LG UA75006LA (VA) vs Samsung S90H (WOLED)

LG UA7500 with a VA panel has brightness peaking around 350 nits, which, by today's standards, isn't very impressive. It's hard to talk about a true HDR experience here – most content looks more like classic SDR with a slight attempt to boost highlights. One advantage is that regardless of the test content, the effect remained relatively stable. However, we noticed that in very extreme scenes with a lot of fine details, the television can slightly dim the image in order to achieve better blacks, but this comes at the expense of the visibility of bright effects. On the downside, it should be noted that the UA7500 is not equipped with any additional technologies to expand the colours. It's neither a QLED panel nor PFS LED, which means the coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut is just 80%, making many HDR films look flat and failing to capture the full diversity of colours.

The Samsung S90H in the WOLED variant is still an exceptionally bright TV for its price bracket, although it is slightly dimmer compared with the QD-OLED version. That difference is not as pronounced as in last year’s F series, where gaps sometimes reached 500 nits. Here the parameters of both panels are very similar, with differences in peak brightness of only about 100–150 nits. In small-window measurements the S90H with the WOLED panel easily reaches close to 1,500 nits. That headroom lets it phenomenally convey the dynamics of HDR effects — blooms, light reflections and explosions have the right punch, exactly as intended by the studio creators. As with most OLED displays, when a very bright scene fills the entire screen, panel protection systems kick in and brightness naturally falls to around 700 nits. It’s worth stressing that this is still an excellent result on the market, often noticeably better than many Mini LED screens in the same segment.

Colour gamut coverage

The biggest difference between the two S90H variants lies in colour reproduction and saturation. This stems directly from the different construction of the WOLED panel, which uses an additional white subpixel. As a result, very high-brightness colours don’t achieve quite the same saturation, and the wide-colour volume is slightly more limited than with QD-OLED. That said, in everyday use these differences will be hard for most viewers to notice. Our measured DCI-P3 coverage on the WOLED panel reaches almost 99%, meaning that for the vast majority of real film scenes both variants will present an almost identical image. The real gap only appears in rarer, especially demanding productions that use the ultra-wide BT.2020 gamut. Because of the WOLED panel’s construction, coverage of that standard is roughly 15% lower compared with the S90HAT with a QD-OLED panel, so the brightest, heavily lit HDR colours may appear a touch less vivid.

The Filmmaker Mode on the LG UA7500 performs better than one might expect from such a budget TV, but let's not get carried away with the praise. The image is reasonably well put together and at first glance doesn't irritate, however, its weaknesses quickly start to emerge. This is most apparent in scenes with bright points – lamps in the background or reflections of light on the skin are clearly exaggerated. Faces of characters often look unnatural, as if they have been "burned out." Additionally, the default gamma setting brightens the smallest details and causes the image to lose subtlety in the darker areas. That said, for its price range, the UA7500 in factory mode offers a pretty decent starting point. However, it is clear that without additional adjustments, these issues cannot be avoided, which is why – similar to other TVs – we decided to check what could be achieved after calibration.

In Filmmaker mode, which we strongly recommend switching on straight out of the box, the S90H offers very good factory colour tuning. Colours are natural and faithful to the creators' intent, without the annoying oversaturation seen in more aggressive profiles. However, as is often the case without full calibration, there is unit-to-unit variation. In our test the white balance was a little deficient in the blue component, so the image leaned slightly towards warmer, yellowish tones. This was most noticeable in bright scenes, such as the snowy sequences from Star Wars. Additionally, the gamma curve was slightly low at around 2.2, which caused a small lift in shadow detail. In HDR mode the tuning was a bit better, showing only a slight undersaturation in the red region.

The biggest improvement we noticed was while calibrating the mode designed for daily SDR content. We managed to smooth out the white balance in an acceptable manner and tackle the issue of excessive brightening of small elements due to the gamma characteristic. As a result, the image gained the consistency and naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. After such correction, we can confidently state that for everyday TV content, programs, or materials from YouTube, the LG UA7500 performs really well – especially after professional calibration. The situation looks a bit different for HDR content. Here, calibration helped to tame the white balance and slightly improved brightness management, but the limitations of the design are immediately apparent. The lack of additional filters to expand the colour palette means that the most vivid colors appear flat, and the image lacks the intensity we would expect from good HDR. So, in SDR, the UA7500 performs quite well, but in HDR – despite corrections – it remains far behind, and this is a characteristic that one must accept when choosing this television.

After full calibration, you can safely say the S90H in the WOLED version looks almost perfect. In SDR mode colour errors fall to ultra-low levels and Delta E values very rarely exceed 2. That's a phenomenal result, so if perfectly faithful colour reproduction matters to you, it's definitely worth getting it calibrated. The calibrated HDR mode also performs very well, where the white balance was stabilised and previous deviations eliminated. After professional tuning it's really hard to fault anything, because the TV delivers an image with almost exemplary naturalness and three-dimensionality. The slightly lower score in this category compared with the QD-OLED variant is solely due to the saturation limitation in extremely bright scenes, while the tuning potential and colour fidelity are at the highest level.

LG UA7500 with a VA panel has shown itself in this category in a really good light. Image scaling from Full HD or even SD materials was surprisingly smooth. The picture looked smooth, edges were not overly jagged, and the television maintained a good amount of detail, ensuring that even older films did not lose their character. It particularly excelled with faces – there were no artificial contours or "mask" effects, which often occur in cheaper models. The way the television handled tonal transitions in lower quality materials is also noteworthy. Thanks to digital processing, colours did not bleed into one another, and gradients looked natural and smooth. There was no question of intrusive smoothing of the image or loss of cinematic grain. This makes the UA7500 great for everyday content – from free-to-air television, to sports matches, all the way to YouTube, where we often watch materials in various resolutions.

When it comes to banding reduction itself, Samsung has kept the same solutions known from last year’s models. The dedicated gradient-smoothing function works quite well and can effectively mask unwanted tonal transitions, which can be useful on a WOLED panel that’s somewhat more prone to banding. However, it’s important to remember it acts aggressively. This mechanism, aside from the artefacts themselves, can remove fine film grain and subtly soften detail. Ultimately it’s a trade-off, but if you want perfectly faithful image reproduction, it’s safer to leave this option off.

There’s also no breakthrough in scaling. The S90H uses the same NQ4 Gen3 processor as its predecessor, so upscaling quality was almost identical. The chip sharpens lower-resolution material very well, pulling a satisfying level of detail out of it. However, Samsung still hasn’t solved the old overscan problem. For some older recordings or archival footage the edges of the image can be slightly cropped. It’s a minor drawback, but it’s a shame the manufacturer still hasn’t fixed it.

LG UA7500 is a TV with a 60 Hz panel, so it’s hard to expect any raving reviews in this category. It’s more of a screen meant for everyday content or an evening movie session rather than for following dynamic sporting events or playing action games. It's evident that the manufacturer targeted this model precisely at this group of consumers – and in that regard, it performs adequately. We get the TruMotion function, which is a motion smoother. It’s simple, has only one slider, but it can make a noticeable difference. In the lower range, the image looks more raw and cinematic, while at higher values, the motion becomes smoother and more pleasant to the eye.

When it comes to motion handling the S90H is simply excellent. This year's panel offers its refresh rate boosted to 165 Hz, although in practice the benefit will mainly be for gamers connecting a powerful PC. For movies, TV series or sports broadcasts such a high refresh rate makes no difference and the picture looks exactly the same as at the standard 120 Hz. Regardless of the source, the OLED panel's lightning-fast response time does the job. Motion is clean, and the ghosting or smearing seen on LCDs simply doesn't occur here.

LG UA7500 is a TV that can be comfortably recommended to "Sunday" gamers. While it doesn't feature a 120 Hz panel or HDMI 2.1 ports, meaning it can't fully utilise the potential of modern consoles, the manufacturer has included a few extras that can enhance the gaming experience. The Game Bar deserves a special mention – a very nicely designed panel where you can quickly view and change the most important settings. From this interface, we have access to features like ALLM (Automatic Low Latency Mode) and frame synchronization, also known as VRR. The range of VRR is limited – working from 48 to 60 Hz – but the mere presence of this feature in such an affordable TV is impressive.

Additionally, it supports HGiG, which is a mode for HDR calibration for gaming. It sounds good, but from our testing experience, we know that for the UA7500, this option isn't very practical. The TV doesn't handle HDR very well, so ironically, we achieved better results with this mode turned off. This is another indication that the UA7500 is more of a screen for casual gamers who value simplicity and convenience, rather than for those seeking a full experience with the latest consoles.

Gamers should feel right at home with the S90H, because Samsung has left few reasons to complain in this area. The TV has four HDMI 2.1 ports, each supporting VRR, ALLM and high refresh rates. There's also the Game Bar, a handy menu that lets you quickly check key parameters and change settings without leaving the game. Importantly, Samsung has also improved HGiG. In last year's models it could cause issues when used with a console, but on the S90H it now works as it should. What really stands out against the competition is Game Motion Plus. It's a specialised motion-smoothing mode for games that works best with titles running at 30 or 60 frames per second. Motion becomes noticeably smoother and latency remains at a reasonable level. In our measurements it was under 50 ms, so gaming is still comfortable. That's important, because on many TVs enabling a similar smoothing feature causes such a big increase in input lag that controls become noticeably sluggish. Samsung has managed to find a good compromise here. There's still no Dolby Vision Gaming, but in practice Game Motion Plus may prove to be the more useful feature.