las Vegas hotel, the bright lights of holographic performers flash intermittently around them. And when K confronts a replicant in the latter's shack, I was able to follow the action even in the scene's near darkness.

But no disc I watched showed off the HDR capabilities of the G2 quite as strikingly as Encanto. Packed with vivid color and sparkling highlights, it would take a review far longer than this to describe how impressive this film looks when viewed on a display as accomplished as the G2. It can do justice to the bright highlights without compromising deep blacks and shadow details. The gloom of Bruno's "room" was dark and foreboding, while the sparkling gold of the casita's magic doors shone brilliantly.

Conclusion
As I commented in last year's review of LG's G1, it's getting harder to discriminate between today's flagship Ultra HD OLED TVs. But with the G2's increase in available brightness, particularly in HDR, OLED has reached another level. Yes, there will always be new advances. I had an uncle, back in the day, who put off buying a color TV "until they perfected it!" I'm not sure he ever bought one. There are competing technologies today that can exceed the G2's higher brightness, but not its black levels and off-center viewing. No display is perfect, but the LG G2 comes pretty darn close.