Technology review: The LG 4K Mini LED TV range offers quality without a high price tag.
LG’s OLED sets offer market leading quality but its Mini LED TVs may be the market success story. We review one.
LG TVs with organic LED screens offer the best quality in the market but are expensive. A 77-inch 4K OLED TV costs about $7500 from Australian retailers. That’s why LG is keen to promote its Mini LED range, which like OLED, delivers striking colours with deep blacks and stunning whites but with a smidgen less quality.
The 4K Mini LED sets are about $2000 less: the QNED91 75-inch 4K is $5999 as is the 8K version, the QNED96. It’s only when you opt for the highest quality QNED99 8K series that its TV price matches a 4k OLED price.
So is this small drop in image quality worth the savings? I’ve been testing the 75-inch QNED91.
First, there is how this TV works. The mishmash of technologies offered by modern TVs are hard to understand but in a nutshell, this TV merges Quantum Dot, NanoCell and Mini LED technologies.
Quantum Dot displays produce a huge range of colours accurately with deep blacks and stark whites similar to OLED.
NanoCell also improves colour accuracy. LG says NanoCell delivers “rich, beautiful reds, blues and greens for the intended viewing experience by removing unwanted dull colours from the image.” It says NanoCell absorbs unwanted light wavelengths.
The third feature, Mini LED, is about backlighting accuracy. Images are formed using around 30,000 LED lights and controlled by between 960 and 1200 dimming zones.
A few years ago 50 dimming zones was thought to be good, which is why Mini LED and Micro LED technologies are a breakthrough in providing image accuracy.
Put these three technologies together and you have this set. The image and colour quality is great.
To test image accuracy I enlarged close up photos of letters on the screen and while letter shapes are crisp they are not quite as clear as with OLED sets. The question is how pedantic are you about image accuracy?
This QNED91 range uses the company’s updated webOS 6.0 menu and operating system. There are a few innovations, such as widgets across the top of your TV that resemble widgets on your phone.
These are instructive. There’s a widget to help you set up the TV, such as setting up the weather module or managing an extensive set of AI (artificial intelligence) settings. There is currently also an Apple TV+ widget at the top of the screen.
Next comes a row of trending content, which LG gleans from set usage. When asked whether LG notes what people watch, the company says it “doesn’t know your name, address etc rather seeks to curate a more accurate recommendation engine”. In other words, trending movie data is collected anonymously. I hope so, as viewing privacy is key.
LG also told us it cannot see what consumers are doing once they enter apps.
Following this is a row of installed apps, then a row of TV management options such as a dashboard for connected devices, followed by mobile, Apple Airplay, Sound out, TV inputs and a digital user guide. This TV’s functionality is well documented and the menu system is nicely laid out.
Then there is a row of recommended websites, then rows of recommended content for each of the major apps you have installed, such as Apple TV+, Netflix, Binge and Amazon Prime TV. LG says these content choices are recommended by the app itself, not LG.
The TV has universal search, so if you ask for movies with Nicole Kidman, you’ll get her movies from different streaming sources, including ones you may not subscribe to.
You can use Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands by pressing their respective dedicated buttons on the remote. LG says the TV supports both natively.
I tried Alexa commands such as “Open Netflix”, “Play Greyhound on Apple TV” and found that not only does the set open the streaming app, it also can bring up specific app content such as a movie using voice commands.
The QNED91 range is also equipped for fast action gaming with a 120 Hertz fast screen refresh rate and support for it through two of the four HDMI ports.
The set uses LG’s Alpha 7 processor. The coming 8K models use a more advanced Alpha 9 processor which supports four HDMI 2.1 ports for fast gaming, an NFC tag on feature, more memory, faster switching between apps, to name some.
You get LG’s signature magic remote with its cursor that you glide across the screen for making menu choices.
In the end you pay $4679 (65-inch), $5999 (75-inch) and $8399 (86-inch) for these models which offer great picture quality and advanced capabilities. The only thing you miss out on is OLED itself, if you really must have it.