FLATSCREEN 4K TV PERFORMANCE - LG UB980T
Decked with the best technologies that LG has to offer, the UB980T’s mostly excellent image quality came as no surprise to us. The IPS panel went pretty bright in our tests, and that bodes well if you’re the kind who enjoys plenty of sunlight in the living room. But be careful of positioning to avoid reflections.
With over 8 million pixels, the UB980T shone when fed with properly done 4K content. Case in point: the sharp footage and natural-looking colors of the dishes in the Food Odyssey 4K documentary that came in this 500GB hard drive that LG used to give to buyers of select 4K TV models couldn’t be more lifelike. The Wolverine movie (also in the hard drive) also hardly put a foot wrong, and to quote our own notes, “the red strands of Yukio’s hair were impeccably rendered”.
With plenty of details, depth, and sharpness, 3D images also looked amazing on this passive 3D TV. If you love watching 3D content, the UB980T is the TV to get. Coupled with the 90W, 5.2-channel front speakers of our 79-inch test unit, we truly had a cinema-like experience.
That said, the UB980T wasn’t without faults. Comparing out of the box performance, we found colors on the UB980T a tad muted than those on the Samsung HU8500. This is largely due to the IPS panel LG uses, which although improves viewing angles, also makes colors ‘pop’ less than rival panels. That said, the TV offers plenty of image controls (including a 20-point white balance control), so advanced users can tweak to their heart’s content. For the average user, the ISF Expert 1 mode is a good preset for critical viewing; and it gave us accurate colors from the get-go. Unfortunately, the dreaded backlight blooming was present across all LED Local Dimming settings, but we managed to lessen the effect by lowering the backlight intensity. Lastly, resolution in fastmoving scenes remained good with TruMotion engaged.