LG OLED B5 vs TCL P7L / P79L

LG B5 is a moderately bright OLED TV. Regardless of the scene, it can generate around 500 nits of peak brightness. And interestingly, it does this even in full-screen shots flooded with white, where most OLEDs usually fall short. So, is this screen suitable for HDR movies? Yes – absolutely, because such brightness really allows you to feel the magic of HDR effects. However, it's worth noting that compared to last year's model B4, the new B5 is darker – by about 100 nits. It may seem like a small difference, but at such average peak values, it makes quite a significant difference. Fortunately, the TV makes up for it with another advantage – excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 and BT.2020 color gamut. As a result, HDR movies look really colorful, vibrant, and impressive even in more demanding scenes.

The biggest limitation of the TCL P7L in HDR is simply brightness. The TV doesn't have a large luminance headroom, so strong highlights, sunlight, or small light sources can't clearly "pop" out of the image. As a result, even well-produced HDR material looks fairly restrained and in terms of dynamic range is closer to good SDR than to what brighter models show. That doesn't mean the P7L can't handle HDR at all — the issue is mainly a lack of sufficient backlight power.

Looking at color, the situation is a bit better. The TV covers about 91% of the DCI-P3 gamut and about 68% of the wider BT.2020 color space, so for its price class the color range is quite decent. TCL markets this model as QLED, though the nature of the solution used is closer to a PFS phosphor-based backlight than a classic quantum-dot layer. What matters most to viewers, however, is the result: more saturated colors are available.

We tested the B5 in Filmmaker mode and... we would like to see more TVs like this straight out of the box. Really. The white balance is set very well – there is practically nothing to complain about. Well, if one were to be very picky, one might notice a slight deficiency in blue, which makes the overall picture have a slightly yellowish tint. But that’s just our editorial nitpicking. Most of you probably won't even notice it. We also have some minor reservations about brightness management in HDR format. The EOTF curve – that is, the one responsible for how the TV distributes brightness in a scene – is slightly below the ideal. In practice, it can happen that the darkest parts of the image may be displayed too dark and simply... disappear. But these are details that only come out in measurements. Overall: we are impressed. But we also know that LG TVs respond very well to professional calibration. They can produce nearly reference-quality images, so – even though it's already very good out of the box – we allowed ourselves to take an extra step and fine-tune everything to perfection.

In Film mode the TCL P7L performs fairly well without major adjustments, especially with typical SDR material. The white balance is relatively even, although as brightness increases there is a slight rise in red and blue and a bit of a shortage of green. This does not produce a strongly noticeable tint and most colors remain close to their reference points. The ColorChecker confirms this, with a large portion of errors falling below a level that would notably bother viewers during normal watching. We have more concerns about the gamma response. In the darkest parts of the image the TV runs it noticeably above the reference, so some shadow detail can be a little too dimmed. The curve then settles and for much of the range it is close to the intended target. As a result SDR generally looks natural, but in dark scenes the P7L can lose some subtlety. In HDR the factory setting is less precise. As brightness increases an excess of blue becomes more pronounced, making the image look cooler than it should. The number of larger color deviations also grows, particularly in brighter hues. The EOTF curve itself is handled fairly conservatively, with the TV showing the image darker than the reference over a large portion of the range. For a budget model, however, 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 TVs that looks good right from the start, but after calibration… it can really impress. The white balance was brought to almost perfect levels – to a degree of error invisible to the human eye, unless you are a professional colorist with a magnifying glass at the screen. We also managed to control the TV's slight tendency to dim the darkest details, especially in HDR scenes. After proper tuning, everything looks coherent: the black is still deep, but not information-hungry. The highlights retain a natural sparkle, and the colors align with the director's vision. It's really one of those models that show you don't have to spend a fortune to get almost reference-quality image. If you can decide on professional calibration – it's definitely worth it for the B5.

After calibration, the TCL P7L can deliver a really pleasant picture, especially with classic SDR material. We managed to very effectively even out the white balance, and the gamma curve now tracks close to the target value of 2.4. You can also see this in the color measurements, as most errors dropped noticeably, and in everyday viewing it's hard to find any strongly visible inaccuracies. Movies, series, YouTube, or regular TV therefore look more natural, without unnecessary warming or a cool cast. For a model in this price range, the result in SDR is really very good.

With HDR the situation gets 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 can't maintain appropriate luminance for more saturated colors, so some errors remain even after careful tuning. In other words, settings can improve how the TV interprets the signal, but they can't overcome its physical capabilities. That's why calibration makes the most sense for this model primarily with SDR.

LG B5 really surprised us positively in terms of dealing with lower quality content. Thanks to the enhancement and smoothing features, HD or even SD materials get a new life. Importantly – when this option is turned on at the "low" or "medium" level, we don't get the impression that the image is artificially softened or overly smoothed. Details remain intact, film grain does not disappear, and object edges do not look washed out 😉. It's a really useful tool – especially if you watch terrestrial TV, archival materials, or content from YouTube in lower resolutions. The image is clean, cohesive, and simply pleasant to the eye.

Upscaling as such works very well – even content of poor quality is rendered with surprising fidelity. Unfortunately, there was a small hiccup. While the menu offers an option to turn off overscan, the television still struggles to display very low-resolution images correctly. It’s a minor detail, but when watching older materials – it can be annoying.

In this regard the TCL P7L performs surprisingly well, especially for such an inexpensive TV. The tonal transition smoothing feature, which in many budget models does little or almost nothing, actually manages to improve the picture here. It doesn't remove all banding completely, but it can noticeably reduce posterization and make trickier 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 excessive sharpening or adding artificial outlines around objects. Of course the P7L won't turn a very poor source into 4K-quality footage, but for regular TV the result is simply solid. For a model in this class there is little to criticize.

The LG B5 is a television with a 120 Hz OLED panel. It may not sound as impressive as the marketing terms "144 Hz" or "165 Hz" found in gaming monitors, but honestly? The smoothness is still excellent. The picture is sharp, smooth, and simply enjoyable to watch – even when there’s a lot happening on the screen. The organic panel does its job – the pixel response time is nearly instantaneous, which means there’s no blurring or smearing that can ruin dynamic shots. Sports, fast-paced games – everything looks clear and distinct.

We also have LG's classic motion smoother, TruMotion. This feature allows you to smooth out films shot at 24 frames per second – in other words, most of what you watch on Netflix or on Blu-ray discs. If you set the “De-Judder” slider to lower values, you'll get an image closer to the cinematic experience – with a slight judder, but without artificiality. Higher settings? Soap opera effect guaranteed. Fortunately, LG gives you the choice, and you can tune everything as you like.

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

There are already a few televisions on the market with the label "for gamers" that don’t really understand what that means. The LG B5 is not one of them. Everything here is right – there are four HDMI 2.1 ports, it has 120 Hz, VRR and ALLM, and it also has a Game Bar that is actually useful, not just looks good in the promotional folder. 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 not in the sense of "it theoretically supports it," but rather it really turns on, looks good, and you don’t have to fiddle with the settings for half an hour. On top of that, there’s the HGiG picture mode, which LG has implemented correctly – meaning that HDR in games doesn’t turn the screen into a flashlight 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. Kudos 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 adds its Game Bar, which lets you quickly view 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 much about the feature set. The most interesting thing starts when you give up on 4K. At that resolution the TV runs at a maximum of 60 Hz, but at 1440p and 1080p it can already display at 120 Hz. And that's not just a spec-sheet curiosity. In fast-paced games that support that frame rate you can really notice the difference in smoothness, so if you care more about smoother motion than maximum image sharpness, that mode can make a lot of sense. Of course that doesn't make the P7L a true 120 Hz TV. Even so, it's precisely those extra modes that make the P7L perform really well for gaming.