LG E7P OLED 65" (OLED65E7P) vs TCL S517 65" (65S517)

The LG E7P is an 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.

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.

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.

The LG E7P has exceptional picture quality thanks to its OLED panel, which are unrivalled 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).

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.

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.

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 remains 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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%.

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 its 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.

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.

The S517 does a reasonably good job with upscaling most content to 4K quality, be it 480p DVDs, HDTV or full HD Blu-rays.

The S517 offers the possibility to represent motion 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 milliseconds, 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 milliseconds. 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 milliseconds.

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 vast 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.

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.