LG UR8000  TV Review

The LG UR8000 has a very simple design, with thin bezels on three sides and a thicker bottom bezel. It doesn't look as modern or as premium as some of LG's higher-end models, but it's not bad for a budget model.

This TV uses a pair of V-shaped feet, which support the TV well. The stand lifts the display about 3.4" above the table, so there's plenty of room to place a soundbar in front without blocking the screen. Unlike the LG UR9000, there's no alternate position for the feet, so you can't place them closer together if you have a narrow table.

Footprint of the 65-inch model: 47.3" x 10.6".

The back of the TV is very plain. The inputs are recessed into the back panel, making them difficult to reach when the TV is wall-mounted. There are clips just above each foot for very basic cable management.

The LG UR8000 is decently-built overall. The feet support the TV well overall, and it wobbles just a bit when nudged. There's some flex along the back panel, but this is common and isn't an issue. It's mostly made of plastic, and although the materials used aren't premium, the overall build has no obvious areas of concern.

The LG 65UR8000 has okay contrast overall. Its native contrast ratio is great, so blacks look very good in a dark room. Since there's no local dimming feature, dark scenes look washed out when bright highlights are on the screen.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. But as the TV can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the image, dark scenes look washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. But this means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

Unfortunately, this TV has mediocre peak brightness in HDR. With no local dimming and low peak brightness, highlights don't pop at all and HDR looks flat overall.

Unfortunately, this TV doesn't support HDR from Windows PCs. When attempting to enable HDR in the Windows display settings, it fails, and the HDR setting remains disabled.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Cinema
• Brightness 100
• Contrast: 100
• Color Temperature: Warm 50
• HDR Tone Mapping: Off

Switching to Game Mode causes no noticeable change to the TV's peak brightness. Overall peak brightness is still too low for an impactful HDR gaming experience.

Unfortunately, this TV doesn't currently support HDR from Windows PCs. When attempting to enable HDR in the Windows display settings, it fails, and the HDR setting remains disabled.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• Game Optimizer: On
• Brightness 100
• Contrast: 100
• Color Temperature: Warm 50
• HDR Tone Mapping: HGiG

The PQ EOTF tracking on this TV is superb, so even though it can't get very bright in HDR, it properly tracks the content creator's intended brightness level. Near-blacks are raised and look a bit washed out, though, due to the TV's lack of a local dimming feature.

The LG UR8000 Series has mediocre peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome moderate amounts of glare, and there's no variation in brightness with different scenes. It's not bright enough for a very bright room, though.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Expert (Dark Space, night)
• Brightness: 100
• Color Tone: Warm 50

The LG UR8000 has a decent color gamut in HDR. It can't display a wide color gamut, so HDR content looks washed out. The tone mapping is also bad throughout when sent a 75% stimulus, which corresponds to content mastered at 1,000 nits, so most HDR content is inaccurate. In dimmer scenes, the TV performs much better:

• DCI-P3 - 50% Stimulus
• Rec. 2020 - 50% Stimulus

Sadly, this TV has sub-par color volume. Due to its limited color gamut, it can't display a wide range of colors at any luminance level, and saturated colors are dim.

The LG UR8000 has excellent accuracy in SDR even before calibrating it. The white balance and overall color accuracy are fantastic, with no noticeable issues. The gamma is nearly perfect, but near blacks are too bright.

This TV is very easy to calibrate, and the results after calibration are nearly perfect, with no noticeable issues at all.

You can see the full calibration settings we used here.

Sadly, the gray uniformity is just okay. There are noticeable dark vertical bars across the entire screen, and a dark patch near the center of the screen is very distracting when watching sports or using the TV as a PC monitor. The uniformity is much better in near-dark scenes, and the previously-mentioned issues aren't noticeable.

The black uniformity of this TV is great overall. The screen is a bit cloudy throughout, but there are no bright spots or backlight bleed.

Unfortunately, this TV has poor off-angle viewing. The image degrades rapidly as you move off-center, as colors wash out and fade, and black levels rise rapidly. This makes it a poor choice for a wide seating arrangement or if you like to move around with the TV on.

The TV has decent reflection handling, but its anti-reflective coating has a few noticeable issues. Any bright source of light reflected on the screen has a noticeable rainbow smear. The coating absorbs some light, reducing its intensity, but since this TV can't get very bright overall, it's not suited for a bright room. It has a slightly glossier coating than the Hisense A6/A65K, so bright reflections are more noticeable and less diffused.

The TV has fair HDR gradient handling. There's a lot of banding in dark grays and blues.

The TV has good low-quality content smoothing. There's very little noticeable macro-blocking in dark scenes, which is very good, but unfortunately, it struggles with preserving details. The LG UT8000, which replaces this TV, is strangely worse in this regard, as it can't smooth out low-quality content properly.

The LG UR8000 has sub-par sharpness processing capabilities. Upscaled content looks blurry, text isn't sharp, and small details are lost. These results are with the following settings:

• Adjust Sharpness: 18
• Super Resolution: High

This TV uses a BGR subpixel layout, which doesn't impact the image quality, but it makes text look blurry in some applications that don't support the BGR layout, which is important if you want to use it as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

The LG UR8000 has a good response time overall, but there are still a few issues, and motion isn't clear overall. Transitions to or from a dark state are significantly slower than bright transitions, resulting in significant smearing behind dark areas of the screen. There's also noticeable image duplication at anything below peak brightness due to PWM flicker.

Unfortunately, this TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight, and it flickers at a low frequency, causing noticeable image duplication, as you can see in the response time photo. At max brightness, the flicker isn't nearly as noticeable, as instead of a full square wave with equal on/off cycles, the brightness only dips down briefly at 120Hz. This will still bother you if you're sensitive to flicker, but it reduces image duplication.

This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, also known as BFI. Instead, the backlight always flickers at 120Hz, which helps reduce persistence blur but introduces severe image duplication below max brightness.

The TV has an optional motion interpolation feature, but it's pretty bad in any fast-motion scenes. There are significant artifacts around any fast-moving object.

This TV's slow response time helps with stutter, as there's very little of it when watching low frame rate content.

Strangely, unlike the LG UR9000, this TV can remove judder from any source. 24p sources work perfectly, which includes Blu-ray players and a streaming box with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature. 60p sources, on the other hand, are only judder-free if you enable motion interpolation and set De-Judder to '10'.

Most sizes of this TV are limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and don't support a variable refresh rate (VRR). The 86-inch LG 86UR8000, on the other hand, has a 120Hz panel, but it still doesn't support VRR.

This TV has superbly low input lag, ensuring a very responsive desktop experience if using this TV as a monitor or very responsive inputs when gaming.

The TV supports most common resolutions but only at a 60Hz refresh rate. It displays chroma 4:4:4 signals properly at all supported resolutions, essential for clear text from a desktop PC.

Except for the 86-inch variant, this TV can't take full advantage of the PS5's capabilities. Most sizes are limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and don't support variable refresh rates. Although HDR doesn't work with Windows PCs, it works fine on the PS5.

Except for the 86-inch variant, this TV can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X. Most sizes are limited to a 60Hz refresh rate. Although HDR doesn't work with Windows PC, it works fine on the Xbox.

This TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all three of its HDMI ports, and it doesn't support HDR10+ or Dolby Vision, so you're limited to HDR10. LG advertises the 86-inch version to support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on two HDMI ports.

This TV supports Dolby's lossless audio formats through its eARC port, which is great. Sadly, unlike LG's higher-end models like the LG C3, they haven't added support for any DTS audio formats. Many Blu-rays and DVDs use DTS for their audio tracks, so if you plan to watch these, connect your media player directly to your home theater system for the best possible sound.

The frequency response of this TV is just okay. Like most TVs, it can't produce deep bass, so there's no thump or rumble in action movies. It has a well-balanced sound profile above the low-frequency extension (LFE), ensuring that dialogue sounds good at moderate listening levels. It gets decently loud, but there's noticeable compression at max volume.

The overall distortion is alright. It's much better at moderate listening levels and noticeably worse at max volume.

The LG UR8000 runs the 2023 version of LG's proprietary webOS smart interface. Unfortunately, navigating menus and apps is slow overall and feels sluggish.

Unfortunately, like almost all TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the smart interface, and you can't fully disable them. You can limit ad tracking and remove ads from the home screen using the 'Home Promotion' and 'Content Recommendation' settings in the 'Home Settings' menu, but there's no way to remove ads from the apps page.

The content store has a huge selection of streaming apps, and most mainstream streaming services are available.

The LG UR8000 comes with LG's Magic Remote. You can use it as a pointer, making it easier to navigate the menus if you prefer that approach instead of using the remote's buttons. The remote also has an integrated microphone, which works well. You can use voice commands to ask the TV to open specific apps, search within apps, ask for the time, or ask for the weather.

There's a single button centrally located at the bottom of the TV, and that's also where the infrared sensor is. You can turn the TV on or off with the button, change inputs or channels, and control the volume.

• Power cable
• Remote (with 2x AA batteries)
• Cable management clips and cable tie
• User manuals