During a recent visit to LG’s UK HQ to get an early look at its latest TVs and soundbars for 2024, three very unexpected things happened.
First, LG actually went to the trouble of setting up one of its LCD TVs in its main demonstration room, rather than focusing exclusively on its new OLEDs. Second, it actually had one of its most senior TV picture quality engineers stand next to this LCD TV and talk earnestly about how much effort he and his team had put into its picture quality. Third and most startlingly of all, LG then ran a demo of the TV that included very high-contrast images, having first darkened the room…
Why is any of this unexpected? Because while LG’s OLED TVs have long been beloved of home entertainment fans, its LCD TVs have, for at least as long, tended to be left on the home cinema naughty step because they use the IPS type of LCD screen technology rather than the VA type.
This matters because while IPS technology supports slightly wider viewing angles before pictures start to lose colour saturation and contrast, they also find it harder to control how much light is let through to the screen. Which means they struggle much more to produce the sort of deep, rich, consistent black colours in dark scenes that home cinema fans crave.
LG has tried all sorts of backlight control systems over the years to try and ‘solve’ IPS’s contrast problem, but nothing has really enabled its LCD TVs to compete on all-important contrast terms with the best VA-based LCD TVs.
So why, you might ask, has LG stuck with IPS so long? The simple answer is that LG Display, the panel manufacturing part of LG’s multi-business tech empire, has always made IPS panels. And not surprisingly, LG Electronics is pretty big on buying its LCD TV panels from LG Display.
I don’t at this stage have any definite information on what has led to this sudden change of LCD panel heart in LG’s 2024 TV range. Not surprisingly, LG didn’t explicitly mention the panel change during its presentation; I only spotted it after tapping the demo screen and noticing how doing so caused local picture distortion of the sort you get with VA panels, but not IPS panels. Once I’d noticed it, though, LG confirmed with me that VA panels are being used in the 65 and 75-inch models from LG’s upcoming QNED90 LCD TV series.
To be clear, LG certainly hasn’t turned to VA LCD panels for its entire LCD range in 2024. Far from it. The VA support appears to be limited to just these two QNED90 screen sizes (even the 86-inch QNED90 will revert to IPS). But it’s a fascinating move all the same – and one which I think suddenly puts LG LCD TVs on the serious home enthusiast’s TV radar.
The thing is, the only reason I felt compelled to tap the demo 65QNED90’s screen was because I’d been so blown away by what I’d just seen it do during its dark room demonstration. Having expected to see dark sequences in the demo material appearing with the customary IPS mixture of low-contrast greyness and significant backlight blooming around bright objects when they appeared against a dark backdrop, instead I saw this new screen reproduce a really bright object against a pretty much pitch black backdrop with scarcely a trace of backlight haloing at all.
Bolstered by a mini LED lighting engine, the 65QNED90 handled this extreme contrast sequence so well, in fact, that I’d say there are precious few other VA LCD TVs I’ve seen that could have presented it any better. Especially as the screen didn’t appear to be dimming down the bright parts of the high-contrast sequence as part of its attempts to keep backlight blooming at bay.
In fact, the picture looked consistently strikingly bright – almost as if no longer having to worry so much about light ‘bleeding’ through into dark areas has enabled LG’s engineers to fully open the brightness taps for the 75-inch and 65-inch QNED90.
While I’ve struggled to get on with the contrast limitations of LG’s previous IPS-based LCD TVs, I have previously been a fan of the sort of colour subtleties and richness you can get with LG’s QNED TVs (which combine Quantum Dot technology with an exclusive LG NanoCell layer that reduces the potential for stray light to pollute colour tones). I was therefore much less surprised than I was about its black level performance to find the 65QNED90 demo unit throwing out colours of a floodlit football (soccer!) match that looked both fearsomely intense but also surprisingly nuanced.
The colours exhibited during the Vivid mode football demo were a bit over-the-top for a dark room setting, actually – but I have no doubt there will be presets and tools available on the 65 and 75-inch QNED90 TVs with which you can calm things down to comfortable and/or accurate levels. LG was just wanting to show what its exciting new screen is capable of.
I’m not suggesting that everyone who was thinking of buying an LG OLED TV this year should now jettison that idea and turn to a 65 or 75QNED90 TV. Also, it’s important to note that LG can’t say for certain at this point that the QNED90s will get the same VA panels in every territory.
Where the VA QNED90 screens are available, though, there seems every possibility that they will finally enable LG to go toe to toe with similarly priced LCD rivals from the likes of Sony and Samsung. And I can definitely confirm that for the first time in many moons, it won’t just be LG’s OLED TVs that I’ll be keen to review this year.
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Related reading
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