LG UA75006LA (IPS) vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

The version with an IPS panel looks even more modest, where the peak brightness barely reaches 250 nits. In practice, this means that a real sense of HDR effect is out of the question, and the materials viewed resemble rather ordinary SDR. Similar to VA panels, the image behaves stably on most test patterns, but in demanding scenes with fine details, the television has a tendency to slightly dim the image. This allows for slightly better blacks; however, this comes at the expense of losing detail in bright elements. The absence of additional colour filters is also noticeable here. The UA7500 with an IPS panel does not belong to QLEDs or PFS LED panels, and the DCI-P3 colour gamut is limited to 80%, meaning that HDR films lack significant colour depth and appear quite flattened.

Bravia 3 II is certainly not a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached about 450 nits, so it falls well short of the brightest models on the market. That does not mean HDR is just a paper feature. Compared with ordinary SDR material, the brightest elements of the image can already come through noticeably, and reflections, highlights and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. This is most obvious in simpler shots where the screen displays many bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a hint of a higher dynamic-range picture. The problem only begins with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is required. There the TV quickly shows its limitations and instead of powerful, striking HDR we get only a competently rendered picture.

Colours

Bravia 3 II uses a QLED-type panel, although technically it does not use a classic quantum dot layer. Instead Sony has used a solution based on PFS phosphor, which performs a very similar role: it allows more saturated reds and greens and thus enables a much wider colour gamut. In measurements DCI-P3 coverage was around 94%, and the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. These are good results for this class of hardware, which mean the Bravia 3 II has no problem reproducing sufficiently saturated colours in HDR content. Colours do not look washed out, and more intense hues can look genuinely attractive.

The Filmmaker mode on the LG UA7500 performs better than one might expect from such a budget television, but let's not get carried away with praise. The picture is quite well put together and does not irritate at first glance, but its weaknesses soon start to show. This is most evident in scenes with bright points – lamps in the background or reflections of light on the skin are distinctly overemphasised. Characters' faces often appear unnatural, as if they have been 'overexposed'. Additionally, the default gamma setting brightens even the smallest details, causing the image to lose subtlety in darker areas. However, it remains true that for its price bracket, the UA7500 in factory mode offers a fairly decent starting point. It is clear that without additional adjustment, it will not be possible to avoid these issues, which is why – as with other televisions – we decided to see what could be achieved after calibration.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II already delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. White balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases the blue and red components become slightly lacking, so whites can at times take on a marginally warmer, faintly greenish tint. These are not faults that immediately catch the eye when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setting can be regarded as quite good. The situation is similar in HDR. Here too there is a slight lack of the blue component, so the image is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference is not large enough to significantly interfere with normal viewing.

The greatest improvement we noticed was during the calibration of the mode intended for everyday SDR content. We managed to smooth out the white balance in an acceptable way and control the issue of excessive brightening of fine details due to the gamma characteristics. As a result, the image gained the consistency and naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. After this correction, we can confidently state that for everyday television content, programmes, or materials from YouTube, the LG UA7500 performs really well – especially after professional calibration. The situation is somewhat different for HDR content. Here, calibration allowed us to tame the white balance and slightly improve brightness management, but the limitations of the design are immediately evident. The lack of additional filters expanding the colour palette means that the most vibrant colours appear flat, and the image does not have the intensity one would expect from good HDR. Therefore, in SDR, the UA7500 performs quite well, but in HDR – despite the corrections – it remains far behind, and this is a feature one must accept when choosing this television.

After calibration, there is particularly a lot to be gained from SDR content. The white balance was set almost perfectly, the gamma practically matches the reference value, and the average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That is already a level at which differences from the reference image are, in practice, very difficult to detect. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that, despite its position in Sony’s lineup, it has quite a lot of potential for precise picture calibration. Improvements are also visible in HDR, although here it is no longer possible to avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. After evening out the colours, it is easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film content runs slightly below the reference value in places, so the Bravia 3 II gently darkens part of the image. This is not an ideal solution from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has its benefits. With no local dimming and average black levels, this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps maintain a stronger impression of contrast. So you could say Sony partly masks the limitations of the panel this way, instead of trying at all costs to stick to the reference luminance.

The version with the IPS panel performed noticeably worse here. Image scaling was uneven – this was particularly evident in lower quality materials, where edges became jagged and the image appeared less detailed. At times, there was also a slight blur that diminished sharpness and made the overall impression seem less refined than in the VA version. The solution proved to be the tonal transition smoothing function. On the medium setting, it worked very well – it did not spoil the image with excessive softening, while simultaneously smoothing colours in such a way that everyday content gained coherence. The difference was particularly noticeable with television programmes or streaming materials with poorer compression quality, where the television with the function on presented itself much better. This is one of those additions that are worth keeping active, as they significantly enhance the experience of daily content.

The Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, and there are a few changes in image processing. Starting with the basics. The upscaling itself is adequate. The TV can sensibly pull up lower-resolution material and does not have a strong tendency to over-emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or weaker streaming material the picture therefore remains quite pleasing. We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its role is essentially very similar: it is supposed to smooth unpleasant tonal transitions and artefacts resulting from heavy signal compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "High" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many elements of the image at once, causing film grain to disappear and the texture of objects or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When a scene contains more motion, the function's effect clearly weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the picture altogether. For everyday viewing we therefore would not recommend using it at a high level. It can help on a static shot, but the price is often an excessive loss of detail.

LG UA7500 is a television with a 60 Hz panel, so it is difficult to expect much excitement in this category. It is rather a screen designed for everyday content or an evening film screening rather than for following dynamic sports events or playing action games. It is clear that the manufacturer aimed this model at this group of consumers – and in this regard, it performs adequately. We have the TruMotion function available, which is a motion smoother. It is simple, has only one slider, but can make a noticeable difference. At the lower range, the picture looks more raw and cinematic, while at higher values, the motion becomes smoother and more pleasant to the eye.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120Hz VA panel, a solution that, by nature, despite the high refresh rate, does not always cope well with motion blur. Here, however, Sony has managed to keep that problem very well under control. Fast-moving objects remain crisp, and the characteristic trails and blurring are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It is one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we have tested. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive True RGB flagship series, the Bravia 9 II.

LG UA7500 is a television that can be confidently recommended to "casual" gamers. While it lacks a 120 Hz panel and HDMI 2.1 ports, so fully utilising the potential of modern consoles is out of the question. However, the manufacturer has included a few features that can enhance the gaming experience. Noteworthy is the Game Bar – a very well-designed panel where you can quickly preview and change the most important settings. From this panel, we have access to various features, including the ALLM mode (automatic switching to game mode) and frame synchronisation, namely VRR. The range of VRR is limited – it operates from 48 to 60 Hz – but the mere presence of this feature in such an affordable television leaves a positive impression.

Additionally, there is support for HGiG, which is the HDR calibration mode for gaming. This sounds good, but from our testing experience, we know that in the case of the UA7500, this option is not particularly useful. The television does not perform very well with HDR, so paradoxically better results were achieved with this mode turned off. This is another signal that the UA7500 is more of a screen for occasional gamers who value simplicity and convenience rather than for those seeking a full immersion experience with the latest consoles.

Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been implemented exactly as we would like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get as many as four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the issues that has plagued this manufacturer’s TVs for years. We can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, for example VRR or ALLM. There is also a simple Game Bar that lets you view key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game. However, there are two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That will not be a problem for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC, for example to get higher frame rates in certain games, will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony does not allow you to disable the TV’s tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the screen is always processing HDR content even when you would prefer to leave that task to the console. This is most obvious during HDR setup — the checkerboard pattern does not disappear at the point that corresponds to the TV’s actual capabilities. That does not mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to approach the setup a little differently and, instead of relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to around 450 nits. The issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start setting up the console.