- This is LGS flagship TV,
the absolutely stunning Z10 OLED,
and it costs $30,000.
But why is it so expensive?
It's not just because it's 8K, that doesn't account for it.
It's not because it's OLED either.
It's not even just that it's 88 inches diagonally.
It's because it's all of these things at once.
So let's play a game.
Let's pretend you're in the market
for a unicorn TV like this one,
and you've stacked up enough benjis to afford it.
Is it amazing enough to pull the trigger
or should you just wait for something
just about as good to be available
for a fraction of the price in a couple of years?
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The LDC 10 is available in two sizes,
but they're not identical products.
The $20,000, 77 inch value offering
sits on minimalistic metal feet
or on the wall via the VESA mount,
but that is not the case with the 88 inch.
It has no wall mounts and must be sat
on this 137-pound stand.
So I hope it either matches the stuff you already have,
or you have deep enough pockets to just go buy new stuff
to go with your new TV.
Anecdotally, I do know of some companies
that have successfully wall-mounted this monstrosity,
but it required some custom metalwork
and ripping out the power cables
that LG has routed through the stand.
So you would have to be prepared for that.
It also means that the TV's
forward firing integrated speakers
will be shooting downwards
since LG relies on this dinky reflector
to make their 80 watt 4.2 channel
audio solution sound its best.
Losing that is a real deal breaker.
I'm kidding.
Although the built-in speakers actually sound okay
for a flat screen TV,
please, for the love of all that is holy,
do not spend $30,000 on this thing
and then not use real speakers, please.
On that subject, let's talk about the kind of room
this TV makes sense in.
For most Netflix and chillers,
88 inches is a pretty punkin big TV,
but for the home theater crowd,
it's actually on the small side.
That market typically uses Longfield projectors
to get screen sizes of 120, 130, even up to 150 inches.
Of course, it's not really about
the physical size of the image,
but rather about how much of your field of view
that the image occupies from your seat,
which is why it's perfectly acceptable for a
cinematic experience to just put your phone right here.
I was kidding about too.
Now, most regular people tend to be comfortable
with about a 30 degree viewing angle.
But in a home theater you want more like 40 to 46 degrees
occupied by the screen for better immersiveness.
That would put your main viewing position
less than nine feet away from the Z10 88.
That's pretty reasonable.
But if that were the case,
I probably wouldn't want to be in the second row of seats.
That's often recommended to be about
six feet behind the front rows so people can recline
without feeling uncle Bo's breath on their neck.
(whispering indistinctly)
Although I did hear they have great water bottles.
Unfortunately, that second row seat nets you a field of view
that's smaller than THX is bare minimum recommended figure
of 26 degrees.
So why then would anyone spend $30,000 on an OLED TV
when they could get a high-end projector
and a fantastic screen,
not to mention some comfortable seating for half the price?
Well, a big part of the answer has to do with light control.
OLEDs are well-known for their amazing blacks.
Not only is it impossible for projectors
to equal the black levels of an OLED,
they can't even approach them unless you have
complete light control in your theater room.
This means you need a windowless or perfectly draped room,
and even the walls and ceiling of the room
need to be painted as close to black
as your spousal unit will allow
so that the light from the brightest parts of the image,
doesn't reflect around the room
and wash out the darker parts.
And while does Z10 isn't as bright as some LCDs,
it is bright enough to use all day long,
even in a white-walled, sun-drenched room
while also having unrivaled picture quality.
But forgive us for this video not feeling
as much like a review as you might expect.
The fact is that there's just not much for us to say
because the OLED panel in the Z10 is very similar
to what we've seen in all LG OLEDs
going back to at least 2017.
Just bigger, brighter, and of course, 8K.
Now, you might initially dismiss the 8K-ness
as a non feature given that
there's no 8K movies or TV to watch.
I mean, heck even the Olympics,
which were going to be broadcast in 8K,
well, at least in Japan, have been postponed,
making a huge part of this TV is cost
basically a deferred investment into the future.
But that's not completely the case.
For starters, the Z10's Alpha 9 Gen 3 processor
claims to be able to upscale any content to 8K.
Although I really wasn't able to see much difference.
And anyway, more importantly, gamers should note
that the RTX 3090 is 8K-capable today,
and in my experience, it's pretty sweet.
This is without a doubt,
the highest fidelity gaming I have ever experienced.
Just bear in mind that I had to sit
much closer to the screen than most people would
to appreciate the difference in image sharpness
and the capableness of even the fastest gaming system
in the world is going to vary drastically from game to game.
Doom Eternal happens to be both beautiful
and incredibly well-optimized.
And of course, you'll be able to run E-sports titles,
particularly the ones that support native 8K
at 60 frames per second.
But anything other than that is going to be relying on
upscaling tricks, like is DLSS,
just like your TV and movie content.
Oh, and of course I'd be remiss
if I didn't mention AMD's new flagship graphics card,
the 6,900 XT.
It's not specifically marketed as being 8K-capable,
but until we try it, we won't know for sure.
So make sure you subscribe for that.
It's probably pretty hard for something
to look outright bad on this TV.
We're just trying to say,
you need to manage your expectations for how consistently
it's gonna blow you out of your seat,
at least for the next couple of years or so,
while we wait for a new generation of graphics cards
or for console developers
to fully leverage the series X
and the PlayStation 5's ability to output 8K.
Of course, if we do get AAA games at 8K,
they will probably be capped at 30 FPS.
And of course, all of the Z10's gaming features
like variable refresh rate and auto low-latency mode
are enabled by it's HTMI 2.1 ports of which it has four.
However, be aware they don't all have
the same bandwidth capabilities or features.
Only one of the ports is labeled E arc, that's normal.
But what's not labeled and not normal is that ports 1 and 2
support HTMI 2.1 full 48 gigabit per second bandwidth
while ports 3 and 4 only support 40 gigabit per second.
Now, that's still a lot.
It's the same as Thunderbolt 3.
So you'll have no problem gaming on your new console
at 4k 120 Hertz with Dolby vision HDR-enabled
and no Chromo sub sampling.
It's gonna glorious,
but it could be a limiting factor when you're gaming at 8K.
On the lower bandwidth port,
you're gonna be limited to 8K at 30 Hertz,
which might be all that your GPU or console can push anyway.
But you'll also be limited to eight-bit color,
which has less than ideal
for the 10-bit panel LG's OLEDs use,
and less than the wide color gamut required for HDR.
Alternatively, you could do 8K, 60
with 4:2:0 sub sampling
with all the fringing that that entails,
but at least at 10 bit.
On the 48 gigabit per second ports, though,
you should be able to get 8K, 60
with no Chroma sub sampling up to 12 bit,
if Nvidia's testing is anything to go by.
That's pretty darn future-proof right about now.
Bear in mind though that at the time of rating,
you can't get this configuration working
on any of the Z10's ports until LG issues
an upcoming firmware update that takes advantage
of display stream compression,
which I'm told will be amazing.
And if their quick response to the G sync issues
on the rest of the Z10 lineup is anything to go by,
makes me think that maybe LG
is finally starting to clue into the importance
of TV firmware support.
Please keep it up, you guys.
This shouldn't be like a one and done.
So then should you buy this TV?
Well, assuming that you're not shocked by the price tag,
the Z10 represents the absolute cutting edge
in terms of picture quality, feature set, and size,
unless you want to spend at least five times more
and get some kind of micro led installation.
But in terms of solutions that arrive
to your house in a box, this is about as easy as it gets.
You don't even have to calibrate it.
Just set it to ISF or filmmaker mode and you're done.
Filmmaker mode in particular is fantastic
because it automatically turns off motion interpolation
and all of the "advanced AI processing"
enabled by the displays Alpha 9, Gen 3 processor,
which as I mentioned already,
was nowhere near as good as the upscaling
that Nvidia's Shield is capable of.
Though, it should be noted that the current gen Shield
can only upscale to 4K, not to 8Ks.
Gerr
Okay, then, how about if 30 grand is maybe manageable,
but still closer to car money than lunch money,
then honestly, I'd recommend buying
several 77-inch GX OLEDs instead G10 (bleep)
- [Man] You should keep that in.
- I hate this.
I hate it so much.
Why did Apple do this to the industry?
G10 OLEDs instead and put them all over my house
because the inflexible mounting and stand
make it honestly more of an art piece than an actual TV
and 8K just isn't going to be
that important that often until we get into screen sizes
that are, well, more like projector screen sizes,
150 inches.
In fact, actually, while you're at it,
you might as well just drop down to Z10s
because the only difference is the wall Mount
and the internal speakers, which by the way,
you still shouldn't use anyway.
That'll give you more money to buy an Nvidia Shield
since even the Z10 still has a
100 megabit per second ethernet connection
because apparently nobody at LG has ever heard of
streaming 4k Blu-rays over Plex.
As for the theater use case, I think due to its small size,
those folks are probably gonna pass over this
in favor of continuing to roll their projectors.
That is unless of course they don't have enough friends
to fill a second seating row.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe check out the 8K gaming experience.
I actually mistakenly said that we had a Z10 in that video,
it was actually a Z9,
but as far as we can tell, it's the same damn thing.