The LG QNED models seem to offer a lot. Miniled backlighting with local dimming for good contrast and a lot of brightness, quantum dot – Nanocell colors and 120 Hz refresh rate. This is aimed at the sports-loving public. We are happy to put this QNED model on the test bench to check its performance.
LG 65QENG866 – Specifications
| What | Ultra HD LCD TV (MiniLED FALD, 15×12 zones, Quantum Dot) |
|---|---|
| Screen format | 65 inches (165 cm), flat |
| Connections | 4x HDMI (2x v2.1 (48 Gbps), 2x v2.0, ARC/eARC, ALLM, VRR, 4K120), 2x USB, 1x optical digital out, 2x antenna, Bluetooth 5.0, WiSA |
| Extras | HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision IQ, Dolby Atmos, WiFi (802.11ac) built-in, WebOS 22, AirPlay 2, USB/DLNA media player, DVB-T2/C/S2, CI+ slot, Alpha 7 Gen 5 processor |
| Dimensions | 1,452 x 910 x 336 mm (incl. base) |
| Weight | 31.9 kg (incl. base) |
| Energy consumption | SDR 108 (G) / HDR 175 Watts (G) |
| MSRP | 2,099 euros |
LG 65QENG866 – Design
The design can’t really inspire us. It looks very ordinary, with a dark gray back, and a dark titanium colored plastic frame. The sickle-shaped foot is the only striking design accent.
It ensures that the device hangs about eight centimeters above the TV cabinet, so there is room for a soundbar. Although you have to take into account that there is only a little more than sixty centimeters of space between the two ends of the foot. If the soundbar is wider, it must be completely in front of the foot.
LG 65QENG866 – Connections
The LG 65QENG866 (QENG866 Series) has two HDMI 2.0 ports and two HDMI 2.1 ports that deliver the full 48Gbps bandwidth and support ALLM, VRR, ARC/eARC, 2K and 4K HFR. This makes it slightly less well equipped than, for example, the popular C2, but still a good offer.
We also find two USB connections, an optical digital audio output, two antenna connections, an Ethernet port, WiFi and Bluetooth. This LG is also equipped with WiSA (Wireless Speaker and Audio Association) for 2.1 setups.
Ease of use and smart TV
After the big step from the playful interface with a ribbon at the bottom to the full-screen interface last year, LG is working on a number of details in 2022. WebOS 22 has had a small update in the meantime, which further adjusts the Home Screen. Keep in mind that older (2021 and earlier) devices will not receive new versions of WebOS.
The latest WebOS update has cleaned up the Home screen in particular. The tiles in the top half of the screen are all gone. There is now only a large WebOS banner to see, with icons at the top right for the EPG, search function, settings, notifications and your profile. That looks a lot neater, but on the other hand still wasted space.
The recommendations have remained central. You still can’t customize them, and seem to only contain Disney+. If you don’t have Disney+ at home, that’s wasted space. The first tile in those recommendations is the source you last viewed. That can also be live TV or an HDMI connection, for example.
At the bottom of the screen you will find the apps, which you can select yourself and adjust the order. Further rows on the next screen include an item ‘Now streaming’ in which you can view all streaming services via a tab list. In our list we found Amazon Prime Video, Rakuten TV and YouTube, but unfortunately no Netflix or Disney+.
Other rows include the Home Dashboard and Connections, Frequently Watched Channels, Sports Alerts, and the Web Browser. WebOS 22 works very smoothly in any case, but we had the impression that the Alpha7 processor reacts a little less quickly than the Alpha9. The app offer is very extensive and includes all important international and national apps. For Belgium, we hope to get VRT Max and Telenet Flow in the future.
Remote control
The Magic Remote is an integral part of your experience with an LG TV. After all, you move the pointer on the screen simply by pointing at it with the remote. The slightly rounded remote control fits well in the hand, but the keys require just a little too much pressure.
LG has another numeric pad, which is useful not only for changing channels, but also because you can program them as hotkeys for your favorite apps. At the bottom we find four shortcuts for Netflix, Prime Video, Rakuten TV and Disney +. We find the three keys for voice control a bit confusing, there is a general microphone key and separate keys for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. This remote control differs slightly from the model you will find on the C2, for example, because there is no NFC functionality to quickly connect your smartphone and TV, although you can still do that quite easily via the LG ThinQ app.
Functions
The LG 65QNED866 (QNED866 series) is equipped with a single TV tuner for digital TV (DVB-T2/C/S2) and CI+ slot. Watching and recording another channel at the same time is not possible. The LG provides Apple Airplay 2 and Google Cast for YouTube and Netflix. The media player supports major formats, subtitles and HDR. He only refuses Xvid and DTS. It will therefore not forward DTS via eARC.
In addition to the existing Sports Alerts where sports fans can follow their favorite teams, there are two striking new features . Multi View allows you to view two sources at the same time. As promised, those options have now been expanded somewhat. You can combine HDMI with YouTube, Airplay, Screen Share or a USB camera, or Live TV with Screen Share, YouTube or a USB camera). Always Ready gives the TV a function when you’re not watching. You can then put a clock on the screen, photos, works of art or a music player.
LG 65QENG866 – Image processing
In terms of image processing, the Alpha 7 Gen 5 has to give up little ground compared to the Alpha9 that you will find in the higher models. Especially the new Dynamic Tone Mapping Pro is missing, and you notice that in HDR. But SDR only lacks that he is less able to distinguish bodies and objects to distinguish between foreground and background, but that lack hardly seems to affect his performance. The processor therefore delivers excellent deinterlacing, excellent noise reduction, both for random and MPEG noise, and excellent upscaling that brings out a lot of detail. We notice that the LG 65QENG866 (QENG866 series) has a bit more trouble with strong block noise due to video compression. In soft color gradients, ‘Smooth Gradation’ can get rid of a lot, but the lowest setting leaves a little too much, even if the bands of color are relatively subtle. The middle position works better, but then we see that quite a bit of detail can be lost in the dark Game of Thrones test scene. It is therefore best to leave that in the lowest setting and only move to higher settings if the color bands really bother you.
he QNED delivers rather decent motion sharpness, but falls slightly below our expectations in this area, despite the 120 Hz panel. In any case, leave Trumotion at least on ‘Cinematographic Motion’, otherwise you will lose even more detail in moving images. This seems mainly due to a clearly lagging image that sometimes causes a relatively visible double border. In long pan shots like RED’s intro scene, that setting still gives a lot of judder, so we recommend ‘Natural’ instead. You get smooth images with ‘Smooth’, but you have to take the occasional image error with it. With the Motion Pro setting you activate Black Frame Insertion technique , but at 60 Hz. That causes too much visible flickering in the image, and it sometimes made the lagging image even worse.
Main settings
| General | Advanced Setting | Advanced Setting |
| Picture Mode: Filmmaker Mode Aspect Ratio Setting: Original / Scanning: On Energy Saving: Off |
Brightness:
Panel Brightness: 100 Colour: Color Depth: 50 |
Purity:
Sharpness: 10 MotionPro: off |
LG 65QENG866 – Image quality
LG chose an ADS panel for this QENG, a variant of IPS with a wide viewing angle and moderate contrast. The panel had remarkably good uniformity in both dark and bright images. We saw a slightly dark edge on the clear test surfaces only on the outer sides, but never visible in practice. The screen suffers a little bit from the dirty screen effect, in pans over clear images you can sometimes see some dark vertical streaks. The ANSI contrast is, as expected, relatively low, 1070:1. The mini LED backlight can be dimmed in 15×12 (180) segments. This increases the ANSI contrast to 2,286:1, and in some test patterns even to 11700:1.
But that low native contrast makes it a difficult task to avoid halos with so few zones. That becomes clear very quickly. The Gravity test scene shows a lot of stars, but we also see zones going on and off here and there. Adjusting LED Local Dimming to other positions (middle or high) sometimes makes zone edges even more visible. It is therefore best to stick to the ‘Low’ setting. Dark backgrounds can show clear halos around bright objects anyway, subtitles trigger that too.
The Filmmaker mode is well calibrated, with small deviations that are barely visible. The image has a lot of black detail and excellent color reproduction.
Only the red tones are just not saturated enough, and that continues in skin tones that are also less strong than desired. We want to overlook that, because it certainly does not disturb. Rather this than skin colors that are strikingly too strong, and give a burnt tint.
LG 65QENG866 – HDR
LG supports HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision IQ , not HDR10+. The ADS panel with the mini LEDs provides a lot of brightness. On the 10% window we measure a peak of 1,130 nits and on the completely white field it still has a large 573 nits left. The QNED technology also provides a wide color range, 91% P3 and 68% Rec.2020. So you can expect fairly solid HDR images.
You have to take into account that the limited native contrast of the ADS panel makes some images look better than others. The Filmmaker Mode also provides a good calibration here. Just like in SDR, we see that red is somewhat undersaturated.
But what is the impact of the ADS panel? In the first place you lose quite a bit of shadow nuances. Dark images become a bit flatter. And bright objects really create a clear halo, or make zone boundaries visible. For that kind of content, this combination is not ideal. It performs much better with clear images. There we see that the LG comes out very strong, with beautiful colors and lots of light. We only notice that it dims the light accents a bit, but that is not visible without a reference. Dynamic Tonemapping Pro is missing, which is only available on the Alpha 9 processor, a pity because that would undoubtedly have compensated for some of the minor flaws. The Alpha7 processor does provide Dynamic Tone Mapping, which is best left activated. The image then retains much better contrast and color intensity.
Gaming, Reflections and viewing angles
The ADS panel of the QNED866 delivers a remarkably good viewing angle, both for contrast and color, but you should definitely avoid sitting too high or too low. Then we notice a very clear haze over the image. Keep the center of the image at eye level.
The input lag of 14.8 ms (4K60) and 6.2 ms (2K120) is in line with the results of LG’s top models. The HDMI 2.1 connections provide ALLM and 4K120. For VRR there is HDMI VRR and AMD Freesync, but no NVIDIA GSync as on the C2 for example. Dolby Vision 4K 120Hz gaming (for Xbox Series X) is supported. On the game dashboard you can see how many frames your console delivers, whether the lowest input lag is activated and you can also go to the game menu where LG offers you all kinds of options to adjust the display.
LG 65QENG866 – Sound quality
The sound quality on these mid-range devices can be disappointing, but that is not the case with this LG 65QNED866 (QNED866 series). A 40 Watt audio configuration, of which 20 Watt for the subwoofer provides a very powerful sound. We tune the sound with the automatic procedure for the room acoustics. You get more than enough volume from the set and the sound is quite warm with a lot of bass. This gave very good results for our film fragments. Dolby Atmos tracks, and Scenes from Pan of Star Wars provided a compelling soundtrack, although it must be said that we would have liked a little more surround effect. This QNED is also suitable for music, but there we heard that the heavy action in the intro of Metallica’s ‘The Struggle Within’ pushed the bass a bit over the limit. You can then hear the chassis protesting a bit.
LG 65QENG866 – Conclusion
The LG 65QNED866 (QNED866 series) seems well suited to do its job in a lit living room. After all, the ADS panel only provides a modest contrast and the local dimming can only adjust that to a limited extent. In dark images you still risk seeing zone boundaries or halos, which can occur in both HDR and SDR.
The QNED technology mainly focuses on brightness and a wide color range. The device scores well in those categories. For sports or other bright images, you certainly won’t be disappointed with the results. The wide viewing angle is a plus if you invite friends. The TV provides an excellent calibration and the Alpha 7 processor provides good image processing. The QNED is also suitable for gaming with two HDMI 2.1 connections and good input lag. The powerful audio performance is a nice surprise. LG WebOS 22 has received some improvement with an update and is already due for its second reorganization this year. The price seems to be a bit on the high side, there are many competitors in this segment.
- Good image processing
- Excellent calibration
- Wide viewing angle
- Bright and colorful for HDR
- HDMI2.1 and a wide selection of gamer features
- Powerful sound, including Dolby Atmos
- WebOS 22 offers many features
- Limited contrast
- Local dimming visible in dark images
- Home screen is insufficiently customizable
