When comparing LG UJ6300 49" (49UJ6300) vs TCL S517 55" (55S517), the Slant community recommends LG UJ6300 49" (49UJ6300) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” LG UJ6300 49" (49UJ6300) is ranked 27th while TCL S517 55" (55S517) is ranked 33rd. The most important reason people chose LG UJ6300 49" (49UJ6300) is:
The UJ6300 is a decent choice for gaming thanks to its extremely low input lag, excellent response time, and full 4K 60 FPS support. In terms of input lag, this TV outperforms almost every currently available high-end TV. The low input lag makes the TV great for fast games. The motion blur is really low at ~17ms, so fast-moving objects won't leave any trails at all. It’s also compatible with 60 Hz 4K input which makes it suitable for high-end console gaming.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Good for gaming
The UJ6300 is a decent choice for gaming thanks to its extremely low input lag, excellent response time, and full 4K 60 FPS support.
In terms of input lag, this TV outperforms almost every currently available high-end TV. The low input lag makes the TV great for fast games. The motion blur is really low at ~17ms, so fast-moving objects won't leave any trails at all.
It’s also compatible with 60 Hz 4K input which makes it suitable for high-end console gaming.
Pro Has an excellent smart TV platform
The UJ6300 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 Handles reflections well
The UJ6300 does a decent job at lowering the intensity of glare. Reflections are kept to a minimum thanks to the panel's semi-gloss finish. In fact, only around 1.9% of total light is reflected - a feat surpassed only by a handful of higher-end TVs.
Pro Fairly good upscaling capabilities
The UJ6300 can upscale 480p, 720p, and 1080p content quite well. The majority of details will be preserved, although there might be some artifacts on the sides of an image.
Pro Good at handling dynamic content
The UJ6300 is great at handling motion, making it a good choice for displaying fast and dynamic content. Fast-moving objects don't leave any discernible trails behind them, thanks to its low motion blur of only ~17ms.
Pro Compatible with current-gen consoles
The UJ6300 will run content from the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X smoothly, and its input lag stays low at ~13ms even with HDR-enhanced 4K content. You will not notice any increased delay when switching from SDR gaming mode to HDR.
Pro Great picture quality
In terms of picture quality the S517 is comparable to high-end TVs. It displays remarkably deep blacks due to its great contrast and reproduces details in color very well due to its good color gradient.
The 6000:1 native contrast ratio allows the TV to reproduce dark scenes particularly well. It is easily one of the best in this price range – it’s often compared to high-end counterparts.
The S517 has superb black uniformity and contrast that create pleasant, deep blacks. They are much better than those of the similarly-priced competitors. The maximum deviation sits at around 1.02% .
The TV is good at capturing small differences in color such as skin tones, green colors in nature, details in shadows, etc. This is because of the color gradient, which is on par with other options of the same price. There is almost no banding and the standard deviation of color doesn't go past 0,11%.
Pro Good for gaming
The S517 is fit for all gamers because it offers a clear, lag-free experience. The TV is very responsive - it has struck a good balance between decent refresh rate, solid input lag, and good response time.
The TV is an ideal choice for console gaming in terms of its native refresh rate. It caps at 60Hz, which is perfect since most games won't benefit from anything higher than this.
The S517 is fast. An action shows on the screen in around 18 miliseconds, which can make the difference between managing to get a frag or waiting for a respawn. The time doesn't substantially increase when gaming in HDR or 4K either - it goes up to roughly 20.5 ms. The only thing to remember is to keep "_Game_" mode enabled for the lowest possible input lag.
The TCL S517 also handles motion and fast-paced content quite well, it has a good response time. This makes sure you can keep up with fast-moving objects and a lot of action without it all appearing blurry. A full pixel color transition takes only 15.8 ms.
Pro Functional mobile app
The mobile remote app for both iOS or Android can fully and comfortably substitute the real remote – launch apps, input text in apps, control most TV settings, etc.
Also, colors can easily be adjusted close to perfection thanks to the app’s calibration menu.
Pro Great smart features
The S517 comes with the Roku TV smart platform, which provides a comfortable interface and a big app selection.
The interface is quite basic and easy to overlook. It’s smooth and simple to swap to your favorite apps.
Roku TV offers a huge app store with all the most popular apps – Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Vudu and much more. Some apps are even absent from other TV manufacturers Smart TV platforms and unique to Roku.
Pro Well calibrated out-of-the-box
The picture quality when you first open the TV up is quite decent. The only settings that could potentially require tweaking are grey inaccuracy and color inaccuracy. Either way, these are things that most people won't even notice.
Pro Decent for use as a PC monitor
The S517 offers a pleasant PC monitor experience not only due to the good responsiveness, but also because of the video signal's compression.
The TV won't make text appear blurry while connected to a PC because the signal has no compression and transports color data and luminance fully. This is also known as chroma 4:4:4, and the “_Computer_” and “_Game_” modes display it properly at 60Hz.
Pro Accessible inputs
All of the inputs are conveniently placed on the side of the S517, so you won't have to worry about leaving space between a wall and the TV.
Pro Optional video smoothing feature
The S517 offers the possibility to make movement in videos smoother, also known as the "soap opera effect". This is done by making the TV take two frames and try to guess what would a frame in between of those look like, also known as motion interpolation. The frame rate can interpolate up to 60 frames per second.
Pro Handles 4K scaling well
The S517 does a reasonably good job with upscaling most content to 4K quality, be it 480p DVDs, HDTV or full HD Blu-rays.
Pro A well-rounded option
The TCL S517 is a decent option for pretty much everything, be it gaming, movies, sports, or HDR content. It has noteworthy picture quality, good all-around responsiveness, decent smart features, nice motion handling, and, most importantly, a great price.
Pro HDR playback
The S517 is a much better fit for HDR content and HDR gaming than its competitors due to the wide color gamut, decent color depth, and high contrast.
The TV can display a lot more colors than its similarly-priced counterparts. The coverage of the Digital Cinema P3 color space is very good - 90%.
The color depth is on par with competing options. The S517 has 10-bit color depth, which means that it can display approximately 1.07 billion colors in total. This is important for HDR content because HDR media takes advantage of 10-bit.
The S517 can display deep blacks in the HDR mode because of it's high native contrast ratio of 6000:1, which is easily one of the best in the given price range.
The TV can also play all HDR content, because it supports both standard formats of HDR - HDR10 and Dolby Vision. They enhance the viewing experience by editing the metadata, that is, the extra information that tells the TV how to display HDR. The formats differ in the way they deal with it however - Dolby Vision edits the picture on a per scene basis, whereas HDR10 edits everything at the start of the video.
Cons
Con Dark scenes look bad
The UJ6300 fails to reproduce deep and uniform blacks. Its dark images look smoky and grey-ish, which makes many dark scenes look awful. Furthermore, the panel’s low contrast ratio of only 1314:1 makes the blacks look distorted and flat.
Con Some artifacts might occur
Because of the TV’s specific RGBW pixel structure, some unwanted artifacts might occur while the TV is displaying 4K content. The problem with the RGBW pixel structure is that only 75% of the total panel's pixels can produce colors, which results in lower quality and less detailed picture.
Con The remote looks outdated
Apart from some tiny details, it seems like LG adapted their old remote from 2016 to the UJ6300. The remote is as basic as it can get. It does not have any smart functions that can be found on higher-tier LG TVs. In fact, it is very disappointing that this TV does not have LG’s new Magic Remote.
Con Can't handle intense glare
The UJ6300 can’t fight glare well in really bright environments because of the panel’s low peak brightness level. The brightness peaks at only ~170 nits for SDR, which is really low. Even cheaper and lower-tier TVs are usually brighter.
Con Suffers from minor image retention
The UJ6300 suffers from minor image retention issues. If a static image is on the screen for more than 10 minutes, it gets burned in and you'll be able to see it retained on the screen faintly, which is really unpleasant. Fortunately, this does not cause permanent pixel damage and disappears in around 5 minutes.
Con Can't overcome glare
The S517 is better fit for dim environments or dark room viewing, since the brightness can’t peak very high, only at 277 nits. This is common for TVs in this price range.
Con Runs ads
The main interface page contains big advertisements that can’t be disabled.
There’s also a “Featured” tab that promotes all kinds of apps and channels.
Con Some dirty screen effect is present
This might cause some discomfort to sports fans because the playing surface might look darker at points. The S517's gray uniformity is decent at best, which, unfortunately, is often the case for lower-end TVs. The image is a little darker around the edges and the middle of the TV. The standard deviation of sits at around 3.1%.
Con Inconvenient calibration access
The only way to access the calibration menu is via the mobile app. This might be uncomfortable for people without smartphones or for people who prefer all control on the real remote.
Con HDR content lacks brightness
Small bright details in dark scenes won’t stand out. Unfortunately, this is usually the case with TVs in this price range. The TV's brightness for HDR media peaks at only 273 nits. Moreover, the TV doesn't support local dimming, which is also a big drawback for HDR content.
Con Struggles with reflections
While the S517 is okay for dimmer environments, the weakness shows in bright rooms and especially rooms with the light source facing the TV. The reflection handling of the TV is a bit worse than that of its competitors. It reflects approximately 6% of light off the screen.
Con Bad viewing angle
The S517 is a bad choice for a wide room because colors and blacks shift when viewed even slightly off center.
Basically, leaning sideward just a little bit will drastically alter what you see. Colors shift at 18 degrees, brightness shifts at 28 degrees, but the blacks shift at the extremely tiny angle of 9 degrees.