LG OLED55B7V OLED 4k TV

The picture is detailed, balanced, and clean, to the extent that it's hard to believe how much of what you're watching is being made up by the screen. No other 2017 4K TV (barring other LG OLEDs) is as good with SD content as the B7. LG knocks it out of the park in terms of its gaming performance too.

It's not the youngest OLED TV on the market, but LG have truly hit the sweet spot with the LG OLED55B7. This 55-inch set is impressively bright for an OLED panel, and rounds that off with a stylish design and immersive 2160p resolution for a truly affordable price tag. With support for all three key HDR formats catered for, plus Freeview Play, it’s an easy set to lust over.

he OLED55B7 has the most basic sound system of the 2017 LG OLED range. It's actually a bonus for the aesthetes, in that it leaves the face of the chassis entirely free of speakers. Instead you have a clean and simple display, surrounded by a thin bezel and an elegant crescent-shaped pedestal stand.

Last year was a bad time for people looking to buy a decent 4k tv with all the bells and whistles. Unless of course you were happy to go down the lcd route in which case the market had some awesome tvs out there. Samsungs qleds were making big inroads and prices were starting to get more respectable. Factor in the guarantees that samsung were giving about screen burn on 'some' of their sets and things were improving fast. For gamers this screen burn aspect was important enough, but another potentially larger part of 4k gaming was the need for minimal input lag. In the wings was a tv that for gamers was almost holy grail territory, a tv that brought the lag down to 21ms in game mode and not far off that in other modes, it came in 55 and 65 inch sizes and specs are near identical as to make no real world difference. Best of all was that this was an oled screen. The big negative was that to buy even the smaller 55 inch model it would have emptied your wallet of 3000 pounds. This was perhaps the biggest deal breaker for most.

Fast forward to 2018 and the 55 inch model is now retailing at 1800 quid. For anyone looking to buy a 55 inch tv at decent money, you have probably already been looking at the competitions screens and found numerous issues and concerns that have you struggling to make a choice. For me it was everything from the various clouding and lighting issues that edge lit lcd screen were known to be susceptible to, coupled with occasional reviews mentioning ghosting, and of course the ever present input lag concerns. Chances are that if you are looking at this you have seen that some of the best 55 inch tvs to fit the bill will be coming in at around 1300 pounds. The nearest to that price in an oled screen being the lg of this review and thats coming in at a whopping 500 pounds more. So is it worth the extra? Well, yes, in every way possible its very much worth considering.

I read that the oled screen werent as bright as some of the led models out there, but in use, the lg is bright and clear with no concerns on that score whatsoever. Setup was a breeze, simple on screen instructions and once the set asked for the password to the wifi it automatically prompted with the message that a new software update was available. Agreeing to the request to allow the update let the set update itself quietly in the background. Hdmi 2.2 devices connected flawlessly and we were up and running in minutes.

The remote took a bit to get used to, being both a regular button remote but also a pointer. It has more functions but so far I havent gone into them. If you are watching something and then turn another device on, the input for that device shows on screen for around ten seconds. During that time if you press ok on the remote then the tv will change to that input.

The upscaling abilities of this set are nothing short of brilliant. So many 4k sets struggle on this aspect. Images upscaled can lose a lot of their clarity and look worse that they would on a non uhd set. But the lg handles this well.

Sound is another aspect of this tv that impressed me. For a set that looks so uncluttered with a minimalist bezel and no sign of the speakers from the front, the sound is very good indeed.

The inbuilt apps work well and do what they should, covering all the usual suspects in the smart tv stable. The wifi has been rock solod and buffering was non existent.

Negatives, if there are any of real note are that the wafer thin look of the screen from the front is ruined by the tvs slightly fatter shape lower down the case. Some of the hdmi sockets (and the aerial and optical connection) point straight out of the back. This could be troublesome if you are considering wall mounting, though there are hdmi sockets and usb down the left side, placed in a way that cables can still be hidden from view. Another potential negative is the stand which does NOT swivel. It is a fixed stand. Its worth noting here that the stand is a lovely curved chunk of aluminium that protrudes to the front of the screen by around 3 inches and it couod make use of a soundbar awkward for those who snuggle them up near the tv base. While on the subject of the stand, you can also get a sister set to this tv that has a near identical name 'oled55c7v'. The c7v is sold only by currys in the UK and has a different style stand that may be a far better proposition for those wanting their soundbar as close to the screen base as possible. The screen bezel is also slightly different, but in every other way the tvs are identical. The last negative fir me was that I felt the 'hardwired' power cable was a tad shorter than I would have preferred.

If you can justify going the extra mile and going for the oled tv you will not be disappointed. Gamers will love it for its screen quality and super low input lag times, while the picture itself is stunning in 4k. Still stunning in its upscaling of 1080p stuff and even handles lower quality video well.

I am an oled convert now. The blacks on this screen make my old plasma look like a geriatric tv. Its a shame I only have this tv on loan while a friend moves house as it is truly a huge step up over my once brilliant plasma. Had I not seen the difference in the flesh I wouldn't have believed it. Even in its presentation of 1080p videos it batters my samsung in every way.

Its a tv worth having.