TCL P607 55" (55P607) vs LG B7A OLED 55" (OLED55B7A)

At $650, it's hard to find a better deal for a 55-inch 4K TV that can also handle HDR content reasonably well.

Compared to its direct competitors, its picture quality is more or less similar to them. Although the HDR performance is just a tad below them, it's still great, especially for the price.

It's also more versatile because it has better features for gaming - the input lag of ~15ms is among the lowest in 4K TVs on the market, and it has a motion blur of ~12ms that stacks up to more expensive options.

The screen size is large for the price when compared to TVs in this price bracket, such as the Sony X900E which costs ≥$250 more for the 49" model.

The P607 can play both HDR10 and Dolby Vision content.

The P607 runs on the Roku TV smart platform, touted for its simple, straightforward, and lag-free UI.

It’s easy for anyone to grasp how navigation works, thanks to its two-column design with the menu on the left and options on the right.

There’s also no noticeable lag during navigation or menu selection.

In a decently-lit environment, the P607's colors won't look dull thanks to the panel's high peak brightness levels and decent handling of reflections.

It's bright enough to fight off glare with peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for both SDR & HDR, and the intensity of reflections are also reduced by panel's semi-gloss finish.

The P607 has low input lag and barely noticeable motion blur, making for a responsive and fluid gameplay experience.

The input lag is barely noticeable at ~15ms for both SDR & HDR inputs, and the panel only requires ~12ms to fully change the pixels color, resulting in fast-moving objects not leaving any trails on the screen, eliminating virtually all motion blur.

The P607 is excellent at reproducing colors accurately out of the box.

Even without calibration, the colors are spot-on. They're very close to what the source signal demands, and any inaccuracies are generally considered imperceptible to most end users.

The overall average difference between the source signal and the panel's reproduction of the color is measured in Delta-E, where lower means better accuracy. The P607 has a Delta-E of below 2.0, and anything below 3.0 is generally considered accurate for most end users.

On top of its excellent picture quality, the P607 has everything essential to a great HDR experience: local dimming, wide color gamut, and fairly high peak brightness level.

Highlights will really stand out as the deep black levels are further improved with local dimming. It can make parts of the screen darker when the image calls for it, resulting in a fairly huge boost in picture quality as the black levels become deeper.

The wide color gamut enables the panel to reproduce the full range of colors required for true HDR playback. The screen can get sufficiently bright at a peak level of ~500 nits to light those colors up and make HDR details really pop.

The P607 has no ads on its main interface, although there can be ads in third-party applications. Third-party ads can't be blocked, but the tracking and personalisation can be limited through the TV's settings.

The P607 can upscale 480p, 720p, and 1080p content to 4K very well. The upscaled content has almost no artifacts, and the crisp details are preserved.

The P607 looks true-to-life with lots of details.

There’s a great depth to pictures and you’ll be able to see everything stand out. Dark scenes are great and you won't miss out on any details, even in shadows.

The panel has a contrast ratio of about 6500:1, which means it can produce blacks that are 6500 times darker than the brightest white. This can be pushed even further to over 7000 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 P607’s picture quality can still hold up - the panel is great at handling reflections and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

The B7A is the perfect choice for HDR content. On top of its exceptional picture quality with perfectly deep blacks, it has everything essential to an excellent HDR experience: an OLED panel, wide color gamut, and high peak HDR brightness levels.

Shadow details are perfect and highlights are really stunning, making for an immersive experience. The OLED panel can manipulate pixels individually, which means it has control over every tiny bit of the picture.

The panel can also reproduce the colors necessary for true HDR, and these colors will really pop thanks to its high peak brightness level of ~700 nits.

The B7A is great at handling reflections. It can fight glare pretty well in bright environments, thanks to its anti-reflective coating on the panel.

The B7A runs on the webOS smart platform, known for its intuitive and fully customizable UI. It’s 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.

The B7A looks good from almost any angle thanks to its OLED panel, making it a great choice if you usually watch the TV with large groups of people.

Its viewing angle is wide enough for a group of audience to experience more or less similar picture quality when watching from multiple angles off the center of the screen. The black levels and brightness only starts degrading at ≥75°, which means the picture quality will stay roughly the same no matter which angle the screen is viewed from.

The B7A can reproduce a really broad range of colors that are crucial for HDR, which also means it has zero issues with SDR colors.

It’s capable of reproducing ~70% of the standard colors for 4K HDR, the Rec. 2020 colorspace. This is one of the highest in the 4K TVs market.

It can also display these colors at different brightness levels accurately that conveys much more HDR details than its direct competitors can.

Apart from games, the B7A is great for movies and sports. Its top-notch picture quality, combined with the features it offers, makes it perform really well across different kinds of use cases.

Movies look excellent thanks to the exceptional picture quality, and it’s also a great pick for watching sports because the motion blur is non-existent and the panel is really uniform.

It has near-perfect pixel response time of ~1.0ms, resulting in virtually no motion blur, so fast-moving objects like football don’t leave any trails on the screen. The panel is also uniform enough that it has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.

While the B7A can seem rather expensive, the picture quality and features it offers is top-of-the-line and can’t be beaten. The performance easily outclasses all other TVs in this price bracket.

The B7A can display clear and crisp images from a computer thanks to its full 4:4:4 color support. Because of this, text or shapes with clear, hard edges won’t be blurry.

The B7A can display extremely fast-moving objects smoothly without any blur or lag, thanks to its OLED panel that has near-perfect pixel response time of ~1.0ms.

The B7A is excellent for gaming thanks to its really low input lag and near-perfect pixel response time that gives it virtually no motion blur.

It’s perfect for all types of games, even fast-paced action games. The experience will be really responsive and fluid. Players will have no issues keeping their actions in sync with what’s on the display thanks to the really low input lag of ~20ms, and fast-moving objects won’t leave any trails on the screen because the panel has a response time of ~1.0ms - it can fully change its pixels color in that tiny amount of time.

The B7A comes with LG's Magic Remote, touted for its easy-to-use design.

It works similarly to a Nintendo Wii remote where the on-screen cursor follows the remote's movement, making it easy to navigate the UI and select menu items.

The remote also has a built-in microphone for the voice command feature, which also supports content searching with voice input.

The B7A’s input lag remains low at ~20ms even when gaming in 4K @ 60Hz + HDR, making for an really immersive and responsive HDR gaming experience.

The B7A 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.

The B7A's picture quality is top-of-the-line. It has an OLED panel that gives it infinite contrast ratio, excellent screen uniformity, high peak brightness, wide viewing angle, and great handling of reflections.

Thanks to that, it can reproduce blacks perfectly and the uniformity is top-notch - they’re truly dark and even, because the OLED panel has the ability to manipulate pixels individually.

Colors really shine and look true-to-life, thanks to the peak brightness levels peak of ~400 nits for SDR & ~700 nits for HDR.

The picture quality also doesn't suffer from much deterioration when viewed from any angle because the panel has a really wide viewing angle. It’s also capable of maintaining the same picture quality in bright environments, thanks to its high peak brightness levels and great handling of reflections.