The black levels were generally quite good, but there was a touch of unevenness in broad areas of blackness, thanks to inconsistent backlighting, when viewed in a darkened room. That aside, the picture was natural in colour, and rich where required.
The second thing to check out is was ultra high definition content, of which I’ve accumulated a reasonable collection. I was able to play these on the TV via USB, the network, and HDMI (through a UHD video source). If you’re on a fast Internet connection (25Mbps at an absolute minimum) then you can also enjoy UHD from Netflix. My Internet offers less than a quarter of that speed so I was stuck with what I had.
That was enough to again demonstrate the glories of UHD on a 65 inch TV. Once you get to this size the increased detail becomes clear, dazzling even. All my clips ran perfectly, with smooth graduations of colour across the skin of models, bright and bold colours on flowers and signs, and exceptional sharpness.
The third aspect of picture performance was with a couple of UHD clips that LG provided. These are probably the closest to the forthcoming Ultra HD Blu-ray format, using the same high efficiency video coding (HEVC) it will use, with a wide colour gamut.
Switching between ‘Standard’ and ‘Wide’ colour gamut in the picture settings yielded a much richer, deeper result with the latter setting.
Accurate? Who knows when the content is unfamiliar. There was no doubt, though, that the results were impressive.
The responsiveness of the WebOS 2.0 was kind of thrilling, after having spent quite a bit of time with the previous version waiting for it to do stuff. Even newly loaded apps seemed to start up instantly. The voice control was also snappy, and was very good and interpreting my mumblings.
And it was seriously easy to use. I pressed the ‘Voice’ on the remote and said ‘Start web browser’, and within a second, there it was on the TV screen. A few seconds with only the pointer and the voice control and I had gadgetguy.com.au up on the screen. You can also change channels and do much more with voice control.
The TV does not have a camera built in. I was thinking that that might be an optional extra for plugging into one of the USB sockets, but I’m not sure it would be of much use. There didn’t seem to be a Skype app. Nor Twitter or Facebook, either, which are more or less standard in Smart TVs.
That said, you can use the latter two via the web browser fairly efficiently. There are plenty of other apps for streaming Internet content (including, in addition to NetFlix, YouTube, QuickFlix and Bigpond Movies).
You can also stream local media from USB or your network. This worked well with all my test videos, including MKV material delivered from network attached storage. I was able to cast the screen from a couple of different Android devices to the TV, plus share videos from the same devices.
Photos – JPEG of course, plus PNG and BMP formats are supported – were delivered at the maximum resolution possible by the 8 megapixel display, not down-sampled somewhere along the way as happened with the first generation of UHD TVs.
The streaming audio formats are a touch restricted compared to today’s norms: MP3, WMA, OGG, WMA, DTS and Dolby Digital, but not FLAC or the Apple-friendly ALAC. The iTunes-style AAC format isn’t mentioned in the specifications, but is supported.
The Harman Kardon designed audio system proved to be more than a simple branding exercise. Somehow the LG and HK combo has managed to induce a panel TV to produce surprisingly listenable sound, a step above the spoken word competence normally available from TVs. It even managed to produce hints of relatively deep bass. The trick is in part in having the downwards firing speakers shooting into the angled skirt of the stand which reflects the sound out into the room. Presumably it is less fine sounding when wall-mounted.
Conclusion
LG’s years of development seem to have come to proper fruition with the 65UF950T TV. With a large, high quality picture, decent sound, excellent control and great facilities, this one is definitely worth a look.