LG OLED C6H (TANDEM OLED) vs Sony BRAVIA 7 II

And it is with HDR that the Tandem OLED panel shows its greatest advantage. The C6H’s brightness is simply very high and in our measurements it hovered around 1900–2300 nits in most film scenes. That’s already a level at which bright highlights, the sun or small light sources can look truly spectacular. The biggest impression, however, was made by the fifth scene from the film The Meg. It is exceptionally demanding for OLEDs because almost the entire screen is very bright. Even so, the C6H reached about 1650 nits in that scene. By comparison, the regular C6 with a classic WOLED panel recorded around 600–700 nits at the same point. So we’re talking about more than double the brightness, and in places the difference even approaches three times. And that is probably the best example of what Tandem OLED delivers here. It’s not just a higher result on a small test patch. The C6H can maintain very high brightness even when much more of the screen is lit. As a result HDR has significantly greater dynamism, and in this respect the C6H is much closer to flagship OLEDs than to typical mid-range models.

Colours

Tandem OLED also brings an improvement in colours. DCI-P3 coverage remains practically complete at about 99%, while in the much wider BT.2020 colour space we measured around 82–83%. That’s roughly seven percentage points more than the regular C6. In everyday use this won’t be a difference visible in every scene, because most films do not use such a wide gamut. However, when very highly saturated colours appear, the C6H already has noticeably greater capability, especially in reds. Reds benefit the most, becoming deeper and more saturated. This still isn’t at the level of the best QD-OLED panels or SQD TVs, but for a WOLED panel the performance is really very good.

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.

Straight out of the box the LG C6 is fairly well set up, especially if you select the Filmmaker mode. In SDR content the white balance is decent, although as brightness increases it shows a slight deficiency in red. The image therefore becomes a little cooler, but not enough for the difference to be very noticeable during normal viewing. More is happening in the brightness response. Gamma is a bit low and, instead of holding at 2.4, it sits closer to 2.1–2.2 across much of the range. In practice the C6 slightly brightens midtones. Shadow detail is therefore more readable, but the picture loses some depth compared with how it should look in a darkened room.

In HDR the situation is a bit more interesting. The lower end of the greyscale performs very well, but from roughly 20–30% brightness the white balance starts to drift increasingly. As brightness rises there is more red, while blue becomes noticeably deficient. In the brightest scenes the difference is already substantial and also affects the reproduction of some colours. The EOTF itself is, however, fairly well tracked across most of the range. The C6 merely tends to slightly brighten the image, which we already saw in our film comparisons. The largest deviation appears in the very brightest areas, where the TV begins to adapt the signal to the panel’s capabilities.

The factory Filmmaker setting in HDR is therefore not perfect, but overall it performs well. The biggest room for improvement is the white balance, particularly at high brightness.

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 TVs have long been very receptive to calibration and the C6 is no exception. After adjustment the white balance could be set almost perfectly, and most colour errors fell below 3, often even down to around 2. In practice this means very accurate colour reproduction in both SDR and HDR. An interesting detail only emerged when we looked at the HDR luminance response. On a classic EOTF plot everything looks almost ideal and at first glance it would be hard to find fault. Only when we measured the TV's behaviour on filters based on real film scenes did it become apparent that the C6 has a slight tendency to artificially boost image brightness.

It is not a huge difference and many people may even welcome it because HDR looks a bit more striking as a result. From the point of view of fidelity to the source material this is not ideal behaviour though – some scenes are simply a touch brighter than the filmmaker intended. Interestingly, this is rather unusual for LG. In previous generations the brand's TVs typically stuck closely to the reference picture characteristic after calibration. With the C6 we are still very close to the standard, but this subtle brightness 'boost' can indeed be noticed in films and series.

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.

Here the LG C6 has taken a really big step forward. The TV uses the same processor found in the flagship G6, and in terms of image processing the two models are very similar. That's a considerable plus, because this year's LG processor excels in that area. The "Smooth Gradation" function works particularly well. With heavily compressed footage it can effectively hide ugly banding and artefacts that often occur, for instance in lower-quality streaming. It's best to leave it on the "Low" setting. Then the improvement is noticeable, while the TV does not yet start to blur fine detail. Higher levels smooth the picture more, but can already remove some of the natural texture of objects on screen. Upscaling itself also performs very well. Lower-resolution material is sharpened correctly, edges look clean, and the processor quite effectively reconstructs fine detail. In this respect the C6 is already very close to LG's best TVs and the differences compared with the G6 are small.

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 C6H with a Tandem OLED panel can also operate at refresh rates of up to 165 Hz. PC gamers will naturally get the most out of this, because for consoles, films or sport we're still looking at a maximum of 120 Hz. The panel itself is excellent when it comes to motion. OLED pixels respond virtually instantly, so even with fast-moving objects you don't see the typical motion blur. The picture remains clean whether you're watching sport or playing fast-paced games.

If you prioritise smoothness over motion clarity, TruMotion is available. LG lets you adjust two parameters separately. De-Judder mainly works with films and series shot at 24 fps and helps reduce the judder that's characteristic of them. De-Blur, meanwhile, is intended for 50/60 fps content, so it's particularly useful when watching sport or television.

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 C6H offers practically the full suite of gaming features. On consoles you can easily use 4K at 120 Hz, while PC users can push the refresh rate up to 165 Hz. The TV also supports VRR from 40 to 165 Hz, ALLM and a proper implementation of HGiG. Dolby Vision is also available in game mode, which remains a major advantage for Xbox owners. All key information can be viewed in the Game Bar, which provides quick access to VRR settings and the current signal’s parameters. The OLED implementation therefore does not alter the feature set available to gamers, but with such high panel brightness HDR games can make an even stronger impression. Functionally, the C6H is simply a very complete TV for console and PC gaming.

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.