The LG OLED55B7V offers the following list of improvements over last year’s OLED55B6V:
Cleaner near-black handling with clearer shadow detail;
Less aggressive ABL contributing to higher perceived contrast;
Lower input lag while preserving accurate colours and full 4:4:4 chroma;
Slightly better upscaling quality;
Availability of two-point [White Balance] controls in HDR mode;
Improved HDR tone-mapping with less clipping of bright highlight detail; and
A new anti-reflective filter that doesn’t suffer from a magenta tint when hit by light.
Whether it’s worth paying just under double the price for the 55B7 over the 55B6 (current street price £1599) depends on how sensitive you are to the flaws (particularly near-black quantisation noise and posterisation) of LG’s 2016 OLEDs. It’s also worth remembering that the retail price of the 55in B6 was £3000 at launch, so it’s probably a tad unfair to compare the price of a product that’s at the end of its life cycle to a brand new one with proven, tangible upgrades. This time next year the B7 could feasibly drop to £1599 too, but then again who knows what improvements 2018 models will bring.
A few eyebrows may be raised at the award of a “Best Value” badge for a display costing £3000, but at the end of the day, the OLED55B7 is the most affordable 2017 OLED television you can buy, delivering essentially identical picture quality – which should rank among the best you’ll see all year – to LG’s own £8000 flagship 65W7 wallpaper TV.
