LG 86QNED85UQA 86 Inch TV

Prior to this, I had a basic 65″ LG 4K Smart TV from 2018 that I’d originally thought was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. And it was beautiful and clear, but of course the blacks were never actually black because the light was always on and bleeding through. Last year, the wifi entirely failed and even the ethernet connection started acting funky this year. Some of the apps started getting laggy and didn’t want to work at all on the older version/style of webOS on this TV (I couldn’t even watch HBOMax on it, I always had to switch to my Xbox’s app). Thus, I started thinking of upgrading and a big bonus from work gave me the ability to do so without worrying much about cost.

I’m SO glad I got this TV.

The apps all work smoothly and there’s no hiccups with wired or wireless internet. There are SO MANY customization options for picture and sound and you can set them separately for different inputs or apply it across all of them if you find a set up you like. I mean, you can change between modes, brightness settings, AI settings, clarity settings, white and black balances, and even into things like sharpness and noise reduction. Too many options for me to even remember. My main changes have been turning Energy Saving off, Auto Dynamic Contrast to High and LED Local Dimming to High.

My favorite things are (of course) the picture and the sound. The picture is GORGEOUS and the deep blacks are incredibly impressive. There’ve been times I’ve caught myself staring at the edges of the screen where a shadow or the black bar on the movie would seamlessly blend into the black bezel to the point where I genuinely couldn’t see where the screen ended and the bezel began. It was the first thing I started texting my friend about after I set up the TV! And when the screen is black, it’s BLACK. Not dark grey. Not bleeding in around the edges. Solid black.

Now, because of how dimming zones work, there are cases where you might have something bright next to/inside something black, and you will see a bit of a halo around it. The size of this halo will depend upon your TV settings and how large/small the item is. I’ve attached some photos with examples. On the first, you can see a large halo around the big white box on the screen (which was visible in real life, but not even as drastic as it appeared on camera), but nothing around the magic mouse’s cursor at the top of the screen, and the surrounding black screen that takes up most of the screen is still black. In the second, you can see where the darkness at the top of the screen all goes to solid black and the black bar totally disappears, while on the bottom you can still see it due to that edge of the picture being brighter.

Another picture-related thing that has really impressed me is how the screen captures reflective/shiny things like bits of metal or sequins or glass. I was watching a TV show where a character was constantly wearing clothes with chrome studs or holographic sequins, and the way they glittered and caught light was so REAL. In lower quality images, those kind of reflections will get crushed into just looking like a white spot, but no detail was lost in these reflections on this TV.

And for those worried about angles, my couch is off to the side instead of directly in front of the TV and I’ve noticed no difference in the picture. Even right next to the side of the TV and staring straight across it, the image and colors never fade or look any different.

Then for the sound part I mentioned, it also has a lot of customization options just like the picture and you get to choose between different sound modes and different outputs. Mine’s currently on the AI Sound Pro mode and I have it set to output to Optical Out Device + TV Speaker. I had used my LG soundbar with my previous TV and carried it over to this one, and I’d never seen the option to use both before. I love it! It can sound a little strange if you don’t balance the volumes correctly, but I’ve found keeping the soundbar volume 2 clicks higher than the TV speakers works really well. I find having the extra speakers give a lot of the sound effects a more nuanced sound. The deeper sounds really come through my soundbar/subwoofer, while the lighter ones come through the TV. There’s this added feeling of sounds moving around without having a better sound set up, thanks to the extra set of speakers beyond my soundbar. Without the soundbar, the built in speakers are great for a TV. They’re just not as “deep.”

If I had to nitpick and complain about something, it would probably only be the scroll wheel/select button the Magic Remote. It could be that I’m just not used to it yet (my previous LG TV did not come with a Magic Remote) or that my nails having grown out a bit at the moment are getting in the way, but it’s not always the most comfortable to click. I often end up trying to press it and I’ll press the ring around it at the same time. That or I’m trying to press it to select something and the wheel scrolls and switches to cursor mode instead. I would’ve preferred the scrolling and selecting being two separate buttons, but honestly it’s not a deal breaker and it doesn’t behave weirdly often enough that I want to replace it with something else. It’s actually a really cool innovation to be able to scroll or use it like a mouse on your TV!

All in all, I really love the TV and I’m incredibly impressed (if you couldn’t already tell from the lengthy review). If you want to upgrade and you want to upgrade like I did, then I highly recommend it!