These blacks are to die for

Pictures LG

The LG EG960T is a curved OLED 4K UHD TV. Unlike LCD TVs that require a light source made up of tiny LEDs, OLED pixels produce their own light. The result: infinite contrast with blacks to die for. LG has already been producing 1080p OLED TVs, but by merging 4K with OLED on the EG960T, it may have just attained the holy grail of TVs.

If you ignore the section that houses ports, the EG960T is a pencil-thin TV with matching bezels. To create a floating TV effect, the panel is propped up by a piece of see-through acrylic with a silver metallic base. The space saved from not having a backlight unit is probably one reason why LG chose to keep all hardware components within the chassis unlike Samsung’s flagship 4K TVs that use a breakout box. Of course, both implementations have pros and cons. In Samsung’s case, you can sort of half-upgrade the TV down the road by replacing the box.

Connections-wise, you get three HDMI inputs, three USB ports (two USB 2.0, one USB 3.0), and one headphone output. I was hoping to see at least one more HDMI port though, because you’d be left with two if one of them is used for ARC (audio return channel). Other features like wired and wireless connectivity, HEVC decoding, HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 are standard TVs of this class. On the software side of things, the TV’s WebOS 2.0-driven interface is definitely pretty looking. Aided by a quad-core CPU and 3GB of RAM, it was noticeably faster than earlier WebOS 1.0-based models.

Picture quality is exceptional on the EG960T. The only TV that can stand up to it now is the Samsung JS9500, an LCD TV using quantum dot technology. In my tests, in areas of screen uniformity, brightness, and motion resolution, the Samsung may fare better. But the EG960T had better viewing angles, a more enjoyable 3D performance (high resolution with no crosstalk), and possessed chart-topping black-level response. In a way, the vastly superior black levels more than compensated the areas it was weak in. Even non-technical viewers preferred the EG960T most of the time during a side-by-side comparison.

If you’re willing to pay for the best picture quality (the 55-inch version costs $6,999, the 65-inch $10,999), there’s no better choice than the LG EG960T. My only real complain is that LG is reserving HDR support for newer models coming later this year.

You can click, point, scroll, or use voice commands on the LG Magic Remote.