LG UA75006LA (VA) vs Philips OLED811

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.

Philips OLED811 uses the new generation WOLED EX panels, also found in models like the LG C6 and Samsung S90H. After calibration we measured around 1500 nits, which is a very good result for an OLED TV. You can see it clearly in movies and series. All kinds of light flashes have the right intensity, especially when they appear on a dark background. In such scenes the OLED811 can deliver truly impressive HDR. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll see that peak brightness in every shot. When the screen is filled with a large area of white or a big explosion, brightness falls to around 600 nits. That's still a good result, but those scenes no longer have the same punch as small, bright elements on a dark background. This is a known limitation of OLEDs, and the OLED811 is no exception.

Colors

Aside from HDR brightness, colors also matter, and Philips performs very well here too. It covers almost the entire DCI-P3 gamut, which contains most of the colors used in HDR movies and series. So you get rich reds and lush greens, and while watching it's hard to find major faults in this area. It looks a bit worse with the much wider BT.2020 gamut — its most saturated shades are already beyond the reach of this panel. Added to that is the issue of the white subpixel the WOLED panel uses to help boost brightness. With very bright colors you can see some "whitening": the color is bright but loses some of its saturation. In exactly these situations QD-OLED panels from Samsung Display have the advantage. In most movies and series, however, this won't be something that immediately stands out.

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.

The movie mode on the Philips OLED811 is sensibly configured right out of the box. Most color errors are minor, both in SDR and HDR, so you can sit down and watch without first adjusting the settings. There are no major inaccuracies that would immediately pull attention away from the film.

It's not perfect, though. The white balance shows a slight deficiency of red compared with green, so whites and grays can have a faint greenish tint. It's not a strong cast, but measurements clearly show it. There are also small brightness deviations in SDR: some areas of the picture are slightly lifted, and the deepest blacks aren't always rendered evenly. In HDR the TV tracks the reference much more closely, although in places it slightly pulls details out of the shadows. These are generally things to refine. The factory movie mode provides a good starting point, and calibration will show how much more you can get out of it.

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.

After calibration the Philips OLED811 produces an image very close to the reference. We managed to even out the white balance and remove the subtle color cast visible in the factory settings. Errors in Color Checker measurements for SDR and HDR dropped to around 1 to 2, and many samples even fall below 1. That's a level at which it's hard to spot differences from the reference image with the naked eye. We also improved the gamma, and only in the brightest whites a slight brightening remains. In HDR the EOTF curve also stays close to the reference, although the TV still tends to slightly boost the brightness of small elements like stars or subtitles. That gives the image a bit of extra glow that shouldn't be there, but otherwise there's little to complain about. It was already good out of the box, and after calibration we managed to refine most of the remaining shortcomings.

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.

The OLED811 handles lower-quality content reasonably well, though it's far from perfect. The "Artifact Reduction" feature helps smooth tonal transitions and on the low setting delivers a pretty good result. It doesn't remove banding between shades as effectively as similar solutions from some competitors, but at least it doesn't introduce new artifacts. That's a sensible setting for everyday viewing. Still, there's some disappointment, because the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip used here can, in other manufacturers' implementations, deal more effectively with heavy compression even at similarly low settings. A lot therefore depends on how each manufacturer uses its capabilities. We have a few more reservations about the 4K upscaling itself. There is plenty of detail, but the overall image looks fairly soft. Edges are heavily smoothed, which robs the picture of some sharpness and clarity. You can partly correct that with the sharpness slider in the menu, though that will just emphasize outlines rather than recover detail. On the plus side, there is no overscan, so even with an SD signal the TV does not crop the edges of the picture.

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.

In terms of motion handling, the OLED811 performs excellently. At 120 Hz, which is useful for console gaming and watching sports, the image stays clear and moving objects don’t leave noticeable trails. The fast response of OLED pixels helps here; you can see it clearly in the UFO test, even on dark backgrounds. There are also motion-smoothing controls. For movies you can adjust the strength of smoothing to your taste, ranging from preserving a cinematic feel to much smoother motion. A separate motion blur reduction control is useful for fast-paced content like live sports broadcasts.

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.

OLED811 has almost everything you could expect from a gaming TV. It supports 120 Hz at Full HD, 1440p and 4K resolutions, and when connected to a PC can reach 165 Hz. It also has VRR, which helps avoid screen tearing with variable frame rates, and ALLM, which automatically switches to game mode. So you don't have to dig into the settings every time you power up your console.

HGiG also works correctly, so once you enable HDR on the console the TV doesn't apply its own brightness adjustments. There's also a Game Bar that lets you check signal parameters and quickly change settings useful while gaming. The list even includes Dolby Vision for games, but there's a significant catch, which you'll read about below.