LG UA75006LA (VA) vs LG MRGB85B

The LG UA7500 with a VA panel has a brightness that hovers around 350 nits, which, by today’s standards, isn't very impressive. It's hard to talk about a true HDR experience here – most content looks more like classic SDR with a slight attempt at highlights enhancement. One advantage is that regardless of the test pattern, the effect remained relatively stable. However, we noticed that in very extreme scenes with a lot of fine detail, the television can slightly dim the image to achieve better black levels, but this comes at the cost of visibility of bright effects. Additionally, it should be noted that the UA7500 is not equipped with any extra technologies for expanding color. It is neither a QLED panel nor a PFS LED, which is why the coverage of the DCI-P3 color palette is only 80%, causing many HDR movies to appear flat and not fully represent the variety of colors.

LG MRGB85 offers moderate brightness. On test patterns it reaches about 700 nits, which by itself is a decent result. In actual movie scenes the values are lower and most often fall between 400 and 600 nits. Bright, expansive shots perform best. In scenes with a lot of black the TV noticeably limits luminance, trying to maintain the highest possible contrast. The HDR effect is therefore visible, but it is far from the level offered by more advanced Mini-LED designs. Especially in darker parts of films the limitations of edge-lit backlighting and imprecise local dimming become noticeable again.

HDR Colors

A much stronger suit of the MRGB85 is its colors. The TV covers about 95% of the DCI-P3 color space and 74% of BT.2020, allowing HDR material to look vivid and striking. Colors are well saturated, and the difference compared with basic LCD TVs is clearly visible. It is worth noting, however, that this is not a classic RGB backlight, where each of the three primary colors is generated by a separate diode. Red is produced by a PFS phosphor, which expands the palette and yields more saturated red shades. This solution works well for color reproduction, but it does not change the limitations of dimming itself. The LEDs are not driven independently in the way the series name might suggest... so it turns out that Mini RGB is not the same as Mini-LED RGB!

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 the praise. The picture is put together quite sensibly and at first glance is not irritating; however, its weaknesses quickly start to show. This is most apparent in scenes with bright points – lamps in the background or reflections of light on the skin are clearly exaggerated. Characters' faces often look unnatural, as if they have been "burned out." Additionally, the default gamma settings brighten even the smallest details, causing the image to lose subtlety in darker areas. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, for its price range, the UA7500 in factory mode provides a decent starting point. However, it's clear that without additional correction, these issues cannot be avoided, which is why – as with other TVs – we decided to check what could be achieved after calibration.

We tested the TV in Filmmaker Mode, because among the available settings it produced the image closest to the reference. Factory color reproduction was not perfect. The biggest deviations were in the white balance, with too much red and not enough blue, which pushed the picture noticeably toward warmer tones. Whites took on a slightly yellowish cast, and skin tones and bright areas did not always look natural. It wasn’t a flaw that completely ruined the viewing experience, but in a direct comparison with the same screen after calibration the difference was clearly visible.

We noticed the greatest improvement when calibrating the mode intended for daily SDR content. We managed to smooth the white balance in an acceptable way and tackle the issue of excessive brightening of small elements by the gamma characteristic. As a result, the image gained the consistency and naturalness that were lacking in the factory settings. After such correction, we can confidently state that for daily 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, the calibration did allow 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 widen the color palette means that the most vivid colors appear flat, and the image does not have the intensity we would expect from good HDR. In SDR, the UA7500 performs quite decently, but in HDR – despite corrections – it remains far behind, and this is a characteristic that one must accept when choosing this television.

Calibration primarily corrected the white balance and removed the previously visible warm tint. After the adjustment, whites no longer had a yellow cast and colors became more neutral and natural. The biggest improvement was seen in SDR content, where the picture looked even and much closer to the reference. A similar effect was achieved in HDR. After calibration the picture became more controlled, although not all of the TV's limitations could be eliminated. The biggest issue remained the intense reds, which were not always reproduced with the necessary precision. In practice the MRGB85 handles everyday SDR content very well, but in more demanding HDR material its limitations remain clearly visible.

The LG UA7500 with a VA panel has shown a really good performance in this category. The image scaling from Full HD content or even SD was surprisingly smooth. The picture looked smooth, edges weren't excessively jagged, and the television maintained a significant amount of detail, which meant that even older movies didn't lose their character. It particularly excelled with faces – there were no artificial contours or the "mask" effect, which often occurs in cheaper models. The way the television handled tonal transitions in lower-quality materials is also noteworthy. Thanks to digital processing, colors didn't blend together, and gradients looked natural and smooth. There was no intrusive image smoothing or loss of cinematic grain. This makes the UA7500 great for everyday content – from terrestrial television, through sports, to YouTube, where we often watch materials in various resolutions.

Upscaling and digital image processing perform quite well on the LG MRGB85. The Alpha 8 AI 4K Gen7 processor efficiently upscales lower-resolution content, and you can easily disable overscan regardless of the source. The TV also handles compression artifacts fairly well. The "Smooth Gradation" feature can effectively reduce visible banding and tonal unevenness, but it doesn't always work precisely. At higher settings it can smooth over fine details, for example material textures. On the plus side, it doesn't remove film grain. It's safest to use the "Low" or "Medium" setting, which provides the best compromise between artifact reduction and detail retention.

LG UA7500 is a television with a 60 Hz panel, so it’s hard to expect any awe in this category. It’s more of a screen intended for everyday content or an evening movie session rather than for following dynamic sports events or playing action games. It’s clear that the manufacturer directed this model specifically to that group of consumers – and in that regard, it performs correctly. We have the TruMotion function at our disposal, which is a motion smoother. It’s simple, has only one slider, but it can make a noticeable difference. At lower settings, the image appears more raw and cinematic, while at higher values, motion becomes smoother and more pleasing to the eye.

The LG MRGB85 is equipped with a VA panel with a native 144 Hz refresh rate, so it performs very well in terms of motion smoothness. The TV easily handles 120 Hz content from consoles and higher refresh rates when connected to a PC. That matters not only for gaming but also when watching sports, where camera movement is noticeably smoother than on basic 60 Hz models. There's also the TruMotion system, which lets you set the level of motion smoothing yourself. You can keep a more cinematic motion or increase smoothness, which works well for sports broadcasts and TV shows. The range of adjustment is wide, so you can easily tailor the motion smoothing to your preferences.

LG UA7500 is a television that can be safely recommended to "casual" gamers. While it does not have a 120 Hz panel or HDMI 2.1 ports, so fully utilizing the potential of modern consoles is out of the question. However, the manufacturer has taken care to include a few extras that can make gaming more enjoyable. Notably, the Game Bar deserves mention – a very nicely designed panel where you can quickly view and change the most important settings. From this panel, we have access to features such as ALLM (automatic switching to game mode) and frame synchronization, which is VRR. The range of VRR is limited – it works 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 HDR calibration mode for gaming. It sounds good, but based on testing experiences, we already know that with the UA7500, this option doesn't make much sense. The television does not handle HDR very well, so paradoxically we achieved better results 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 looking for full immersion from the latest consoles.

When it comes to gaming, the LG MRGB85 performs best by far. The manufacturer didn’t skimp on the feature set and essentially brought the full suite of functions from higher-end TVs to this model. You get three HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Each of them supports 4K 120 Hz from consoles, and when connected to a PC also 4K 144 Hz. So you don’t have to worry about which port to plug your console or PC into, since they all offer the same capabilities.

It also includes VRR, AMD FreeSync Premium, NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible, ALLM, and HGiG. Dolby Vision Gaming is present as well, allowing supported games to use high refresh rates and dynamic HDR simultaneously on Xbox. Rounding it out is Game Optimizer, a handy in-game menu for gamers. Without leaving the game you can change the picture profile, brighten shadow details, or check the current frame rate. In terms of gaming features, the MRGB85 therefore offers almost the same as much more expensive LG models.