LG UA75006LA (IPS) vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

It looks even more modest in the version with an IPS panel, where the peak brightness only reaches 250 nits. In practice, this means that a real sense of HDR effect is out of the question, and the materials being viewed resemble regular SDR. Similar to VA panels, the image behaves stably across most test patterns, but in demanding scenes with fine details, the television tends to slightly dim the picture. As a result, blacks appear a bit better, but at the cost of losing detail in bright elements. The absence of additional colour filters is also noticeable here. The UA7500 in the IPS version is neither a QLED nor a PFS LED panel, and the DCI-P3 colour gamut stops at 80%, which means that HDR films lack significant colour depth and appear quite flat.

The Bravia 3 II isn't exactly a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached around 450 nits, so it's well short of the brightest models on the market. That doesn't mean HDR is just a paper feature here. Compared with standard SDR material, the brightest parts of the image can already punch through noticeably, and highlights, light sources and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. You can see this best in simpler shots where the screen contains lots of bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a taste of a higher-dynamic-range picture. The problem only starts with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is needed. There the TV quickly shows its limits and instead of bold, spectacular HDR we’re left with a merely competent picture.

Colours

The Bravia 3 II uses a QLED panel, although technically it doesn't employ a traditional quantum-dot layer. Instead Sony has used a PFS phosphor-based solution, which performs a very similar role: it allows for more saturated reds and greens, and thus reproduces a much wider colour gamut. In our measurements coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut was about 94%, and of the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. Those are good results for this class of hardware, which means the Bravia 3 II has no problem showing suitably saturated colours in HDR material. Colours don't look washed out, and the more intense hues can look really attractive.

The Filmmaker mode on the LG UA7500 performs better than you might expect from such a budget television, but let’s not get carried away with admiration. The picture is put together quite sensibly and at first glance is not irritating; however, its weaknesses quickly become apparent. This is most noticeable in scenes with bright points – lamps in the background or reflections of light on skin are clearly oversaturated. The faces of characters often appear unnatural, as if they have been "blown out." Additionally, the default gamma setting brightens even the slightest details and causes the picture to lose subtlety in the darker areas. That said, for its price range, the UA7500 in factory mode provides a pretty decent starting point. However, it is clear that without additional adjustment, these issues won't be avoided, which is why – as with other televisions – we decided to see what could be achieved after calibration.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. The white balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases a bit of blue and red drops away, so whites can sometimes appear a touch warmer with a faint greenish tint. These aren't mistakes that immediately jump out when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setup can be considered quite good. The situation in HDR is similar. Here too there's a slight lack of blue, so the picture is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference isn't large enough to be distracting during normal viewing.

The biggest improvement we noticed was when calibrating the mode intended for everyday SDR content. We managed to smoothly adjust the white balance in an acceptable manner and tame the issue of excessive brightening of small elements due to the gamma characteristics. As a result, the image gained consistency and a naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. After such a correction, we can confidently say that for everyday television content, programmes, or materials from YouTube, the LG UA7500 performs really well – especially after professional calibration. The situation is somewhat different for HDR content. Here, calibration did manage to tame the white balance and slightly improve brightness management, however, the design limitations are immediately apparent. The lack of additional filters that expand the colour palette means that the most vibrant colours appear flat, and the image lacks the intensity one would expect from good HDR. In SDR, the UA7500 performs quite well, but in HDR – despite the corrections – it remains far behind, and this is a characteristic that one must accept when choosing this television.

After calibration you can get a lot out of SDR material. The white balance was set almost perfectly, gamma practically matches the reference value, and average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That’s already the level at which differences from the reference image are very hard to spot in practice. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that despite its place in Sony’s range it has quite a bit of potential for precise picture tuning. Improvement is also visible in HDR, although here you can’t avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. Once the colours are evened out it’s easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film material runs slightly below the reference value in places, meaning the Bravia 3 II gently darkens parts of the image. That isn’t ideal from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has an advantage. With no local dimming and average black levels this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps preserve a stronger sense of contrast. You could say Sony is partly masking the limitations of the panel this way, rather than trying at all costs to stick to the reference brightness.

The version with the IPS panel performed noticeably worse here. Image scaling was uneven – this was especially evident in lower quality materials, where edges became jagged and the image looked less detailed. At times, there was also a sense of slight blurriness, which took away sharpness and made the overall picture seem less refined than in the VA version. The tonal smoothing function turned out to be a rescue. On medium settings, it worked quite well – it did not ruin the image with excessive softening, while also smoothing out colours in such a way that everyday content gained consistency. The difference was particularly noticeable with TV programs or streaming materials of poorer compression quality, where the television with the function enabled presented itself much better. This is one of those additions that are worth keeping active, as they significantly improve the reception of everyday materials.

Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip, and you can see a few changes in the image processing. Starting with the basics: the upscaling itself is decent. The TV can sensibly upscale lower-resolution material and doesn't have a strong tendency to over‑emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality streaming material the picture therefore remains quite attractive.

We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its job is basically the same: to smooth out ugly tonal transitions and artifacts caused by heavy compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "Large" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many image elements at once, which causes film grain to disappear and object textures or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When there's more motion in a scene, the function's effect noticeably weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the image altogether. So for everyday viewing we wouldn't recommend using it at a high level. It can help on static shots, but the trade-off is often too much loss of detail.

LG UA7500 is a television with a 60 Hz panel, so it's hard to expect any excitement in this category. It's more of a screen intended for daily content or an evening movie session rather than for following fast-paced sports events or playing action games. It’s clear that the manufacturer designed this model specifically for that audience – and it performs well in that regard. We have the TruMotion function available, which is a motion smoother. It’s simple, has only one slider, but can make a noticeable difference. At the lower range, the image looks more raw and cinematic, while at higher values, the motion becomes smoother and more pleasurable to the eye.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120 Hz VA panel, a solution that by nature, despite the high refresh rate, doesn't always cope well with motion blur. Sony has, however, managed that issue very well here. Fast-moving objects remain sharp, and the characteristic motion trails and blur are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It's one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we've had the chance to test. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive flagship True RGB series, the Bravia 9 II.

LG UA7500 is a TV that can be confidently recommended to "casual" gamers. While it doesn’t feature a 120 Hz panel or HDMI 2.1 ports, making full use of the potential of modern consoles isn’t something we can expect. However, the manufacturer has included several additions that can enhance the gaming experience. Notably, there's the Game Bar – a very nicely designed panel that allows quick access to and changes of the most important settings. From this panel, we have access to the ALLM mode (automatic switching to game mode), as well as frame synchronization, or VRR. The range of VRR is limited – it works from 48 to 60 Hz – but the mere presence of this feature in such an affordable TV leaves a positive impression.

Additionally, it also supports HGiG, which is a HDR calibration mode for games. It sounds good, but from our testing experience, we know that for the UA7500 this option doesn’t make much sense. The TV doesn't perform well with HDR, so paradoxically, we achieved better results with this mode turned off. This is another signal that the UA7500 is more of a screen for occasional gamers who value simplicity and convenience rather than for those looking for the full experience from the latest consoles.

The Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been solved the way we’d like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the problems that has hung over this manufacturer’s TVs for years. You can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, including VRR and ALLM. There’s also a simple Game Bar that lets you check the key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game.

There are, however, two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That won’t be an issue for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC—for example to get higher frame rates in certain games—will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony doesn’t let you disable tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the TV keeps processing HDR even when you’d prefer to leave that task to the console. It’s easiest to spot during HDR setup—the checkerboard test pattern doesn’t disappear at the point where it should based on the TV’s actual capabilities. That doesn’t mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to set up a little differently and, rather than relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to about 450 nits. So the issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start configuring your console.