LG NANO81 TV Review

The LG NANO81 is an entry-level TV in LG's NanoCell series. It replaces 2019's LG SM8100 and sits below the LG NANO85. In Canada, it's sold as the LG NANO80, with a different stand. Its main competitors are the Samsung Q60T QLED, Sony X800H, and the Vizio V Series 2020.

The LG NANO81 has an excellent design and looks a lot like the LG NANO85 and the LG SM8600 in terms of its build and frame. It has the same center-mounted stand as the SM8600 that gives it a more premium look than the two-footed stand on the NANO85.

The center-mounted moon-shaped stand is mainly plastic, except for the base underneath the stand, which is metal. The center part that connects to the TV is plastic and doesn't hold the TV very well as there's a lot of wobble.

Footprint of the 65" TV: 32.7" x 12.8".

The back is made out of a thin sheet of metal that almost feels plastic and it has a slightly-brushed textured finish to it. The back panel bends quite easily. Also, cable management is serviced through the stand, keeping your setup clean.

The borders are thin and aren't distracting.

With the stand, the LG 65NANO81ANA is fairly thick and you need a large table. If you wall-mount the TV, it won't stick out much.

Decent build quality, very much like the LG SM8600. The stand wobbles a lot and the back panel has a lot of flex to it. Also, you can visibly see the screws and lines where the different parts of the TV are attached.

The contrast ratio is okay; it's actually better than most IPS panels we've seen, but blacks appear closer to gray when viewed in the dark. There's a local dimming feature that only slightly improves the contrast ratio.

The LG NANO81 has a bad local dimming feature. It has six edge-lit dimming zones and bright objects light up entire zones, so you can see where each zone starts and ends, which is distracting even during real content. Due to this issue, there are noticeable blooming and uniformity issues around subtitles and bright objects. On the upside, it doesn't crush scenes and objects transition between zones well. We recommended setting Local Dimming to 'Medium' as it's less distracting than on 'High'.

The LG NANO81 has a disappointing SDR peak brightness. This TV doesn't get very bright, not enough to combat glare in bright rooms. For the most part, its brightness remains consistent with varied content.

We measured the brightness after calibration in the 'Expert (Dark Mode)' Picture Mode, with Local Dimming on 'Medium', Backlight set to 'Max', and the Color Temperature set to 'Warm 2'.

If you don't care about image accuracy and want the brightest image possible, set the Picture Mode to 'Vivid' with the Local Dimming on 'High' and Backlight to 'Max'. We were able to get 504 nits on the 2% peak window test.

The LG NANO81 has disappointing brightness in HDR. It doesn't get bright enough to make highlights pop the way they're supposed to, so HDR content doesn't look all that much different from SDR.

We measured the brightness before calibration in the 'HDR Cinema' Picture Mode with Local Dimming on 'Medium', Backlight set to 'Max', and the Color Temperature set to 'Warm 2'. The brightest the TV got was with these settings, as seen in the 2% peak window test.

The LG 65NANO81ANA has good gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are slightly darker, more so near the corners. There's also very minimal dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for sports fans. The uniformity is much better in near-dark scenes, except there's visible backlight bleed in the bottom right corner.

Good viewing angles, which is expected from an IPS panel TV. It's better than other TVs in LG's 2020 LED lineup like the LG NANO90. The image remains accurate when viewing from the side, ideal for a wide seating arrangement.

Bad black uniformity for the LG 65NANO81ANA. Without local dimming, there's clouding and backlight bleed in the bottom right corner, and the screen appears more blue than black. With local dimming, the uniformity is even worse, as the center cross lights up the two dimming zones in the center, and the left and right dimming zones are the only zones truly turned off.

The LG NANO81 has excellent reflection handling. Even with direct sunlight on the TV, the reflections don't get too distracting.

The LG NANO81 has alright out-of-the-box color accuracy. The colors are fairly accurate but the color temperature is very cold, giving the image a blue-ish tint. The white balance is off and the gamma doesn't follow the curve well, as most scenes appear darker than they should.

The LG NANO81 has outstanding color accuracy after calibrating. Any remaining inaccuracies are difficult to spot without the aid of a colorimeter and the gamma follows the target almost perfectly. The color temperature is cold when displaying an image with 5% and 10% stimulus levels, which affects the scoring for the color temperature. The temperature is closer to the 6500K target with all the other stimulus levels we tested.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The LG NANO81 upscales 480p content, like from DVDs, without any problems.

720p content, such as from cable boxes, is upscaled without any noticeable artifacts.

1080p content, like from Blu-ray players or native apps, looks almost as good as native 4k content.

The LG NANO81 displays native 4k content perfectly.

This is a 4k TV that doesn't support an 8k signal.

This TV uses a type of IPS panel similar to the panel on the LG NANO85.

Decent color gamut. It has impressive coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used in most HDR content, but it has limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

For the most part, the EOTF follows the curve fairly well until it rolls off, except most scenes are slightly too bright. In 'Game' mode, it performs exactly the same, as you can see in the here.

If you find HDR too dim, set Local Dimming to 'High', Dynamic Contrast to 'Medium' and enable the Dynamic Tone Mapping. The image is noticeably brighter as you can see the EOTF here.

Mediocre color volume. Due to its low contrast ratio and limited color gamut, the LG NANO81 doesn't display colors at different luminance levels well, and it can't display dark, saturated colors.

The LG NANO81 has good gradient handling. There's noticeable banding in all colors, especially with dark green and gray. In real content, enabling Smooth Gradiation helps smooth out gradients, and set it to 'Low' if you don't want to lose too much detail.

There are no signs of temporary image retention, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast static test image for 10 minutes, which is great.

Although some IPS panels can suffer from temporary image retention, this doesn't appear to be permanent as seen in our long-term test.

The LG 65NANO81ANA has a decent response time, slightly worse than the LG NANO85, which has a 120Hz refresh rate. There's overshoot in darker transitions and some motion blur with fast-moving content.

This TV uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. It flickers at 240Hz in 'Filmmaker', 'Expert (Bright Room)', and 'Expert (Dark Room)' picture modes. In any other picture mode, including 'Game', it flickers at 120Hz.

Unfortunately, this TV doesn't have a black frame insertion feature to improve the appearance of motion. The backlight flickers at 120Hz in most modes.

The LG NANO81 interpolates motion up to 60fps, known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It looks decent overall and smooths everything out in slower scenes, but it doesn't stop interpolating in action-packed scenes, causing visible artifacts.

See our settings page for the motion interpolation settings.

Due to the TV's slower response time, there's not much stutter on this TV when displaying lower frame rate content. This is similar to the Samsung TU8000.

The LG NANO81 can remove judder from native 24p content, such as from native apps, but like most 60Hz TVs, it can't remove 24p judder from 60p/i signals. To remove judder, enable Real Cinema.

The NANO81 doesn't support any variable refresh rate technology.

The LG 65NANO81ANA has an incredibly low input lag, even lower than the LG NANO85 and LG NANO90. You need to be in 'Game' mode to achieve the lowest input lag possible, and the TV has an 'Auto Low Latency Mode' that automatically switches to 'Game' mode when a compatible device is connected. To enable it, turn on the Instant Game Response setting.

All common resolutions at 60Hz are supported on this TV. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4, which is important for reading text if you use this TV as a PC monitor. To do this, set the input icon to 'PC'. Also, enable HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color to achieve full bandwidth.

Note that we were able to input 1080p @ 120Hz and 1440p @ 120Hz signals, but at 1080p it skips frames, and at 1440p, it doesn't properly display an image, so it's not useable.

Unlike the LG NANO85, the LG NANO81 doesn't support Dolby Vision.