LG's OLED TVs have consistently stood out as some of the best we've tested over the last several years.
The technology simply provides a much better picture than conventional LCDs can produce, and allows for some creative designs with extremely slim panels mounted in different ways.
LG's OLEDE8P series continues this tradition.
The 55-inch OLED55E8PUA model we tested offers incredible contrast and remarkably wide, accurate colors out of the box, and adds Google Assistant voice control to the mix.
At $3,299.99, it's a pretty sizeable investment when measured against LCD TVs.
Still, the OLEDE8P series produces a stunning picture that earns our Editors' Choice.
Design
Like most OLED TVs, the 4K E8P looks visually striking and unique.
The design is completely bezel-free, with a single pane of glass covering the OLED panel from edge to edge, with a slim quarter-inch frame of blackness surrounding the active part of the display (which disappears whenever the TV shows anything black, thanks to the OLED technology).
The panel is just over a quarter of an inch deep, thickening to two inches on the lower third for the enclosure that accommodates all the electronics and physical connections.
The bottom edge of the screen holds a 0.75-inch black speaker grille, under which extends two inches of clear glass.
That glass lip mounts onto the included stand, a wide, shallow metallic gray hexagon that supports the TV securely, giving it the impression that it's floating an inch above the table thanks to the glass between the screen and the base.
It isn't quite the floating-rectangle design of the even more expensive LG Signature W7P, which puts all of its electronics in a separate compartment that doubles as a soundbar and leaves only the OLED panel for hanging on the wall, but it's still quite eye-catching.
The enclosure on the lower part of the back of the TV holds all ports in two recesses near the left side of the screen, with the exception of the power cable attached to the right side of the back of the screen, facing back.
The leftmost recess opens out toward the left side of the screen and features three HDMI ports and a USB 3.0 port.
One more HDMI port, two more USB ports, a composite video input, an optical audio output, an RS232-C port, an Ethernet port, and an antenna/cable connector sit in the more centered recess, facing back.
The included Magic Touch remote is effectively identical to the remotes included with the OLEDC7P and LG's high-end LCD TVs.
It's a curved black wand dominated by a circular navigation pad with a clickable scroll wheel in the middle.
A number pad and volume/channel buttons sit above the navigation pad, while playback controls, four color buttons, and dedicated buttons for Amazon and Netflix sit below it.
The remote features a pinhole microphone near the top for using WebOS' voice search feature, and it has built-in air mouse functionality for controlling an on-screen pointer.
Thanks to a wireless connection to the TV, the remote doesn't need line of sight to work.
WebOS
LG continues to use its WebOS platform for smart TVs.
Visually, WebOS on the E8P is identical to past LG smart TVs.
A pop-up menu bar appears at the bottom of the screen at the push of a button, showing your most recent inputs and apps with additional choices available by scrolling to the righsont.
A live TV guide is supported, and you can add your favorite broadcast channels and content to the My Channels and My Content menus on the left side of the screen.
While the app selection isn't quite as robust as Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, or Roku TV, most major streaming video services are available, including Amazon, Google Play Movies & TV, Hulu, Netflix, Sling TV, and YouTube.
For music you can access iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, Spotify, and some others, but Amazon Music and Google Play Music are both missing.
WebOS also includes a web browser, which is relatively easy to use thanks to the air mouse functionality of the remote.
The platform also supports screen sharing with WiDi and Miracast, but that leaves most modern Android devices out since the shift to Google Cast for local streaming and mirroring.
It can stream Bluetooth audio, however.
While WebOS doesn't support Google Cast, it recently got another powerful Google tool under its belt.
The E8P and other 2018 LG smart TVs now feature the Google Assistant voice assistant.
Pressing the microphone button on the remote and speaking into the pinhole mic lets you use all of the features of Google Assistant, just as if you were using an Android TV device.
You can look up general information, check weather reports and sports scores, and control smart home devices through the TV with your voice,
You can also search for movies, shows, and other content, but this is where WebOS takes over and provides search results using LG's ThinQ technology instead of Google Assistant.
Voice control of the TV itself is similarly served by WebOS rather than Google Assistant, letting you adjust the volume, change the channel, switch inputs, and open apps by speaking into the remote.
The separation of content searching from voice assistant features is awkward but understandable, since WebOS doesn't support the same streaming services or methods as Android TV, and lacks Google Cast.
Performance
The E8P supports high dynamic range (HDR) content, including HDR10 with or without hybrid log gamma (HLG) and Dolby Vision.
We test TVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and SpectraCal's CalMAN software on a Razer Blade Pro laptop using methodology based on Imaging Science Foundation calibration techniques.
In the Technicolor (Expert) picture mode, the E8P shows an impressive 740.23cd/m2 peak brightness in an 18-percent white field, our standard for testing OLED TVs.
A full-field pattern drops that significantly to 139.3cd/m2, while a smaller 10-percent field doesn't increase the brightness past the 745cd/m2 range.
Like all other OLED TVs we've tested, the E8P displays perfect black levels, generating no light even when another part of the screen is displaying an image.
This means the E8P has the same "infinite" contrast ratio as the C7P, the W7P, and the Sony A1E.
The above chart shows Rec.709 broadcast standard color levels as boxes and measured color levels as dots.
Out of the box, in Technicolor (Expert) picture mode, the E8P shows impressive color performance.
Whites are spot-on, and reds and greens extend well past standard levels without any significant drift.
Cyans and yellows also reach far without leaning toward a primary color, and magentas appear only slightly warmer than ideal.
Unsurprisingly, the E8P's OLED panel creates a spectacular picture.
The BBC's Planet Earth II on Ultra HD Blu-ray looks excellent, with vivid, natural greens and blues for the foliage, sky, and water in the "Islands" episode.
Details look crisp and visible in shadows and highlights, with the fine texture of both black and white fur appearing clearly without anything looking washed out or muddy.
The Great Gatsby looks similarly impressive, with warm, natural skin tones against the extreme contrast between bright whites and dark blacks in the party scenes.
Fine shadow details like the contours and textures of suits and hair look clear against bright white shirts and lights, producing a very striking image regardless of the lighting.
The Ubisoft game Far Cry 5 supports HDR on the Xbox One X, and it also looks very good on the E8P.
Both day and night missions are clean and detailed, with dark action coming through clearly without appearing blown out or with shadows that look more gray than black.
The Game picture mode improves responsiveness at the cost of color accuracy, but even with slightly cooler colors, the game looks vivid and generally natural.
Input Lag and Power Consumption
Input lag is the amount of time between when a TV receives a signal and the display updates.
In most picture modes, the E8P shows a very high input lag of 100.1ms.
However, the Game picture mode drops that down to 21.1ms, effectively identical to other LG OLED TVs in Game mode.
This is low enough for us to consider the E8P to be an excellent TV for gaming, though it doesn't quite dip below the 20ms threshold we've seen some LCD TVs reach.
Under normal viewing conditions, the OLED55E8P consumes 138 watts in Technicolor (Expert) picture mode when displaying HDR content.
HDR disables the TV's APS power-saving picture mode, but power consumption is comparable in Technicolor (Expert).
The E8P can spike to 210 watts of power consumption in very bright scenes, but this is still in a very reasonable range for an OLED panel, using about two-thirds as much electricity as the 55-inch LG OLED55C7P from last year.
Conclusions
The LG OLEDE8P series follows in the footsteps of LG's previous OLED TVs by offering one of the best pictures you can get at a very high price.
At $3,300 for the 55-inch model we tested, this is one expensive TV, even if it's less pricey than the LG Signature W7P or upcoming W8P.
It looks great, with some of the best colors and strongest contrast performance we've seen so far.
While we've yet to test the 2018 C8P version, LG's OLEDC7P series offers similarly excellent performance and features (without Google Assistant) for a fair bit less than the E8P.
For now, though, the OLEDE8P stands as the best TV we've tested this year, and if you can afford it, it's well worth the price.
If you want strong performance without the OLED premium, the Roku TV-powered TCL 6-series is an excellent budget LCD line with 55- and 65-inch versions available for around a quarter the price of the equivalent E8P TVs.
Don't expect nearly the same color reach or contrast, though.
Cons
The Bottom Line
The LG OLEDE8P series of OLED TVs offer some of the best picture quality money can buy.
