LG 55 B4 vs Sony BRAVIA 7 II

The brightness results in HDR materials for LG B4 are very good. It is true that none of them exceed 1000 nits, although the stability of luminance is excellent and looks practically the same in every scenario. The only moment where the tested television performs worse is the last of the scenes, although this should not be surprising. Large frames filled with a lot of white have always been, and probably will continue to be, somewhat of a weakness for OLED televisions. However, the combination of perfect contrast, black levels, and brightness of LG B4 allows for a full experience of the HDR effect. Additionally, the incredibly high coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut deserves recognition, reaching 99%. This makes the colours look incredibly vivid and striking.

The Sony Bravia 7 II handles HDR very well and, above all, is simply a bright television. In the correct viewing mode, Professional, we measured around 2,000 nits of peak brightness, so the panel’s capabilities are truly significant. Of course, with Mini-LEDs a test pattern result is only part of the story, because a lot still depends on how the TV controls the backlight in real scenes. Here Sony’s algorithms perform very well. Depending on the scene, the brightness we measured in films ranged from roughly 1,100 to as much as 1,700 nits. That’s already a level at which HDR has proper punch and bright highlights can be genuinely impressive. It isn’t perfect in every situation, though. With small bright elements on a very dark background the Bravia 7 II clearly favours maintaining good blacks, which can cause their brightness to drop to around 500 nits. It still looks good, but you can see the TV does not always manage this without compromise.

Colours

The second thing that has a huge impact on HDR is, of course, colour. And this is precisely where True RGB technology was meant to bring one of the biggest changes. Looking at the panel’s capabilities alone, the Bravia 7 II performs very well. We measured about 98% DCI-P3 coverage and 88% BT.2020, so the potential to show strongly saturated colours is really large. In RGB TVs, however, the situation is a bit more complex. When we repeated the same measurements with a film background applied, palette coverage fell to around 92% DCI-P3 and 78% BT.2020. Those are still good figures, especially for an RGB Mini-LED TV, but they clearly show that the final result largely depends on how the algorithms control the three backlight colours. In most scenes the Bravia 7 II handles this well and colours retain high saturation. The biggest differences are visible in shades of blue, where samples begin to deviate more noticeably from reference values and coverage is weaker than for the other primary colours. True RGB therefore offers genuinely greater potential here, but, as with brightness, much depends on what is happening on screen.

The best factory mode prepared by the manufacturer is "Filmmaker," which is exactly what we used throughout the entire testing procedure. We must admit that the unit we received out of the box had quite good colour reproduction. The biggest problem in both SDR and HDR content turned out to be white balance. In the former, a strong red hue was evident, causing the displayed image to have a pronounced yellow tint, particularly noticeable on skin tones and whites. In higher quality materials, this colour was also accentuated, but due to a lack of blue, there were also signs of green visible. Apart from these issues, we also encountered problems with grayscale and the colours themselves.

To evaluate the factory colours we chose the Professional mode, because it performs best among the available settings. However, it is not perfect. In SDR the white balance drifts slightly towards magenta, making some scenes look a little warmer and less neutral than they should. A bigger problem is the gamma, which sits closer to 2.5 than to 2.4. This makes the image a bit too dark in places, particularly in the midtones. In HDR the situation is better. As brightness increases a little too much red appears, but this is not an issue that is highly noticeable during viewing. Overall the Professional mode is a good starting point, although you can get a bit more out of it after calibration.

LG B4 has been providing very advanced calibration tools in its televisions for years. We can even say that as the only manufacturer on the market, it allows for such deep intervention in image adjustment. It is thanks to these tools that we were able to calibrate the device so well. Evidence of this is the extremely low deltaE errors, which can be said to be at a reference level. Both SDR and HDR materials now look exactly as intended by the film director. It is no coincidence that televisions of this brand are most often used as preview screens for various graphic or post-production studios.

After calibration the Bravia 7 II can look decidedly better. Above all, we managed to set the white balance very well, both in SDR and HDR. Gamma can also be improved, which after correction runs very close to the reference value. And in fact, for most users these changes will have the greatest impact on the picture. There is, however, a limitation when it comes to the colours themselves. In the Bravia 7 II Sony does not provide access to a classic CMS that would allow us to correct individual hues separately. A lot is therefore left in the hands of the algorithms controlling the True RGB backlight. If the TV misrepresents a particular colour, we are not always able to do anything about it. In our measurements this is most visible in certain reds and blues, where errors can still be quite large. This does not, however, undermine the point of calibration itself. Correctly setting the white point and gamma strongly affects the whole picture, so even without the ability to precisely correct every colour the difference compared with the factory settings is noticeable.

In this paragraph, we will take another look at the function for smoothing tonal transitions, but we will also check how the television handles lower quality material. As we have managed to verify, the setting responsible for smooth gradation works quite efficiently, although it has its weaker moments. Just as the function works correctly in SDR content, it becomes rather useless in HDR content. Even at the lowest of the options, it blurs essential details, which is why we advise against using it.

The image scaling on LG B4 is rated rather moderately positively. Although there is no edge doubling, the image itself is naturally "soft." We can change this by adjusting the sharpness slider.

Scaling and digital processing are among the strongest points of the Bravia 7 II and one of the bigger reasons to choose Sony over the competition. The manufacturer has been handling digital image processing well for years, and it shows here too. First and foremost, the 'Smooth Gradation' function works very well and can smooth out weak tonal transitions in lower-quality material. The safest setting is Low, but we would comfortably recommend Medium as well. The effect is stronger then, yet the TV still treats details very gently. Some fine details may be slightly smoothed, but Sony does this much more subtly than many other brands. The upscaling itself also performs very well. Lower-resolution material is well upscaled to 4K, the image looks clean and retains a lot of detail. Of course the TV will not magically turn native HD material into true 4K, but what can be extracted from such a source is handled really well by the Bravia 7 II.

The maximum refresh rate that we can set on the LG B4 is 120 Hz. This is the absolute minimum for those requiring high image fluidity. The manufacturer has implemented a multi-step motion smoother called "TruMotion". It has been divided into two separate sliders adjusting the sharpness of moving images (De-Blur) and jitter (De-Judder). Both sliders can be set in the range from 0 to 10, with each degree affecting the level of fluidity, so everyone can find their golden mean.

The LG OLED B4 panel features an average response time of 0.1 ms (which directly results from our measurements), allowing for an incredibly clear image, unattainable for LCD televisions, whose response times can be as high as several milliseconds. This is clearly evident in the pictures from the "UFO Test", showing no trail following the object.

The Bravia 7 II uses a 120 Hz panel, so in terms of motion handling it delivers everything you would expect from a TV of this class. With sport or games at 120 fps, the picture is suitably smooth, and for films Sony provides an extensive motion interpolation system. You can therefore adjust the interpolation level separately and decide whether you want to preserve a more cinematic character to the motion or obtain noticeably smoother movement. The issue of motion blur itself is a little worse. The VA panel used is not among the fastest, and you can notice a slight trail behind moving objects, particularly on darker backgrounds. It is not at a level that greatly bothers during normal viewing, but last year’s Bravia 7 fared better in this respect and had a noticeably faster panel.

The LG B4 television is equipped with four fully-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports with a full bandwidth of 48Gbps. All features that are identical to this standard were activated without any issues, and throughout the entire testing process, they did not cause any problems. The combination of such extensive functionality and low input lag suggests that the tested television is truly made for gaming. This is not surprising, considering that the manufacturer has always placed great emphasis on this. Therefore, we can enjoy both the properly implemented HGIG mode and gaming in Dolby Vision with low latency. This pairing will certainly attract the attention of all passionate gamers for whom quality is paramount.

An additional standard in televisions from this Korean manufacturer is the implementation of GameBar, allowing for quick adjustment of settings "on the fly," without the need to exit the game. It also enables image adjustments for individuals with visual impairments, which is a very nice touch. Another important piece of information is that when VRR technology is enabled, we will not experience a drop in contrast. This is thanks to the construction of the panel and the lack of conventional backlighting. However, it is normal for shades of grey to flicker slightly; nevertheless, this is a characteristic feature of this function regardless of the manufacturer or television.

In summary: the LG B4, like all of the manufacturer’s OLEDs equipped with 120Hz panels and HDMI 2.1 ports, creates a harmonious whole with the console. In practice, this is a comprehensive television, and if we expect the highest possible efficiency in gaming, B4 will be the ideal choice.

Bravia 7 II has basically everything you’d expect today from a good console TV. It supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR from 48 to 120 Hz and ALLM, so when you start a game the TV automatically switches to a low-latency mode. It also has properly working HGiG, which means that after configuring HDR on the console the TV won’t try to brighten the image further on its own. You just need to remember to turn off tone mapping in the TV’s menu. Dolby Vision in game mode is also a plus, especially useful for Xbox owners. Sony adds its own Game Menu. From it you can quickly check key signal information, verify VRR operation or change gaming-related settings without digging through the whole TV menu. The only thing missing from the feature list is support for 1440p at 120 Hz.

Our biggest reservation is not really about the functions themselves, but about the connectors. The Bravia 7 II has four HDMI ports, but only two of them support full HDMI 2.1 at 48 Gbps. One of those is also an eARC port. So if you connect a soundbar or AV receiver to the TV via HDMI, in practice you’re left with only one full HDMI 2.1 for a console or PC. With a single console that’s no problem, but with a PS5, an Xbox and an audio setup it starts to get tight. And this is hard to excuse for Sony. In cheaper TVs two HDMI 2.1 ports can still be acceptable, but in a model of this class, especially in 2026, we would expect a full set of four such ports.