One win for the B6 is blacks and grays, which have great texture and clarity, a surprise given how many midrange televisions make dark, shadowy scenes look washed out. Scenes from Awake and The Creator, very dark movies, were clear and detailed, after tweaking a few picture quality settings (namely changing to Vivid mode).
Photograph: John Brandon
Photograph: John Brandon
Contrast and brightness are more of a mixed bag. I watched House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones (yes, the infamously dark season eight, episode three) to stress test these specs, and the B6 struggled. On better TVs (and home theater projectors), you can see trees in the background of a scene where a character emerges on a frozen lake. On the B6, they are completely black—e.g., a contrast problem.
Color saturation and luminance could be better too, especially compared to RGB TVs I’ve tested recently. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, with its various blooming effects, wasn’t exactly terrible looking, but certainly not as crisp as on something like the LG Micro RGB Evo. (The less technicolor The End of Oak Street fared better.) During a demo reel benchmark, green grass by a fence in winter looked a bit too brown for my taste (again, color saturation issue), but skin tone variation was surprisingly good.
LG is not the first brand I think of for playing video games (it’s Sony), but the B6 deserves some extra credit here. The 120-Hz refresh rate screen does its job, and made all my movements playing Crimson Desert on PC crisp and responsive. Resident Evil: Requiem looked almost photo realistic, with gleaming statues and surprisingly good color quality, even zooming in on crumpled leaves.
Watching sports and news didn’t yield any surprises—a Baltimore Orioles baseball game looked rich and textured, but not very bright.
Affordable, But Outclassed
LG B6 may be an entry-level OLED, but, like an entry-level BMW, it has a lot of the bells and whistles of a flagship, with plenty of ports, features, and premium finishes. My main issue with it is brightness and contrast, both could be better. And LG’s WebOS is still not my favorite interface in the world.
The main issue might actually be price. At the time of writing, the LG B6 is on sale for $1,300. The superior midrange LG C6 is also on sale for $1,500. That’s only $200 more for a much better, brighter TV (both 65-inches). That’s not even discussing buying an older (but still brighter) model like the LG C5 (which I found on sale for less than the B6). It all depends on how much you want to spend.