LG OLED G6 (G64LW, G66LS) vs TCL X11L

The LG G6 is currently one of the brightest OLEDs on the market. Its peak brightness reaches nearly 2500 nits and, best of all, this translates directly to real movie scenes. The TV flawlessly extracts details in the bright areas of the image. And this is regardless of whether we are talking about very small points in the form of stars in the sky or slightly larger elements on the screen. Naturally, with full-screen, uniformly white scenes, the brightness of the G6 drops due to the panel protection system (ABL). However, in real, varied movie shots, this value still hovers around an impressive 2000 nits, which can be considered a remarkable result. The coverage of the color palette also deserves praise. The new 2nd generation Tandem OLED panel has brought about only a cosmetic change, but still an improvement. The coverage of the DCI-P3 color space reaches nearly 99.5%, while the ultra-wide BT.2020 is around 84%. These are very good results, although it's important to remember one thing: at extremely high brightness levels, the volume of colors will be lower than in QD-OLED panels from Samsung Display due to the use of white sub-pixels (WOLED). However, in everyday content and most films, capturing this difference will be very difficult.

Such a large number of zones translated not only into deep, inky blacks but also into the panel’s brightness. The X11L is an extremely bright TV. Peak brightness can easily exceed 4000 nits, and with the special "Boost" mode enabled, under specific conditions that brightness can even hover around the marketing figures of 9000–10,000 nits. This is undoubtedly one of the brightest, if not the brightest, screens on the market. But how do those numbers translate to real-world movie measurements? The results are very good, though of course far from the marketing promises. Our measured brightness in actual movie scenes hovered around 2000–3000 nits. That’s an outstanding result, considering that the vast majority of content is produced to those brightness levels, including the rarer material mastered to 4000 nits. But it also shows that the numbers the manufacturer brags about don’t always translate directly to the video content available at home. The only "quirk" (if you can call it that) is that when very small, bright elements appear on the screen, their brightness drops below 2000 nits. The dimming algorithm does this deliberately to preserve deep blacks and minimize halo. This is entirely understandable and the effect remains very strong, but it also demonstrates that even with such powerful hardware, Mini-LED technology has its limits and does not always work without compromise. In HDR, brightness isn’t the only thing that matters; color saturation and color accuracy do as well. On the X11L these are very good thanks to the new Super QLED quantum dots (SQD). The addition of a newly applied filter delivered excellent coverage of the P3 color gamut and the ultra-wide BT.2020. Although it doesn’t reach the advertised 100% of BT.2020, values around 89–90% can be called excellent. Colors are not far off those of RGB Mini-LED panels. We can even say they’re more stable because they use a less demanding algorithm than the one RGB screens often have to deal with.

We tested the LG G6 in the best factory mode for colour fidelity, which is FILMMAKER MODE. In the case of our test unit, this mode was reasonably well tuned straight out of the box. In SDR content, the only issue we noticed was the white balance, which leaned towards warmer tones. This made the image occasionally appear slightly yellowish, but overall, it wasn't a significant problem. The G6 performed a bit worse in HDR content. There, the white balance showed too much blue component. This caused the image to veer towards cooler shades, resulting in quite noticeable errors. As can be seen on our ColorChecker chart, the colours shifted towards these cooler registers. Nevertheless, considering the factory settings, the television presented a perfectly decent level. However, we know that OLED screens – particularly those from LG – respond exceptionally well to professional calibration, so we immediately proceeded to do just that.

When you switch on what should theoretically be the best Filmmaker Mode, you expect a one-to-one image of what the director saw. On the X11L it's quite good, but the mode has obvious flaws that our measurements immediately exposed. Let's start with SDR. Both the white balance and the gamma are simply miscalibrated. The white point has too much blue and red, so there's a faint pink cast on the screen. That also affects the gamma, which instead of holding the cinematic 2.4 runs closer to 2.2. What does that mean? The whole picture ends up pushed and artificially brighter. The worst, though, is saved for last: the HDR measurements. Besides the slight white balance shift, the X11L fails on the luminance management curve, the so‑called EOTF. What we saw in the measurements immediately explains what we saw earlier in films. The image is unnaturally bright because the curve massively overshoots the reference. The TV just unapologetically lifts the dark parts of the picture to create a "wow" effect, completely ignoring the director's intent.

After completing a professional calibration, we gained complete control over the panel, and we managed to align all parameters to nearly zero. We were able to tune the white balance perfectly, which removed the factory's cool and warm tints from the screen. The effects are visibly clear in the ColorChecker test – the average colour reproduction errors dropped below the critical value of 1-2. And what does this mean? PERFECT colours, without any distortion! However, as a reviewer’s duty, we must point out how the LG G6 arbitrarily manipulates brightness, which is due to the EOTF curve's behavior. When we look at the standard synthetic graph, it might seem that the line is quite straight. However, the situation changes when we turn on the measurement filter, which shows how the television interprets brightness in actual, moving film scenes (EOTF in MOVIES). Then, it is clear as day that some of the smallest fragments on the screen are slightly overly brightened by the algorithm. Of course, for the average viewer, such a deviation will practically go unnoticed, but in the test of such an expensive screen, it’s worth noting – especially since we are talking about a model that has huge aspirations for the title of the best television of the year.

After professional calibration we chiefly managed to fully master the SDR signal. The X11L responded perfectly to our adjustments. We completely straightened the white balance, removed that pink tint and set gamma to a stable 2.4. After that treatment the picture finally became consistent with the director's vision, natural and free of artificial boosts. We were also able to make minimal tweaks for HDR, but the TV's biggest flaw remained unchanged. I'm talking, of course, about how the X11L handles its brightness and how much it overshoots the EOTF curve. Unfortunately, TCL provides practically no controls to adjust this parameter. Even during professional calibration the software does not allow you to rein in that curve, so the TV in HDR will always tend to brighten the image on its own.

No matter what one might say about the G6's issues with near-black signal, it must be fairly acknowledged that it handles heavily compressed material and lower resolution content extremely well. All unwanted, ugly tonal transitions are effectively reduced here by the "Smooth Gradation" feature. At the "Low" setting, the algorithm works flawlessly – effectively masking the artifacts resulting from strong compression without destroying the sharpness and details in the frame. Higher levels of this feature do further smooth the image, but they start to blur the real texture elements of the objects, so we recommend keeping this slider at a low level. As for the actual upscaling to 4K, the processor does an excellent job – edge sharpness and detail reconstruction are at the highest level, and in this respect, the G6 is on par with the global leaders.

As with the C8L we tested earlier, TCL has delivered a substantial upgrade in its flagship X series in this area. It's all down to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in this model. Thanks to it, features like smoothing tonal transitions and even upscaling content to higher resolutions finally look the way they should. The biggest Achilles' heel of previous TCL models has finally been overcome. The processor handles digital processing superbly, and in this respect the TV no longer falls short of flagship models from Korea or even the most polished ones from Japan.

The LG G6 is an OLED television, so in the category of motion fluidity, it traditionally deserves the highest marks. The TV supports very high refresh rates of up to 165 Hz in 4K resolution, but most importantly – there are absolutely no signs of blurring on the screen. The response time of the matrix is virtually instant, ensuring that dynamic images remain perfectly sharp.

Spec-wise the X11L can impress, supporting refresh rates up to 144 Hz at 4K, and in Full HD it can be pushed as high as 288 Hz. From a real-world perspective, though, we were most interested in how the screen handles 120 Hz — that's the limit of today's hardware, led by current-generation consoles. How does it perform in practice? Even though it's a VA panel, the screen doesn't exhibit heavy ghosting. With very fast-moving objects you can notice a slight trail, but it's subtle enough that you hardly notice it while gaming or watching sport. Also very helpful is the motion smoothing feature called "Wyrazistość ruchów", where you can adjust motion fluidity to your liking. You'll find the recommended settings in the photo.

The LG G6 is a true beast for gamers and one of the best-equipped TVs on the market in this regard. The manufacturer didn't compromise and equipped this model with four full HDMI 2.1 ports with a maximum bandwidth of 48 Gbps. This means that no matter which port you plug in your PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or powerful PC, you'll get the absolute maximum performance out of them.

The TV supports a full suite of gaming technologies: from VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), to AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and Nvidia G-Sync Compatible. Let's add to that a remarkably low, almost imperceptible input lag and an excellently functioning game panel (Game Optimizer), which allows you to constantly monitor signal parameters. Gaming on this screen, with the perfect black of OLED and powerful refresh rates, is pure pleasure.

For gamers the X11L is simply a superb screen. TCL has already trained us to expect that it packs practically every feature available on the market into its products, and it’s exactly the same with the flagship X series. Thanks to the new processor, the X11L gets four HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Naturally, HDMI 2.1 brings a set of very useful options, such as automatic low-latency mode (ALLM) and variable refresh rate (VRR) synchronisation, working across the full refresh range up to 288 Hz. All of these features can be conveniently controlled from the dedicated Game Bar. Interestingly, you can customise its appearance to your taste, with three ready-made themes directly referencing the Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles. And speaking of Xbox, Dolby Vision Gaming also runs without issue on the X11L.

When playing in the standard HDR10 format you should be aware of the screen’s specific brightness-curve tuning, which can cause problems during initial setup. Even though the TV supports HGiG, getting everything set correctly in the PlayStation or Xbox system menus can be tricky. The screen’s algorithms tend to artificially brighten the test checkerboard, so nailing the correct white-clip point by eye is genuinely difficult. For HDR10 to look correct, we suggest manually setting the console brightness in the console menu to around 2500–3000 nits.