LG E7 OLED TV Review

The design of the LG E7 is excellent. It looks sleek from any angle, and will certainly stand out in a room. The edges of the TV are glass, and the soundbar acts as a stand to support the TV very well. It can be a little bit difficult to move due to how thin the screen is, but for most people, this is a single event.

There is a metal plate on the base of the TV which supports the TV well. The soundbar can also act as part of the stand and helps to provide extra stability. The width of the soundbar is 48.3".

Footprint of the 55" TV stand: 6.8" x 18.8"

The rear of the TV looks great, with a textured glass finish. There is a single removable tab for cable management, which isn't as good as what is provided with some other brands such as the Sony A1E.

The borders look extremely thin due to the glass which sits in front of the panel. There is a fairly small gap before the picture starts.

The top of the TV is extremely thin when viewed from the side, and looks just like a sheet of glass. The electronic components, power supply, and inputs are in the bottom third of the TV which is thickest.

The TV stays fairly cool because as an OLED its pixels only get as bright as they need to be. The TV does get a little warm to the touch in a few places along the back though, where the TV's internals are located.

The build quality of the E7P is excellent, and the whole TV feels very premium. The textured back is a nice touch, as is the 'Picture on glass'. Even the remote feels higher quality (but bigger) than other LG models.

The LG E7P has an outstanding contrast ratio since, like other OLED TVs, when the TV is displaying a totally black color, the TV does not emit any light at all. This makes the E7P a perfect TV for a dark room. Blacks are deep and dark scenes look fantastic.

The LG E7P does not need any local dimming because OLED is an emissive technology, so when the TV displays a pure black it totally shuts down the emissive part in that region, so no blooming or clouding is created.

Plot over time

Good SDR peak brightness. The TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) doesn't kick in during our 50% and smaller white window tests, so the TV's brightness will only decrease during very bright scenes, or during PC monitor use with white web pages. However, when the brightness does decrease it does so drastically and it's very visible. Overall the TV is bright enough for a bright room, but may be a little dim in a very bright room.

The brightness is a little less than the LG C7 OLED, which uses the same panel, but the difference is within expected panel variance from unit to unit. However, many other competing LED TVs are much brighter, such as the Sony X930E, X900E, Samsung MU8000 and Q9F.

Plot over time

Good HDR peak brightness. Though the TV's ABL limits its brightness quite severely when very bright content is shown, these kinds of bright scenes are very rare for HDR content because it's usually mastered for an average scene brightness of 100 cd/m². Our real scene test shows that highlights in a typical scene can reach a very good 689 cd/m², though still quite short of the 1000-4000 cd/m² HDR highlights are typically mastered for.

Overall the brightness is a little less than the LG C7 which uses the same OLED panel, but the difference is within panel variance from unit to unit so both can be considered equal. The E7P fares better against its LED TV kin in HDR than in SDR, but a few LED TVs are still brighter such as the Sony X930E, X900E and Samsung Q9F.

Great gray uniformity for the E7P and this is almost the same result as we have measured on the C7 OLED. On our 50% gray test picture, besides a warmer patch near the bottom, not much uniformity issues can be noticed. Dirty screen effect is not a problem at all here and we did not notice it at all while watching sports like hockey or football.

Looking at our 5% gray uniformity test picture, some vertical lines can be noticed (looks at the picture with the light closed to see the issues better) but in person, those lines are only visible while displaying a dark uniform color and not really problematic while watching normal video content.

Great viewing angle, as expected from an OLED TV. Blacks remain perfect at an angle and brightness decreases gradually, however, color shift becomes severe when viewed at moderate angles. Overall this TV is a great choice for a room where people often view the TV from the side.

As with other OLED TVs before, the black uniformity of the E7P is flawless as when the TV is displaying a completely black image, the light emitting pixel is completely turn off and thus, no light bleeding occur at all.

The reflection handling of the E7 is excellent. It has a glossy finish so reflections are defined, but reduced in intensity significantly. It has a purple tint similar to other high-end TVs such as the C7 and Q9F, but this results in excellent performance even in a bright room.

Out of the box and with the picture mode that brought us the closest to our calibration target, the accuracy is average. This is mostly due because the E7P gamma is tracking closer to the 2.4 target and thus, the white balance accuracy is also affected. The C7 gamma target, with the same 'Out of the box' setting, was tracking closer to the 2.0. This may be only due to panel variance and is not really a problem in itself. The color accuracy is a bit high, but can mainly be explained by the drift of the white point toward the yellow, which all other colors also have from their respective targets.

After calibration, most of the issue encountered at the pre-calibration step are fixed, and the final result is an extremely accurate TV with a white balance dE of only 0.13, which is unnoticeable. The white balance control was extremely precise, and corrections were easy applied. The gamma curve is very flat and tracking very closely our 2.2 target.

The color dE was brought down to 0.99, which again is almost unnoticeable by anyone. The white point target now tracks very precisely. The color management system was helpful, but it is still not as precise and easy to use as other available color management system of other brands.

You can see our recommended settings here.

Upscaling of low-quality content such as DVDs is good. Like other LG TVs, haloing along edges is visible but the results are good.

720p content is upscaled well. Edges are smoothed without losing much detail.

Full-HD sources such as Blu-rays look great. The image remains very clear and detailed.

No issues can be seen with native 4k content displayed on the E7.

Excellent wide color gamut. In DCI P3 all three red, green and blue primaries are close to their targets, and in Rec 2020 only green is far from its target, as is common for modern TVs. This gamut is very similar to the LG C7, B6 and other OLEDs from last year, but not quite as good as Samsung's 2017 QLED TVs like the Q7F.

The TV's EOTF in the HDR Cinema Home picture mode undershoots the PQ curve quite a bit, making most scenes more dim than intended. The EOTFs in Game and PC modes are similarly dim. The picture quality still looks very good in a dark room because of the TV's infinite contrast ratio, but in a bright room HDR content will look too dim. Setting 'Dynamic Contrast' to Medium or High can alleviate this somewhat, at the cost of less accurate picture quality.

Update 11/10/2017: LG's new Active HDR feature (Dynamic Contrast: Low) improves the EOTF considerably, so we recommend enabling it. Unfortunately Active HDR doesn't work in Game or PC mode.

Decent color volume. The TV's infinite contrast ratio helps it extend its wide color gamut to extremely low brightnesses, but at high brightness the TV's RGBW pixel structure prevents it from making saturated colors nearly as bright as it can make pure white. This color volume is a little different than that of the LG C7, but the difference is within expected panel variance from unit to unit so both can be considered equal.

The E7P has a great result on our gradient test. It can display our gradient test image very good and without any visible 8-bit banding, which is great for HDR content. Like the C7, light shade is almost spotless with only some little color issues in the darker color and grayscale. Banding in movies is not really more a problem here than on the C7.

Update 2017-11-07: Note that when the TV is set to 'PC' mode, via the input menu, the banding is much more visible, and this for all picture modes.

The LG E7P did show some image retention on our image retention test but unlike the 2016 LG OLED TVs, it's far better and is very similar to the LG C7. The retention is not very strong right after the 10 minutes burn-in scene (as seen in the above picture) and after 4 minutes, it is almost not noticeable. After 6 minutes no retention is visible and this, when compared to the 2016 OLED TVs, is a big improvement.

Note that this test only tests the short term image retention and not the permanent burn-in that may occur with a longer exposition to static images. We are currently running a burn-in test that should give us clue on how each type of TVs respond to a longer exposure to static image and you can read more on this test here.

Note that there is a variation in temporary image retention between units.

OLED panels such as the E7 do have the possibility of experiencing burn in. You can see our investigation into this here.

Like other OLED TVs, the LG E7P has a nearly perfect response time, resulting in almost no visible blur following moving objects, which is excellent when watching fast-paced content. The downside of this is that low fame rate content such as movies may appear to stutter, because there is no motion blur to smooth transitions between frames.

Like all OLED TVs, the E7P doesn't flicker to dim, and instead shows each image for a full frame. Some flicker is detectable in our measurements but shouldn't be visible during normal usage. The absence of visible flicker makes motion appear slightly smoother, but results in some persistence blur.

Like with other 2017 LG OLEDs, it is unfortunately not possible to use Black Frame Insertion (BFI) to add flicker to help reduce persistence blur, like the Sony A1E does.

The LG E7P has a 120 Hz panel and can interpolate lower frame rate content to 120 fps, which greatly improves motion. Unfortunately the interpolation isn't as good as on some other TVs: the motion stuttered at times during normal content, especially cartoons, and artifacts would appear in rare cases. This behavior is similar to the LG C7. To enable motion interpolation (soap opera effect) set 'TruMotion' to 'User'. To interpolate a 30fps source increase 'De-Judder', and to interpolate 60fps content increase 'De-Blur'.

Update 11/13/2017: The motion interpolation performance has been clarified in the text.

Like other OLED TVs, the E7P has stutter which is especially noticeable with low frame rate content such as movies. This is a result of the very fast response time, so each frame is shown as a static image for some time. Unfortunately there is no way to fix this without adding additional frames through motion interpolation (the soap opera effect).

The E7 OLED is able to play 24Hz movies from any source (Blu-rays, DVDs and HTPCs) without judder. For 24p sources turn on 'Real Cinema' and set 'TruMotion' to cinema with both sliders set to 0, and this won't add the soap opera effect. For a 60p/60i source such as HTPC or cable box, only turning on the 'Real Cinema option is necessary.

The E7 has a native 120Hz panel, but doesn't support any variable refresh rate features.

Excellent low input lag, which should please all but the most competitive gamers. Both Game mode and PC mode have low input lag; all picture modes in PC mode have the same low input lag. 4:4:4 color is only shown properly in PC mode (aka when the input's icon is set to 'PC'). Overall the input lag is similar to the LG C7 and most Samsung TVs, and far better than most Sony TVs, but a little worse than the LG SJ8500 and TCL P607.

All common resolutions are supported. 4k @ 60 Hz @ 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 colors are only supported when 'HDMI ULTRA HD Deep Color' is enabled for the port being used. 4:4:4 color is only shown properly when the input's icon is set to 'PC' (aka PC mode). 1080p @ 120 Hz is listed as a possible resolution in the TV's EDID, so no custom resolution is required.

Good frequency response, the LG E7P follows our target decently well and it extends well into lower frequencies. It also doesn't have much dynamic range compression at higher volumes, so the sound quality doesn't deteriorate when brought up to its maximum.

Average Distortion performance. The E7's THD follows a common pattern where levels are relatively low at normal listening volumes but rise significantly higher the volume is brought up. IMD is also quite high when the TV's volume level is set to max.