In the TV space, it’s nigh impossible to beat OLED TV’s when it comes to perfect contrast and colour vibrancy. But OLED isn’t perfect thanks to it’s low peak brightness and the risk of image burn-in. So what’s the next best thing if you want an experience on par with OLED minus the drawbacks? The answer is probably Mini LED and the new LG QNED86 Mini LED QNED Smart TV is a prime example.
A Mini LED TV uses thousands of really small LED backlights arranged in equally numerous dimming zones which can be turned off to give almost matching contrast of OLED. The advantage being that Mini LED panels can get so much brighter than OLED’s without the risk of image burn-in.
The QNED86 starts at $3,499 for the smallest 65-inch model but there’s also 75-inch($4,499) and 86-inch($5,999) models. While that isn’t cheap, it’s at least $2000 cheaper than a similarly sized OLED Evo G3 and yet, the image quality isn’t noticeably worse.
And aside from a thicker cabinet and a lower tier α7 AI Processor 4K Gen6 compared to the α9 processor in the C3 and G3 TV’s, you really aren’t losing much in terms of features. The QNED86 still comes with 4 HDMI 2.1 ports that support 4K 120Hz gaming as well as the usual suite of game features that we have come to know and love.
I’ve lived with the 65-inch variant of the QNED for almost two months now, streaming all manner of free and paid content and playing on my PlayStation 5. After all that time, I can’t say that I’ve missed the C3 which the QNED86 replaced but I can definitely say its way better than your regular LCD TV.
Design and features
LG has really streamlined the design of their top end TV’s this year and just by looking at the QNED86 head on, you’d be forgiven for thinking its an OLED Evo series TV. The slim metallic frame supported by an elegant, center stand makes for an excellent visual presentation.
The stand is easy to install and LG have designed the box foam pieces to double as a stand to allow for easier installation. Despite the 31kg weight of the TV, the stand does a marvelous job at keeping it nice and stable. Of course, you are free to VESA mount the TV if you want, thanks to its support for VESA 400 x 400 mounts.
Where the QNED does physically differ from its OLED siblings is in thickness; no doubt due to all the LED’s it needs to house. It’s about 1.76-inches thick — almost twice as thick as the G3. So when you mount this to a wall, it won’t look as svelte. Nevertheless, you aren’t looking at the TV sideways anyway so that really doesn’t matter.
What does matter is the wealth of ports that are still available. Including the aforementioned 4x HDMI 2.1 ports, one of which is eARC, there’s also Ethernet port, Optical audio out, an RF input for local telly and 2x USB 2.0 ports.
The QNED86 also supports Bluetooth 5.0 and very disappointingly, Wi-Fi 5. This is shocking for a modern device coming out in 2023 to not have Wi-Fi 6 and I had plenty of trouble with slow connections to the TV as a result, even though I have a beastly Wi-Fi 6 router. If you hardwire your TV via Ethernet, then this shouldn’t be an issue but I suspect most people will prefer
The thick frame also houses a 40W, 2.2 channel speaker system that sounds surprisingly weak. I expected much better from such a thick TV but even the slimmer G3 sounds much better with louder, fuller audio. Ultimately, this wasn’t a big issue since LG supplied the new S77Q Sound bar to pair with.
I would definitely recommend pairing the QNED86 with a sound bar for the best experience and if its an LG sound bar, you can enjoy WOW Orchestra which uses both devices speakers for a more immersive sound.
In terms of navigating the TV, we once again have LG’s WebOS system which is ever inching closer to Google TV in terms of layout. Like many other LG TV’s, the OS is somewhat bloated with ads and is somewhat slow to move around. Thankfully, you still get the excellent Magic Remote to help you easily navigate with an on screen cursor and the TV supports voice commands through it too. The TV also supports Alexa and Google Assistant as well as Apple Airplay and LG’s ThinIQ smart home management.
You get access to a wealth of apps but I’m dissappointed that WebOS still doesn’t have a native Xbox Cloud Gaming app but at least you do get GeForce Now. Speaking of games, the QNED86 doesn’t skimp on features. You still get the excellent Game Optimizer dashboard which is an overlay that gives you a number of controls such as black levels, frame rate, game genre mode and more.
Hardware wise, we still get Auto Low Latency Mode with Variable Refresh Rate which is great for gamers who want the best big screen experience. Looking at the spec sheet, I noticed that LG dropped support for Nvidia G-SYNC which was on the C3 and G3. That’s not great for any one connecting an Nvidia powered PC but largely, it shouldn’t be a huge obstacle.
Panel and performance
So, the QNED86 is using the latest and greatest 4K, Mini LED QNED panel which combines the best of LED, quantum dot and Nano Cell colour tech for a stunning picture. With a little under 200 local dimming zones and combined with the smarts of the α7 processor, the QNED86 achieves impressive contrast between light and dark areas with much less of the halo effect that I saw in the previous model.
This halo effect usually rears its ugly head when viewing things like captions or bright white HUD elements over black or very dark backgrounds. This causes a cloudy fringe or glow around those elements which is terribly distracting but with this model of the QNED86, I noticed this far less than previous models.
The panel gets really bright too which is all the more impressive how it manages contrast so well. Though LG doesn’t give any exact figures, some Googling reveals that the panel can get up to 1200 nits of brightness. This means using the QNED86 in bright rooms is no problem at all. The panel is still fairly reflective and anything outside of 120-degrees will punish you.
When it comes to image processing, the α7 does a great job at upscaling content to 4K. I recently went back to Netflix and using their mid-tier 1080p offering, I was impressed with the clarity of the upscaled picture. There was never any weird artifacting or weirdness to give away that the TV was doing something to the image.
The same was true for 1080p YouTube videos which all look barely distinguishable from 4K. I really appreciated the effective upscaling because of that limited Wi-Fi 5 bandwidth which essentially forced me to stick with 1080p streaming if I wanted smooth play.
On top of that, you are getting excellent HDR thanks to the Mini LED QNED panel. Colours pop and sizzle with clear bright highlights and deep blacks. It’s not as good as the G3 OLED Evo but certainly close enough that unless you have them side by side, you wouldn’t notice a difference. Mini LED panels struggle to balance that brightness with local dimming leading to slightly grey blacks and not perfect, inky blacks that OLEDs can.
In terms of formats, the QNED86 supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10 and HLG so whether you are streaming Netflix or playing Spider-man 2 on PlayStation 5, everything looks stunning. I would have loved to test Dolby Vision gaming on the Xbox Series X but I unfortunately don’t own one. Still, for those who do, the option is available.
Gaming is a delight on this TV, whether I was playing a dark and moody Last of Us Part II or bright and colorful Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Response and fluidity is on point and if you like to play FPS like CoD: Warzone, you won’t be disappointed. The VRR works well with the PlayStation and keeps games running really smoothly.
As is custom, the TV comes with a number of picture presets including the Filmmaker and ISF Expert modes for those who want the truest cinematic representation. But what I like the most is the new Personalised picture wizard that was introduced early in 2023 across LG’s models. This wizard lets you create a custom picture profile by going through a series of A/B choices. This is a whole lot easier and faster than diving into the menus to customise things the way you want.
Verdict
So there you have it — the new LG QNED86 Mini LED TV ticks all the right boxes and in spite of a few issues, it’s one of the easiest TV’s to recommend. Great picture quality, HDR performance and great gaming make it a winner. I would like to see Wi-Fi 6 and low latency Bluetooth 5.3 in this years models though and while the local dimming is much improved, there’s still room for improvement in the handling of haloing. The sound output is also quite lacklustre and you’d definitely be forced to use a sound bar with it.
Lastly, $3,500 isn’t small change. Sure, Samsung’s QN85C costs exactly the same but other competitors like TCLs C845 Mini LED come in at $2000 which is a huge difference — and you get largely the same feature set and performance. To be fair, if you are patient, you can sometimes find up to 30% discount on the LG.
In saying that, I would rather wait for said discount to happen to the LG OLED Evo C3 to bring it down to the QNED’s RRP. But if you aren’t keen to play “dodge the burn-in” game and want to steer clear of OLED TV’s for some inexplicable reason, then Mini LED is going to be the next best tech available to you and the LG QNED86 is one of the best.
LG Australia kindly loaned the QNED86 to PowerUp for the purpose of this review
