LG NANO90 2021 TV Review

From the front, this TV looks similar to the LG NANO90 2020. It has thin bezels and similar feet to the 2020 model, but they're slightly redesigned. The back has a new look, similar to the higher-end LG NANO99 8k 2020, but it doesn't look as sleek.

The metal feet are less deep than those on the LG NANO90 2020, and they support the TV well.

Footprint of the 55" TV: 43.3" x 10.1".

The back panel is made of smooth metal and has a somewhat premium look. There's cable management through the feet and hooks on the TV, which helps keep your setup clean.

The LG NANO90 has good build quality. It's well-made throughout and feels solid. The back panel flexes in the middle and near the inputs, but it won't be a problem for most people. The TV doesn't wobble at all, which is nice.

The LG NANO90 2021 has decent contrast overall. The native contrast is very low, but thankfully the local dimming feature is extremely effective at boosting contrast. Dark scenes look great overall, even when bright highlights are noticeable on-screen. There are a few downsides to this, though, as this TV shows significant blooming around bright highlights.

Unfortunately, there's significant blooming around bright highlights on this TV. It's especially distracting in dark scenes, as subtitles bleed out into the surrounding dark areas, and any bright areas in the scene are spread out over a wide area due to the relatively large size of each zone.

Unfortunately, zone transitions are distracting. As bright lights move across the screen, you can see the zones turning on and off. The algorithms can't keep up with fast-moving content, so the leading edge is darker than it should be, as it doesn't turn the backlight on quickly enough, and there's a trailing halo behind bright objects.

The local dimming performs the same in the 'Game Optimizer' Picture Mode as outside of it. The color temperature is cooler in the 'Game' mode, so colors look a bit more vibrant, but the overall image looks the same.

The HDR brightness is okay. It gets brighter than in SDR, and it's an improvement from the LG NANO90 2020, but it's still not enough to make highlights pop. It gets brightest when small-to-medium-sized highlights stay on the screen for a short period, but they quickly lose their brightness the longer they stay on the screen. Once again, small highlights are dimmer because of frame dimming. The EOTF doesn't follow the target perfectly, as most bright scenes are over-brightened.

We tested it in the 'Cinema' HDR Picture Mode with Panel Brightness and Contrast at their max, LED Local Dimming set to 'Medium', and Color Temperature on 'Warm 50' with all other image processing disabled.

We couldn't achieve a brighter EOTF plot, but if you want the highest luminosity possible at the cost of image accuracy, then use the 'Vivid' Picture Mode with LED Local Dimming on 'Medium' and everything else at their default settings. We measured 1309 cd/m² using these settings in the 10% window.

The HDR brightness in the 'Game Optimizer' mode is the same as outside of it. The minor differences in measurement are due to variance between testing runs, and you won't see any difference with your eyes.

On average, this TV tracks the PQ EOTF well, but there are a few noticeable issues. Near-blacks are raised a bit, and midtones are slightly crushed, especially in content mastered at 4,000 nits. The brightest highlights the TV can display are overblown, and there's a sharp cutoff at the max luminance, causing a loss of fine details.

The LG NANO90 has good SDR brightness, a nice improvement from the LG NANO90 2020, but it's not as bright as the LG QNED90. It gets bright enough with real content to fight glare in most rooms. Brightness varies just a bit between our different test windows, and small highlights are dimmer than the rest due to frame dimming.

We tested SDR brightness after calibration in the 'Expert (Dark space, night)' Picture Mode with Color Temperature set to 'Warm 50', LED Local Dimming to 'Medium', and Panel Brightness to its max.

If you want the brightest image possible and don't care about image accuracy, we reached 1047 cd/m² in the 10% window in the 'Vivid' Picture Mode.

The LG NANO90 has a good color gamut for HDR content. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content. Due to the bad color accuracy, tone mapping is also off. This results in the image looking cooler than expected, but it still looks good overall.

The color volume is just okay. It struggles to display dark colors because of its low contrast but does a better job with brighter colors.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is terrible. Although this can vary between units, we noticed similar behavior on the LG C1 OLED. We measured it with different equipment and kept getting the same results. White balance and colors are way off; yellow colors look more white than the actual color white. Gamma is awful, and all scenes are too bright, especially brighter scenes. Color temperature is also on the cool side, giving the image a blue tint. Also note that we disabled LED Local Dimming for the measurements.

We also tried measuring the accuracy in the 'Filmmaker Mode' Picture Mode and got slightly better, but similar, results. However, we don't suggest using this because it disables some settings:

• White Balance dE: 6.84
• Color dE: 6.12
• Color Temperature: 7332K
• Gamma: 1.68

Accuracy after calibration is fantastic. Any remaining inaccuracies to the white balance and colors are nearly impossible to spot. Gamma follows the target almost perfectly, and the color temperature is closer to our 6500K target.

See our recommended settings here.

The LG NANO90 has okay gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are visibly darker all around, and there's dirty screen effect in the center, which could get distracting during sports. However, uniformity is improved in near-dark scenes. Keep in mind that uniformity can vary between units.

The black uniformity is disappointing. Without local dimming enabled, the entire screen looks blue due to the low native contrast of the panel. Even with local dimming enabled, the uniformity is worse because there's intense blooming around the center cross.

The LG NANO90 has okay viewing angles, but it's nothing special for an IPS panel. The image quickly starts to look darker as you move off-center, and it looks inaccurate at wide viewing angles. It'll be fine for watching stuff with a few people around, but probably not suggested for large viewing parties.

The LG NANO90 2021 has impressive reflection handling. It handles even intense light pretty well, and combined with its good peak brightness, glare won't be an issue in most settings. It looks like it has a different coating from the LG NANO90 2020 as light looks more purple when reflected off, similar to the LG C1 OLED.

This TV has good gradient handling overall. There's more noticeable banding in dark shades of red and bright shades of green, but everything else looks great.

This TV has impressive smoothing capabilities when watching low-quality content. It does a fantastic job smoothing out macro-blocking, but there is some loss of fine details that are unnecessarily smoothed out.

Unfortunately, this TV has poor sharpness processing, so low-resolution and low-bitrate content doesn't look good. Edges aren't very sharp, fine details are lost, and text is blurry.

The optimal settings for a sharp 480p image with no over-sharpening are as follows:

• Adjusted Sharpness: 24
• Super Resolution: On

The LG NANO90 2021 uses a proper IPS panel but with a BGR sub-pixel layout. This doesn't affect the overall picture but may have an effect on the way text is displayed. Read about it here.

The LG NANO90 2021 has a great response time. You may still notice some blur trail behind fast-moving objects, but motion still looks good overall. There's some minor overshoot in most transitions, but it's nothing to worry about.

This TV uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. The flickering starts when the Panel Brightness is set to anything below its max, but the frequency is so high that you won't notice it. However, it flickers at 120Hz in the 'Game Optimizer' Picture Mode.

The LG NANO90 has a Black Frame Insertion feature to try to improve the appearance of motion. It works for both 60fps and 120fps content, but it can create some image duplication. Keep in mind that the BFI score is based on the frequency at which the TV can flicker and not the actual performance.

See here for the settings that control the BFI feature.

There's a motion interpolation feature for lower frame rate content, known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It can interpolate 60fps up to 120fps, and it can interpolate 30fps up to 60fps, but it can't do it up to 120fps, which explains the blurriness of the top photo. With real content, the motion interpolation feature doesn't look that good. There are a few artifacts and motion blur with anything that's moving. It even stops interpolating altogether during busy scenes.

See here for the settings that control the motion interpolation feature.

Despite the quick response time, lower frame rate content doesn't stutter that much. If it bothers you, you can try enabling the motion interpolation feature.

The LG NANO90 2021 can remove 24p judder from any source. For it to work, simply enable Cinema Screen.

The LG NANO90 has native FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR support to reduce screen tearing. On our unit, we set the AMD FreeSync Premium to 'High' to get the full refresh rate range with FreeSync because setting it to 'Wide' limits it to 60Hz. Although it's not officially certified to be G-SYNC compatible, we found it works with our RTX 3080 graphics card, but it doesn't work with any 1000 Series card. Enabling the VRR setting also disabled the LED Local Dimming, TruMotion, Noise Reduction, and Smooth Gradation settings.

The LG NANO90 2021 has incredibly low input lag as long as it's in the 'Game Optimizer' Picture Mode. LG introduced a new Prevent Input Delay setting to their 2021 TVs, and setting it to 'Boost' reduces the input lag by about 3ms for 60Hz content compared to the LG NANO90 2020. However, it doesn't affect anything with 120Hz content. Sadly, enabling the motion interpolation feature in 'Game' mode greatly increases the input lag, so it's not suggested for gaming.

Update 11/24/2021: We double-checked to make sure that this TV could display 4k @ 120Hz signals properly. Unlike TVs from other brands, including the Sony X90J and the Hisense U8G, LG doesn't use the MediaTek chipset and has no issues displaying 4k @ 120Hz.

The LG NANO90 TV displays any common signal up to 4k @ 120Hz. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4 on any supported resolution, which is important for reading fine text when using it as a PC monitor. For it to work, set the icon for the input you're using to 'PC' in the Home Dashboard. For full-bandwidth signals, set HDMI Deep Color to '4k'.

The LG NANO90 2021 doesn't have any issues displaying content from either the PS5 or Xbox Series X. It has Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into 'Game' mode when a game from a compatible device is launched. For it to work, simply enable Game Optimizer in the General Settings page.

Since HDMI 3 is also the ARC input, you may only be left with one HDMI 2.1 input (HDMI 4) if you need to connect a receiver.

All HDMI inputs are side-facing, making them easier to access if you wall-mount the TV.

The LG NANO90 supports eARC, allowing you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver over an HDMI connection. It supports Dolby Digital audio formats, but not DTS. For it to work, set the HDMI Input Audio to 'Bitstream' for the input you're using, Digital Sound Output to 'Auto', and enable HDMI e-ARC Support.

The LG NANO90 2021 has a decent frequency response. It has a well-balanced sound profile that makes dialogue sound good. In our testing, any frequency above 11KHz sounded awful, but most content won't reach this high pitch anyways. There's a decent amount of bass with a bit of thump, but it's still not as good as a dedicated subwoofer.

The distortion performance is disappointing. There isn't too much distortion at moderate listening levels, but it gets more noticeable when playing content at its max volume. However, this depends on the content, and not everyone may hear it.

LG redesigned the webOS in 2021, and you get a full home page with all your apps instead of the banner that was at the bottom on previous versions. It's easy-to-use, and the menu navigation feels fairly smooth. We didn't notice any bugs during testing.

Like most modern TVs, there are ads on the home page. They even have a dedicated 'ads page' where you can shop for all of their advertised products.

LG's app store has a wide selection, and the apps run smoothly.

LG's popular Magic Remote has been redesigned in 2021. Instead of the curved shape we've become used to in the past years, it's now flat with more quick-access buttons to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and the app store. It has the same functions as past Magic Remotes as you can use it with its traditional buttons or use the motion-controlled pointer, like a Wii remote. Through the built-in microphone, you have access to both Google Assistant and Alexa, and you can ask it to change inputs and search for content, but you can't ask it to change settings.

There's a single button underneath the middle of the TV to turn it On/Off, change inputs, adjust the volume, or switch channels.

• Remote
• 2x AA batteries
• User guides
• Cable tie
• Not shown: Clips and feet covers for cable management