Setting up
The TV is installed in the usual way – actually a bit faster than usual because there’s no need to attach a stand.
Note: the TV is not suitable for wall mounting. The normal LG wizard guides installation and all went perfectly smoothly, including tuning in the TV stations, setting up the network connection (I went for WiFi) and offering a bit of training on using the Magic remote control.
The default picture settings for the ‘Standard’ picture were pretty accurate, except that the sharpness control was up a bit too high.
The picture was clearly smoother when this was brought down to zero. The ‘Contrast’ and ‘Brightness’ picture settings were spot on.
The grey-scale test pattern I use to check this showed the very slightest tilt towards pink in the lightest grey shades, but this wasn’t noticeable at all in normal program material.
Contrast
The regular viewing experience with high quality Blu-ray content was magnificent. I watched a couple of full movies and lots of test clips, and in my office, at night, with all the lights turned out, and it soon became apparent than this TV produced real blacks.
As in, the total absence of light. In my dark room when the picture faded to black, the TV disappeared completely.
And that is something to be cherished. It is something that has been absent, pretty much, from TVs since the last of the CRT TVs disappeared from the market. If your TV can go full black, pixel-by-pixel, then it can reproduce the subtlest of low-light details in dark scenes.
And those dark scenes are darker, and so more realistic.
LED-backlit LCD TVs have probably been best at this until now, but even they could only control light levels in approximate areas.
This TV will go full black in one part of the screen while remaining bright in another part, all the way down to pixel-level precision. Amazing.
On test patterns I use to check this the only limitation was that the light emerging through the glass tended to scatter a little, producing a slight glow against the black immediately abutting it. I guess then next development will be glass that manages to avoid this.
LG doesn’t say how bright this TV will go.
In practice it produced a nicely bright picture under my harsh fluorescent tubes. But thanks to the infinite blacks, it seemed even brighter. That’s what a massive contrast ratio delivers.
As I mentioned, LG says that the curve ‘delivers an immersive viewing experience’. It didn’t do anything much for me. But in a darkened room the perfect blacks removed all distractions from viewing, resulting in a real immersion in the picture.
How fast?
LG’s motion smoothing is pretty good, with minimal artefacts. Yet somehow the motion seemed smooth even with this switched off – at least until the scrolling credits at the end of movie appeared. Then the switching speed of the display became obvious. These lines of text visibly jumped from frame to frame until I switched the motion smoothing back on.
That might not seem like much of an endorsement, but it means at the fundamental level this TV is doing what it should. LCD TVs soften this kind of judder because of the time they take to switch their pixels on and off, causing motion blur. In other words, their picture weaknesses mask judder.
The result of the fast switching is significantly improved clarity. I have a test Blu-ray that another company used to demonstrate the clarity of moving text on plasma compared to LCD. On this TV it was as clear as anything I’ve ever seen.
The 3D with this TV was, frankly, disappointing.
LG has long used a passive system, whereby the screen has each horizontal row of pixels alternating in the direction of polarisation compared to those above and below. In 3D the left eye image is sent to half the lines, the other image to the other lines. Matching eyewear then separates the two.
The advantage of this is light and inexpensive eyewear and virtually no ghosting or crosstalk (caused by leakage of the image from eye to eye). The cost is reduced vertical resolution.
OLED features fast pixel switching times, which ought to allow excellent active 3D. But with this TV, which sticks with the passive system, you lose that resolution. In practice, this means you need to sit further away to get a clean 3D image.
The sound quality from the speakers was unexceptional in the sense of it being neither better nor particularly worse than most other TVs. It was a touch brighter than normal, presumably due to the front speakers, and there was very little bass. Fine for watching the news and TV shows in which the sound is mainly used for dialogue.
Conclusion
For the best 3D, then, you might want to look elsewhere.
But if you want a TV with exceptional 2D picture performance, the usual quality LG smarts, and astonishingly attractive styling, then the LG 55EA9800 OLED TV is well worthy of your attention.
And it is also a fitting demonstration vehicle for the OLED to come. With its design it shows dramatically what can be done with this display technology.
Importantly, it suggests that our future TVs will be even better in several dimensions – colour and brightness and speed – than the TVs were are watching now.
