LG OLED B5 vs TCL P7L / P79L

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 biggest limitation of the TCL P7L in HDR is simply brightness. The TV does not have much luminance headroom, so strong highlights, the sun or small light sources can't clearly 'pop' out of the picture. As a result, even well-produced HDR material looks fairly restrained and, in terms of dynamics, is closer to good SDR than to what brighter models show. That does not mean the P7L completely fails at HDR. The issue is primarily a lack of backlight power.

Looking at colours, the situation is a little better. The TV covers around 91% of the DCI-P3 gamut and about 68% of the wide BT.2020 colour space, so for this price class the colour range is quite respectable. TCL markets this model as QLED, although the nature of the solution used is closer to backlighting that uses a PFS phosphor than to a classic quantum-dot layer. What matters most to the viewer, however, is the effect: more saturated colours are on offer.

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.

In Film mode the TCL P7L performs quite respectably without major changes to the settings, particularly with ordinary SDR material. White balance is relatively even, though as brightness increases there is a slight rise in red and blue and a touch too little green. This does not, however, produce a strongly visible tint and most colours remain close to their reference points. The Colour Checker confirms this, with a large portion of errors falling below the level that should be particularly noticeable during normal viewing. We have more reservations about the gamma response. In the darkest parts of the image the TV runs it noticeably above the reference value, so some shadow detail can be a little too subdued. The characteristic then calms down and across much of the range it is close to the intended behaviour. As a result SDR generally looks natural, but in dark scenes the P7L can lose some subtlety.

In HDR the factory calibration is less precise. As brightness increases the excess of blue becomes more pronounced, which can make the image look cooler than it should. The number of larger colour deviations also grows, particularly in brighter hues. As for the EOTF curve itself, it is handled fairly conservatively, with the TV showing the image darker than the reference across much of the range. For such an inexpensive model, the factory Film mode settings are not bad.

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 calibration the TCL P7L can deliver a genuinely pleasant picture, especially with conventional SDR material. We managed to even out the white balance very well, and the gamma curve now tracks close to the target value of 2.4. This is also reflected in the colour measurements: most errors have fallen noticeably, and in everyday viewing it is hard to point to any obvious inaccuracies. Films, series, YouTube and ordinary broadcast TV therefore look more natural, without unnecessary warmth or a cool tint. For a model in this price bracket the SDR performance is really very good.

With HDR the situation becomes more complicated. Calibration helped improve the white balance and tidy up some deviations, but here the panel's limitations become increasingly apparent. The P7L has relatively low brightness and cannot maintain adequate luminance for more saturated colours, so some errors remain even after careful tuning. In other words, settings can improve the way the TV interprets the signal, but they cannot overcome its physical limits. That is why calibration makes most sense for this model primarily in SDR.

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.

In this respect the TCL P7L performs surprisingly well, especially for such an inexpensive TV. The banding-reduction feature, which in many budget models does little or nothing, actually manages to improve the picture here. It does not remove all banding entirely, but it can noticeably reduce posterisation and make more challenging gradients look more natural. At this price point that’s a genuinely pleasant surprise. Upscaling itself also performs well. Lower-resolution material is scaled correctly, without over-sharpening or adding artificial outlines around objects. Of course the P7L won’t turn a very poor source into a 4K-quality image, but for regular TV the result is simply solid. For a model in this class there is little to criticise.

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 P7L uses a panel with a native 60 Hz refresh rate at 4K resolution, and that's how it should be regarded in everyday use. When watching films the TV mainly offers frame interpolation, so it can smooth motion and reduce the characteristic judder, but it does not deliver the fluidity typical of true 120 Hz panels.

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!

For such an inexpensive TV, the P7L has quite a lot to offer gamers. It has ALLM, VRR, Dolby Vision for gaming, and TCL also includes its Game Bar, which lets you quickly check the key information or change some settings without leaving the game. Not everything is perfect, though, because HGiG doesn’t work here as it should, but at this price point it’s hard to complain about the feature set. The most interesting part starts when you give up 4K. At that resolution the TV runs at up to 60 Hz, but at 1440p and 1080p it can display at 120 Hz. And that’s not just a line in the specs. In fast-paced games that support that frame rate you can really notice the improvement in smoothness, so if you value smoother motion more than maximum image detail, that mode can make a lot of sense. Of course, that doesn’t turn the P7L into a proper 120 Hz TV. Even so, those extra modes are exactly what make the P7L perform very well for gaming.