Last month, LG’s OLED handily beat the LCDs in the annual US TV shootout but a UK shootout hosted this weekend begs to differ. Here, Samsung’s flagship LCD won (for HDR content). OLED won the SDR comparison, according to a report by Forbes.

HDTVtest 2016 TV shootout
Our friends over at HDTVtest, together with UK retailer Crampton & Moore, hosted its annual TV shootout event on Saturday 23. The shootout focused heavily on HDR picture quality but also included a SDR session. All TVs were calibrated. The results were embargoed until after the weekend.

The four TVs included in the shootout were:
65” LG OLED65E6V (LG E6 in the US)
65” Panasonic TX-65DX902 (not available in the US)
65” Samsung UE65KS9500 (KS9800 in the US)
75” Sony 75XD9405 (X94D in the US)


Perhaps surprisingly Samsung KS9500 – a LCD TV – was voted best in HDR picture quality. Out of a total of 22 participants 9 voted for the Samsung TV, 6 for the Panasonic TV, 4 for the LG TV, and 3 for the Sony TV.

- “Samsung’s KS9800/KS9500 received the most votes from attendees, largely because it was the only display that could resolve highlight detail up to 4,000 nits, helped by some clever tone-mapping, even though its peak brightness topped out at 1,400 nits. Although the TV betrayed some greyness and posterization  versus its rivals in dark scenes, and its curved screen was raised as a concern by attendees during the demos, voters praised its all-round HDR performance with more pros than cons,” said Vincent Teoh of HDTVtest to Forbes.

Panasonic’s DX900 reportedly suffered from visible backlight blooming issues, something we also noted in our review. The Sony suffered from relatively low peak brightness and too few local dimming zones.

LG’s E6 OLED on the other hand was “hampered by lower peak brightness” but was still praised for its colors, overall strong HDR performance, and of course its black levels. Some attendees reportedly said that specular highlights on LG E6 still at times looked brighter than the other TVs, despite lower peak brightness on paper, because of its higher native contrast. However, it still clipped details at the bright end.


The HDTVtest shootout also included a vote on SDR (standard dynamic range) picture quality where the LG E6 OLED wiped out the competition. It received 18 votes and the remaining four went to Samsung’s KS9500.

- Source: HDTVtest.co.uk via Forbes