LG QNED80 2022  TV Review

The LG QNED80 2022 has a simple design with a silver metallic finish and two V-shaped feet. There's nothing that stands out about its design, but it doesn't look cheap, either.

After nearly two years now, the scorch marks are increasingly noticeable along the bottom edge, but the LG QNED80 2022 now has a worse problem, as roughly half of the backlight has failed. The center of the screen now measures a nearly 85% drop in peak brightness. The TV is still on the test, but it'll probably fail completely in the near future.

After 14 months on our accelerated longevity test, the LG QNED80 2022 has developed multiple serious issues, similar to the Samsung AU8000. There are scorch marks around some LEDs along the bottom edge, which has caused cracks in the light guide plate. These cracks, in turn, cause light to seep through. Unlike the AU8000, the LEDs haven't completely failed yet.

As part of our two-year test, which has so far subjected 100 TVs to over 10,000 hours of accelerated testing, we found that edge-lit TVs like this one have significant durability issues. These issues range from warped reflector sheets and cracked light guide plates to completely burnt-out LEDs. You can read the full results of our investigation here.

The stand has two V-shaped feet that hold the TV well. They raise the screen high enough off the table that there are 3.31 inches (8.4 cm) of space between the table and the bottom of the screen, meaning most soundbars won't block it. You can also place the feet in a narrow position (see here) if you have a smaller TV stand.

Footprint of the 65" TV:

• Wide position: 45.9" x 11.7"
• Narrow position: 16.8" x 11.7"

The back of the TV features brushed metal and is simple-looking. The inputs are set into the TV, so they're hard to reach with the TV wall-mounted. You can route cables through the feet and clips for cable management. If you have the stand in the narrow position, you can also move the clips to the center to keep the setup clean.

The thickness measurement includes the removable cable management clips, and without them, the TV is 1.77" (4.5 cm) thick.

The LG QNED80 2022 has good build quality. It's well-built, and there aren't any quality control issues. Although there's a bit of flex on the back panel, and the stand wobbles a bit, neither is of major concern, and you won't notice them once you place the TV.

The LG QNED80 2022 has a terrible contrast ratio. This means that blacks look gray anytime there are bright highlights present. Because the local dimming on the TV generally does more harm than good, our test results are with local dimming turned off.

Although the local dimming feature helps improve the contrast a bit, it does so by raising the brightness of the whites, so dark scenes look even worse. The higher-end LG QNED85 delivers much better dark scene performance thanks to its Mini LED backlight.

With local dimming set to 'Off', there's no blooming, as the entire backlight is always on at the same intensity. Here is what the same scene looks like with local dimming set to 'High'. Again, it slightly improves the contrast, but at the expense of severe blooming in almost all scenes.

With local dimming set to 'Off', there are no zone transitions, as the entire backlight is always on. For comparison, here's what lighting zone transitions look like with local dimming set to 'High'; there's severe blooming, although it does make contrast a bit better. The local dimming does more harm to the image than good, so we recommend users keep it turned off.

The contrast and dark details look the same in Game Mode with local dimming disabled. The image and videos above are with local dimming set to 'Off', but here's what the contrast in Game Mode looks like with local dimming set to 'High':

• Blooming

The HDR brightness isn't bad, but it isn't bright enough to make highlights truly stand out against dark backgrounds. Small highlights do get brighter than larger ones, but because of the low contrast and elevated black levels, they don't pop like on other TVs.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Select Mode: Cinema
• Panel Brightness: 100
• Adjust Contrast: 100
• Color Temperature: Warm 50
• LED Local Dimming: Off

Enabling local dimming significantly increases the peak brightness of smaller highlights, but the overall picture quality is worse, and there's distracting blooming around bright highlights. Here are photos and measurements of the TV's HDR Brightness with local dimming set to 'High':

• Hallway Lights: 340 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 318 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 130 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 489 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 533 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 444 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 401 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 388 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 485 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 529 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 441 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 398 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 385 cd/m²

The HDR brightness in Game Mode looks the same as outside of Game Mode, even if the individual windows are slightly dimmer, but you can't notice any difference. These results are with the same settings as outside of Game Mode but in the 'Game Optimizer' HDR Picture Mode.

The PQ EOTF tracking on the LG QNED80 2022 is okay. While it doesn't display all highlights the way they should be, there's a slow roll-off at the peak brightness, meaning it preserves details well. However, it isn't as good with content mastered at 4,000 nits because the roll-off happens earlier, so bright highlights are quite a bit dimmer than they should be. When it comes to shadows and midtones, they are displayed dimmer than they should be, regardless of what brightness level the content was mastered at. On the other end, blacks are displayed brighter than they should be, so perfect blacks are unachievable on the TV no matter what the content was mastered at.

The graph above is with local dimming set to 'Off'; here's what the PQ EOTF tracking looks like with local dimming set to 'High'. It's significantly more accurate than with local dimming disabled, but unfortunately, it comes at the expense of massive blooming and distracting lighting zone transitions.

The SDR peak brightness on the LG QNED80 2022 is decent. It's bright enough to fight glare with a few lights around but not enough if you have it placed opposite a bright window. There's some variation in brightness between different scenes, but this is only noticeable when using it as a PC monitor, like when you're minimizing and maximizing windows.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Expert (Dark Space, Night)
• Panel Brightness: 100
• Color Temperature: Warm 50
• LED Local Dimming: Off
• Adjust Contrast: 80

With local dimming set to 'High', it gets a bit brighter, especially when displaying small, bright highlights:

• Real Scene Peak Brightness: 356 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 231 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 544 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 486 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 391 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 340 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 230 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 541 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 339 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 339 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 340 cd/m²

The LG QNED80 2022 has a very good color gamut thanks to its quantum dot technology. It has excellent coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, but it isn't future-proof because it has limited coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space, which is becoming more popular with HDR content. Unfortunately, it has bad tone mapping with the tested 75% stimulus, meaning that brighter colors lose details. However, it's better with a 50% stimulus, as you can see with the DCI-P3 color space here and the Rec. 2020 color space here.

The color volume on the LG QNED80 2022 is not bad. It struggles to display bright colors and can't display dark colors well either due to its low contrast.

With a few quick setting changes out of the box, the LG QNED80 2022 has good accuracy. Most colors have excellent accuracy as they aren't oversaturated, and the color temperature is close to the 6500K target. However, the white balance is a bit off, particularly with mid shades of gray, and gamma doesn't follow our 2.2 target, as most scenes are too bright.

The LG QNED80 2022 is very easy to calibrate, and the results after calibration are nearly perfect, with no noticeable issues at all.

You can see the full calibration settings we used here.

The TV has very good gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are a bit darker than the rest, and there's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, but it isn't enough to be distracting while watching sports or using it as a PC monitor.

The black uniformity of this TV is unremarkable. With the local dimming disabled, the entire screen is blue due to the low contrast, and there's noticeable clouding. Although the local dimming helps deepen parts of the screen, there's still noticeable blooming due to the edge-lit dimming zones. For comparison, here's what lighting zone transitions look like with local dimming set to 'High'.

The LG QNED80 2022 has a very good viewing angle. For the most part, the image remains consistent when viewing from the sides, but you'll notice the screen looks darker at a wide angle.

The reflection handling is decent. It's fine if you have a few lights around, like a lamp or dim pot lights, but it isn't ideal to place it opposite a bright window with direct sunlight.

The gradient handling is mediocre. There's visible banding in most colors, especially the grays and greens, and you'll see this banding in scenes with shades of similar colors, like a sunset. It has a Smooth Gradation setting that helps smooth out the gradients.

The LG QNED80 2022 has good low-quality content smoothing. There's very little noticeable macro-blocking in dark scenes, which is very good, but unfortunately, it struggles with preserving details.

This TV's upscaling and sharpness processing is okay overall. Fine details are upscaled well for the most part, but hardcoded text is a bit hard to make out. These results are with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 23

Like most IPS panels, the LG QNED80 2022 has an RGB subpixel layout, which is better for PC use than BGR panels because it improves the text clarity, which you can read about here. However, the 50-inch model has a different panel type with a BGR layout.

The LG QNED80 2022 has a very good response time. Motion looks smooth for the most part, but there's still some smearing due to a slower response time with darker transitions.

The LG QNED80 2022 uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight at all brightness levels. The flicker depends on the picture mode you use, and you can see the differences below. The 120Hz flicker can be noticeable and cause image duplication with 60 fps signals, like when you're gaming, as it flickers at 120Hz in Game Mode.

Picture modes with 480Hz flicker:

• Expert (Dark space, night)
• Expert (Bright space, daytime)
• Cinema
• FILMMAKER MODE

Picture modes with 120Hz flicker:

• Vivid
• Standard
• APS
• Sports
• Game Optimizer
• All HDR modes

This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, which you can enable to improve the appearance of motion. It can flicker at either 60Hz or 120Hz, and while it does a good job at reducing blur, there's still some image duplication.

The TV can interpolate lower frame-rate content up to 120 fps. It's decent overall with slow-moving content, but significant motion artifacts are present when interpolating fast-paced action.

Due to the quick response time, there's some noticeable stutter when watching low frame-rate content like movies. It's especially noticeable in slow panning shots or wide landscape shots.

The TV removes judder from any source, including 60Hz sources like cable boxes. For a smooth movie-watching experience, enable the Real Cinema setting.

The TV supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. It supports all three VRR formats across the TV's entire refresh rate range.

The LG QNED80 2022 has incredibly low input lag, ensuring a responsive gaming or desktop experience. It's a bit slower than the latest high-end LG TVs like the LG G3 OLED, but still low enough for most users.

The LG QNED80 2022 has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth that lets it support all signals up to 4k @ 120Hz, as long as you're using HDMI ports 3 and 4. It also displays proper chroma 4:4:4 with any signal, which helps it display proper text with PCs. If you're using HDMI ports 1 and 2, you're limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, so you can't use it for 4k @ 120Hz signals with chroma 4:4:4 and 10-bit color depth.

This TV works without issue with the PS5 as long as you use HDMI ports 3 and 4, as they support the full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth.

Like with the PS5, there aren't any issues with the Xbox Series X, but you need to use the HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports 3 and 4 to take full advantage of it. The TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, so you can get all the green checkmarks except that.

The TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, so you're limited to watching HDR content in the basic HDR10 format. One of the HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports also serves as the eARC port, meaning you can only have one HDMI 2.1 device connected if you have a soundbar or receiver.

The power input is on the back left side of the TV.

The TV supports eARC to pass audio formats from a connected player to your home audio system or a soundbar. It supports the vast majority of Dolby audio formats, except for the lossless Dolby TrueHD 7.1. It also doesn't support any DTS audio formats, which limits you if you like to watch DVDs or Blu-rays, as they regularly use DTS for their main audio tracks.

This TV has an okay frequency response. It sounds alright with moderate listening levels, but there's more deviation and compression at its max volume. Sadly, like most TVs, it doesn't produce much bass, if any.

The distortion handling isn't bad. It's decent with moderate listening levels, but the distortion is worse at its max volume.

The LG QNED80 2022 comes with the 2022 version of the webOS smart platform. It's easy to use and it has a few more features compared to past models, like the support of user profiles so each member of your household can customize their profile how they want.

Like most smart platforms, ads are throughout the interface, and there's no way to disable them.

The app store has a ton of apps you can download, so you're sure to find your favorite content.

The included Magic Remote has a point-and-press feature that makes it easier to navigate through the menu. It has a built-in mic that you can ask to switch inputs, open apps, search for content, or adjust the settings. The remote that comes with the Costco version of this TV has an NFC feature that lets you tap your phone against the remote to cast content, and it's symbolized with the NFC logo on the remote.

There's a single button centrally located at the bottom of the TV to turn the power on or off, change inputs, adjust the volume, or switch channels.

• Remote
• 2x AA batteries
• Power cable
• Cable wrap
• Stand covers
• User guides