CES 2012: First Impressions: LG 55" OLED TV, 84" Quad HD TV

We headed over to the LG stand at CES 2012 to check out the firm's latest flagship products—a 55-inch OLED TV and an 84-inch Quad HD TV. We hunted them down, we examined them up-close, we tried them out and we were suitably impressed. Read on for our first impressions of these two superstar TVs!

LG 55" OLED TV with Passive 3D

As expected, one of the main attractions at this year's CES can be found on the LG stand. Actually it's not so much 'one' main attraction as six, since no less than six OLED TVs are on display at the entrance to the LG display area.

Needless to say, picture quality on these models is superb—it's actually incredible! Screen viewing angles are comparable to a plasma TV and blacks are impressively deep. However, when, like us, you stay spellbound in front of one of these models watching the same demo over and over again, the magic starts to wear off a bit once you get used to the initially eye-watering contrast. In fact, on closer inspection, whites are over-exposed and gradually shaded colours look more like a series of solid colour blocks. What's really impressive about these TVs is above all the contrast between deep black zones and brightly coloured parts of the scene, whereas more subtle tones are rendered in a slightly disappointing way—the petals of a rose, for example, seem to glisten, twinkle and look posterised. In the end, it seems that LG has gone for an 'In-Store Demo' effect, activating all the dynamic filters available to give an eye-catching but unnatural effect, which is a bit of a shame.

On the other hand, the new OLED TV does seem to be very, very responsive, as there's no visible ghosting trails behind moving objects onscreen. Nice!

Another rather disappointing thing about this TV is that LG has chosen to use passive 3D. As this technology effectively halves the 3D image resolution (1920 x 540 pixels in 3D), black lines are visible in 3D images when you get up close to the screen (less than 2.5 metres away). That's a bit of a let-down in a TV that costs $8,000!

Extract from a 3D image: left, passive 3D / right, active-shutter 3D

Passive 3D technology does have its advantages, though. For example, the glasses have no internal electronics so they're cheaper to produce and lighter to wear. However, because of this drop in resolution, passive 3D would be best used in a Quad HD TV rather than a Full HD TV ...

LG 84" Quad HD TV (3840 x 2160 pixels) with Passive 3D

And here it is, the LG Quad HD TV. With an 84" sceen (213 cm), this TV is literally massive! This time, image quality is much more impressive, as passive 3D technology works wonders with Quad HD resolution (that's four times Full HD!). Obviously, passive 3D still halves the overall resolution, but here it's hardly even noticeable since the 3D image is still effectively rendered in 'double Full HD'.

Once again, we watched the 3D demo videos over and over and over. We were glued to the screen, as things really seemed to jump out at us in an unbelievably impressive way. In fact, one scene in the demo was particularly captivating, with a pretty Korean girl making strange movements at the screen and releasing a load of butterflies right out at us. We ended up standing there watching the video again and again just for that scene! Honestly—it really looked like they were flying off the screen! Plus, the butterflies were intensely brightly coloured, perfectly reproduced in 3D, and packed with fantastically realistic detail.

As one of the butterflies flew out ahead, it looked so real that we almost wanted to reach out and grab it! The three of us who tested the TV were completely and utterly mesmerised. This has got to be the most impressive sequence of 3D footage we've seen since the 3D viewing arrived in the consumer tech market!

A moving 3D moment we'll never forget—the pretty 4K butterflies!

If we had to choose between these two TVs, we'd definitely go for the Quad HD model. The OLED screen certainly delivers excellent picture quality, but we reckon it's worth waiting for Quad HD resolution to really get the best out of it ... although that does mean waiting until at least 2014 ...

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