- Jul 24, 2012
- 1,163
- 2
- 19,315
I recently decided to take the late plunge to 4K. Having read the exceptionally positive reviews, especially Rtings', about the two top tier high end flagship TVs: Samsung KS8500 and LG B6.
I bought LGB6 65" for starters. After reading and hearing how: "it's world apart any other TV", "blows Samsung KS8000 out of the water", "has absolutely no competition", "OLED is miles better than LED" and how "you will never go back to LED LCDs after experiencing OLED".
Ironic, my first and prolonged impressions were far from "oh wow"-perfect.
The LG B6 - best TV of 2016-17 -didn't wow me as much as reviews and buyers feedback made one believe.
It has plenty of issues, and a some positives, let's dive in:
Cons:
-Colors were not lively enough, even when ramping the Color setting up. They were vibrant, but not particularly rich, vivid and detailed.
-Noticeable Blur. Image in games was somewhat blurry, even with sharpness on mid 5/10 setting (which means neutral +0% sharpness). Upping sharpness further resulted in less blur but unpleasant sharp-artifacts and white-edges.
-There aren't many ways to change image quality to adapt to your taste. I felt that there's only one particularly good setting and hardly any flexibility.
-It was not bright enough, even with OLED light on the maximum.
-Pure OLED blacks are indeed minblowing and are quite the eye candy. However in some instances in Gaming such as nighttime exploration it may look jarring as if the blacks are too crushed and darkness is too englufing. Yes it creates a truer cleaner image when viewing artwork, still shots and so on, but it may not work for everything or everyone.
-Image retention is a truly bothersome issue. It's really THAT bad. Worse than I've expected- and trust me, I prepared myself. This is most noticeable with PC gaming and browsing/desktop use.
-Software issues. Living in Middle-East, Israel, the latest updates such as Game Mode + HDR and the Input Lag fix was not available in my country and region. I had to do something even the technicians here didn't knew about or dared doing - and that was forcing an American firmware update using USB and lots of digging, quite risky procedure.
Dead pixels - this was thr deal breaker for me - I had 2 solid full dead pixels. I suspect it has something to do with the OLED lighting and IR issues.
Pros:
-After installing the latest firmware usjng USB I had less issues. Changing source type and name (which actually affects image settings, input lag and motion)- sticks and works.
-There's nothing as black as LG's OLED true black. It's truly a thing to behold. Especially in loading screens and title screens where you see image or text on pitch solid black and with an image on black background.
So even though I was offered a replacement - I decided to "go safe" and go with the familiar favorite manufacturer of mine: Samsung.
In Israel they don't sell the flat 65" KS8000 so I took the 65" 8500 instead. Man, was I into a dreadful surprise...
1st TV arrives, first glance everything appears normal. Closer inspection (after a few days) showed a huge count of dead sub-pixels, dead partial pixels and few dead full pixels. Even black markings in between the grid of pixels.
There was also light bleeding: white-bluish marking, like a "black eye" on the lower right side of the screen, and another fainter on the top right.
Asked for a replacement. Customer service was a pain and they dragged it terribly, took about 2 weeks to replace.
2nd new KS8500 TV arrives -with the cardboard box with holes, torn and bumped. The TV itself was broken- with cracked plastic on the back, and the gap between it and the frame, which was bent. There was also no plastic (naylon) covers in the back - raising the suspicion this was an RMA'd or used showcase TV which was tempered with in some lab and refurbished. So much for Samsung customer service. Who gave me their word I'll get a brand new TV.
Next came the 3rd KS8500 TV. About 8 days after - near perfect boxing this time, plastic covers in place. Technician wanted to be over with it and leave - when I noticed one ugly crecent shape backlight bleed or stain on the middle-right. Looking like tooth marking in a crecent arc in bluish-white color. Oh and there were sub-pixels and possibly full dead pixels again! But I already given up on a TV free of dead pixels.
So stupid, dead pixels are totally unexpected with today's standards and especially this price range (which in Israel is like 5+ times more expensive than the US).
With older LED and LCD I almost never had dead pixels on arrival.
With 2017 LED and OLED modes, however, Dead Pixels are to be somewhat tolerated and expected it seems. There is no escaping them, You are left with no choice but living with it or ask for replacement and hope the lottery gives you a cleaner model. Roll of the dice, never dead-pixel-free.
Oh and there's a 4th Samsung 8500 coming and I am sick of being nervous about what fortune and Samsung's poor quality assurance gives me this time.
Finally, my brother bought himself a Samsung KS8000 60" as well, I went myself to see the installation. It had one full noticeable dead pixel, and a horribly distracting - temporal burn-in issue. How is burn-in possible with LED-LCD screens especially Samsung KS series which is said to be burn in free? No idea, suspect it was software/hardware fault. However turning the TV off and on seemed to make the issue disappear, for now. So my brother settled to live with the dead pixel, to avoid future pain and hassle, and stay with the TV.
As for the Samsung TV itself:
Cons:
-The UI is simple and slick -but there's one super annoying software design fault: you can change source type and rename it to whatever you like-but the source type and name will reset and change automatically every now and then, on almosy every TV power-on or device boot. So for instance it changes to PC mode and removes tons of settings, locks color to 50 and ruins the image quality, responsiveness and motion. Or it changes to receiver, HDMI 1-4, or Home Theater. Good luck trying to lock your sources to Game Consoles like Rtings recommended- to get best possible gaming video.
-There's definitely edge lit pillar of light issues when viewing a black screen with small area of light/color -such as most loading screens in video game (when you have a logo on pitch black or loading spining circle on one of the corners).
This may appear as light banding in some instances.
Pros:
-Blacks are awesome and rich! Yes- they look VERY close to LG's true blacks. And you get much more detail in dark scenes and dark-black/grey bodies. Such as the detail and embroidery on Noctis's black jacket from FF XV or Venom Snake's Sneaking Suit patterns and complexity.
-The image quality. I was wowed by Samsung's image quality. It was both familiar and comfortable (coming from Samsung LED UA55D6400) - and amazingly superior.
-The sharpness is much better, playing with 50 sharpness (which is in fact 0% sharpness and should be used with games and all content!) games look crisp, clear and mind-blowingly good especially at 4K.
-There's a ton of flexibility in image customization, even on Game Mode.
I do miss the Black Tone setting (off, dark, darker, darkest) which was one of the best features for gaming in older models. Can't fathom what they decided to omit this.
-Remote is nicer, simple and high tech. No motiom sensor though, and it is made of plastic unlike LG's.
-HDR on KS8000 is vastly superior to LG's.
All in all- brightness, color, backlight, picture modes, sharpness, clarity and 4K quality on the Samsung KS8500 and 8000 is noticeable better and preferable in my honest humble opinion to LG's flagship B6 OLED.
I can't understand how all these people said OLED is in a higher league andnhas no competition - when everything about the Samsung's quality wowed me and impressed me - and made me feel more comfortable from the very beginning- much more than LG's top OLED.
However the software bug where it constantly resets and erases source type and names -is extremely frustrating and tedious to deal with. It's super buggy by design and can't understand why Samsung bothered giving us these options if the software robs away our control every time. Such a dumb decision. A simple toggle or lock option with a patch would fixed it easily.
The issues of backlight stains/bleed or however you would call it - and dozens of dead pixels/sub pixels on every brand new TV is dealisheartning and disappointing.
This review is still an "open case"-as I wait for my 4th and hopefully "perfect" KS8500 TV.
Fingers crossed.
Thanks for reading.
I bought LGB6 65" for starters. After reading and hearing how: "it's world apart any other TV", "blows Samsung KS8000 out of the water", "has absolutely no competition", "OLED is miles better than LED" and how "you will never go back to LED LCDs after experiencing OLED".
Ironic, my first and prolonged impressions were far from "oh wow"-perfect.
The LG B6 - best TV of 2016-17 -didn't wow me as much as reviews and buyers feedback made one believe.
It has plenty of issues, and a some positives, let's dive in:
Cons:
-Colors were not lively enough, even when ramping the Color setting up. They were vibrant, but not particularly rich, vivid and detailed.
-Noticeable Blur. Image in games was somewhat blurry, even with sharpness on mid 5/10 setting (which means neutral +0% sharpness). Upping sharpness further resulted in less blur but unpleasant sharp-artifacts and white-edges.
-There aren't many ways to change image quality to adapt to your taste. I felt that there's only one particularly good setting and hardly any flexibility.
-It was not bright enough, even with OLED light on the maximum.
-Pure OLED blacks are indeed minblowing and are quite the eye candy. However in some instances in Gaming such as nighttime exploration it may look jarring as if the blacks are too crushed and darkness is too englufing. Yes it creates a truer cleaner image when viewing artwork, still shots and so on, but it may not work for everything or everyone.
-Image retention is a truly bothersome issue. It's really THAT bad. Worse than I've expected- and trust me, I prepared myself. This is most noticeable with PC gaming and browsing/desktop use.
-Software issues. Living in Middle-East, Israel, the latest updates such as Game Mode + HDR and the Input Lag fix was not available in my country and region. I had to do something even the technicians here didn't knew about or dared doing - and that was forcing an American firmware update using USB and lots of digging, quite risky procedure.
Dead pixels - this was thr deal breaker for me - I had 2 solid full dead pixels. I suspect it has something to do with the OLED lighting and IR issues.
Pros:
-After installing the latest firmware usjng USB I had less issues. Changing source type and name (which actually affects image settings, input lag and motion)- sticks and works.
-There's nothing as black as LG's OLED true black. It's truly a thing to behold. Especially in loading screens and title screens where you see image or text on pitch solid black and with an image on black background.
So even though I was offered a replacement - I decided to "go safe" and go with the familiar favorite manufacturer of mine: Samsung.
In Israel they don't sell the flat 65" KS8000 so I took the 65" 8500 instead. Man, was I into a dreadful surprise...
1st TV arrives, first glance everything appears normal. Closer inspection (after a few days) showed a huge count of dead sub-pixels, dead partial pixels and few dead full pixels. Even black markings in between the grid of pixels.
There was also light bleeding: white-bluish marking, like a "black eye" on the lower right side of the screen, and another fainter on the top right.
Asked for a replacement. Customer service was a pain and they dragged it terribly, took about 2 weeks to replace.
2nd new KS8500 TV arrives -with the cardboard box with holes, torn and bumped. The TV itself was broken- with cracked plastic on the back, and the gap between it and the frame, which was bent. There was also no plastic (naylon) covers in the back - raising the suspicion this was an RMA'd or used showcase TV which was tempered with in some lab and refurbished. So much for Samsung customer service. Who gave me their word I'll get a brand new TV.
Next came the 3rd KS8500 TV. About 8 days after - near perfect boxing this time, plastic covers in place. Technician wanted to be over with it and leave - when I noticed one ugly crecent shape backlight bleed or stain on the middle-right. Looking like tooth marking in a crecent arc in bluish-white color. Oh and there were sub-pixels and possibly full dead pixels again! But I already given up on a TV free of dead pixels.
So stupid, dead pixels are totally unexpected with today's standards and especially this price range (which in Israel is like 5+ times more expensive than the US).
With older LED and LCD I almost never had dead pixels on arrival.
With 2017 LED and OLED modes, however, Dead Pixels are to be somewhat tolerated and expected it seems. There is no escaping them, You are left with no choice but living with it or ask for replacement and hope the lottery gives you a cleaner model. Roll of the dice, never dead-pixel-free.
Oh and there's a 4th Samsung 8500 coming and I am sick of being nervous about what fortune and Samsung's poor quality assurance gives me this time.
Finally, my brother bought himself a Samsung KS8000 60" as well, I went myself to see the installation. It had one full noticeable dead pixel, and a horribly distracting - temporal burn-in issue. How is burn-in possible with LED-LCD screens especially Samsung KS series which is said to be burn in free? No idea, suspect it was software/hardware fault. However turning the TV off and on seemed to make the issue disappear, for now. So my brother settled to live with the dead pixel, to avoid future pain and hassle, and stay with the TV.
As for the Samsung TV itself:
Cons:
-The UI is simple and slick -but there's one super annoying software design fault: you can change source type and rename it to whatever you like-but the source type and name will reset and change automatically every now and then, on almosy every TV power-on or device boot. So for instance it changes to PC mode and removes tons of settings, locks color to 50 and ruins the image quality, responsiveness and motion. Or it changes to receiver, HDMI 1-4, or Home Theater. Good luck trying to lock your sources to Game Consoles like Rtings recommended- to get best possible gaming video.
-There's definitely edge lit pillar of light issues when viewing a black screen with small area of light/color -such as most loading screens in video game (when you have a logo on pitch black or loading spining circle on one of the corners).
This may appear as light banding in some instances.
Pros:
-Blacks are awesome and rich! Yes- they look VERY close to LG's true blacks. And you get much more detail in dark scenes and dark-black/grey bodies. Such as the detail and embroidery on Noctis's black jacket from FF XV or Venom Snake's Sneaking Suit patterns and complexity.
-The image quality. I was wowed by Samsung's image quality. It was both familiar and comfortable (coming from Samsung LED UA55D6400) - and amazingly superior.
-The sharpness is much better, playing with 50 sharpness (which is in fact 0% sharpness and should be used with games and all content!) games look crisp, clear and mind-blowingly good especially at 4K.
-There's a ton of flexibility in image customization, even on Game Mode.
I do miss the Black Tone setting (off, dark, darker, darkest) which was one of the best features for gaming in older models. Can't fathom what they decided to omit this.
-Remote is nicer, simple and high tech. No motiom sensor though, and it is made of plastic unlike LG's.
-HDR on KS8000 is vastly superior to LG's.
All in all- brightness, color, backlight, picture modes, sharpness, clarity and 4K quality on the Samsung KS8500 and 8000 is noticeable better and preferable in my honest humble opinion to LG's flagship B6 OLED.
I can't understand how all these people said OLED is in a higher league andnhas no competition - when everything about the Samsung's quality wowed me and impressed me - and made me feel more comfortable from the very beginning- much more than LG's top OLED.
However the software bug where it constantly resets and erases source type and names -is extremely frustrating and tedious to deal with. It's super buggy by design and can't understand why Samsung bothered giving us these options if the software robs away our control every time. Such a dumb decision. A simple toggle or lock option with a patch would fixed it easily.
The issues of backlight stains/bleed or however you would call it - and dozens of dead pixels/sub pixels on every brand new TV is dealisheartning and disappointing.
This review is still an "open case"-as I wait for my 4th and hopefully "perfect" KS8500 TV.
Fingers crossed.
Thanks for reading.
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