Our test unit LG G5 had some issues in the factory Filmmaker mode. While the picture might have seemed fine to most people, we knew this TV could do much more. This mode had a noticeable excess of blue tint in the white balance, resulting in a strongly cooled image – especially in HDR modes, where there was additionally a lack of red. The image appeared cold, and its sharpness was artificially boosted and unnatural. Another significant problem was the brightness characteristics. In SDR content, the situation wasn't the worst, aside from a slight dimming of the entire image. However, it fared much worse in HDR materials – due to improper brightness management, the smallest details could completely disappear from the image, while larger, bright elements looked overexposed and lacking in gradation. Fortunately, the G5 supports calibration using 3D LUT (a professional tool for colour calibration), so we decided to take advantage of its professional capabilities and see what it was really capable of. Because while it wasn't terrible even before calibration, the potential of this TV definitely deserved more.
When it comes to colours straight out of the box, the Sharp JP7 was tested in the Film mode, which traditionally offers the most cohesive image compared to the yellowed “Eco” mode or the glaring blue of the “Dynamic” mode. Although this is the best choice among the available settings, the results still fall short of ideal. The white balance clearly lacked red and blue components, causing many scenes to take on an unnatural, greenish hue. Another issue was the gamma – in full-screen scenes, the TV produced excessively bright images, completely robbing it of its cinematic character. All of this resulted in colour reproduction errors, especially in shades of grey, which exceeded the Delta E 10 value. To remind you: errors above 2-3 are already noticeable to the human eye, so here we are dealing with a significant distortion of reality.
In HDR mode, the situation is reversed, but not in a better way. Here, the white balance is dominated by blue, giving the image an unnatural, almost “store-like” sharpness, reminiscent of aggressive demonstration modes. Moreover, the measurements of the EOTF curve emphasise the store-like nature of the image. The graph clearly shows that the TV generates images that are significantly brighter than the standards predict, resulting in an artificially boosted and unrealistic final effect. The Sharp JP7 is evidently trying to appear stronger than it actually is, but it does so at the expense of fidelity to the original content.