Haier K85F vs LG OLED C6 (WOLED)

Let’s now move on to one of the hottest topics in the world of televisions, which is the quality of HDR performance. In the case of the Haier K85F model, we unfortunately have to make it clear: if you’re looking for equipment to watch content in a wide dynamic range, you should steer clear of this model. The main issue is its very low peak brightness, which during our tests barely reached 250 nits. To give you a better idea of what that means – this level is fine for watching standard SDR content, but it’s absolutely insufficient to show any real benefits of HDR. The image simply doesn’t have the "power" to generate bright, striking highlights. All of our measurements and tests on specialised test patterns confirmed this. As if that wasn’t enough, the television also struggles with colour reproduction. In this budget build, there are no technologies that broaden the colour gamut, such as quantum dot layers (marketed as "QLED"). As a result, the coverage of the DCI-P3 colour space, which is crucial for HDR content, is only around 80%. In practice, this means that the image will not only be dark but also devoid of the vibrant, saturated colours that the director wanted to show us.

The HDR performance of the LG C6 is really very good. LG Display’s new WOLED panel has mainly brought a significant increase in brightness. In our unit we measured around 1500 nits and, importantly, the TV can show similar values in many normal movie scenes as well. That gives HDR real punch. Bright highlights, lamps and sunlight can be genuinely intense, and most HDR movies simply look very impressive. Of course it’s still an OLED, so brightness falls in scenes with a lot of white. The fifth scene from the movie The Meg illustrates this well, where the C6 reached around 600 to 700 nits. That’s still a very good result, but it also shows the new panel hasn’t shed all the limitations typical of OLEDs.

Colours

When it comes to colours, it’s also hard to raise major objections. The C6 covers about 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut and roughly 75% of BT.2020. In practice colours are very saturated and, importantly, stable regardless of the scene. That’s worth emphasising, because not every TV behaves the same in this respect. In some RGB Mini LED models colour saturation can depend more strongly on image brightness. A wider colour gamut today is mainly offered by QD-OLED TVs and new SQD models with a new generation of quantum dots. However, the C6 still performs very strongly here and is able to produce suitably saturated colours in most movie scenes.

Alright, how does the television handle colours straight out of the box, without any intervention from our side? The Haier K85F offers a whole range of picture modes, such as Dynamic or Eco, but for anyone wanting to watch films according to the creators' intentions, there's essentially only one that matters: Film mode. This is where we focused our tests, and unfortunately, its name has little to do with reality. The picture on factory settings is very far from what we could call cinematic fidelity and requires many adjustments. Let's start with the white balance, which has a clear deficiency of red colour. In practice, this means the entire image has a cool, bluish tint. Even worse is the issue of brightness management, that is, the gamma curves (for SDR) and EOTF (for HDR). Their graph resembles a true rollercoaster, which terribly impacts the viewing experience. This results in unnatural dimming of SDR content, causing details in the shadows to be lost, and in the case of HDR – an excessive brightening that further exacerbates the problem of clipping. Such a combination, which consists of too cool white combined with chaotic brightness and too much blue colour saturation, leads to enormous errors in colour reproduction. Our measurements on a specialist ColourChecker chart showed errors (Delta E) regularly reaching and exceeding values of 8-9. To put it simply: errors above the threshold of 3 are easily noticeable to the naked eye, so such a result means that the colours on the screen are simply heavily distorted.

Right out of the box the LG C6 is quite well set up, especially if you choose the Filmmaker mode. In SDR material the white balance is decent, although as brightness increases there is a slight lack of red. The image becomes a bit cooler, but not enough for it to be very noticeable during normal viewing. More is happening in the brightness characteristic. Gamma is a little low and instead of holding at 2.4, for a large part of the range it sits closer to 2.1–2.2. In practice the C6 slightly brightens midtones. Shadows are therefore more readable, but the image loses some depth compared with how it should look in a darkened room.

In HDR the situation is a bit more interesting. The start of the greyscale looks very good, but from about 20–30% brightness the white balance starts to drift increasingly. As brightness rises there is more red and a noticeable lack of blue. In the brightest sections the difference is already significant and also affects the reproduction of some colours. The EOTF curve itself is followed quite well through most of the range. The C6 only tends to slightly brighten the image, which we also saw in our film comparisons. The largest deviation appears around the brightest parts, where the TV starts adapting the signal to the panel's capabilities.

The factory Filmmaker setting in HDR is therefore not perfect, but overall performs well. The biggest area for improvement is the white balance, especially at high brightness.

No good, but can anything be done about this picture? Is professional calibration able to save the situation? The answer is both yes and no. It needs to be said clearly that there are certain things we cannot overcome. The limitations of the construction itself, namely a poor panel and its narrow colour coverage, mean that you can forget about a sensible HDR effect – we won't be pulling the wool over your eyes on that. The biggest beneficiary of our adjustments is undoubtedly the SDR mode, and it is for watching such content, after calibration, that this television starts to make sense. We managed to tame the white balance in our own way. Although the television only offers basic, 2-point adjustment (rather than precise, 20-point), it's not perfect, but we successfully eliminated that unpleasant, cold "chill" in the picture. Above all, though, we noted a huge improvement in brightness management. The gamma curve, which previously resembled a rollercoaster, looks like an almost perfectly straight line after calibration. This is a sign that the television can finally display an image without artificially dimming or brightening it. The conclusion is simple: even with such a cheap television, professional setting correction can achieve a great deal and extract the maximum potential from it.

LG TVs have long responded very well to calibration, and the C6 is no exception. After adjustments we managed to set the white balance practically perfectly, and most colour errors fell below 3, often down to around 2. In practice this means very accurate colour reproduction in both SDR and HDR. An interesting detail only appeared with the HDR brightness response. On a classic EOTF chart everything looks almost perfect and at first glance it would be hard to find fault. Only when we measured the TV’s behaviour using filters based on real film scenes did it become clear that the C6 has a slight tendency to artificially boost image brightness.

It’s not a huge difference and many viewers may even see it as a positive, because HDR looks a bit more striking as a result. From the point of view of fidelity to the source material, however, it’s not ideal — some scenes are simply a touch brighter than the filmmaker intended. Interestingly, this is rather unusual for LG. In previous generations the brand’s TVs typically held very closely to the reference picture curve after calibration. The C6 is still very close to the standard, but that subtle brightness 'boost' can indeed be noticed in films and TV series.

Let’s move on to digital processing and image scaling, specifically how the Haier K85F handles lower resolution signals, such as from regular television. Right off the bat, we encounter an incredibly annoying and completely incomprehensible issue – the overscan is enabled by default. This means the television artificially enlarges the image, cutting off its edges on every source, even 1080p. To see the full frame, you have to dig into the screen settings each time and manually switch the format to "stretch to 16:9." It's a minor detail, but devilishly frustrating. The scaling of content to 4K resolution can be described in one word: acceptable. And that's about it. The image processor doesn't strip detail from the image, nor does it generate jagged edges or other artifacts. It simply does its job, without any bells and whistles. It’s alright, but nothing more. The most significant and noticeable shortcoming in the digital processing section is, however, the absence of a tone transition smoothing feature. This is an algorithm that could significantly reduce the annoying banding effect we mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, the manufacturer did not foresee such a solution, condemning us to watch the imperfections of the panel and low-quality material in all their glory.

Here the LG C6 has taken a really big step forward. The TV uses the same processor found in the flagship G6, and in terms of image processing the two models are very close. That's a big plus, because in this area LG's processor this year performs excellently. The "Smooth Gradation" function works particularly well. With heavily compressed material it can effectively hide ugly tonal banding and artefacts that often appear, for example, in lower-quality streaming. It's best to leave it on the "Low" setting. Then the improvement is clear, and the TV doesn't yet start blurring fine detail. Higher levels smooth the image more aggressively, but can already remove some of the natural texture of objects on screen. Upscaling itself also performs very well. Lower-resolution content is properly sharpened, edges look clean, and the processor quite effectively reconstructs fine details. In that respect the C6 is really close to LG's best TVs and the differences compared with the G6 are small.

The panel in the K85F model operates at a native refresh rate of 60 Hz, which sets certain expectations for image smoothness right from the start. However, we must admit that we were very positively surprised when we found two separate motion control sliders in the settings menu: one labelled "Motion Blur Reduction" and the other "De-Judder." Such generosity in this price segment is an absolute rarity, as manufacturers usually offer at most one shared option. Unfortunately, our enthusiasm faded as quickly as it appeared. It soon became clear why Haier was so "generous" – the slider responsible for reducing motion blur is simply a decoy. Sliding it makes absolutely no visible difference on the screen, so only one of the two options works.

The LG C6 features a panel with a maximum refresh rate of 165 Hz, which is great news especially for gamers using a powerful PC. For movies, sport and consoles we’ll of course be limited to 120 Hz at most, but even then it’s hard to fault the motion clarity. As you’d expect from an OLED, the panel’s response time is near-instant. Moving objects therefore don’t leave the characteristic smearing you still see on LCD TVs. This is especially noticeable in sport and fast-paced games, where the picture remains very clean even during dynamic movement.

For movies and TV, LG has also included a motion smoothing system called TruMotion. In the user settings you’ll find two separate sliders. De-Judder is primarily for low-frame-rate material, namely movies and TV series at 24 fps. You can use it to slightly reduce the characteristic judder or increase it if you prefer a much smoother picture. De-Blur, on the other hand, is useful for higher-frame-rate content, mainly sports broadcasts and 50/60 fps TV.

Let’s move on to the features for gamers, although we must point out straight away that this is more of a proposal for the "occasional" ones. The manufacturer does boast in the specifications about having HDMI 2.1 ports, which looks impressive on paper, but in reality, it’s largely a marketing ploy. What good is a modern port when the heart of the television is a panel with a refresh rate of 60 Hz? It physically cannot display a signal at 120 frames per second, even at lower resolutions, which takes away HDMI 2.1’s key advantage. What a shame. (That’s why in our tests we note this as HDMI 2.0 ports). Another odd issue is the TV's response to an attempt to calibrate HDR from the console. Changes to brightness settings result in very unnatural image behaviour, which could suggest incorrect implementation of the HGiG standard. To be honest, one shouldn’t worry too much about this, as we have repeatedly mentioned, we simply do not recommend using any HDR content on this screen. However, to counterbalance the negatives, the Haier K85F does have two big and unexpected advantages. The first is the presence of ALLM, or automatic game mode, which switches the TV to low latency mode as soon as it detects a connected console. The second, even bigger surprise, is support for VRR, or variable refresh rate. While it operates within a very modest range of 48-60 Hz, its mere presence is commendable. Thanks to this, the image in games can “tear” less, which realistically improves the gaming experience.

LG has long focused heavily on gamers, and the C6 essentially lacks nothing important. The TV supports 4K at 120 Hz from consoles, and when connected to a PC it can even run at 165 Hz. On top of that there’s VRR from 40 to 165 Hz, ALLM and a properly functioning HGiG. Another big plus is support for Dolby Vision in games, so the Xbox Series X can use that format without giving up game mode. The package is rounded out by the Game Bar, which lets you quickly check key signal parameters and change settings without leaving your game. In terms of features alone, the C6 is one of those TVs it’s really hard to fault. Whether you play on PlayStation, Xbox or PC, practically everything you could expect from a modern gaming TV is available here.