LG NANO99 8k 2020 TV Review

The LG 65NANO99UNA has an outstanding style and looks like a mix between the LG NANO90 and LG GX OLED. Its thin bezels and straight feet look like other models in their NanoCell lineup, while the back looks like the GX. This is because the NANO99 is compatible with LG's Gallery Flush wall-mount, but it doesn't come with it and you have to buy it separately. Overall, it's a premium-looking TV that should please most people.

The stand is nearly as wide as the TV itself and you need a fairly deep table for the large feet. There's a bit of wobble, but overall, the stand supports the TV well.

Footprint of the 65" TV: 51.6" x 11.2".

The back of the LG 65NANO99UNA looks very similar to the LG GX OLED because it's also compatible with LG's Gallery Flush wall-mount, but unlike the GX, it doesn't come with one. The back panel is made of thick plastic with a smooth finish, but the panels for cable management have a textured finish.

This TV has thin borders that aren't distracting.

The LG 65NANO99UNA is thin and doesn't stick out if you wall-mount it.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has outstanding build quality. It's better than most TVs in the NanoCell Series, such as the LG NANO90, and it's similar to the LG GX OLED. It's well-built all around and the frame feels very solid. There isn't much flex and doesn't feel like it would break if you drop it.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has a poor contrast ratio. This is expected from an IPS panel, but it's lower than most of LG's LED TVs. The local dimming feature improves it a bit, but blacks still appear gray when viewed in the dark. Note that contrast may vary between units.

If you want an 8k TV with a better contrast ratio, check out the Samsung Q900TS 8k QLED.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has decent SDR peak brightness. Small highlights are dim and it seems to get brighter as there are larger brighter objects. For the most part, it gets bright enough to combat glare in most well-lit rooms. If you want an 8k TV that gets significantly brighter, then look into the Samsung QN800A 8k QLED.

We tested the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Expert (Dark Room)' Picture Mode with Brightness at its max, Local Dimming set to 'Medium', and Color Temperature set to 'Warm 2'.

If you want a brighter image and don't care about accuracy, then set the Picture Mode to 'Vivid' with everything else at their default settings. We reached 912 cd/m² in the 25% window using this setting.

Update 08/04/2021: Added the real content local dimming videos.

The full-array local dimming feature is poor. It crushes small light sources and they don't pop the way they're supposed to. The local dimming feature seems to make the entire screen dimmer, and you lose details in scenes where there are both light and dark elements in the shadows. There's a bit of blooming with non-HDR content, but there's none with HDR content because small light sources are so dim. However, when there's a bigger light source, the backlight flickers, causing the screen to become brighter, and it can be very distracting. It does the same thing when there are two or more lines of subtitles, and you might think the TV is broken because of it. It seems to handle the test pattern and real content differently as zone transitions are visible in the test pattern, but not noticeable with real content. Overall, it looks better than the local dimming on the LG NANO90, but it scores the same because of the flickering issue.

We tested it with LED Local Dimming set to 'Medium'.

If you prefer something with better local dimming, then look into the LG NANO99 8k 2021.

Update 08/04/2021: Added the real content local dimming videos.

Local dimming performs the same in Game Mode as outside of it.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has decent HDR peak brightness. Like with SDR content, small highlights are very dim and don't pop the way the creator intended. The screen gets brighter as large, bright areas cover it. However, it handles our test slides differently, and real content is very dim, to the point where it's difficult to recommend this TV for watching HDR content.

We measured the HDR peak brightness in the 'HDR Cinema' Picture Mode with Contrast and Brightness each at their max and Local Dimming set to 'Medium'.

If you want the brightest image possible and don't mind losing image accuracy, we reached 964 cd/m² in the 25% window in the 'HDR Vivid' Picture Mode with LED Local Dimming on 'High'.

The gray uniformity is just okay. The edges are noticeably darker and there's dirty screen effect in the center, which can get distracting during sports. The uniformity is better in dark scenes, but the entire screen seems to be slightly blue. Note that uniformity may vary between units.

Our unit of the LG 65NANO99UNA has disappointing black uniformity. Without local dimming, the entire screen looks blue and there's a bit of clouding throughout. The image is more black with local dimming, but there's more blooming around the center cross.

The viewing angles are decent, which is expected from an IPS panel. The colors remain accurate when viewing from a wide angle, but you may notice a loss in brightness.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has excellent reflection handling, similar to the LG SM9970 8k. Visibility shouldn't be an issue even in well-lit rooms.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is great. Most colors and white balance are only slightly inaccurate, and most people shouldn't notice any issues. However, the color temperature is cold, giving the image a blueish tint. Also, gamma doesn't follow the target very well, and most scenes are darker than they should be. Note that color accuracy may vary between units.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has outstanding color accuracy after calibration. Any remaining inaccuracies can't be spotted with the naked eye. Gamma is better from before pre-calibration, except some really dark scenes are slightly over-brightened. The color temperature improved, but it's still on the cold side.

See our recommended settings here.

480p content, such as from cable boxes, looks good and there aren't any obvious artifacts.

The LG NanoCell 8k upscales 720p content, such as from cable TV, without any issues.

1080p content, such as from Blu-rays, looks incredible.

The LG 65NANO99UNA does a fantastic job at displaying native 4k content. We didn't score it a perfect 10 like most 4k TVs because it's not a pixel-perfect resolution.

Unlike the Samsung Q800T QLED, this TV displays native 8k content perfectly and there aren't any dithering issues.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has a unique subpixel structure with notches in the blue and red pixels. The LG SM9970 8k had the same thing.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has a good color gamut for HDR content. It has excellent coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space, but limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The EOTF doesn't follow the target PQ curve very well as most scenes are dimmer than they should be. The EOTF in 'Game' mode is very similar, except some scenes may be a bit brighter.

If you find HDR too dim, set the Picture Mode to 'HDR Standard' with Brightness, Contrast, Dynamic Contrast, and LED Local Dimming at their max settings, with Dynamic Tone Mapping enabled. This results in a much brighter image, as you can see in this EOTF. However, there's a strange increase in brightness at around the 40% stimulus mark, and this coincides with when the screen appears to flicker in HDR, as explained in the Local Dimming section.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has a decent color gamut. It displays brighter colors well but struggles with dark, saturated colors because of its low contrast ratio.

The gradient handling is good. There's minor banding throughout and it's most noticeable with green and gray. The Smooth Gradation setting doesn't do much to improve the gradients in the test pattern. It removes a lot of the banding in real content, but it may cause a loss of fine details in some scenes.

There's so sign of image retention after displaying a static image, but this may vary between units.

While some IPS panels like this have some temporary image retention, this doesn't seem to be permanent as the IPS panel in our long-term test appears to be immune.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has an excellent response time. For the most part, motion looks smooth and there should be minimal blur trail. However, there's overshoot in every transition and you may notice some artifacts.

The LG 65NANO99UNA uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. It flickers at 960Hz at all brightness levels on all picture modes, except for 'Game' mode, where it flickers 120Hz. The 960Hz flicker is so high that most people shouldn't notice it.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has a Black Frame Insertion feature to reduce motion blur. It flickers at 60Hz if you set TruMotion to 'User' with 'Motion Pro' enabled. It flickers at 120Hz when in 'Game' mode or with TruMotion enabled.

This TV has a motion interpolation feature to interpolate lower-frame-rate content up to 120fps, known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It doesn't work well with the test pattern as it looks fuzzy, but it works very well with real content. There are minimal artifacts, even in busy scenes.

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

Due to the quick response time, there's a fair amount of stutter with lower-frame-rate content. Enabling the motion interpolation feature can help reduce this problem.

The LG 65NANO99UNA removes 24p judder from any source, such as native apps or Blu-ray players. To do so, simply enable Real Cinema.

Unlike the LG NANO90, the LG 65NANO99UNA doesn't currently support any variable refresh rate technology. However, this may come in a future firmware update and we'll retest it when we can.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has an excellent low input lag. It's an improvement from the LG SM9970 8k and should be low enough for most gamers, as long as you're in 'Game' mode. You can use the motion interpolation feature in 'Game' mode, but it significantly increases the input lag. If you want to use it as a PC monitor and have the lowest input lag possible, you need to be in 'Game' mode with the input you're using labeled as 'PC'.

This TV is advertised to have support for an 'Auto Low Latency Mode' that automatically switches it into 'Game' mode when a game from a compatible device is launched. However, it doesn't seem to work even after we enabled Instant Game Response and tried with multiple devices.

The LG 65NANO99UNA supports most common resolutions up to 8k @ 60Hz, except for 1440p @ 120Hz. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4 at a 4k resolution or below, but not at 8k. If you want to use it as a PC monitor and want it to display chroma 4:4:4, set the icon for the input you're using to 'PC' in the Home Dashboard. For full-bandwidth signals, set HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color to '8k' for the HDMI input you're using.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has four HDMI 2.1 inputs, so they support 4k @ 120Hz content and 8k @ 60Hz content.

Update 09/16/2021: We had originally listed that the LG NANO99 8k 2020 has an IR In port. The IR port is for an IR Blaster, which is an output device, not an input. There's no IR input on this TV.

The LG 65NANO99UNA supports eARC, allowing you to send high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver through an HDMI connection. For it to work, enable eARC in the 'HDMI ARC' page of the 'Sound' menu, and set Digital Sound Out to 'Passthrough'. Sadly, LG dropped DTS decoding from all of their TVs in 2020.

The LG 65NANO99UNA has an okay frequency response. It has a somewhat well-balanced sound profile and gets loud, but there are compression artifacts at its max volume. Sadly, it doesn't produce much bass.

The distortion performance is okay. There's a bit of distortion at moderate listening levels, and it slightly increases at its max volume. Not everyone may hear it, and it depends on the content.

This TV runs on the same LG WebOS found on other high-end LG TVs. It's easy-to-use and fairly smooth to navigate. We didn't experience any bugs during testing.

There are ads and suggested content on the home screen and within the app store. Unfortunately, there's no way to opt-out of them.

LG's app store has tons of apps available for download, and they run smoothly for the most part.

The LG 65NANO99UNA comes with the same Magic Remote as most other 2020 LG TVs. You can use it like a traditional remote with its navigation buttons or use it as a point-and-press remote, like a computer mouse. There are shortcut buttons to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. It has built-in voice control that allows you to change inputs and search for content, but you can't change some settings with it.

There's a single button underneath the center of the screen. It allows you to turn the TV On/Off, change inputs, volume, and channels.

• Remote (with 2x AA batteries)
• Wrap and clips for cable management
• IR Cable
• Composite in adapter
• 2x stickers
• User guides

Like the Samsung Q800T QLED, the LG 65NANO99UNA gets very hot, and it's almost too hot to touch the back panel. It uses the most power with 8k HDR content.