LG QNED85A  TV Review

The LG QNED85A has mediocre peak HDR brightness. It's about on par with the LG QNED85T from 2024, but a clear step down from LG's 2025 flagship LG QNED92A. Its brightness dips notably in dark scenes due to its global dimming feature, a common feature among edge-lit TVs. Combined with its poor contrast, this TV doesn't deliver an impactful HDR viewing experience.

These results are with Local Dimming disabled because this feature decreased the TV's performance, as we'll see later. However, enabling this feature results in a boost in peak brightness in smaller windows, as shown below:

The TV is dimmer in Game Optimizer, but only slightly. Similar to when it's outside of this mode, there's a notable peak brightness boost in smaller windows when Local Dimming is set to 'High'.

The LG QNED85A has mediocre peak SDR brightness. When Local Dimming is set to 'Off', the TV isn't bright enough to overcome glare or reflections in bright rooms. 

However, with this feature enabled, SDR brightness does see a notable increase, especially in medium-sized highlights. Unfortunately, some very dark scenes appear much darker than they should as a result of the TV's dimming algorithms, which artificially dims these scenes ('global dimming') and is common among edge-lit TVs.

The LG QNED85A has poor native contrast, which is significantly lower than that of the LG QNED85T released in 2024.

While enabling this feature improves the TV's contrast to 21446:1, blacks become raised across any of the TV's six dimming zones if there's a bright highlight shown within that column. As a result, the local dimming feature on this TV is ineffective and can negatively impact the viewing experience. 

As such, the results shown are with Local Dimming set to 'Off' as this delivers a much better viewing experience overall. 

Compared to when the TV's local dimming is disabled (see image above), enabling the TV's local dimming feature improves its contrast, but also introduces a lot of haloing around bright highlights in dark scenes, which is common among TVs with edge-lit backlights. It can only adjust the light output across entire columns at a time, and as the QNED85A has six dimming zones, it means that the entire backlight is often always on when watching real-world content. This is also visible when in Game Optimizer mode.

We also encountered a processing bug where the backlight would start flickering on any local dimming setting (except 'Off'), but we weren't able to reproduce it outside of this test slide. This is similar to the issue we also came across with the LG QNED92A. Let us know if you encounter the issue with real content.

The LG QNED85A has awful lighting zone transitions. The video above shows when the TV's local dimming feature is disabled. With its edge-lit backlight and six dimming zones, large areas of the screen light up, especially when large highlights move quickly across the screen, which is distracting when watching dark scenes.

Switching to Game Optimizer doesn't result in any notable difference in dark scene performance when local dimming is disabled. Likewise, for when local dimming is enabled in Game Optimizer and with VRR, large areas of the screen light up as objects move across the screen. 

The TV has mediocre black uniformity. With Local Dimming set to 'Off', the screen looks blue and patchy in different parts of the screen due to its low native contrast. Enabling the TV's local dimming feature improves uniformity, though there's still some cloudiness around bright objects.

The LG QNED85A has decent color volume in SDR. It struggles with saturated greens. That said, it covers a good portion of the BT.2020 color space, and there isn't a significant difference in color coverage at different lightness levels.

The TV has mediocre HDR color volume. It struggles to display dark, saturated colors effectively, and combined with its unremarkable peak brightness, it can't display colors at high luminance levels, which prevents it from offering a vibrant viewing experience in HDR.

The LG QNED85A has unremarkable SDR accuracy out-of-the-box. Its white balance is mediocre, with reds becoming very overrepresented towards lighter shades of gray, which gives it a noticeably warm color temperature. Its color accuracy is good overall, with only a few issues with whites and lighter shades. The TV's gamma tracks close to the 2.2 target, though dark scenes are noticeably darker than they should be.

The TV boasts superb SDR accuracy after calibration, and calibration's also easy to perform. White balance and color temperature significantly improved, and the gamma is close to the target 2.2, though very bright scenes appear darker than they should. Its color accuracy is also notably improved, although reds remain slightly off after calibration.

See our full calibration settings.

The TV has okay HDR accuracy before calibration. Color accuracy is passable, but white balance is notably off, with reds overrepresented and blues underrepresented in lighter shades of gray, resulting in a color temperature that's a bit too warm.

Calibrating the TV does little to benefit its HDR accuracy. White balance improved, though color dE was barely impacted and remains notably off. Color temperature also remained off-target, but now outputs an image that is a bit too cool. 

The TV has decent PQ EOTF tracking. Near-black details are shown brighter than intended, while shadows and mid-tones are darker than they should be. However, the TV follows the curve closely with highlights. There's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness with content mastered at 4000 nits, which helps to retain some details in highlights. For content mastered at 1000 nits, there's some clipping that results in some finer details getting lost in very bright scenes.

The TV's low-quality content smoothing is good. It does a very good job smoothing out macro blocking and pixelization from lower-quality streams, though there's some loss of fine details in the process.

The TV does a great job upscaling lower-resolution content like DVDs. The image is clear enough that you can make out some detail, while mid- to large-sized texts are easy to read.

The LG QNED85A has good HDR native gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in dark greens and grays, but all other shades have minimal banding.

The LG QNED85A has very low input lag across all resolutions and refresh rates when it's set to Game Optimizer mode, which helps ensure a responsive experience.

The TV supports all common resolutions up to 144Hz. It also properly displays chroma 4:4:4 if you're planning to use it to display text from a PC.

The LG QNED85A supports FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR up to its maximum 144Hz refresh rate. It's also G-SYNC compatible to help reduce any screen tearing. 

The LG QNED85A has poor motion handling at its max refresh rate of 144Hz. It performs at its best in bright scenes, with very little to no overshoot. However, all other transitions are very slow, resulting in very noticeable blur.

The LG QNED85A has poor motion handling at 120Hz. While dropping down to this refresh rate does improve the TV's motion handling, it's not by much. Again, it performs better with brighter scenes, and there's little to no overshoot. However, it struggles with darker scenes and introduces noticeable blur that can be distracting when gaming.

Dropping the refresh rate further to 60Hz doesn't result in any significant changes from how it performs at 120Hz. There's no overshoot, but it struggles a lot in darker scenes, leading to a lot of motion blur.

The TV is fully compatible with the PS5, including for gaming at 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz. It also supports HDMI Forum VRR, along with Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV to Game Optimizer mode to ensure the lowest input lag.

The TV is almost fully compatible with the Xbox Series X|S, including for gaming at 4k @ 120Hz. It also supports HDMI Forum VRR, FreeSync Premium Pro, as well as Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches you to Game Optimizer to give you the lowest input lag. However, it doesn't support Dolby Vision gaming.

There is some stutter in lower-frame rate content like movies, which is more apparent when watching slow-panning shots.

The TV removes judder when watching 24p movies and TV shows when Real Cinema is enabled. This includes from sources that can only send 60Hz signals, like cable boxes.

The LG QNED85A has poor cinematic response time, especially when transitioning to and from dark shades. While there is little to no overshoot or inverse ghosting, the TV's slow response time results in noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects whenever you're watching movies, TV shows, or sports.

The TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight, which introduces flicker. It flickers on all picture modes, though the frequency varies depending on the local dimming setting applied. With the local dimming feature set to either 'Off', 'Low', or 'Medium', the TV flickers at 240Hz, while setting it to 'High' increases the frequency to 960Hz.

The TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, that is supported at both 60Hz and 120Hz. While it does help clear up some of the motion artifacts, there's apparent image duplication.

The TV has an optional motion interpolation feature, but it doesn't work very well. There are artifacts visible in both slow- and fast-panning shots, and during high-action scenes, it can struggle and stop motion interpolation altogether. Overall, it can make for a jarring viewing experience.

The TV has inadequate direct reflection handling. Its glossy screen coating does little to reduce the impact of direct light sources, resulting in a mirror-like experience, especially in darker scenes. 

The TV does a remarkable job of handling indirect light, with its black levels barely raising when viewing in a bright room. Although it already has poor contrast on account of its raised blacks, this should be considered.

The TV does a sub-par job of handling reflected light, including from lamps, windows, and other ambient light sources. These reflections can be especially distracting during dark scenes.

The TV does an okay job of retaining its color saturation in bright rooms. It loses some pop in its low-luminance colors, but all other colors are not notably impacted by ambient light.

The TV has an inadequate viewing angle, making it less ideal for wide seating arrangements. Its colors start to wash out pretty early as you move to either side of the screen, as blues shift in hue rapidly while the other colors remain relatively stable, resulting in a bit of yellow-ish tint. Its black levels also rise, leading to a noticeable loss in contrast. This TV is more ideal for setups where you'll be sitting directly in front of the screen.

The TV has adequate gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are bit darker than at the center, while there is some dirty screen effect towards the center that can be distracting when watching sports.

The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. This doesn't impact the experience for watching movies or gaming, but it can cause an issue for text clarity if using the TV as a monitor, though not everyone will notice this.

The TV supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1 on all four of its HDMI ports, so you can take full advantage of multiple high-bandwidth devices like newer gen consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2) or higher-end gaming PCs. 

The LG QNED85A supports eARC and passes through all Dolby Digital options. However, DTS passthrough, often used on physical media, is not supported. 

The LG QNED85A has a basic look and feel, similar to its predecessor, the LG QNED85T, released in 2024. With thick bezels and a mostly-plastic frame, the TV doesn't look very premium.

The table comes with two V-shaped plastic feet that can be adjusted into two different positions. The narrow position (pictured above) is great if you have limited space on which to place the TV. The wider position adds more stability to the TV and may be more ideal for when you want to place a soundbar below the screen. In either position, there are about 3.4 inches before you reach the bottom of the screen, which should be enough clearance for most soundbars without blocking the image.

• Footprint of the 65-inch stand in its narrow position: 16.3" x 11.7"
• Footprint of the 65-inch stand in its wide position: 45.5" x 11.7" 

The back of the TV is plastic and has a very basic look. All of the inputs are within an inset on the left side of the TV, which can make them tricky to reach if it's wall-mounted. To help with cable management, the back includes two clips, and you can feed the cables through channels built into the feet to help keep things clean if you're planning to use the stand.

The TV has decent build quality. There are no issues with quality control, though it does have a decent amount of flex in the middle largely due to it being made almost entirely out of plastic.

The LG QNED85A ships with the 2025 version of LG's proprietary smart interface, webOS. LG promises five years of yearly updates on their TVs as part of their Re:New program.

Unfortunately, it has a bug where the light sensor dynamically adjusts the brightness of the screen based on ambient room light, even when this feature is disabled.

Sometimes, the TV keeps defaulting to PC mode, even after setting the input label to HDMI. We found that we could get around the issue by triggering another handshake by either going back into the HomeHub settings or switching the input back to HDMI.

There are two settings in the 'Home Settings' menu, namely the 'Home Promotion' and 'Content Recommendation' settings. These settings remove the top banner ads, suggested content from the home screen, and screen saver promotions. This gives your home screen a clean look, but there's no way to remove ads from the apps page.

The TV comes with LG's new 2025 Magic Remote. Like the old version, it can be used as a pointer, or you can use the traditional buttons to control it. It also supports voice control, giving users a hands-free option to access and search many of their favorite apps. Unlike the old version of this remote, there is no longer a number pad to allow for quick launch shortcuts. 

• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• User manuals
• Power cable
• 2x cable clips

The LG QNED85A has poor frequency response. While the TV doesn't produce much bass, its sound profile is fairly well-balanced, helping ensure that dialogue is clear and easy to understand. However, the sound becomes very unbalanced once you reach high volumes.