LG SK9500 TV Review

The design of the LG 65SK9500PUA is excellent. It resembles last year's SJ9500. It comes with a metallic curved stand and premium feel. The back is plain and the inputs are accessible from the side if it is wall mounted. The build quality is great and there are no gaps or loose ends. Unfortunately, there is only very basic cable management and the stand prevents you from placing the soundbar directly in front of the TV.

The stand of the TV is metallic, curved and sturdy. It supports the TV from the center, and it will wobble when pushed or if your table shakes.

Footprint of the 65" model: 29.9 " x 11.2"

The rear of the LG 65SK9500 is very similar to the SK9000. There is no cable management as seen here.

The borders of the TV are thin and look great. Similar to the SK9000, the bezel does not surround the LCD panel. The panel is attached on top of the frame and care should be taken when moving the TV, as it could be damaged if knocked, similar to what happened to our SJ8500.

The TV is a little thicker than average but looks thin when viewed from the side due to the smooth angles of the back. It does not stick out when wall mounted.

The LG 65SK9500PUA stays relatively cool. There are a few warm spots on the back but not warm enough to cause any issues.

The build quality is great. The TV is solid and there were no obvious gaps or other build issues. Care should be taken when moving the TV as the top is very thin.

The native contrast ratio on the LG 65SK9500 is decent, but blacks will look more grey than black when viewed in a dark room. This is less noticeable in a brightly lit room.

Contrast improves when local dimming, is enabled but again blacks will fade in dark environments.

The local dimming feature of the LG 65SK9500PUA is not very good. It reacts promptly to moving highlights, and dimming zones do turn on and off on time. The dimming algorithm is not too aggressive and thus clouding around highlights is obvious. It is quite similar to the performance of the SK9000 but slightly smoother.

We recommend setting it initially to High, but if the sudden brightness changes become unpleasant then Medium or Low can be a better choice.

The TV has excellent SDR peak brightness, bright enough for most rooms. Highlights are a little dim, most likely due to the poor local dimming.

This is brighter than the LG SK9000, which is beneficial for those in bright rooms with glare.

Very good HDR peak brightness. Very small highlights are displayed with good brightness and real scenes are quite bright. This is an improvement from last year's SJ9500 and from SK9000 where highlights were dimmed. However, the brightness is still far from the target 1000 cd/m² to fully appreciate HDR content.

The gray uniformity of the LG 65SK9500PUA is decent and very similar to the SK9000. In brighter scenes, the screen is a little darker on the sides compared to the center. Some dirty screen effect is present when viewing sports. This is not noticeable though on darker scenes.

The viewing angle is decent. It is better than most TVs with VA panels, but worse than TVs with OLED panels. Colors and brightness shift when one moves off of the center. This TV is an okay choice for a wide room where people will frequently be watching from the side.

The black uniformity is mediocre for this LG SK9500. There is clouding all over the screen and only the corners look black. However, things are considerably better when local dimming is enabled. The clouding is only apparent around the center of our test cross.

Great reflection handling on the LG 65SK9500PUA. The semi-gloss finish does diffuse reflections slightly and provides a very similar performance to the SK9000. This should be fine for most rooms, but reflections may be distracting in a very bright room or if sunlight falls directly on the TV.

It is bright enough to overcome most glare and it is our best outdoor TV. However, since it isn't meant for outdoor installation, it is important to properly protect it from the elements with a proper enclosure.

The out-of-the-box color accuracy is very good. The most accurate results were obtained with the Expert (Dark Room) picture mode. Color dE was good, but white balance dE was slightly higher and some people might notice some gray inaccuracy. The color temperature was warmer than our target and, giving everything a slightly red/yellow tint. This was a surprise since it was a change from the out-of-the-box color temperature we measured on the SK9000 which was cold.

Gamma was slightly lower than our target and this might cause some shadows to be darker.

The post-calibration colors of the LG SK9500 are excellent. White balance is almost perfect, color dE was good too. Gamma is very close to our target, shifting a little off target at the low end of our inputs, and color temperature is almost spot-on.

You can see our recommended settings here.

There are no obvious issues or artifacts when upscaling low-quality content like DVDs.

720p content is scaled well on the LG 65SK9500PUA with no obvious artifacts or softening.

1080p sources such as Blu-rays look great once upscaled on this LG SK9500

Native 4k content is clear and sharp.

The TV is able to display a wide color gamut as it has a very good coverage of the P3 color space.

In the Cinema picture mode the HDR EOTF overshoots the target PQ curve at low stimulus levels, which will cause many shades in HDR scenes to be too bright. If users still find HDR content too dark, setting the TV's Dynamic Contrast setting to Medium raises the EOTF and brightens most HDR scenes. On the other hand, the EOTF in Game mode follows the target PQ curve very well.

The color volume is decent. However, the LG 65SK9500 is unable to produce deep, dark blacks due to its not so great contrast ratio. Color volume is worse than last year's SJ9500.

This LG 65SK9500PUA has very good gradient. Some medium banding is evident in many places, and some more major banding can be seen in red and blue.

In HDR, setting the MPEG Noise Reduction to Low reduces banding.

The LG SK9500 IPS TV does present some image retention. After the 10 minutes burn-in scene, as we can see on our test picture, the image retention is easily noticeable, but after 2 minutes of recovery, the retention is non-noticeable.

This is result is slightly disappointing and we were not expecting it judging from the results of the SK9000 or the LG SJ9500.

While IPS panels can have some temporary image retention, there doesn't appear to be any risk of permanent burn-in as seen in our long-term test.

Very fast pixel response time, great for fast-moving content like sports and video games. Most of the blur in the photo is due to backlight flicker and the trail following the moving logo is fairly short, which is good.

The LG 65SK9500PUA uses PWM to dim the backlight. This helps clear the motion slightly but also results in duplications following fast-moving objects as seen in the motion blur box photo.

In order to dim the picture the backlight starts flickering at any Backlight setting other than 100. People sensitive to flicker should consider a nearly flicker-free alternative, like the Sony X900F or the LG C8.

The BFI function of this LGSK9500 is very good. To enable BFI in the Tru Motion menu set Motion Pro to on. This will flicker the backlight at 60Hz and will improve the blur. At the same time, the luminosity will increase so you will not notice any dimming. With 120 Hz content, the BFI options are grayed out as the TV is already flickering at its native frequency.

The LG 65SK9500 has excellent motion interpolation. Its native 120Hz panel can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120 fps. It is nearly perfect during slow-moving shots, and it has a pretty conservative algorithm as it stops interpolating as soon as there is too much motion. Very few artifacts were seen during testing.

To activate Motion interpolation, in the TruMotion menu, enable De-judder to interpolate 30Hz content to 60Hz. Enable De-Blur to interpolate 60Hz content to 120Hz.

The stutter of this LG SK9500 is decent. The fast response time will create some stutter in slow fps content, but you can always use the motion interpolation to correct this. There is also some persistent motion blur that will reduce stutter.

The LG 65SK9500PUA is judder free when you set Real Cinema to on, no matter if the 24p signal is native or is coming through 60p or 60i. This is excellent for those who are sensitive to judder when watching 24p movies.

The LG 65SK9500PUA doesn't support any variable refresh rate features.

Outstanding low input lag that will keep any gamer happy. In PC mode all picture modes have the same low input lag, so we recommend Expert (Dark Room).

4:4:4 color is only shown properly in PC mode.

When Chroma 4:2:0 is used in HDR there is an extra 120 Hz frame (8.3 ms) of input lag. Please refer to the SK8000 input lag box review for a more detailed explanation.

The most common resolutions are supported on the LG 65SK9500 although 1440p is not supported.

4:4:4 Chroma is only properly displayed when the input icon is set to PC (aka PC mode).

When in PC Mode with HDR enabled, the TV does not properly support 4:4:4 color and colors appear washed out.

In PC Mode, Sharpness at 0 means no added sharpness.

Similar inputs to the LG SK9000.

Update 02/27/2019: While the TV doesn't support Atmos passthrough via a Dolby TrueHD carrier signal (common in Blu-ray disks), it is advertised as supporting Atmos passthrough via Dolby Digital Plus, which is the Atmos format used by some sources like Netflix; our testing confirmed this passthrough on the LG C8. We expect this to be true for the LG SK9500.

The frequency response of the LG 65SK9500 is decent. LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 76Hz, which is above-average. This means that this TV won't produce any thump or rumble, but will have a decent amount of body and punch to its bass. The response above the LFE point is quite well-balanced, which is important for producing clear dialogue. Also, this TV can get quite loud, but will produce some pumping and compression artifacts under maximum load. However, its room correction system (Magic Sound Tuning) wasn't able to remove the modes of our test room around 200Hz.