2020 may be an awful year for drones, action cameras and all the gadgets that were made for outdoor activities but not for TVs. At the rate we’re binge-watching TV shows now, a good TV might be the only tech product worth investing in. LG certainly has an attractive 8K series lined up next month, although whether it can sell as hoped, well, that remains to be seen.
We saw the series up close in January at CES, in Las Vegas, before the coronavirus outbreak. As always, LG had a massive display at the entrance in their “hall” – I feel that booth is an understatement at this point – so they were impossible to miss. However, with competition from TCL and Samsung (just to name a couple), LG could’ve missed the mark with its TVs and failed to impress us.
Needless to say, they didn’t. As a matter of fact, their record-breaking display technology made such a good case, that we gave them a TTL award.
What was the TV that made a long-lasting impression?
The ZX Real 8K OLED, which comes in two sizes, a 77-inch model and an 88-inch version. These TVs are a part of a bigger series of products that were outfitted with a new AI chip, the α9 Gen 3. With it, come new tools to enhance the image and sound quality and the power to upscale image and audio to 8K resolution. Plus, we found out the new TV modes are capable of recognizing faces and texts, adjusting view quality for both.
But the “Real” in the naming of the TVs intrigued us. Why were these TVs more “real” than the others on the market? What set them apart?
Turns out, LG managed to break the records. These TVs exceed the industry’s official new 8K Ultra HD definition set by the CTA, as confirmed by the TÜV Rheinland. Watch the video above to see exactly what that means for you, the consumer!
It didn’t hurt that the ZX Real 8K TVs have the hardware and software to support and play native 8K content. The TV sets have HDMI and USB digital inputs and work with codecs like HEVC, VP9 and AV1, delivering integrated calibration software that performs to a hardware level.
LG says that thanks to the UHD Alliance’s Filmmaker Mode™, their products respect the filmmaker’s vision for their movie and displays it exactly as intended. Although I would mostly use it to watch blockbusters, with the ocassional Baz Luhrmann movie, gamers can take advantage of this display, too.
The company made sure they were NVIDIA G-SYNC® compatible, so the TVs refresh rates are adapted to the frame rates of the connected hardware.
The only downside to these 8K TVs? You guessed it – the price! LG just announced the ZX series will sell for $19,999 (the 77-inch version) and $29,999 (the 88-inch version) this May.
In this economy, I worry about the success of their TVs although the technology is more than worthy of our award.
This is one of several products that have won a TechTheLead Award, after being carefully selected by our editorial staff from all registered entries. Special Awards have been given to products and companies that the editorial staff hand-picked for their outstanding features. The TechTheLead Awards go to products/companies that embody at least one of the following criteria: most innovative features, most compelling use cases, best price versus quality ratio, best user experience, most positive impact for user and society.
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