The 7 series is actually launching at a lower MSRP than the 6 series did. It’s all about the waiting game. I don’t recall when you bought your E6, but I would bet that if you were to buy at the same time this year, you’d get a comparable, possibly better, price for the 7s.
Interesting - thanks for the additional info. An additional problem here is that Canada will likely not get the 7 series for many months - I don’t think the 6 series even appeared until sometime mid-fall (and we never got the 9500 flagship from 2015, only the curved 9600). I’m not sure I can wait in November and hope I can get a 55 B7 in Canada around 3k.
Seems unlikely, especially since the B6 pricing just popped back up to $4k just for the 55" (7k for just the B6 65", which is sold out, it seems), although they goes on sale regularly. Kinda crazy.
I haven’t tracked US prices as closely as UK, but I’m pretty sure they got to below $1,500 for the 55". Don’t know on the 65". I have heard that the 65" has quality control issues so you may be in for a bit of a panel lottery.
B6/C6 and E6 are very similar apart from the soundbar, though technically all 6 models but the B6 use the same chipset so there are minor improvements in image quality/motion in the E6 and it has 3D. Otherwise it’s basically an industrial design choice unless you’re using the inbuilt sound. For 2017, there is no difference in the panel (and no 3D in any model).
No C6 specific gotchas I’m aware of other than the fact that curved TVs are silly. Some people have issues with the motion on the B6/C6, which is supposedly improved on the 2017 models. And the 6 series in general is relatively poor on near-blacks.
The 55" B6 has been around $1500 or less recently, and the 65" has been between $2,000 and $2,500. Just not on Amazon. You’re not going to get great deals there. Most of the best prices come from eBay retailers. Some are legit, and some are shady as hell, so do your homework.
The 65" E6 is actually $2,700 right now from ielectrica. Not its lowest price ever, but it’s fairly close. Don’t know anything about the retailer personally, but others have vouched for them. Again: homework.
The AVS Forums seem to have a lot of people who have been happy with Value Electronics and Cleveland Plasma, the latter supposedly giving out great deals. So they might be worth a call.
The C6 (the curved model) is generally the same price as the B6 but has the E6 chipset and 3D, too. As Ginger said, the B6 has neither.
The B6, after a firmware update, actually has lower input lag than any of the other models, except when it comes to PC gaming (i.e. 4:4:4 color mode). For some reason, its input lag in milliseconds jumps from upper-20s to the 60s-70s, which no other model in the line does. More here.
I have read conflicting reports as to whether the 7 series uses new panels, but, at the very least, they have been optimized over the 6 series. Some professional and user reviews say that the difference is negligible (especially when it comes to motion handling), but others say there is a modest but significant increase in brightness and near-black detail (and motion, in some accounts). The calibration controls are supposedly greatly improved, too, meaning that color can be more accurately dialed in.
Input lag in game mode across all 2017 models in all resolutions in both SDR and HDR is in the 21ms ballpark.
The 2017s support two more flavors of HDR—HLG and Advanced HDR—but their relevance and staying power versus the currently competing standards of HDR10 and Dolby Vision have yet to be determined. There is also the (optimistic?) hope that at least HLG can be added in firmware to the 6 series.
Only the top of the line W7 (“wallpaper”) model and the entry level C7 model have been reviewed to date, so there is no commentary on what the E7 or G7 bring to the table beyond styling and enhanced sound (the B7 appears to be a retailer-specific SKU; there are differences in styling, but the B7 and C7 are both flat). While the E7 was the cheapest way to get a 3D-enabled, flat screen LG OLED last year, it’s seeming that there might be less reason to step up this year.
LG is demoing live HFR. According to some posters over at AV Forums, you can get it working even on the 2016 sets if you point your satellite dish at the stream and use the media player.
Almost certainly panel life. I believe this can be disabled or drastically reduced in the settings, though.
There’s also some other setting I have enabled, which “pings” the display pixels with white every so often. It’s not super noticeable even on a pitch black display (as long as you’re standing more than a few inches from the screen), but presumably is to prevent burn-in by cycling through all pixels at random.
Supposedly the ABL on the 2017 OLEDs is much better/reduced. HDTVTest:[quote]Reduced ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiter) is another area where LG’s 2017 OLED TVs outperformed their predecessors, and perhaps even competing models from other TV makers this year. If peak white was calibrated to 150 cd/m2 in SDR (standard dynamic range), ABL wouldn’t kick in at all, and was generally less aggressive throughout the luminance range so bright scenes would look brighter. Since all OLED displays can produce 0 cd/m2 blacks anyway, it’s the top end of the picture that would determine the final perceived contrast, and less ABL would help in this regard.
Of course, the lower ABL implemented on the LG B7, C7, E7, G7 and W7 won’t be immediately apparent in every content. Films, for example, typically run an APL (Average Picture Level) of below ten percent especially when the top and bottom black letterbox bars are taken into account. Where LG’s 2017 OLEDs will shine versus the 2016 versions are on computer webpages, adverts with white background, ice hockey matches, and bright splash screens such as the title menu of the AVSHD test disc[/quote]
So, the B6 is now £1,500. At this price, I don’t see much point holding off. However, the 2017 models do supposedly fix a purple tint visible on the screen in a brightly lit room (some kind of coating on the screen), which I’m pretty worried about given that I get a lot of direct sunlight in my living room during the day. 2016 model owners, how noticeable is it?
PlayStation VR uses OLED, too. No one has shipped a dedicated headset that doesn’t use OLED since the early Occulus devkits and people definitely noticed the improvement with the move to OLED.
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