When comparing LG B7A OLED 55" (OLED55B7A) vs Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E), the Slant community recommends Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) is ranked 2nd while LG B7A OLED 55" (OLED55B7A) is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) is:
The X850E is an excellent option for those who watch content from an antenna/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray player or Apple TV. It can detect eliminate jerky playback that is common in content from these sources.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Perfect for HDR content
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.
Pro Great at handling reflections
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.
Pro Interface is intuitive and user-friendly
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.
Pro Wide viewing angle
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.
Pro Great color reproduction
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.
Pro Extremely versatile
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.
Pro Good value for money
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.
Pro Suitable as a computer monitor
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.
Pro Excellent at handling dynamic content
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.
Pro Excellent for gaming
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.
Pro Remote is well-designed
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.
Pro Excellent for HDR gaming
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.
Pro Smart platform has great ecosystem of apps
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.
Pro Exceptional picture quality
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.
Pro Excellent for 24p content
The X850E is an excellent option for those who watch content from an antenna/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray player or Apple TV. It can detect eliminate jerky playback that is common in content from these sources.
Pro Offers best value for screen size in this price bracket
The X850E has the largest screen size at 65” for the cheapest when compared to its direct competitors. Similarly-sized models from its direct competitors cost much more.
Pro Decent for HDR content
The X850E has a wide color gamut that allows it to reproduce the colors necessary for true HDR, and it has an average peak brightness level of ~400 nits that allows it to light up these colors properly. Thanks to that, HDR pictures look decent and highlights will look fairly good.
However, the HDR performance can’t get better than that, due to the average peak brightness of ~400 nits which isn’t really enough for details to truly stand out, and it lacks local dimming.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
The X850E 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 Good for sports
The X850E looks fluid thanks to its excellent color uniformity and decent handling of motion.
It can display large, same-color objects like football fields really well - they will look natural and uniform.
Fast-moving objects, like football, will also look smooth. The panel only requires ~14ms to fully change the pixels color, resulting in fast-moving objects not leaving any trails on the screen, eliminating virtually all motion blur.
Pro Decent picture quality
The X850E looks really good in dark scenes, thanks to its decent contrast ratio of 4500:1 and excellent black uniformity.
It can produce blacks that are 4500 times darker than the brightest white, and the black uniformity is especially good - there’s barely visible flashlighting, where edges of the screen has light on them when displaying a black image, and the screen is evenly bright. This makes it perform really well in dark scenes.
Colors look vibrant because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~350 nits for SDR & ~400 nits for HDR. With these brightness levels, it can get bright enough to fight glare. Along with its great handling of reflections, pictures will still look good in decently-lit environments without dull colors.
Pro Suitable for gaming
The X850 has a relatively low input lag of ~35ms that makes it a decent pick for gaming. Most players will feel in sync, however, it might be a little unresponsive for competitive or demanding gamers.
It’s also acceptable for HDR gaming because the input lag does not increase in HDR mode.
Pro Interface is ads-free
There are no ads on the X850E’s interface.
Pro Excellent motion interpolation capabilities
The X850E can increase the framerate of content to either 60Hz or 120Hz.
It guesses which frames are missing based on the previous and next frame, and inserts the missing frame in between them. This produces a really strong soap opera effect, where images look really smooth.
This might look weird to some people that doesn't like it, but the X850E can do this really well for those who enjoy it.
Cons
Con May require some color calibration out of the box
Out of the box, the B7A’s white balance might look slightly off to some viewer, so a brief calibration might be required if you notice it. Fortunately, all the optimal color settings are available on the internet and isn’t hard to find.
Con Interface has ads
The B7A's interface includes ads that can’t be removed - there’s no option to disable it. Ads on this TV can be really annoying when compared to other smart TVs because they're almost everywhere. There are video ads in LG's Content Store, apps menu, and even voice search results.
Con Below average sound quality
The sound quality of the B7A's built-in speakers is below average. It can't get very loud with the max volume peaking at ~85db, and sound quality it offers does not match the picture quality.
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. This usually happens with content that has a static image anywhere on the screen, like the logo of TV channels.
As the B7A has an OLED panel, it unfortunately suffers from this problem. There might be some retainment of artifacts for ~15 minutes when this happens, and it usually goes away after watching other content without static images.
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. Fortunately, the B7A has a “Pixel Refresher” feature that can recalibrate the screen, which should get rid of any remaining artifacts.
Con Not suitable for group watching
The X850E has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for watching with groups.
Its picture quality starts to deteriorate significantly when viewing from just ≥20° away from the screen's center. The colors will start degrading really quickly.
Con Might require color calibration
Some viewers might find the X850E’s white balance to be slightly off out of the box, so a brief calibration might be required if you notice it. Fortunately, all the optimal color settings are available on the internet and isn’t hard to find.