When comparing Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) vs LG E7P OLED 55" (OLED55E7P), the Slant community recommends Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) is ranked 6th while LG E7P OLED 55" (OLED55E7P) is ranked 171st. The most important reason people chose Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) is:
The X900E looks true-to-life with really deep blacks, clear details, and captivating colors. Pictures look realistic with lots of details. There’s great depth to them and you’ll be able to see everything in the picture stand out. Dark scenes are excellent with nice shadow details that are not overly dark to the point where some details get drowned out. This is thanks to really deep black levels, enabled by the panel’s contrast ratio of about 5500:1 which means it can produce blacks that are 5500 times darker than the brightest white. This can be pushed even further to over 6500 with local dimming. The colors are lifelike and accurate even without any calibration by the user. They will look really vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR. Even in a decently lit environment, the X900E’s picture quality can still hold up as the panel is great at handling reflections and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Excellent picture quality
The X900E looks true-to-life with really deep blacks, clear details, and captivating colors.
Pictures look realistic with lots of details. There’s great depth to them and you’ll be able to see everything in the picture stand out.
Dark scenes are excellent with nice shadow details that are not overly dark to the point where some details get drowned out. This is thanks to really deep black levels, enabled by the panel’s contrast ratio of about 5500:1 which means it can produce blacks that are 5500 times darker than the brightest white. This can be pushed even further to over 6500 with local dimming.
The colors are lifelike and accurate even without any calibration by the user. They will look really vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR.
Even in a decently lit environment, the X900E’s picture quality can still hold up as the panel is great at handling reflections and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.
Pro Google Assistant is available
The X900E runs on Android TV that has Google Assistant. It has voice commands that are pretty useful as you can open apps with it, ask for the weather, and even turn the TV off.
Pro Excellent at upscaling low-res content
The X900E can upscale 480p, 720p, 1080p content to 4K with no issues. All the details are preserved and most won't notice any imperfections.
Pro Virtually no reflections
The X900E's panel has a semi-gloss finish that significantly reduces the intensity of glare.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
The X900E runs on Android TV that has access to the Google Play Store. The Play Store has a nice selection of apps, but normal Android apps won't work unless they support Android TV.
Pro Interface is ads-free
There are no ads on the X900E's interface.
Pro Excellent at handling highly dynamic content
The X900E can display fast-paced or rapidly-moving objects very well without any trails behind it. The panel only requires ~11ms to fully change the pixels color, which eliminates virtually all motion blur. It also has a native refresh rate of 120Hz that makes images look smoother.
Pro Great versatility
Apart from being an excellent TV for movies, the X900E is a decent choice for gaming and sports thanks to its decent input lag, low motion blur, great screen uniformity, and a 120 Hz native refresh rate that makes images look smoother.
The input lag of ~35ms is sufficient for most gamers, apart from competitive ones, to stay in sync with what's on the screen. The low motion blur of ~11ms and a refresh rate of 120 Hz ensures that everything will look smooth - fast-moving objects won't leave any trails on the screen.
It’s also viable for watching sports because the panel also has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.
Pro Great at handling glare
Even in a decently lit room, the X900E's picture quality will remain more or less the same as in a dark room.
The colors will still look vibrant because the panel is bright enough to fight off glare. It has peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR, and reflections are also significantly reduced by the panel's semi-gloss finish.
Pro Excellent for HDR content
On top of the excellent picture quality, the X900E has everything essential to an immersive HDR experience: decent local dimming, great coverage of HDR colors, and high HDR peak brightness level.
Its excellent black levels are further improved with local dimming, which can make parts of the screen darker when the image calls for it. This results in an increase in overall picture quality with black levels becoming much deeper, so highlights will stand out further.
The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~65% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered great for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.
Along with the the high peak brightness level of ~550 nits, HDR scenes will look stunning and you'll be able to see HDR details really pop.
Pro Exceptional picture quality
The LG E7P has exceptional picture quality thanks to its OLED panel, which are unrivaled in picture quality — OLED panels are capable of reproducing absolute blacks and whites on a per-pixel basis, giving it infinite contrast ratio (which may sound hyperbolic but is absolutely true).
Pro Great color reproduction
The color gamut of a TV refers to the range of colors the display can reproduce — the wider the color gamut, the more colors it can display, and the better the overall picture quality will be. This is extremely important for HDR content because it requires a much wider color gamut than SDR content. The LG E7P has a wide color gamut and have no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR.
Pro Comes with an integrated soundbar
The LG E7 has an built-in soundbar that performs surprisingly well. The frequency response is noticeably better than all other TVs out there, with good extension into the lower-ends of the frequency range, which means it can produce deep bass. The distortion levels are also low and not noticeable unless the volume is set to near-maximum. While an external audio set-up will definitely be better, this soundbar will suffice for most users that doesn't wish to spend additional money on an audio set-up.
Pro Great performance for sports & gaming
The LG E7P's versatility is top-notch. The motion blur (sub-1ms) makes it an excellent choice for sports & gaming, and the low input lag (~21ms) contributes to this especially for gaming where input lag matters.
Pro Interface is intuitive and user-friendly
The LG E7P runs on the webOS smart platform, renown for its intuitive and fully customizable UI built around a Launch Bar that provides quick and easy access to the TV's apps, settings, and inputs. This can be customized and re-organized to the user's liking.
Pro Wide viewing angle
The picture quality of the LG E7P does not suffer from much deterioration when viewed from other angles. While the colors might look off as brightness decreases with the viewing angle, the black levels and uniformity remain the same throughout, thus the panel retains most of its usual picture quality. This TV is a great choice if you require wider than usual viewing angles that LED panels can't provide.
Pro Remote is well-designed
The LG E7P's remote works similar to LG's Magic Remote (included in other LG TVs, e.g. the B7A). It is noticeably bigger than most remotes, but also comes with better controls and the on-screen cursor can follow the remote's movement similar to a Nintendo Wii remote, making it easy to navigate the UI and select menu items. It also has a built-in microphone for the voice command feature, which also supports content searching with voice input.
Pro Smart platform has great ecosystem of apps
The LG E7P runs on the webOS smart platform. It has a great ecosystem of apps, ranging from media streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc.) to third-party apps. Support for these apps are also first-class with up-to-date features and good performance; for instance, the YouTube app supports 360-degree video playback.
Pro Supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision
There are two different formats for HDR — HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Some TVs support only HDR10 and can't play Dolby Vision content. The LG E7P supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision, giving it the ability to play any HDR content in 2017.
Pro Dark scenes are perfectly reproduced
The LG E7P can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its OLED panel, which gives it infinite contrast ratios. This gives it the ability to reproduce dark scenes perfectly.
Pro Great at handling reflections
The LG E7P's panel has a glossy finish with anti-reflective coating, giving it the ability to fight light in bright environments very well. As a result of this, the picture quality remains the same even in bright rooms.
Pro Great at handling low-res content
The LG E7P is great at upscaling lower-res content such as DVDs — all details are preserved, but there are some visible haloing especially around edges.
Pro Excellent for dark rooms
The LG E7P performs exceptionally well in dark environments. Its ability to produce absolute and perfect blacks means the reproduction of dark highlights and scenes in movies will look great — this is further improved when there's no light around the TV as it allows the blacks to stand out more. This makes it great for watching all sorts of movies in a cinema-like setting, particularly movies with many black highlights/scenes where this is immediately noticeable even to undiscerning viewers (e.g. Interstellar).
Pro Extremely low motion blur
Because the LG E7P has an OLED panel, it has near-perfect pixel response time; the motion blur is virtually non-existent at sub-1ms, which means this TV will have no issues with displaying extremely fast-moving objects — they will look smooth without any blur or lag.
Pro Perfect TV for movies and HDR content
The LG E7P is a 4K OLED TV with perfectly uniform blacks and infinite contrast ratio, achieved by its ability to manipulate pixels individually. This, along with its color uniformity and wide color gamut, gives it exceptional picture quality and makes it the perfect choice for movies. It also has no issues with brightness levels as the panel can reach up to ~700 nits of brightness when playing HDR content, and it handles reflections very well.
Cons
Con Bad sound quality
The sound quality of X900E's built-in speakers is bad. It can't produce much bass and sounds rather flat. There is also noticeable distortion at high volumes.
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The X900E currently only supports the HDR10 format for HDR content.
Con Not suitable for group watching
The X900E has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for group watching.
Its picture quality gets worse when viewed from off-center angles. At ≥20° away from the center, the blacks start degrading into greys and colors will start looking dull. Brightness levels start decreasing at ≥50° away from the center.
Con Suffers from image retention issues
The main drawback of OLED panels are image retention issues with static images — pixels on the panel gets burned in when the picture doesn't change for extended periods of time. Noteworthily, the static image doesn't have to be whole like a full wallpaper on the TV; it can happen with content that has a static image anywhere on the screen (e.g. the logo of some TV channels).
As the LG E7P has an OLED panel, it, unfortunately, suffers from this problem. There might be some retainment of artifacts for ~10 minutes when this happens, and it usually goes away after watching other content without static images. It's worth noting that the E7P handles this better than most OLED panels where artifacts can take longer to go away. There are some cases where normal content won't cut it, which usually happens when the static image has been there for more than some hours.
This can be remedied with the LG E7P's “Pixel Refresher” feature — it recalibrates the screen, which should get rid of any remaining artifacts. Note that this procedure takes around an hour, and the TV has to be turned off the entire time for it to work properly.
Con Interface has ads
The user interface of modern smart TVs can include some advertisements similar to those on the internet or in a mobile app. The LG E7P's interface includes ads that can’t be removed — there is no option to disable or opt-out from it. Compared to other smart TVs (e.g. Samsung's), ads on this TV can be really annoying because they're almost everywhere: video ads in LG's Content Store, apps menu, and even voice search results.
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