Note: because the viewing evaluation was fairly brief, this evaluation will focus mainly on technical performance.
The 65EC9700 differs significantly from all three 55” LG OLED models I’ve worked with.
LG’s 20 point white balance control has been giving calibrators fits, and it’s easy to see why: any contrast setting that did not shave off whiter than white at exactly 100% would displace the controls, making the 85% control adjust around 92%, for example, with progressive mistracking from dark to bright. In addition, LG’s undefeatable dimming when the display sensed a same sized image for too long made real time adjustments highly suspect. On the 65EC9700, I was surprised to see some important differences in how the mistracking behaved in comparison to the 55” models. Initially, using the ISF Expert 1 mode and starting with the standard color gamut selection, I was surprised and disappointed to see that after 2 point white balance adjustment, the 20 point mistracked independently with each color. That meant that red might not mistrack at all, green could mistrack by a maximum of 8%, and blue could mistrack by 15%. It was still possible to get good looking graphs, especially if the readings were taken at 10% increments; but the results had significant jogs in gamma and grayscale tracking that manifested themselves in contouring and banding. Even my tried and true method of pass by pass adjustment, which works so well with the 55” models, failed to get acceptable results.
Surprisingly, switching the color gamut selection to wide eliminated the independent mistracking and made the 20 point behave exactly like that of the 55” models; which, though tough to get used to, can give superb visual and measured results using the right methodology. After making this change, I was able to make significant improvements in the 65EC9700’s gamma and grayscale tracking, while maintaining a smooth, contour free image. I therefore used the wide selection for the remainder of the calibration.
The problem is that making this switch does oversaturate the red and green primaries, pushing their full purity error readings up to around 5 dE. Thankfully, error levels at lower saturation points were significantly lower and more than acceptable. While some viewers will prefer this slight oversaturation, it remains a visible departure from accuracy.
Examining the same screen cap that had shown horrible blotchiness with CMS adjustments as documented in my 55EC9300 review, swinging the 65EC9700’s CMS controls to their extremes no longer produced any significant problems. However, it was still not possible to rein in the oversaturation of full purity greens and reds. Thankfully, medium and lower saturation points could be calibrated fairly well with the CMS controls. Because of LG’s history of CMS problems, I did significantly limit adjustments made to the 65EC9700’s CMS.
With 10% full gray fields, the last 3-4” near each side were noticeably darker than the rest of the screen. The problem diminished or disappeared with brighter fields, though there was then an odd vertical strip about an inch wide just right of center. Neither problem brought attention to itself with the varied DirecTV content and reference screencaps I viewed on the 65EC9700, though some applications will make them more apparent.
As with the 55”, the 65EC9700 measured virtually the same with any size or style (APL or standard) window up to 25%. Light output with Day mode was calibrated to 74 fL with windows, and that decreased to 47 fL with 50% windows and 24 fL with full fields. There was no significant color shift even with full fields, red bumping up only an imperceptible amount with full fields.
I was almost able to achieve my goal of perfect blacks at video level 16 and reproduction of levels 17 and up, though not quite. I was either to get reproduction of 17 with a very, very slight illumination of 16 only visible up close in a dark room, or I was able to get total darkness at 16 but reproduction only from level 18 on up. This is not critical at all and could be due more to sample to sample variation than the 65EC9700 itself.
After calibration, the image looked excellent, though slightly more grainy than the 55”, which I always felt had one of the smoothest, most grain free images I had ever seen. The 65EC9700’s graininess appeared to be in line with many other high end displays.
The 65EC9700 differs significantly from all three 55” LG OLED models I’ve worked with.
LG’s 20 point white balance control has been giving calibrators fits, and it’s easy to see why: any contrast setting that did not shave off whiter than white at exactly 100% would displace the controls, making the 85% control adjust around 92%, for example, with progressive mistracking from dark to bright. In addition, LG’s undefeatable dimming when the display sensed a same sized image for too long made real time adjustments highly suspect. On the 65EC9700, I was surprised to see some important differences in how the mistracking behaved in comparison to the 55” models. Initially, using the ISF Expert 1 mode and starting with the standard color gamut selection, I was surprised and disappointed to see that after 2 point white balance adjustment, the 20 point mistracked independently with each color. That meant that red might not mistrack at all, green could mistrack by a maximum of 8%, and blue could mistrack by 15%. It was still possible to get good looking graphs, especially if the readings were taken at 10% increments; but the results had significant jogs in gamma and grayscale tracking that manifested themselves in contouring and banding. Even my tried and true method of pass by pass adjustment, which works so well with the 55” models, failed to get acceptable results.
Surprisingly, switching the color gamut selection to wide eliminated the independent mistracking and made the 20 point behave exactly like that of the 55” models; which, though tough to get used to, can give superb visual and measured results using the right methodology. After making this change, I was able to make significant improvements in the 65EC9700’s gamma and grayscale tracking, while maintaining a smooth, contour free image. I therefore used the wide selection for the remainder of the calibration.
The problem is that making this switch does oversaturate the red and green primaries, pushing their full purity error readings up to around 5 dE. Thankfully, error levels at lower saturation points were significantly lower and more than acceptable. While some viewers will prefer this slight oversaturation, it remains a visible departure from accuracy.
Examining the same screen cap that had shown horrible blotchiness with CMS adjustments as documented in my 55EC9300 review, swinging the 65EC9700’s CMS controls to their extremes no longer produced any significant problems. However, it was still not possible to rein in the oversaturation of full purity greens and reds. Thankfully, medium and lower saturation points could be calibrated fairly well with the CMS controls. Because of LG’s history of CMS problems, I did significantly limit adjustments made to the 65EC9700’s CMS.
With 10% full gray fields, the last 3-4” near each side were noticeably darker than the rest of the screen. The problem diminished or disappeared with brighter fields, though there was then an odd vertical strip about an inch wide just right of center. Neither problem brought attention to itself with the varied DirecTV content and reference screencaps I viewed on the 65EC9700, though some applications will make them more apparent.
As with the 55”, the 65EC9700 measured virtually the same with any size or style (APL or standard) window up to 25%. Light output with Day mode was calibrated to 74 fL with windows, and that decreased to 47 fL with 50% windows and 24 fL with full fields. There was no significant color shift even with full fields, red bumping up only an imperceptible amount with full fields.
I was almost able to achieve my goal of perfect blacks at video level 16 and reproduction of levels 17 and up, though not quite. I was either to get reproduction of 17 with a very, very slight illumination of 16 only visible up close in a dark room, or I was able to get total darkness at 16 but reproduction only from level 18 on up. This is not critical at all and could be due more to sample to sample variation than the 65EC9700 itself.
After calibration, the image looked excellent, though slightly more grainy than the 55”, which I always felt had one of the smoothest, most grain free images I had ever seen. The 65EC9700’s graininess appeared to be in line with many other high end displays.
