LG OLED B5 vs TCL C7L

The LG B5 is a moderately bright OLED television. Regardless of the scene, it can generate around 500 nits of peak brightness. Interestingly, it achieves this even in full-screen shots saturated with white, where most OLEDs typically struggle. So is this screen suitable for HDR films? Indeed – and very much so, because such brightness allows you to truly feel the magic of HDR effects. However, it is worth noting that compared to last year's B4 model, the new B5 is darker – by about 100 nits. It may seem like a small amount, but at such average peak values, it makes quite a significant difference. Fortunately, the television compensates with another advantage – excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 and BT.2020 colour gamut. As a result, HDR films look really colourful, vibrant, and impress even in more demanding scenes.

The TCL C7L is, without doubt, an extremely bright TV. In synthetic tests using static test patterns it can reach peak brightness of around 2800 nits. That's a truly phenomenal result, given the price bracket it occupies. Unfortunately, measurements with real film scenes are not as spectacular as the white-square tests. Brightness in real HDR footage on the C7L falls to around 1200 nits. That's still very good, because the vast majority of modern films are graded to that level. However, when small, pinpoint elements appear on screen, the brightness of those details drops dramatically, even to around 400 nits, which reduces the HDR impact. The TV does this deliberately to preserve black levels and avoid excessive blooming. This is somewhat understandable, but it also shows that Mini LED technology is not completely without compromises in this respect. As for the HDR effect itself, alongside brightness the key factor is, of course, colour. Thanks to the use of new 'super' quantum dots, the colours are simply superb and among the best on the market. The TV is able to achieve very wide coverage of the BT.2020 and DCI-P3 colour gamuts, matching the best RGB Mini-LED screens with ease. Best of all, the C7L can maintain such high colour saturation regardless of the scene being displayed, which is often problematic in competing RGB Mini-LED TVs.

We tested the B5 in Filmmaker mode and... we would love to see more TVs like this straight out of the box. Truly. The white balance is set very well – there's practically nothing to complain about. Well, if one were to nitpick, one might notice a slight deficiency in blue, which makes the overall image seem slightly yellowish. But that’s just our editorial quibbling. Most of you probably wouldn’t even notice it. We also have minimal reservations about brightness management in HDR format. The EOTF curve – which is responsible for how the TV distributes brightness in a scene – is slightly below ideal. In practice, it may happen that the darkest parts of the image are displayed too dark and simply… disappear. But these are details that only come out in measurements. Generally: we are impressed. However, we also know that LG TVs respond very well to professional calibration. You can achieve almost reference-quality picture from them, so – while it's already very good out of the box – we allowed ourselves to go a step further and refine everything to perfection.

When it comes to out-of-the-box colours, what's new in TCL TVs, including the C7L model, is the addition of a picture mode called Filmmaker Mode. This is significant because such a mode was not previously available from this manufacturer. As the name suggests, this setting is meant to present the picture with the filmmaker's full intent. After our tests we can confirm that it is, without doubt, the best built-in mode on this TV if you want faithful colour reproduction straight out of the box. However, we certainly wouldn't say it's perfect. Like most devices on the market, this C7L also had some factory calibration errors. The white balance in Filmmaker mode drifted towards a slightly greenish-yellow tint, caused mainly by an excess of the green component and a noticeable shortfall in blue. Of course, this won't be a major drawback for the average viewer, but if you care about perfect whites, natural skin tones and getting the full potential out of the structure of those new "super" quantum dots, the TV really needs professional calibration.

We must admit that we didn't have much work with the LG B5. It's one of those televisions that look good right from the start, but after calibration… they can really impress. The white balance was brought to almost perfect levels – to the point of errors that are invisible to the human eye, unless you are a professional colourist with a magnifying glass at the screen. We also managed to master the tendency of the television to slightly dim the darkest details, particularly in HDR scenes. After proper tuning, everything looks cohesive: black remains deep but does not consume information. Highlights maintain their natural sparkle, and colours align with the director's vision. This is truly one of those models that shows you don't have to spend a fortune to have an almost reference-quality picture. If you can opt for professional calibration – it’s definitely worth it in the case of the B5.

After professional calibration we managed to greatly improve the situation in the factory Filmmaker Mode. After our corrections, the errors in the ColorChecker test and across the wide colour gamut fell below the threshold of human perception, that is below a value of 3, which is a very good result. The TCL C7L definitely benefits from such a procedure in terms of colour fidelity, and it's hard to deny. Brightness management for HDR content looks a little worse after calibration, though. As I described earlier, even though we set this model up correctly, when you play real film scenes the TV can handle its brightness in a rather peculiar way. It often brightens some elements on screen contrary to the creator's intent, which is clearly visible in the EOTF traces measured from specific films. Despite this defect, or rather a specific characteristic of the television, one thing you can't fault is that after calibration the C7L was able to reproduce colours accurately.

LG B5 really positively surprised us in terms of handling lower quality content. Thanks to the enhancement and smoothing features, materials in HD resolution or even SD gain a second life. Importantly – when this option is activated at the "low" or "medium" level, we do not feel that the image is artificially softened or smoothed out unnecessarily. Details remain intact, film grain does not disappear, and the edges of objects do not look washed out 😉. This is truly a useful tool – especially if you are watching terrestrial television, archival materials, or content from YouTube in lower resolutions. The image is clear, coherent, and simply pleasant to the eye.

Scaling as such works very well – even content of poor quality is reproduced with surprising fidelity. Unfortunately, there was a slight hiccup. Although the menu contains the option to disable overscan, the television still has issues with correctly displaying images of very low resolution. It may seem like a detail, but when watching older materials – it can be irritating.

This can be seen as, to some extent, the Achilles' heel of the C7L. Unfortunately, this TV uses the older MediaTek Pentonic 700 chip, which has never been famed for outstanding digital image processing. You can clearly see that in the behaviour of the progressive smoothing function, the feature responsible for reducing jagged edges and removing digital noise. It simply performs very poorly. When set to low, its effectiveness is almost non-existent. The only small plus is that the algorithm does not further spoil the picture or blur details unnecessarily. Upscaling, that is scaling lower-resolution content to 4K, performs slightly better. It is simply adequate and does not stand out against the competition. There is no denying that the C7L would benefit greatly in this regard if the manufacturer opted for the newer Pentonic 800 processor, which is now appearing in an increasing number of rival models.

LG B5 is a television with a 120 Hz OLED panel. It may not sound as impressive as the marketing claims of “144 Hz” or “165 Hz” found in gaming monitors, but honestly? The smoothness is excellent nonetheless. The picture is sharp, fluid and simply enjoyable to watch – even when there is a lot happening on screen. The organic panel does its job – the pixel response time is almost instantaneous, meaning there’s no sign of smearing or blurring that can spoil dynamic shots. Sport, fast-paced games – everything looks clear and distinct.

We also have the classic LG smoothness enhancer, TruMotion. This allows you to smooth out films shot at 24 frames per second – which, to put it bluntly, is most of what you watch on Netflix or from Blu-ray discs. If you set lower values on the “De-Judder” slider, you’ll get a picture closer to a cinematic look – with a slight judder, but without any artificiality. Higher settings? A soap opera effect is guaranteed. Fortunately, LG gives you the option to tune everything to your liking.

The TCL C7L uses a native 4K panel with a 144 Hz refresh rate, which at lower resolutions when connected to a PC can even reach up to 288 Hz. These are, of course, very high figures and impressive on paper, but bear in mind that almost all the dynamic content you’ll watch on this TV will still run at around a maximum of 120 Hz. To rein in that motion, the TV’s menu includes a motion-smoothing system called "Motion Clarity". It offers several preset modes, including a user mode that we strongly recommend you set manually using our tried-and-tested guides on our YouTube channel. There are two key sliders available. The first, "Blur Reduction", is responsible for cutting motion blur and improving sharpness in dynamic 60-fps material, such as sports broadcasts. The second slider, "Flicker Reduction", lets you add artificial frames to films and series shot in cinematic 24 or 30 frames per second. This, of course, can completely eliminate the irritating judder that appears during camera movement.

There are already a few televisions on the market with the label “for gamers” that, in practice, don’t understand what that means. The LG B5 is not one of them. Everything here is spot on – there are four HDMI 2.1 ports, it has 120 Hz, VRR, and ALLM, and it even has a Game Bar that is actually useful, not just looks good in the brochure. You connect your console – it works. You set 4K at 120 Hz – it works. You have an Xbox and want to play in Dolby Vision – it works too. And this is not in the sense of “theoretically supports”; it really turns on, looks good, and you don’t need to fiddle with the settings for half an hour. Additionally, there’s the HGiG picture mode that LG implemented correctly – which means HDR in games doesn’t turn the screen into a flash lamp, but shows exactly what it should. There are no surprises here, no strange limitations, no “buts.” And you know what? That’s how it should be. Cheers to the LG B5!

When it comes to gaming, the TCL C7L is simply an outstanding TV for players. Thanks to two HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth, you get access to all the key features required by console owners and powerful PC rigs. There’s a well-working ALLM mode with very low input lag and VRR frame synchronisation that operates over an impressive range from 48 to 288 Hz. Importantly, unlike some rivals, TCL has properly implemented the console HDR10 HGIG profile and supports Dolby Vision in games. The package is completed by a very well designed gamer panel, the Game Bar, which even lets you edit its appearance and change the theme so it perfectly matches the style of your console.

The only thing you can, and even should, criticise is that the TV offers only two full-spec HDMI 2.1 ports, while the other two are older HDMI 2.0. That creates quite a logistical problem. Why? Because one of the fast ports also handles the return audio channel eARC. In practice this means that if you connect a soundbar or home cinema system to the TV, you’ll be left with just one free HDMI 2.1 socket. If you have two consoles at home, or a console and a powerful PC, unfortunately you’ll have to give something up or keep juggling cables at the back of the case while trying to maintain convenient control of the audio system.