When comparing LG E7P OLED 55" (OLED55E7P) vs Samsung NU8500 55" (UN55NU8500), the Slant community recommends Samsung NU8500 55" (UN55NU8500) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Samsung NU8500 55" (UN55NU8500) is ranked 39th while LG E7P OLED 55" (OLED55E7P) is ranked 169th. The most important reason people chose Samsung NU8500 55" (UN55NU8500) is:
This TV makes it feel like the panel is actually surrounding you because of its curvature, which makes you experience the content more immersively. Additionally, the TV's curvature improves the overall uniformity of the corners of the NU8500.
Specs
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Pros
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.
Pro Immersive experience
This TV makes it feel like the panel is actually surrounding you because of its curvature, which makes you experience the content more immersively. Additionally, the TV's curvature improves the overall uniformity of the corners of the NU8500.
Pro Good picture quality
The Samsung NU8500 offers decent picture quality in both HDR and SDR modes. The TV performs on par with the best mid-range options available on the market. The NU8500 can reproduce crisp and colorful bright scenes as well as some inky blacks.
Colors pop and look realistic thanks to the TV's high peak brightness, wide color gamut, and decent color accuracy. In the standard mode, the TV's peak brightness reaches 560 nits which makes the colors look live and vivid. Only a couple of TVs present in this price range can achieve such high peak brightness. The colors are accurate. You'll not be able to spot color inaccuracies as the TV's average color inaccuracy dE measures at just 2.5 - which is too small to be seen by a human eye. It's also worth noting that the NU8500 is capable of reproducing the entire standard color gamut.
The Samsung NU8500 does a reasonably good job when it comes to dark scenes thanks to its high native contrast ratio and good black uniformity. The TV's native contrast ratio measures ar 4478:1, which is a good result for a mid-range TV. That allows the NU8500 to display scenes that have both bright highlights and inky shadows that don't look washed-out thanks to the TV's black uniformity of 1.2% .
Cons
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.
Con Doesn't look good from an angle
The NU8500 is not the best option for those who like to watch with a crowd because of it's narrow viewing angles. Only those who sit right in front of the panel will experience true colors and shadows of the NU8500.
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