LG OLED B7 (B7A) vs LG OLED E7 (E7P) Review (OLED55B7A vs OLED55E7P, OLED65B7A vs OLED65E7P)

The LG OLED E7 (E7P) and the LG OLED B7 (B7A) are part of LG’s 4K HDR OLED TV lineup. Both series equally offer outstanding picture quality with a perfect black level and infinite native contrast ratio. Additionally most of the features also have great performance. On the market, both the LG OLED B7 and the OLED E7 come with 2 screen size options including 55 inch (OLED55E7P vs OLED55B7A) and 65 inch (OLED65B7A vs OLED65E7P). Although picture quality and performance is very similar with the same screen size, the LG OLED E7 is much more expensive, even almost double the price of the OLED B7. So why is the OLED E7P more expensive than the OLED B7A? And when considering the price, which is a better choice for you?

LG OLED E7 vs OLED B7 Key Specs

Technology and Features of the LG OLED B7 and the OLED E7

Aside from their differences, the LG OLED E7 and the LG OLED B7 are powered by similar technology and most features offered are nearly the same. Having an OLED panel that offers infinitive native contrast ratio and perfect black level, they are powered by a number of LG’s most advanced technologies which maximizes picture quality. For color reproduction, both series use 4 sub-pixel technology where there is a white sub-pixel as the addition to the standard sub-pixel (RGB).  There is also True Color Accuracy that maximizes the accuracy of color produced. Additionally for improving their peak luminance, there is Ultra Luminance, making the picture displayed to look bright and consistent when set in a bright room. Incorporating HDR technology, the LG OLED B7 and the OLED E7 are powered by Active HDR engine and support most of the HDR formats available like HDR 10 by UHD Alliance, HLG by NHK and BBC, Dolby Vision by Dolby Laboratories, and Advanced HDR by Technicolor. Not even that, to indulge you in the HDR experience in your home, both series also have a feature named “HDR effect” that is able to improve brightness and color range of the picture as close as possible to 4K HDR, allowing you to enjoy any content in nearly 4K HDR quality. They also support Dolby Atmos, allowing you to enjoy HDR entertainment with the Dolby Atmos Sound experience. To ensure great HDR performance, both series are certified by Ultra HD Premium Certification which means they are able to show HDR images fully as intended, especially for HDR 10 images. The other advantage offered is the picture displayed on screen looks excellent and not just only when viewed from center and front. Since it has an extremely wide viewing angle coverage, the picture displayed on screen also looks excellent when viewed from any angle.

With the use of the OLED Panel featuring an excellent pixel response time, this means both series can handle motion blur excellently when playing fast moving images. When playing 24p movies, performance of both is also excellent for delivering smooth and clear picture quality with judder-free.  For connecting with other devices, both are also equipped with 4 HDMI ports, 3 USB ports, and other inputs and outputs, allowing you to connect most of your other electronic devices at once. Although not as quick as the SJ8500 or the SJ9500 series, the input lag in “Game Mode” is low enough to play any game and to feel responsive without lag. To complement your comfort in enjoying 4K HDR entertainment at home with an attractive, responsive, and simple smart TV experience, both series feature WebOS 3.5 as their smart TV platform.

The differences between the LG OLED B7 and the OLED E7

Design

The major difference between the LG OLED E7 and the OLED B7 is about their design. The usual OLED TV comes with a “picture on glass” design that makes it different to most other TVs available on the market. This is also one of the factors that makes it priced more than the OLED B7. The main panel is mounted on a thin piece of glass without any metal or other material to support it, and makes the TV look very thin on about two thirds of the top glass if viewed from the side. When viewed from the front, the border also looks very thin with an outer edge of glass and the inner edge is black. About a third from the bottom, when viewed from the side the TV looks thicker in this part where all the hardware and connectivity of the OLED E7 are installed. Along the bottom of the panel, there is a built-in sound-bar with a radiator-style grill and along with a footprint at the center of the bottom, this provides the TV with a sturdy and stable stand. Although not having a “Picture on Glass” design, the LG OLED B7 also has excellent design and looks impressive in your room.

Built-in Sound Bar

The other main difference between these series is the built-in sound bar. The LG OLED E7 is equipped with a built in 4.2 channel sound bar with 40 watts of total sound output and installed at the bottom of the main panel. With a radiator-style grill design, it makes the TV look more impressive in your room. Additionally since the OLED E7 supports Dolby Atmos, its built-in sound bar also allows you to enjoy the Dolby Atmos experience without adding an external sound bar. On other hand the LG OLED B7 comes with a standard audio system that is a 2.0 channel speaker system with 20 watts of total sound output. Since there is a firmware update for the OLED B7 that supports Dolby Atmos, due to it not having a built-in subwoofer, to enjoy the Dolby Atmos experience with the OLED B7, you need an additional external sound bar.

Remote Control

Although both series equally come with LG’s Magic Remote as their controller, the type of remote is different. Essentially both of these remotes have almost the same button configuration, smart features, and functionalities, but their design is different. The body of the remote for the OLED E7 is much longer but thinner and its made of higher quality material. Meanwhile the remote of the OLED B7 is shorter but thicker and the material is plastic.

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The LG OLED E7 vs the OLED B7 Performance

Picture Quality

Overall both the LG OLED E7 and the OLED B7 have excellent picture quality. One of the strongest factors to make their picture look excellent is their infinite contrast ratio and perfect black level. Since both series use OLED technology with a self-lighting pixel, it means that each pixel can switch on/off/dim individually without affecting the condition of the other surrounding pixels. When displaying a totally black color, this allows the screen to not emit light at all. The result is black that looks perfect on the screen. Indirectly this also makes darker colors to be shown fairly accurate. Combined with perfect black uniformity and strong performance of the other factors of picture quality, this makes dark scenes of images displayed on screen to look excellent. This certainly makes both series perfect as TVs to use when watching movies in a dark room. Their perfect black level doesn’t only make dark scenes of SDR images look excellent — their black level is also quite dark to reveal details of images in dark scenes of HDR images, making shadow details of HDR images to look excellent as intended.

On the other hand, although not as bright as a premium LED TV like the Sony X930E or the Samsung Q9F, both the LG OLED B7 and the LG OLED E7 also have great peak luminance. Since their peak luminance is quite bright to dampen glare and combined with their excellent reflection handling, this makes both series able to maintain excellent picture quality, even in a room with a sunny window or extremely bright light. When inputted by HDR signal, both series can produce far brighter peak brightness, brighter than 550 nits as the minimum standardization set by UHD alliance. The result is that both of them are able to show highlights of HDR images fairly bright like what’s recommended by the UHD alliance as the developer of the HDR 10 format. Unfortunately, their peak brightness is still lower than 1000 nits which means they can not show highlights of HDR images brighter than 1000 nits or as bright as the brightness range where HDR images are usually mastered. AImages are usually mastered in the 1000 nits to 4000 nits of brightness range. This makes its performance for showing highlights of HDR images to be not as good as the premium LED TVs like the Sony X930E or the Samsung Q9F that has apeak brightness brighter than 1000 nits. For these OLED TVs, the peak brightness produced by the LG OLED E7 and the LG OLED B7 is great, and at least meets the minimum standardization set by the UHD alliance to get an Ultra HD Premium Certification.

Although not the best, both the LG OLED B7 and the OLED E7 have an excellent wide color gamut and their color gamut is only a bit narrower than the Samsung QLED TV lineup as the TV with the widest color gamut. Almost all colors in DCI P3 color space can be shown fairly accurate and in Rec.2020 color space, only the green can not be displayed as saturated as the other colors. Even so, this is not their own problem since most modern TVs have the same issue when showing a saturated green. The result is the color of SDR or HDR images displayed on screen look fairly accurate and makes the picture look natural. The exception being their high brightness, both the LG OLED E7 and the OLED B7 have good color volume. This means that except at nearly their peak brightness where their wide color gamut narrows significantly, each can fairly well show their wide color gamut at almost their entire brightness range, even for extremely dark colors. This is the opposite of most LED TVs, where their color gamut usually narrows at darker colors but at nearly peak brightness, they can show a wide color gamut fairly well. About color performance, both are also able to show 10 depth bit of color fairly well. The result when displaying HDR content that’s usually mastered in 10 depth color, the color gradient of the picture displayed on their screen looks very smooth with almost no color banding. Like most TVs available on the market, some little imperfections might still be visible in grayscale and dark colors, but overall this should not be a serious problem when you are watching movies.

The other advantage offered by the LG OLED E7 and the LG OLED B7 is about their ability to maintain their amazing picture quality when viewed from an angle. This means that no matter the angles you are watching from, the picture displayed on screen will look as good as when viewed from the center and front. What’s offered by the OLED B7 and the OLED E7 is better than an IPS TV designed to maximize the side viewing angle coverage. With a great side viewing angle coverage, this makes both series to be a great TV for you if you often watch TV from a side angle.

Overall both of them have similar picture quality and great HDR performance. No matter the light condition of a room where used and the angle you are watching from, the picture displayed on their screen will look amazing. The only drawback to them is their bad image retention (burn in). Nevertheless, their image retention is not permanent and can be removed with a feature named “Pixel Refresher” under the “OLED Panel Setting” on their “Picture Setting” menu.

Motion Handling and 24p Playback

The other perfect performance offered by the LG OLED B7 and the LG OLED E7 is its ability for handling motion blur. As mentioned, OLED panel has individual self-lighting pixels, allowing each pixel of the OLED panel able to render changes to the color extremely fast, far faster than any LED TV. This has something to do with displaying fast paced contents where the slow pixel response time will cause a visible trail following fast moving objects. And the faster response time of the pixel, a trail following a fast moving object will look faint. Since the OLED panel has an extremely low pixel response time, this certainly makes a trail following a fast moving object when displaying fast paced content to be almost not visible. The result is the picture displayed on screen to look very smooth and clear when used for watching fast movies or sports. When used for playing 24p movies, both the LG OLED B7 and the OLED E7 offer great performance. No matter the frame rate of the source, whether it is 24p videos like Blu Ray Movies, 24p videos via 60i signal like movies from TV Satellite, or even 24p videos via 60p signal from streaming device, all will be displayed clearly and smoothly with judder-free. To remove the judder without adding a “soap opera effect”, you just need turn on the “Real Cinema” option, then set “TruMotion” to “User” and set both the “De-judder” and the “De-blur” to “0” on the picture setting menu. Since both have a native 120 Hz refresh rate panel, this makes them able to interpolate both lower frame rate contents at 30 fps and 60 fps.

Inputs/Outputs

For their connectivity, both of the LG OLED E7 and the OLED B7 are equipped with similar inputs/outputs. There are 4 HDMI ports as the major connectivity which supports HDMI 2.0 full bandwidth, HDCP 2.2, CEC, and more. Support for ARC (Audio Return Channel) is on HDMI 2. In addition to HDMI ports, there are also 3 USB ports, 2 USB ports ver.2.0 (USB 2 and USB 3) and 1 USB port ver.3.0 (USB 3).  In addition to HDMI and USB ports, both are equipped with 1 Antenna In (RF), 1 Composite In (AV In), 1 Ethernet port, and 1 Digital Audio Out (Optical). There is no Component IN. The inputs lag in “PC Mode” and “Game Mode” is also excellent. The input lag might not be as low as the SJ8500 or the SJ9500, but they’re quite low to play any game responsively without lag, even for fast paced games that require quick reflexes. The combination of excellent picture quality, good motion handling, and low input lag, makes these to be a great TV when used for playing games.

Smart TV

For their platform, both series feature the same smart TV platform of WebOS 3.5. As we know, WebOS is one of the best smart TV platforms with a simple, attractive, and responsive smart TV experience. In this version, WebOS 3.5 is powered by a new chip that make its performance faster and more responsive while navigation is still simple. On the home menu, there is a bar across the bottom of the screen containing quick access to the most popular apps, settings, and input selection. This makes navigation faster, allowing you to launch without leaving the “Home Screen”. Apps provided are also very complete and varied. There’s video on demand service such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Live TV, Web Browser, Games, and much more. Although it does not have as many apps as the Samsung apps Store or the Google Play Store, WebOS also has an apps store named the “LG Apps Store” which provides lots of interesting and useful apps, games, and content that you can directly download to your TV.

For their controller as discussed above, both series are equipped with a different type of remote, but basically the remotes have similar smart features and functions.  There are dedicated buttons for Amazon and Netflix, allowing you to launch them without entering the main menu. The remote also has voice command functions, and although not as well implemented as the Samsung remote, the voice command is enough to help simplify navigation. Additionally their remote has universal capability where they can be used for controlling other devices connected to your LG TV. An excellent feature offered is the “Point and Click” feature. With a scroll wheel at the center of the remote, you can navigate similar to using a mouse on a Notebook. Not only that, the pointer on the screen can follow the remote’s movement, allow you to select the menu or icon directly by waving the remote.

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Summary

Conclusion

As we have discussed above, both the LG OLED E7 and the LG OLED B7 have similar picture quality. They equally have infinite native contrast ratio, excellent wide color gamut, and bright peak brightness, making the picture displayed on their screen look consistently amazing no matter the light condition of the room where they are used. Both series have an excellent wide viewing angle, making the picture produced by them to remain excellent even when viewed from a wide viewing angle. The other nearly perfect performance offered is their ability to handle motion blur and judder. The input lag, smart TV platform, and other features offered are also impressive, allowing you to enjoy high quality 4K HDR entertainment in your home. In terms of short comings, they also have similar short comings. They equally have bad image retention and the peak brightness is not quite bright enough to show highlights of HDR images brighter than 1000 nits where HDR images are usually mastered.

So which is a better choice for you? As discussed above, the LG OLED E7 is more expensive than the LG OLED B7, while the advantage offered is about its design named “picture on glass” and a built-in sound bar. The other advantage offered, although both series equally have poor image retention, the image retention of the LG OLED B7 is worse than the OLED E7. Although they equally come with the “LG Magic Remote” as the controller with similar functions and smart features, the remote of the LG OLED E7 looks more elegant than the OLED B7. Now the decision is yours according to your need and preference. If you have extra budget available and you don’t mind spending more to get the aesthetic of a “picture on glass” design and more impressive sound quality, the LG OLED E7 might be a better option for you. Otherwise if you have limited budget the LG OLED B7 might be the best option for you who want enjoy an OLED TV experience with a more affordable budget.

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