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

The situation is even more modest in the IPS version, where the peak brightness reaches only 250 nits. In practice, this means that there can be no real sense of HDR effect, and the materials being viewed resemble ordinary SDR. Similar to the VA case, the image behaves stably on most test screens, but in demanding scenes with fine details, the television tends to slightly dim the image. As a result, blacks appear somewhat better, but at the cost of losing detail in bright elements. The lack of additional color filters is also noticeable here. The UA7500 in the IPS version does not belong to QLEDs or PFS LED panels, and the DCI-P3 color gamut stops at 80%, which means that HDR films present themselves without much color depth and give the impression of being heavily 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's far from the strongest designs on the market. That said, HDR here is not just a paper feature. Compared with regular SDR material, the brightest parts of the image can already punch through, and reflections, highlights, or stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. You can see this best in simpler shots where many bright elements appear on screen. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a hint of a higher-dynamic-range picture. The problem only starts with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is needed. There the TV quickly shows its limits and instead of strong, striking HDR we get only a correctly rendered picture.

Colors

Bravia 3 II uses a QLED-type panel, although technically it does not use a traditional quantum-dot layer. Instead Sony applied a PFS phosphor-based solution that serves a very similar role: it allows for more saturated reds and greens and thus lets the TV display a much wider color gamut. Measurements showed about 94% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and about 74.4% of the very wide BT.2020. Those are good results for this class of hardware, meaning the Bravia 3 II has no problem showing adequately saturated colors in HDR content. Colors don't look washed out, and the more intense shades can look really attractive.

The Filmmaker mode on the LG UA7500 performs better than one might expect from such a budget TV, but let’s not get carried away with enthusiasm. The picture is fairly well put together and at first glance does not offend, but its weaknesses quickly start to show. This is most evident in scenes with bright points — background lamps or light reflections on the skin are clearly overemphasized. The faces of the characters often look unnatural, as if they have been "blown out." Additionally, the default gamma characteristic brightens the smallest details and causes the image to lose subtlety in darker areas. That said, given its price range, the UA7500 in factory mode provides a pretty decent starting point. However, it is clear that without additional adjustments, these problems cannot be avoided, which is why — as with other TVs — we decided to check what could be achieved after calibration.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II, straight out of the box, delivers a fairly good level of color reproduction. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtone areas a bit brighter. White balance is not perfect either; as brightness increases there is a slight lack of blue and red, so whites can sometimes take on a slightly warmer, mildly greenish tint. However, these are not errors that immediately stand out while watching a movie. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory preset can be considered quite good. The situation is similar in HDR. Here again there is a slight deficiency in the blue component, so the image is a touch warmer than the reference, but the difference is not large enough to be significantly distracting during normal viewing.

The biggest improvement we noticed was when calibrating the mode designed for everyday SDR content. We managed to smooth out the white balance in an acceptable way and tackle the problem of excessive brightening of small elements due to the gamma characteristic. As a result, the image gained consistency and naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. After such correction, we can confidently state that for everyday television content, programs, 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 apparent. The lack of additional filters to broaden the color palette makes the most vibrant colors appear flat, and the image lacks the intensity we would expect from good HDR. So, in SDR, the UA7500 performs quite well, but in HDR – despite corrections – it remains far behind, and this is a feature one has to come to terms with when choosing this television.

After calibration you can get a lot out of SDR content. The white balance was set almost perfectly, gamma practically matches the reference value, and average color errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That's a level at which differences from the reference image are, in practice, very hard 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 tuning. Improvements are also visible in HDR, although here you can no longer work around all of the TV's limitations. After equalizing the colors it's easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film material runs slightly below the reference value in places, meaning the Bravia 3 II slightly darkens part of the image. That's not ideal from a reference standpoint, but in this particular TV it also has an advantage. With no local dimming and average black levels, this behavior slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps maintain a greater sense of contrast. So you could say Sony partially masks the limits of the panel that way, rather than trying at all costs to stick to the reference luminance.

The version with the IPS matrix performed significantly worse here. Image scaling was uneven – this was particularly noticeable in lower-quality materials, where edges became jagged and the image looked less detailed. At times, there was also a sense of slight blurriness that detracted from sharpness and made the overall presentation seem less polished than in the VA version. The tonal smoothing function turned out to be a lifesaver. At the medium setting, it worked very well – it didn't ruin the image with excessive softening, while smoothing out colors in such a way that everyday content gained consistency. The difference was especially visible with television programs or streaming materials of poorer compression quality, where the television with the function enabled presented itself much better. This is one of those features that is worth keeping active because it significantly enhances the reception of everyday materials.

The Bravia 3 II is Sony’s first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, and you can see a few changes in image processing. Starting with the basics: upscaling is solid. The TV can sensibly upscale lower-resolution material and doesn’t have a strong tendency to overemphasize jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality streaming the picture remains quite pleasing. We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" feature with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction." Its role is essentially the same: to smooth unpleasant tonal transitions and artifacts caused by heavy compression. Unfortunately, this feature performs noticeably worse than before. At the "Large" setting — the only one that noticeably affected the picture — the TV can smooth away too many image elements at once, causing film grain to disappear and surface textures or even character skin to start looking unnatural. Worse, the effect is not very consistent. When a scene contains more motion the function’s effect weakens significantly and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the image altogether. For everyday viewing we therefore don’t recommend using it at a high level. It can help on a static shot, but the price is often too much loss of detail.

LG UA7500 is a television with a 60 Hz panel, so it's difficult to expect any excitement in this category. It's more of a screen intended for everyday content or an evening movie session rather than for following dynamic sporting events or playing action games. It's clear that the manufacturer designed this model specifically for that group of viewers – and in that regard, it works properly. We have access to the TruMotion feature, which is a motion smoother. It's simple, with just one slider, but it can make a noticeable difference. At lower settings, 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 120 Hz VA panel, a solution that by nature, despite the high refresh rate, doesn't always cope well with motion blur. Here Sony has managed to get that problem very well under control. Fast-moving objects remain sharp, and the characteristic trails and blurring are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It's one of the least smearing LCD TVs we've had the chance to test. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive flagship True RGB series: the Bravia 9 II.

LG UA7500 is a television that can be confidently recommended for "casual" gamers. While it lacks a 120 Hz panel and HDMI 2.1 ports, making full use of the potential of modern consoles out of the question, the manufacturer has included a few additions that can enhance the gaming experience. Notably, the Game Bar deserves mention – a very nicely designed panel that allows quick access to and modification of the most important settings. From this panel, we have access to features such as ALLM mode (automatic switching to game mode) and frame synchronization, which is 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 is impressive.

Additionally, it supports HGiG, which is a calibration mode for HDR specifically for gaming. This sounds good, but based on testing experience, we already know that in the case of the UA7500, this option doesn't make much sense. The television doesn't handle HDR very well, so paradoxically, we achieved better results with this feature turned off. This is another signal that the UA7500 is more of a screen for occasional gamers who value simplicity and comfort rather than for those looking for a complete experience from the latest consoles.

Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been handled the way we'd like. The biggest change concerns the connections. For the first time in a Sony TV we get four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the long-standing issues that has plagued the manufacturer's TVs. You can connect several devices at once and use each input's full capabilities, including VRR and ALLM. There's also a simple Game Bar that lets you check 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.

There are, however, two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. This won't 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 disabling tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the TV continuously processes HDR content even when you would prefer to leave that task to the console. You can most easily notice this during HDR setup. The checkerboard pattern does not disappear at the point corresponding to the TV's actual capabilities. That doesn't mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to approach the setup a bit differently and, instead of relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to about 450 nits. The issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start configuring your console.