LG QNED90 TV Review

The LG QNED90 has a similar design to the LG G1 OLED, with thin bezels that are hardly noticeable, a smooth back designed to sit almost flush with the wall, and a nice metal finish. The stand is pretty basic, but it supports the TV well.

The stand is nearly as wide as the TV, so you'll need a pretty big table for the larger sizes if you're not planning on wall mounting it. Although the feet are pretty basic, they support the TV well. There's about 2.5" of clearance between the table and the bottom of the TV, so most soundbars will fit in front without blocking the display.

Footprint of the 65" stand: 47.8" x 11.7".

The back of the TV is very plain. The inputs are side-facing on the left of the TV, and they're easy to access if the TV is wall-mounted. You can route cables through two clips on the back of the TV that lead to tracks in the stands for cable management.

The cable clips on the back of the TV don't seem to be removable, and they stick out about 0.4", so the TV can't quite be mounted flush to the wall.

The LG QNED90 has superb build quality. It feels pretty sturdy and is mostly metal. The stand is pretty basic, though, and doesn't entirely prevent the TV from wobbling. There's also a bit of flex on the back of the TV near the VESA mount and near the inputs.

The LG QNED90 has excellent contrast as long as you leave the local dimming feature enabled. Blacks are deep and uniform, even when bright highlights are visible in the scene. The native contrast is low, though, so blacks appear gray and washed out with local dimming disabled.

This TV has just okay blooming handling. There's significant blooming around bright highlights in dark scenes, including if you have subtitles turned on.

Despite the high number of dimming zones, transitions between zones are noticeable and distracting on this TV. There's a noticeable flicker as small, bright highlights move across the screen. The algorithms can't quite keep up with fast-moving content, as the leading edge is a bit darker than it should be as the zones are a bit slow to turn on.

The local dimming performs the same in the 'Game Optimizer' Picture Mode as outside of it.

The LG QNED90 has just okay peak brightness in HDR. Although it can get very bright with test slides, real content isn't as bright, and bright highlights don't stand out as well as they should.

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

The HDR brightness in the 'Game Optimizer' mode is the same as outside of it. There are minor differences in each result, but this is just due to the margin of error of our tests, it's not at all noticeable.

This TV has good PQ EOTF tracking, so most content is displayed close to the content creator's intent. It's not very consistent, though, and the accuracy varies depending on what brightness level the content you're watching was mastered at. With content mastered at 600 or 1,000 nits, there's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, resulting in a loss of fine details.

The LG QNED90 has amazing peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare in a bright room. Brightness varies quite a bit with different test windows, but this won't be too noticeable with real content.

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 'High', and Panel Brightness set to '100'.

If you want the brightest image possible and don't care about image accuracy, we reached a peak of 958 cd/m² in the 25% window in the 'Vivid' Picture Mode with the Color Temperature set to 'Cold 50'.

The LG QNED90 has an excellent color gamut, and it can display a wide color gamut, which is great for HDR content. It can display most of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space but falls a bit short on all colors. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is decent, but there's not much content that uses it at the moment.

The LG QNED90 has decent color volume. It's mainly limited by the incomplete color gamut, but like most LCDs, pure blues aren't as bright as other colors.

Out of the box, the LG QNED90 we bought has very good accuracy, but this can vary between units. Gamma is close to our target of 2.2, but dark scenes are over-brightened a bit, and some bright scenes are a bit too dark. The white balance is good overall, but there are some minor issues in bright scenes. Colors are excellent, with no noticeable issues. Unfortunately, the color temperature is very cool, giving everything a bluish tint.

After calibration, the LG QNED90 has outstanding accuracy. Any remaining issues with the white balance or colors aren't noticeable without a colorimeter, and gamma is almost perfect. The color temperature is much better, but still a bit cool.

See our recommended settings here.

Unfortunately, the LG QNED90 has just alright gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, and there's quite a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, which can be distracting when watching sports or if you're using the TV as a PC monitor. Near-black scenes are much better, but there's still quite a bit of dirty screen effect. Note that gray uniformity can vary between units due to manufacturing tolerances.

Unfortunately, the LG QNED90 has sub-par black uniformity. With local dimming disabled, the screen is very cloudy, and there are signs of backlight bleed along each edge. Black uniformity is much better with local dimming disabled, but there's still quite a bit of blooming around the test cross, despite the Mini LED backlight.

As expected for an IPS TV, the LG QNED90 has impressive viewing angles, much better than the LG NANO90 2021. It's great if you have a wide seating arrangement. Colors barely shift, even at a wide angle, but at a moderate angle, the brightness decreases and gamma shifts, causing the image to appear washed out.

The LG QNED90 has decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss finish doesn't diffuse direct reflections, so they can still be distracting if you have many bright lights or windows. Thankfully, the TV is plenty bright enough to overcome most glare.

This TV has good gradient handling in HDR. There's noticeable banding in all shades of gray, as well as in bright shades of green and blue.

The LG QNED90 has good smoothing capabilities when displaying low-quality content. Macro-blocking or pixelization from low-quality sources are smoothed out well, but some fine details are lost.

Unfortunately, this TV has disappointing sharpness processing, so low-resolution or low-bitrate content isn't very sharp. Some 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: 25

The LG QNED90 uses an ADS-type panel, which is similar to an IPS. The panel structure looks very similar to the one used in the Samsung QN85A QLED.

The LG QNED90 has a very good response time. Transitions from a dark color to a bright one are slow, with significant overshoot in some transitions. Transitions from bright to dark are a bit faster, and except for one, there's no noticeable undershoot, which is great.

Surprisingly, the LG QNED90 is completely flicker-free, even with local dimming enabled. It's the first LG TV we've tested, excluding OLEDs, that's completely flicker-free. This is great, as it can help reduce eye strain.

The LG QNED90 has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly called black frame insertion. It can only flicker at 60Hz, which is a bit disappointing. Unfortunately, some image duplication is noticeable due to poor strobe timings, as there's some crosstalk where the backlight flickers while the TV is refreshing the image. Note that our score here is based only on the refresh rates supported, not how well it works.

There's an optional motion interpolation feature, which can improve the appearance of motion in low frame rate content. It seems to work well with some content; we didn't notice any haloing or artifacts when watching Our Planet on Netflix. It doesn't perform as well in busier scenes, though, and we noticed many issues with The Witcher.

Despite the fast response time, there's some noticeable stutter in some content. It's mainly noticeable in slow panning shots.

The LG QNED90 can remove judder from any source, including embedded sources like a cable box. Surprisingly, no extra settings were needed.

The LG QNED90 supports multiple variable refresh rate formats, so you're sure to get a nearly tear-free gaming experience from almost any source.

You might need to adjust the AMD FreeSync Premium setting depending on your source's supported refresh rate. If you're gaming at 60Hz, FreeSync only works with the setting set to 'Wide'. At 120Hz, both 'Wide' and 'High' work, but the supported refresh rate range varies depending on the setting. With it set to 'High', it only removes tearing between 95 and 120 fps. You have to set it to 'Wide' for the full refresh rate range. The behavior is the same from both an HDMI 2.0 and an HDMI 2.1 source.

The LG QNED90 has fantastic low input lag, very similar to the LG NANO90 2021 and just a tiny bit slower than the LG C1 OLED. It delivers an extremely responsive gaming experience that's just a bit slower than the best gaming monitors.

The LG QNED90 displays any common signal up to 4k @ 120Hz, but 1440p @ 60Hz requires a custom (forced) resolution. Unfortunately, it can't display proper chroma 4:4:4 with a 1080p or 1440p signal, which is disappointing, as this is important for reading fine text when using it as a PC monitor. It can display chroma 4:4:4 properly when sending a 4k signal, though, so this isn't a big deal.

The LG QNED90 is fully compatible with the PS5.

This TV can take full advantage of everything the Xbox Series S|X have to offer, including Dolby Vision gaming at up to 4k @ 120Hz.

HDMI 3 is also the eARC port, leaving just one HDMI 2.1 input (HDMI 4) for HDMI 2.1 consoles.

All of the main inputs are side-facing, so they're easier to access if you wall-mount the TV. Some inputs face down, but they're mainly ports that aren't typically changed once the TV is set up.

The LG QNED90 supports eARC, allowing you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver over an HDMI connection. Like all LG TVs we've tested in the last few years, this TV doesn't support DTS.

The LG QNED90 has a decent frequency response. Like most TVs, the low-frequency extension is high, so there's almost no bass response and no thump or rumble. Above the LFE, the sound profile is fairly balanced in the mid-range but drops off in the treble range, especially at max volume, meaning that some dialogue might sound muted. It gets pretty loud, but there's some compression at max volume.

The distortion performance is alright. There's a decent amount of distortion at moderate listening levels. Like most TVs, though, it gets worse at max volume. This varies between content, though, and not everyone is sensitive to it, so you might not even hear it.

LG redesigned the WebOS smart platform 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 experience many bugs or issues with the TV, but when Disabling Game Optimizer Mode and going back into a non-game picture mode, the Clarity settings are grayed out. We suspect this is a bug with the current firmware. To fix the issue, we had disable VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium before disabling Game Optimizer Mode. As long as we disabled those settings first, the Clarity tab wasn't grayed out.

Unfortunately, like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the interface. We noticed them on the home page, app store, and in the Shop Time store.

LG TVs use a custom LG web store built-in to WebOS, but it has a huge selection of apps, so you're sure to find the app for your favorite streaming service.

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. You can still use it as a virtual pointer, making it very easy to navigate the menus. Through the built-in microphone, you can access both Google Assistant and Alexa. Through the voice commands you can search for content or ask questions, and you can even change inputs or change basic picture settings.

The power button is along the bottom bezel. You can also use it to change inputs, channels, or volume through a series of long or short presses. There are also two mics located on either side of the power button that allow for hands-free voice control. Unlike the Hisense U8G, there's no physical switch to disable the mics.

• Remote
• Batteries
• Stand covers
• Cable wrap
• User manuals