LG OLED G5 vs Sony BRAVIA 7 II

LG G5 with the new Tandem OLED matrix brings the biggest change in terms of the brightness of the television. And it's substantial. This is truly an astronomically bright OLED. In every scene tested – whether it was point lights or full-screen whites from the film The Meg – the brightness on the G5 exceeded 2000 nits. Just a year ago, such values on an OLED were simply unimaginable. And here we are – the G5 is approaching, and at times even surpassing, the best Mini-LEDs on the market. A new feature of the Tandem OLED matrix is also the expanded colour gamut – and here the LG G5 performs almost perfectly. DCI-P3 reaches a full 100%, and BT.2020 is maintained at around 83%. These are some of the highest values currently available on the market – it's hard to find any other television that comes close to such results, unless we are talking about the best displays with QD-OLED panels. The G5 has nearly reference-quality HDR – both in terms of brightness and colour saturation. This is an OLED that can truly shine – and not just figuratively.

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.

Our test unit, the LG G5, struggled with certain issues in the factory Filmmaker mode. And although most people might have found the picture acceptable, we knew that this television was capable of much more. This mode had a clear excess of blue tint in the white balance, resulting in a significantly cooled image – particularly in HDR modes, where there was additionally a lack of red. The picture appeared cold, and its sharpness was artificially boosted and unnatural. Another significant issue was the brightness characteristics. In SDR content, the situation wasn't the worst, aside from a slight dimming of the entire image. However, it performed much worse in HDR materials – due to improper brightness management, the smallest details could completely disappear from the image, while larger, bright elements looked overexposed and lacking in gradation. Fortunately, the G5 supports calibration using 3D LUT (a tool for professionals for colour calibration), so we decided to make use of its professional capabilities and see what it could really do. Because although it wasn't tragic even before calibration, the potential of this television definitely deserved more.

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.

After performing the calibration process using professional tools, we can confidently state that the LG G5 offers nearly reference-quality image. Most of the errors related to white balance and the ColorChecker test are below a value of 2, which is a phenomenal result, practically imperceptible to the human eye. And while one could still nitpick that in HDR films the television still has a tendency to slightly dim the smallest elements of the image, in practice this does not negatively affect the overall impression. Kudos to LG, as once again they provide the user with enormous possibilities for adjusting their display – and this, combined with the very good parameters of the panel itself, results in an image that is truly hard to beat.

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.

Upscaling and digital image processing in the LG G5 are quite impressive. The television handles lower quality content very well, especially when the "Smooth Gradation" feature is set to a low level. In this mode, it effectively removes unwanted artifacts and issues with visible tonal transitions. It may also slightly smooth out some desirable details, such as the subtle texture of clothing or skin, but importantly – it does not remove film grain, so it's difficult to speak of a serious compromise here. This is one of those options that is definitely worth enabling.

The G5 also performs well with upscaling, which improves the quality of older materials. The test image with the model looked really solid – slight jaggedness was visible, but that's an effect that cannot be completely avoided. Additionally, there were no problems with overscan, which – contrary to appearances – is not at all obvious, even in 2025.

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 motion smoothness on the LG G5 is simply phenomenal. The television is equipped with a 165 Hz refresh rate panel, and this, combined with the instant response time of the OLED matrix, delivers incredible results. The image does not tear or stutter like on traditional LCD televisions. Like most LG models, the G5 is equipped with a motion smoother, which can be useful when watching films – we are, of course, referring to the TruMotion mode. With the "De-Blur" and "De-Judder" sliders, we can adjust the smoothness of older materials according to our own preferences, whether we want to maintain the characteristic film stuttering or lean towards a more fluid, television-like effect.

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.

Features for gamers? Perfect. That should be sufficient for you to know what level we are dealing with here. The G5 is a television designed with gamers in mind, so we will find literally everything you could expect from a gaming screen. There is a Game Bar, there is support for high resolutions with high refresh rates – that is, 4K at 120 Hz, and even more, as the panel has a refresh rate of 165 Hz (which PC gamers will benefit from). The television supports variable refresh rate (VRR), automatic low latency mode (ALLM), and also correctly handles HDR in games thanks to the HGiG function. All of this adds up to one of the best sets of gaming features available on the market. Well done, LG.

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.