LG OLED B5 vs LG OLED B6

LG B5 is a moderately bright OLED TV. Regardless of the scene – it can generate about 500 nits of peak brightness. And interestingly, it does this even in full-screen shots flooded with white, where most OLEDs usually struggle. So, is this screen suitable for HDR films? Yes – absolutely, because such brightness really allows you to feel the magic of HDR effects. However, it’s worth noting that compared to last year's B4 model, the new B5 is darker – by about 100 nits. It may seem like a small amount, but at such average peak values, it makes a significant difference. Fortunately, the TV makes up for it with another strength – excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 and BT.2020 colour gamuts. This means HDR films look truly vibrant, lively, and impressive even in more demanding scenes.

LG B6 is a moderately bright OLED. After calibration it reaches around 800 nits, roughly 200 nits more than last year's B5. That's down to LG Display's new budget OLED SE panel. In practice this simply provides a bit more headroom and makes HDR look fuller in many scenes than on last year's lower-end OLEDs. That doesn't mean the B6 has no limitations. In very bright shots, when a large part of the screen is brightly lit, brightness can fall below 400 nits. This behaviour is typical of OLED TVs (especially in this segment), and it's then you see the biggest difference compared with pricier models. All the same, we rate the B6's results as really solid. It's still not a TV built to break brightness records, but the HDR effect is strong enough that films really feel like a step up from ordinary SDR picture.

Colour gamut

Using the OLED SE panel has had some impact on wide colour-gamut coverage. Compared with last year's model the figures have dropped by a few percentage points. DCI-P3 reaches about 96%, and BT.2020 around 71%. That doesn't mean the colours on the LG B6 are weak. In most films and TV series they look vivid, well saturated and simply pleasing to the eye. You only notice the difference in very bright, highly colourful scenes. Then colours lose some intensity compared with QD-OLED panels. This is due to the WOLED panel structure. In addition to the red, green and blue subpixels it also uses a white subpixel that helps boost brightness. This comes at a cost: at very high luminance some of the colour is effectively 'diluted' by the white light, so saturation of some hues can be slightly lower. Day-to-day it's not a big problem, but you can see it in the most demanding scenes.

B5 was tested in Filmmaker mode and… we’d love to see more TVs like this right out of the box. Seriously. The white balance is very well set – there’s practically nothing to nitpick. Well, if you really want to, you might notice a slight deficiency in blue, which can make the overall picture have a slightly yellowish tint. But that’s just our editorial nitpicking. Most of you probably won’t even notice. We also have minimal reservations about brightness management in HDR format. The EOTF curve – which is responsible for how the TV distributes brightness across the scene – sits just below ideal. In practice, it may happen that the darkest parts of the image appear too dark and simply… disappear. But these are details that only come out in measurements. Generally: we are impressed. But we also know that LG TVs respond very well to professional calibration. You can extract nearly reference-quality picture from them, so – although it’s already very good out of the factory – we took the liberty to go a step further and fine-tune everything to the max.

We tested the LG B6 in Filmmaker Mode, the best picture setting available straight out of the box. ISF modes give very similar results, but in our tests we always stick to Filmmaker Mode for better comparison with other TVs. Each of them is a far better starting point than Vivid or Eco, where the picture is heavily boosted and noticeably less natural. For SDR content the factory settings perform really well. Colour errors are small, gamma behaves correctly, and the picture looks natural during regular viewing and does not seem overly enhanced.

It's a bit worse with HDR. Once you start playing that kind of content it's quickly apparent the white balance isn't perfectly set. Too much blue and red makes the image take on a slightly pink tint. Colour gamut measurements and the ColorChecker confirm this, with samples clearly shifting in that direction. It's not a defect that completely ruins the picture, but you can notice it with HDR films. So anyone who wants the most faithful image should consider calibration, which we cover later in the review.

We have to admit that we didn't have much work with the LG B5. It's one of those TVs that look good right from the start, but after calibration… they can really impress. The white balance was nearly perfect – down to a level of errors invisible to the human eye, unless you're a professional colourist with a magnifying glass at the screen. We also managed to control the TV's tendency to slightly dim the darkest details, especially in HDR scenes. After proper tuning, everything looks cohesive: blacks remain deep but don't swallow information. Highlights maintain a natural sparkle, and colours are true to the director's vision. This is truly one of those models that show you don't have to spend a fortune to have an almost reference-quality image. If you can opt for professional calibration – it's definitely worth it for the B5.

During calibration we focused mainly on HDR material, because that’s where the factory settings needed the most correction. We didn’t neglect SDR, though. After tuning it was brought almost to perfection. Colours are very accurate and brightness is controlled as it should be. The biggest change in HDR came from improving the white balance. After removing excess red and blue the pinkish tint disappeared and the image became much more natural. Skin tones, whites and all colours that had previously leaned towards pink improved. After calibration most errors fell below Delta E 2-3, the threshold at which an average viewer stops noticing differences with the naked eye. So the LG B6 can produce a very accurate picture, especially for the manufacturer’s entry-level OLED model.

LG B5 really surprised us positively in terms of handling lower quality content. Thanks to the enhancement and smoothing features, HD or even SD materials come to life. Importantly – when this option is turned on at the "low" or "medium" level, we don’t get the impression that the image is artificially softened or overly smoothed. Details remain in place, film grain doesn’t disappear, and the edges of objects don’t look washed out 😉. It’s a really useful tool – especially if you’re watching free-to-air TV, archival materials, or content from YouTube in lower resolutions. The picture is clear, consistent, and simply pleasant to the eye.

Upgrading as such works very well – even low-quality content is reproduced with surprising fidelity. Unfortunately, it’s not without a minor hiccup. Although the menu has an option to turn off overscan, the television still has issues correctly displaying very low-resolution images. It’s a minor detail, but when watching older materials – it can be annoying.

LG B6 copes very well with lower-quality material. Much of that is down to effective digital image processing, which can mask some source imperfections without excessively smoothing the whole scene. The "Smooth Gradation" feature proves particularly useful. It lets you noticeably reduce posterization mentioned earlier, especially in dark parts of the image. The safest choice is to set it to Low or Medium. The feature still effectively smooths out harsh tonal transitions, but doesn't yet interfere too much with fine details. Die-hard purists can of course leave it off. Upscaling to 4K also performs very well. Full HD and 720p content retain a fair amount of detail, and the image is neither overly sharpened nor heavily blurred. Some limitations are only noticeable with very poor sources below 720p, where the smallest text and fine elements aren't always perfectly sharp, but this is true for almost every other TV on the market.

LG B5 is a TV with a 120 Hz OLED panel. It may not sound as impressive as the marketing terms "144 Hz" or "165 Hz" commonly found in gaming monitors, but honestly? The smoothness is still excellent. The picture is sharp, fluid, and simply enjoyable to watch – even when there’s a lot happening on screen. The organic panel does its job – the pixel response time is almost instantaneous, which means there’s no risk of ghosting or blurring that can ruin dynamic shots. Sports, fast-paced games – everything looks clear and distinct.

We also have the classic LG motion smoother, TruMotion. It allows you to smooth out movies shot at 24 frames – in other words, most of what you watch on Netflix or from Blu-ray discs. If you set lower values on the “De-Judder” slider, you’ll get a picture closer to the cinematic experience – with a slight judder, but without artificiality. Higher settings? Soap opera effect guaranteed. Fortunately, LG gives you the choice, and you can tune everything to your liking.

One of the biggest advantages of OLED panels is their very fast pixel response time. That keeps the picture sharp and prevents visible smearing that often appears on LCD TVs. It does have a downside, though. During slow camera pans motion can look a bit choppier than on LCD screens, where the slower panel naturally masks some of that effect. Fortunately, on the LG B6 this is easy to tame with TruMotion. With the motion smoothing set correctly you can get smoother motion without giving the picture an exaggerated soap-opera effect.

There are already a few TVs on the market with the "for gamers" label that don't really understand what that means. The LG B5 is not one of them. Everything here is spot on – there are four HDMI 2.1 ports, 120 Hz, there’s VRR and ALLM, and there’s also a Game Bar that's actually useful, not just looking good in the brochure. You plug in a console – it works. You set it to 4K at 120 Hz – it works. You have an Xbox and want to play in Dolby Vision – it works too. And it's not just "theoretically supports," it actually turns on, looks good, and you don't have to fiddle with settings for half an hour. Plus, there’s the HGiG picture mode, which LG has implemented correctly – meaning HDR in games doesn't turn the screen into a strobe light, but shows exactly what it should. There are no surprises, no strange limitations, no "buts." And you know what? That's how it should be. Cheers to the LG B5!

LG OLED B6 has plenty going for gamers; it's a complete base for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S or a solid PC. It comes with four full-size HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, so you can forget about annoying cable swapping when you want to connect several newer devices at once. We get a full package of sync technologies, from classic VRR to G-Sync and FreeSync. The panel effortlessly syncs its refresh rate to the frame pacing produced by your console or graphics card. Of course ALLM is present: the B6 automatically recognises when a game is running and immediately cuts latency to a minimum. HDR support is also excellent. The TV supports Dolby Vision, and a correctly implemented HGiG means that after an initial calibration in the console settings the picture won't suffer from blown-out whites or lost detail in bright areas. The icing on the cake is the Game Bar. Instead of digging through the full menu mid-game, a single click lets you correct shadow visibility, tweak chosen parameters or simply check the display's current mode. All of this makes the LG B6 a great choice for gamers.