The LG UF9500 UHD TV is LG's flagship 4k LED TV. Despite its plethora of features, the image quality is sub-par, especially when watched in the dark. For a well-lit, wide living room with seating on the sides, it will still fit the bill, and most will enjoy its good smart functions.
Our Verdict
The LG UF9500 is the flagship 4k LED TV from LG. Feature-rich, it still struggles with picture quality because of its low contrast and grayish blacks. It will shine in a well-lit room, and when viewed from the side, but even then, sports fans might be disappointed by the poor screen uniformity. Gamers will enjoy its motion handling and responsiveness, though. As for movie lovers or people that like to watch TV in the dark, they will be happier with a different, and probably even cheaper TV.
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Great viewing angle
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Great smart TV interface (WebOS 2.0)
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Very bad screen uniformity
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Poor picture quality in a dark room
- 7.1 Mixed Usage
- 6.6 Movies
- 7.3 TV Shows
- 7.0 Sports
- 7.4 Video Games
- 6.9 HDR Movies
- 7.1 HDR Gaming
- 6.8 PC Monitor
Changelog
Check Price
Test Results
The LG UF9500 looks high-end with its particular stand. The TV is very slim on the upper portion, and although the middle and bottom portions are a bit thicker, it still manages to look sharp overall. Like some other recent TVs from LG, its back is all white, which is something to keep in mind if the TV won't be close to a wall.
The plastic stand mimics the look of stainless steel convincingly. It is very wide, but its footprint is a little shorter than it appears. Total dimensions of the stand for the 65" TV size: 44.9" x 9.6". Footprint: 37.8" x 9.3".
Black will appear gray in a dark room, which isn't ideal.
The local dimming zones are too big to provide a real improvement to the picture. In our test, when the dot is moving fast, the middle zones don't appear to light up anymore. Only the left and right edges of the screen lit up (almost half of the screen lit up for each side).
This TV isn't able to bring highlights very bright.
Uniformity is particularly bad. In fact, it is the worst we have seen to date. Edges of the screen are very dark and banding can be seen in middle of the screen on most content. It is especially distracting for sports on long camera pans over playing surfaces. For example, in football, long passes where the camera travels from one end of the field to the other will reveal the 'dirty screen effect' (DSE).
Like other TVs that have IPS panels, the LG UF9500 has a great viewing angle. Watching from the sides won't degrade picture quality as much as most other LED TVs with VA panels.
Update 01/06/2017: We have changed the methodology of testing. Since this is an old TV which we don't have anymore, we extrapolated the results from 2016 TVs.
All-black screens are cloudy looking. Some flashlighting (light leakage) can be seen on the top left and bottom right of the screen. Massaging the screen with a soft cloth didn't help.
Colors were off by default, but an untrained eye may not notice the problems.
Calibration was hard to achieve, and we had to lower contrast to correct the more pronounced gamma issues. Our settings then give a less-bright picture, with lower contrast than what the TV can do by default. It was a sacrifice that has to be made to get the grayscale close to gamma 2.2.
The LG UF9500 can display a wide range of colors when 'Color Gamut' is set to 'Wide'. On normal contents, this option will result in over-saturated colors.
It reflects slightly more light than average, but there are no rainbows around bright objects.
Maximum brightness of the UF9500 is average.
Passive 3D is comfortable to watch but there is a bit of crosstalk, as you can see on the left side of our logo.
The response time is fast, so moving sequences will stay defined. The trail following the logo has some length, but is faint enough not to be bothering. Most of the transitions have overshoot, but it isn't apparent in our moving logo test.
24p sources like Blu-ray will look smooth, without judder. You can only get rid of judder on 60p and 60i by using motion interpolation, which adds the soap opera effect.
It isn't the fastest TV around but you most likely won't complain about responsiveness. Controls will feel good for all kinds of games. Motion interpolation isn't recommended while gaming, because it increases the input lag too much.
Most PC inputs are compatible, except for 1080p @ 120Hz. For all supported modes, chroma 4:4:4 can be enabled for sharp-looking text. To enable, change the input icon to PC. While in 4k, 'HDMI ULTRA HD Deep Color' must also be turned on. Under PC mode, the input lag is the same as in game mode as long as the 'Game' picture mode stays selected.
Very good low-end extension and good maximum loudness. The frequency response is decent too, except under maximum load, where pumping may be present.
Very good distortion results overall. We did, however, experience some strange behavior (clicks and pops) with our unit. It happens only at high frequencies, with the volume on the TV set to 25 and lower (see the spikes above 3 KHz on the blue line). The problem seems to go away when the volume is increased above 25. This issue may not be audible under regular use, but it was quite audible and reproducible with our test signal.
WebOS 2.0 is the smart platform running on the LG UF9500 and it offers a very good interface. It could have been better with more apps, but the most popular ones are there. Combined with the great interface, the magic remote makes everything easy to navigate and can act as a universal remote for your other connected devices, such as a cable box and receivers. Switching inputs feels like using apps, which is great.
You can see our full review of the LG WebOS here.
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Comments
LG UF9500: Main Discussion
Let us know why you want us to review the product here, or encourage others to vote for this product.
- 32120
Hi! I just wanted to highlight some issues I’ve encountered with this TV as it’s not been smooth sailings. Some firmware updates back an unbearable amount of chrominance overshoot was introduced and possibly more colour banding gradient issues. On my end the overshoot is so bad that I stopped using it in favour of going back to my old C2, which suffers from it much less severely and only visible in much narrower conditions, almost a non issue. But thanks a firmware update the C3 is basically E-Waste to me now. Another issue is that WebOS update bricked the HDMI causing a scrambled unusable image. (It might be fixed now due to me resetting the TV and connecting it to another HDMI and PC, at the very least the issue is not present on that PC - No updates/hotfixes have been released since then, even though some people have complained about issues with that particular update in forums, and it’s been months now.) I was wondering if any of you have noticed the overshoot issue or if it is present on your models? My C2 is perfectly useable even on the latest firmware but the issue became so severe on the C3 after a firmware update (I’m not sure which one, but it’s not the latest one) I had to just stop using it. Hope they fix the issue cause this is just not great.
Update:
An abundance of firmware updates have been given out, a while ago they did fix the specific omnipresent and very bad overshoot issue on the C3 :) both the C2 and C3 are now closer in parity in overshoot issues, however the C3 is still worse at handling it and I still prefer not using it.
A mitigation that these TV’s have are a combination of static/reactive + dynamic film grain in the affected areas which help a lot with the issue, however they are simply not tuned aggressive enough. If it’s not possible to fix these issues definitively without compromises in firmware updates, please give us the ability to tweak and adjust the low brightness film grain settings. Using Reshade I have found that breaking up these problematic greys with low light film grain + a tiny bit of black crushing is the best/cheapest/least destructive to image quality way to mitigate it, even fixing it 100% with super aggressive settings (Although its very grainy, still less ugly than the overshoot). Another thing that helps in some cases is debanding.
I’ve probably spent 20-50 cumulative hours spanned across months trying to fix this, I probably should not have to be spending this amount of time trying to make my premium 2000$+ TV’s usable. This was not an issue when I bought them. I don’t know if this is a firmware issue or some sort of degradation issue that happens with time.
But I deeply appreciate the engineers working on the firmware updates because there have been way more of them and some improvement attempts even though the TV’s themselves are very stinky apparently. It kinda sucks that even after accepting that VRR flicker would likely never be fixed on them and so it remains unused, not knowing it was an issue before buying as no one talked about it at first, to then be later dealing with this issue as well, and be like OMG is the only real fix here to buy another 2000$ oled and hope it doesn’t suck this time xD
P.S the HDMI bricking/scramble issue was due to me using a custom resolution via the Nvidia control panel, after a firmware update you just can’t do that anymore without bricking the HDMI, weirdly if you have 2 screens turned on the HDMI won’t brick and will work fine, at least on the C3. I can confirm this as I had not updated the C2 in a while, custom resolution worked fine until I updated it. The issue presents itself after turning the TV off and on again.
Edited 17 days ago: Changed the hours to be more accurate, It's hard to estimate it, embarrassing amount - 21010
With my C3 when I give the TV a 720p 60hz signal with the Boost Mode (for input lag in game mode) There is a horizontal line of tearing near the top of the screen. From my testing it stops tearing when I turn the input lag setting to standard or use a different resolution like 1080p. I tested this on a Nintendo Switch by changing its output resolution setting.
I swapped HDMI cables known to be good and swapped HDMI ports. I also tested with my SNES classic which is default 720p 60hz and it had the same line of tearing at the top of the screen. Seems like it’s an issue with the C3 with Boost mode. Several months ago when I first encountered this issue I sent it to LG just in case they eventually fix the issue. I’ve had several LG C3 firmware updates since then but every time I test the issue it still exists. It’s not a huge deal to me, just a weird quirk of my C3.
Have you seen this on your C4?
- 21010
Will this be updated to reflect the new 2.0 ratings?
A complete list of the TVs we’ll update with our newest methodology can be found at the bottom of this article. Unfortunately though, the C3 is not one of them!
- 21010
Will this be updated to reflect the new 2.0 ratings?
- 32120
Hi! I just wanted to highlight some issues I’ve encountered with this TV as it’s not been smooth sailings.
Some firmware updates back an unbearable amount of chrominance overshoot was introduced and possibly more colour banding gradient issues.
On my end the overshoot is so bad that I stopped using it in favour of going back to my old C2, which suffers from it much less severely and only visible in much narrower conditions, almost a non issue. But thanks a firmware update the C3 is basically E-Waste to me now.
Another issue is that WebOS update bricked the HDMI causing a scrambled unusable image. (It might be fixed now due to me resetting the TV and connecting it to another HDMI and PC, at the very least the issue is not present on that PC - No updates/hotfixes have been released since then, even though some people have complained about issues with that particular update in forums, and it’s been months now.)
I was wondering if any of you have noticed the overshoot issue or if it is present on your models? My C2 is perfectly useable even on the latest firmware but the issue became so severe on the C3 after a firmware update (I’m not sure which one, but it’s not the latest one) I had to just stop using it.
Hope they fix the issue cause this is just not great.
- 32120
We really have to defer to LG on this, they know the capabilities of their own panels better than we do. It seems possible that 30-minutes could cause some temporary image retention, but it’s far too short of a time to cause any permanent burn-in, unless you’re constantly leaving it paused. If LG felt it was safe to change this, then they must agree.
I really don’t know what to think about it. LG suddenly increase time to turn on screensaver for 1500%!!! (from 2 minutes to 30 minutes) and it should be OK? So what was the reason to have the limit set of two minutes till autumn 2024? Mistake? It is realy strange. I don’t belive that LG want to destroy my TV. I don’t wear alluminium cap. Difference between two and thirty minutes is realy huge. In my opinion, we as a customers, should get explanation from LG. I also don’t understand why there is no possibility to give customers possibliltiy to set timer of screensaver in user setting in WebOS according their wish (2min, 10min, 30min., etc…)
Edited 5 months ago: grammar mistake - 21010
I recently did the update to WebOS version 24 and I feel there have been significant improvements. The most obvious one is SDR gaming mode. Based on a previous question by me here (input lag film maker mode, thanks for the answers Rtings!) I used the film maker mode for the Nintendo Switch, as the difference between modes in brightness was quite significant. I recently moved, updated and redid all my settings/connections. Now when comparing SDR gaming mode using the Switch (and my Steam Deck LCD), it is close or even equal in brightness at the same settings (FMM vs Gaming). As I play retro games with a crt filter, that brightness is welcome (the scanlines make the screen dimmer). (I only update once in a while and have automatic updates turned off, so am late to the major update, but this time there seems to be more of a difference).
Is there an option to turn off the TV (or enter the sleep mode) automatically after some amount of time? I can’t check this on my unit at the moment, but I think I saw such an option somewhere in the settings. I’d suggest you use that, though it may be somewhat less convenient.
Personally, I turned off all such features and rely on trying to stay mindful and manually turning the screen off via the user menu shortcut or turning off the TV via remote button. But this is far from being safe and convenient for sure.
- 21010
Hello Rtings, I would like to ask you for your opinion for this. There was a firmware update last year autumn for my 65 C3 OLED which increase screensaver timer from 2 minutes to 30 minutes. So now when you stops YouTube, Netflix, Max, etc… there is remaining static image for 30 minutes until the screensaver will turn on. LG support confirms they did it because of customers complaint that screensaver is anoying. There is no user possibility to set timer for screensaver. There is no option for it in settings menu. I can not believe it is OK for my OLED screen and I’m realy afraid of burning. Static picture is problem for burning It is (was) written everywhere. I can understand there is a progress during last years but I can not belive that 30minutes of static picture won’t effect lifespan of my scrreen. Could you please be so kind and check this matter? Thank You.
We really have to defer to LG on this, they know the capabilities of their own panels better than we do. It seems possible that 30-minutes could cause some temporary image retention, but it’s far too short of a time to cause any permanent burn-in, unless you’re constantly leaving it paused. If LG felt it was safe to change this, then they must agree.