LG Electronics 55UB8500 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz 3D Smart LED TV (2014 Model)
LG Electronics 55UB8500 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz 3D Smart LED TV (2014 Model)
- Refresh Rate: 120Hz (Native); Ultra Clarity Index: 1320 (Effective)
- Backlight: LED (Edge-Lit w/ Local Dimming)
- Smart Functionality: Yes – WebOS, Includes Magic Remote
- Dimensions (W x H x D): TV without stand: 48.5” x 28.6″ x 2.1”, TV with stand: 48.5” x 30.2” x 10.3”
- Inputs: 1 HDMI 2.0, 3 HDMI 1.4, 1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, 1 RF, 1 Component, 1 Composite, 1 Digital Audio Out (optical), 1 PC Audio, 1 LAN, 1 Headphone
- Accessories Included: Magic Remote and Two Pairs of Battery Free Passive 3D Glasses
The UB8500 Series puts the stunning clarity of Ultra High Definition, or 4K, into more compact screen sizes, both with an elegant Cinema Screen design. Witness the breathtaking quality of 4K resolution today: Our exclusive Tru-ULTRA HD Engine converts your SD/HD video to near 4K standards. It offers LG Smart TV functionality, so it”s easy to enjoy premium on-line entertainment streamed directly to the TV. And the Ultra HD Cinema 3D televisions turn 2D into 3D, ready to enjoy with lightweight th
List Price: $ 2,299.99
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Good TV, Bad Support from LG,
LG Picture defaults are not good. This is one of the many reasons why their TVs appear to have poorer quality when displayed next to Sony and Samsung models in stores. I was well aware of this as this is not my first LG TV. This would mean you have to spend some amount of time getting things to where you like them. In my case that would be switching to Expert1 settings and lowering the saturation down (the reds are far too saturated in all default modes, which reduces local contrast in my opinion). I also like to turn down or completely off TruMotion, but I know others prefer it especially if spending a lot of time watching sports. The two other TruMotion modes they have are “smoothness preferred” and “clarity preferred” (this is one was default). TruMotion is what’s responsible for the “soap opera” appearance of movies. This has improved greatly since it was originally introduced, but I think it actually causes some digital lag in certain scenes. Don’t quote me on this it’s my personal, and unfounded on any evidence, opinion.
HD to 4K conversion is adequate. I did not notice anything apparently wrong here, but I’m sure as I spend more time watching I would have a more to say.
The 2D to 3D conversion is actually rather good. I tested by watching tennis, hockey, soccer, and a movie. Of course, the quality is far from something that is natively shot in 3D, but at least you have the option. (A side comment – LG uses Passive 3D, which the interpolates each horizontal line presenting one for you left and one for your right eye thereby reducing the overall resolution available by 1/2. This, however, on a 4K TV means you’re only stepping down to HD, 1080 rather than the 2160 available with 4K*).
3D – as available in LG’s free content (native 3D). It’s being streamed to the TV and yet quality was absolutely stunning. My wife and I spent 40 minutes watching a documentary on a moss garden in Korean to simply enjoy the picture. She claims that the Samsung’s active 3D is better, but then I don’t find this feature significant enough to justify the 25-30% price jump. Also, passive 3D means cheaper, much cheaper 3D glasses that require no batteries or charging (I’m actually pretty sure it will work with regular cinema quality 3D glasses).
The Magic Remote is actually very practical. You can image after the amount of hours I’ve spend adjusting sound and picture quality, as mentioned above, my hand would be tired, but it’s not as bad. It’s very intuitive. The scrolling and joystick options are still available if preferred, but motioning with the remote is easy and accurate. You don’t find yourself hunting around the desired option as I would have imagined prior to using it. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to input text, however, although the onscreen keyboard displayed is QWERTY and not like in previous LG models.
WebOS is implemented well, BUT…you must upgrade your firmware in order to run the Netflix app**. It will not run out of the box. I spent over an hour with LG support on the phone (they’re utterly useless) only to have them recommend that I return the unit back to Best Buy. While talking to them I ran the upgrade (I should have probably done that prior to calling), which then allowed me to finally upgrade the Netflix app and run it. The errors I was seeing originally were “Netflix coming soon…” and “406”. I had no issues with any of the other applications. YouTube, AmazonPrime, the web browser and others ran fine with the original firmware version.
This is probably the cheapest ALL BOXES CHECKED TV out there as of May ’14. As such it will be a bit of a compromise. It will not have the greatest picture, it will not have the best sound, its software will need updating before you get it to work 100%. All this said, I do like this TV as it bridges the gap between the $1k smart TVs and the $2K+ UltraHD TVs. It fits the budget of more buyers and it will contribute to commoditizing 4K content.
* This is an oversimplified view of 3D, passive 3D and 4K. I’m unaware of the actual algorithms applied to the picture, but after reading a fair amount of material on the subject this is how I explain it to myself.
** My TV’s original software version was 3.13.19 and WebOS 1.1.0-6119. After the first an only upgrade I’ve done it’s running software ver. 3.13.26 and WebOS ver. 1.1.0-6126
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|My full review of the LG 55UB8500,
Hello, I would like to start out by pointing out that I consider myself a very tech inclined person and know most of what there is to know when it comes to electronics. With that in mind, let me say this, the LG 55UB8500 is sure to be one of the best television choices that anyone could make. Yes, there are much larger televisions on the market, but you are going to be hard pressed to find one that matches this TV’s quality while staying below a few thousand dollars more than this one.
To begin, let me start by explaining one very important feature of this TV, when you need to make adjustments, be sure to use the home button, followed by clicking on the little gear on the top right of the screen. This alone will save you tons of reading and experimenting with settings. I myself read on the set that features could be set using the User guide on the lower list of items on your bottom navigation buttons/options when you do hit the home button. You see, this set has a nice little list of items such as the HDMI ports, component and composite ports. All this along with all the other options like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon, and an internet browser which all come up with the easy to fine home button. Sadly, when you use the user guide, it will allow some of the settings to be adjusted there, but a few, such as 3D settings will be grayed out, not allowing you access at all. This confusion eventually had me calling customer support, which fortunately helped me figure out the problem in no time. Believe me when I say that I’ve found a large number of support pages or forum posts where people complain about the TV not allowing video adjustments while viewing the actual videos, with some people calling the TV near garbage because they weren’t able to use their video calibration disks, All because they were using the guide to change settings and not the little gear on the upper right hand of the home screen. It was a bit sad, but it had happened to me, so I am sympathetic. I had actually grown a bit concerned, as I had been able to do those wonderful image optimizations with my last TV which was a Visio, I felt that it was impossible that a better brand would lack those simple features, so that’s why I decided to begin there.
Now, once you get passed the issue with the user guide, by using the little gear, you have full access to every option, depending on what input you are currently using. The Smart picture mode is only available when you are watching live TV from over the air antenna, cable or satellite. That feature allows you to set the features that improve the appearance of those signals, since they are all going to be 1080p, since there is very little 4k content as of now. In fact, the only source of 4k I’m aware of is Netflix, and even there, its limited to around a dozen video’s and a few season of some series. Due to the lack in genuine 4k content, Smart picture mode allows you to tweak the look of the average 1080p video’s so you can make the most of your nice new 4k set. As I also mentioned before, while using the user guide, you are also prevented fr0m adjusting your 3d settings. This is very important because straight from the box, the settings are set to very low “Pop”, my name for how much the video jumps out at you. This is a more necessary feature, as for the most part, this awesome TV is able to use any video, aside from Netflix video’s you play through the TV app, to display in 3d mode. Now, let me be clear, non native 3d looks good, not great, but lets be fair, the TV is taking non 3d content and creating a 3d image on the fly.
Now, this feature is best used with video that is 1080p, since lower definition video usually looks bad anyway, so the higher the resolution the better. More importantly than the video, this feature really shines when it is used with a shiny new PS4 or Xbox One. If your like myself and suffer no headaches or eye strain when viewing 3d video, you will use this feature a lot. But fear not, if you can’t view 3d for long, the set has a setting that can be adjusted in advanced settings, its called Super resolution. Crank that one right up and behold the most gorgeous video game footage you have ever seen. Mario Kart 8 looks next gen and we all know its far weaker than the PS4 or Xbox One. If the game has a depth of field effect, it makes the game look 3d without ever turning on the 3d feature. Yeah, its a sight to behold.
Now, as for the number of connections or inputs available, I was blown away at the high level of quality that LG gave me. Of course you must have already seen that there are four HDMI ports, but it was the composite and component video that surprised me the most. My last TV did offer these forms of inputs, but they took up a large amount of space since there were three prongs for one, and five for the other. Here though, LG got smart, they included a few useful little items, which…
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|Great Monitor for 4K @ 60Hz and 4:4:4 support.,
I would say that for a regular desktop, this is about 9″ too big, but this was the smallest size available with 4:4:4 chroma support with 2160p and 60Hz. Coming from a 28″ Samsung 4K display with a TN panel, this is night and day better. You can actually read text without having to do any scaling or squinting. Colors are much more uniform as well, but make sure to disable any LED local dimming, as it will lead to a slight darkening of the extreme corners.
You also have to make sure you disable any of the extra processing, noise reduction, etc… since you will be running this at the native resolution and in a PC setting, this should also help with input lag, but that’s just my guess. Gaming with this with BF4 is great as well, with no noticeable input lag to hamper my gaming. For this, you have to make sure you’re gaming at 2160p, lower the graphic settings if you have to, but keep the native resolution of the display in order to bypass any upconversion to 4K by the TV, which adds significant input lag, trust me on this one, you want to avoid this as much as possible.
One drawback is that at random time, perhaps once every 15 seconds, I see a flashing horizontal line about 5 inches long. I’m not sure where this is coming from, but it’s there and is reported by other users in forums. Also, when connecting this to my 970, I would get random black screen flashes when enabling Deep Color in the picture settings. Going into the NVidia Control Panel, under “Display/ Set up Digital Audio” you have to go to the HDMI drop down menu and select “turn off audio” and apply the settings. This fixed it entirely. Make sure to use HDMI input 3 to enable the best PC colors as well.
For what I’m using it for, this is great. Had I not had the screen line issue and if it were a 40″ size, this would be a perfect 5 star product. 4K IPS monitors currently cost hundreds more despite being much smaller and having the exact same resolution. This just works well enough for me.
See the two attached pictures for a reference. One has about 6 browser windows open while the second has google earth open to a random location with my foot as a size reference. My shoe size is a mens 9.5 D, yes, this screen is huge when used in a desktop environment. In the Google earth picture, you will see the two left most extreme corners are slightly darker than the rest of the white background.
Also, for the gamers out there concerned about input lag with PC Gaming, there’s no reason to worry here. Don’t even look at those “reviews” out there, they were merely using a Leo Bodnar’s Lag Tester, which has a max output of 1080P. When you output a 1080P display, this TV will upconvert the signal to 2160P, thereby increasing input lag tremendously. The true input lag at 2160P is SIGNIFICANTLY less, this is why in my review I mentioned it’s best to lower the graphics eye candy in order to game at the display’s native resolution.
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