Lg oled g6 delivers on promised brightness boost

LG's OLED G6 was touted to bring several key improvements, with three standing out in particular: a boost in brightness up to 3500 nits, enhanced color gradations thanks to its new 12-bit processing, and revamped image processing via AI thanks to the arrival of the Alpha 11 Gen3.

Lg's g6 oled lives up to its brightness promise (mostly)

In a test conducted by Vincent Teoh of HDTVTest, the new LG OLED G6 indeed reached its claimed brightness of 3300 nits in the FILMMAKER mode on a 65-inch model - although this may increase to 3500 nits on larger 77 and 83-inch sets.

However, there's a catch: in areas smaller than 1 and 2%, the panel actually peaked at 3300 nits, dropping to 2800 nits at 5%, 2300 nits at 10% (the industry standard set by the UHD Alliance), and just 400 nits at full screen. As Teoh notes, this isn't entirely surprising given that manufacturers often tout the highest possible mode while neglecting real-world conditions.

LG does deserve points for delivering on its promise in the correct FILMMAKER mode, though. Additionally, the EOTF curve is noticeably raised in this mode, leading to scenes that appear slightly more washed out in low-light conditions - a decision on LG's part to better emulate the Sony BVM-X3110 master monitor, although this issue is reportedly already being addressed in the next firmware update.

New alpha 11 gen3 processor a major improvement

Last year, LG faced problems with color gradations in HDR content, exhibiting excessive posterization and color banding in many scenes, particularly those with dark areas punctuated by bright highlights.

While LG has since largely solved this issue through its excellent post-sales support, there were still some scenes where the gradations weren't quite up to par compared to previous generations. Enter the new Alpha 11 Gen3 processor, which boasts a significant upgrade in lithography from 10 to 6 nanometers, resulting in much lower heat and improved energy efficiency. This allows for a substantial +70% boost in graphics processing power, with the GPU and NPU (for AI tasks) both seeing major enhancements.

Perhaps most significantly, the Alpha 11 uses a 12-bit pipeline from start to finish (input to output), up from the traditional 10 bits. This means the TV can now accurately display 4096 levels of color, resolving the issue of poor gradations in HDR content once and for all.

In short, the new LG OLED G6 is a beast of a TV, albeit an evolutionary rather than revolutionary one. LG's approach of alternating years between major leaps and incremental refinements seems to be working well, building upon the excellent G5 with a host of welcome improvements.