LG NanoCell 85 Series Review: A Smart TV for Mixed Usage

LG NanoCell 85 Series: At First Glance

Obviously, LG, also known as “Life’s Good,” is one of the leading television brands in the world. What makes them stand out in the TV world is their brilliant innovations and consistency in producing excellent-performing TVs.

One of these innovations is the NanoCell technology that allows a television’s display to offer a vivid, clear, and wide range of colors. One of LG’s televisions that has this technology is the LG NanoCell 85 Series which was released in 2020.

Apart from this NanoCell technology, this LG television comes packed with numerous amazing features, such as wide viewing angles and HDR support. Impressively, even though most NanoCell televisions are quite pricey, the LG NanoCell 85 Series cost less than $1000.

Specifically, when this review article was written in March 2022, the LG NanoCell 85 Series had a price tag of $996. With a price tag lesser than most LG NanoCell televisions, will this television offers adequate performance as expected from a NanoCell TV?

Well, you have to read on to find an answer to that question.

LG NanoCell 85 Series: Design, Dimension, and Weight

Design-wise, the LG NanoCell 85 Series comes with a sleek and modern design that could grab your attention at first sight. To give more details, this TV features thin bezels that frame its display screen.

These bezels feature a brushed black finish and are composed of high-quality plastic. Besides, the bottom bezel is slightly wider than the others because it features a white “LG NanoCell” inscription at the left edge.

This inscription not only serve as brand identification but also adds beauty to the front view of the television.

Turning to the rear, you will find out that the LG NanoCell 85 Series has an aluminum rear panel. This rear panel features a plain black brushed texture that is very smooth and appealing to run your hand through.

Furthermore, you’ll find four holes at the center of this television’s aluminum rear panel. These holes are meant to accommodate a 300 x 300 VESA mount for mounting the LG NanoCell 85 Series on the wall.

Moreover, because the rear panel is slim and flat, the television should look perfect and not stick out when wall-mounted. Sadly, this LG television lacks any form of a cable management system.

Thus, you will need to manually arrange the cable attached to the television to make them look organized and neat. On the plus side, the LG NanoCell 85 Series comes with a pair of metallic feet.

Due to the metallic build of these feet, they offer the television enough support to stand firmly with minimal wobble. However, each of these feet is positioned close to the edges of the LG NanoCell 85 Series.

Thus, you would need a fairly large table to place this LG television on, if not wall-mounted. Having said all that, let us now consider the dimension and weight of this LG television.

To start with, the LG NanoCell 85 Series measures 1450.3 x 63.5 x 840.7 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 24312.5 g. Compared to most of the 65-inch televisions in its class, this LG television is far heavier and thicker.

For example, the VIZIO V655 measures 1457.1 x 61.2 x 840.7 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 20400 g.

In a nutshell, the LG NanoCell 85 Series comes with an attractive design but is quite heavy. Therefore, I will rate the television an eight out of ten in this design review section.

LG NanoCell 85 Series: Display Features and Picture Quality

The LG NanoCell 85 Series comes with a 65-inch NanoCell LED display that features a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) resolution. First and foremost, NanoCell is an LG technology that functions as a filtering layer behind the panel of a display screen.

This layer is designed to enhance the color depth of the display by rendering more vivid color tones. Hence, due to the NanoCell technology, the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display should be able to deliver accurate colors and a wider color gamut.

Speaking of color gamut, it refers to the number of colors in a particular color space that a display is able to render. Impressively, this television’s display registered a gamut coverage of 91% on the DCI P3 color space.

What this implies is that the display will be able to produce 91% of the colors in that particular color space. As a result, the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display should be able to render millions of color tones with accurate saturation and presentation.

Besides, due to its 4K UHD resolution, the colors and pictures rendered by the display should be very realistic and sharp. Unluckily, because this television’s display is made with an IPS panel, it delivers a poor contrast ratio.

Specifically, the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display has a disappointing contrast ratio of 1700:1. Thus, the display won’t be able to render deep blacks as blacks will appear grayish.

As a result, movies with plenty of dark scenes won’t be suitable to watch on this television. For your information, contrast ratio refers to the difference between the brightest shade and the darkest shade of a display.

To compensate for its poor contrast ratio, this television’s NanoCell display supports local dimming. For clarity, local dimming is a technique that dims backlight zones on an LCD/LED display’s layers so as to enhance the contrast ratio and black level.

However, instead of actually enhancing the black level of the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display, it made things even worse. Specifically, the display’s backlight zones are not actually behind the layers where they are supposed to be.

Rather, they are at the edges of the layers. Thus, instead of local dimming to enhance the black level of the entire display, it enhances just the edges.

Thus, with local dimming, blacks on the edges of the display will look darker than the other areas of the display. Thereby making movies with lots of dark scenes confusing and bothersome to watch on the LG NanoCell 85 Series.

On a bright note, this television’s NanoCell display supports HDR (High Dynamic Range). To be more precise, the display supports three HDR formats which are HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision.

Just so you know, HDR refers to a picture technique that enriches a display’s brightness and color accuracy. Hence, pictures on the display will appear more realistic and natural while viewing HDR-supported content.

If you aren’t aware, where you can find HDR-supported content is on streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video. Besides, thanks to HDR, the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display has an impressive peak brightness of 570 nits.

Thus, the television is good for usage in either a moderately-lit room or a bright room.

As mentioned earlier, this television’s display is made with an IPS panel. Due to this IPS panel, the display offers wide viewing angles.

Therefore, pictures and color won’t lose accuracy even when watching the LG NanoCell 85 Series from the sides or off-center. As a result, this LG television is ideal for a large room setting.

Apart from wide viewing angles, this television’s display also offers an impressively low input lag of 13.4 milliseconds. In brief, input lag is the time a display takes to respond to signal inputs from external sources such as a wireless gamepad.

Furthermore, for a TV to be deemed suitable for gaming, its display needs to have an input lag of 15 milliseconds or less. Apparently, the input lag of the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display is less than 15 ms.

Therefore, the LG NanoCell 85 Series is superb for gaming. Asides from gaming with this TV, you should also enjoy watching fast-motion content such as sports and action movies.

This is because its display has a fast response time of 11.7 milliseconds. Thus, with such a fast response time, there will be minimal blur trails when watching fast-moving content on the television.

For clarity, response time is the duration a display takes to transition from one color to another.

In conclusion, the LG NanoCell 85 Series’ display offers an above-average performance. However, the display suffers from the inability to produce deep blacks due to its poor contrast ratio.

Nevertheless, I will rate the LG NanoCell 85 Series an eight out of ten in this display review section.

LG NanoCell 85 Series: Sound Features

For the sound department, the LG NanoCell 85 Series features a pair of 20-watt down-firing speakers. These speakers produce quality sounds and are loud enough to fill a big room.

Sadly, the LG NanoCell 85 Series fails to come with a subwoofer. Thus, it won’t be able to produce sufficient bass for users to enjoy rumbling and thumping sounds in movies/music.

However, to get an adequate amount of bass, you can consider purchasing a soundbar with the television. The LG NanoCell 85 Series makes up for its lack of a subwoofer by featuring Dolby Atmos.

Dolby Atmos enhances the surround sound production and loudness of the TV’s speakers, allowing them to produce a cinema-style audio quality. That’s not all; it also allows the speakers to deliver clear and understandable dialogue.

In case you don’t know, dialogue is the conversation between multiple characters in a TV show or movie. Sadly, the LG NanoCell 85 Series offers a very disappointing distortion performance.

This claim can be verified through the television’s Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) test result. Briefly, the THD test is an assessment carried out to evaluate the amount of distortion a sound device can produce.

Furthermore, on this test, a sound device produces minimal distortion if it scores 1% or less. On the contrary, a score above 1% indicates that the sound device can produce a noticeable amount of distortion.

Woefully, the LG NanoCell 85 Series delivered a score of 2.1% on the THD test. Thus, when the television is set to the max volume level, the speakers will generate a significant and noticeable amount of distortion.

As a matter of fact, even at a moderate volume level, distortion will still be noticeable on the LG NanoCell 85 Series. For the curious ones, distortion in this context is the change of a sound device’s original frequencies.

Thereby leading to the production of unpleasant sound quality and unwanted noises.

All in all, I will rate the LG NanoCell 85 Series a seven out of ten in this sound review section.

LG NanoCell 85 Series: Ports and Connectivity Features

Port-wise, the LG NanoCell 85 Series comes with a great wealth of ports. Furthermore, some of the ports are right-facing, while the others are directly on the television’s back.

Therefore, if the TV is mounted on the wall, the ports directly on the back might not be easily accessed. Having said that, let us get familiar with the numerous ports on this television.

Starting with the ports directly on the television’s back, you’ll find two USB ports and two HDMI ports. It is important to note that one of these HDMI ports supports ARC (Audio Return Channel).

Thus, with that particular HDMI-ARC port, users should be able to connect a soundbar to the LG NanoCell 85 Series. That aside, the ports directly on the TV’s back also include a digital optical audio out and an RF connector.

That’s not all; there are also composite video inputs, RCA analog stereo out, and an Ethernet port. Meanwhile, for the right-facing ports, they include two more HDMI ports and one USB port.

For wireless connectivity, the LG NanoCell 85 Series features a built-in 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. That said, let us now explore the remote control that comes with this LG television.

To begin with, the LG NanoCell 85 Series features LG’s magic remote control. This remote is made of plastic and has curved edges with a glossy-black finish.

Furthermore, the remote offers quite a number of buttons, including a full number pad, a channel rocker, and a volume rocker. Also, the remote has a round-shaped navigation button with a scroll wheel at its center.

Besides that, there are two dedicated buttons that give users quick access to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video on the remote. Impressively, if you find pressing buttons a bit bothersome, this remote has a built-in microphone for voice input.

Hence, with the help of Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, you should be able to control the LG NanoCell 85 Series with your voice.

In a nutshell, the LG NanoCell 85 Series offers an adequate amount of ports and a remote that supports voice input. Therefore, I will be rating the LG NanoCell 85 Series a nine out of ten in this ports and connectivity review section.

LG NanoCell 85 Series: Smart Features

Similar to modern LG smart televisions, the LG NanoCell 85 Series uses LG’s exclusive operating system called webOS 5.0. This OS has a brilliant interface that is user-friendly and doesn’t lag at all.

Aside from its user-friendly interface, the operating system also comes with lots of pre-installed apps and streaming services. To mention a few, you’ll find Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Spotify, and HBO on the OS.

Besides, if these pre-installed apps aren’t enough for you, you can download more from the built-in app store called the LG Content Store. Nevertheless, this app store offers limited apps compared to the Google Play Store or Samsung Store.

On a brighter note, users can share/stream multimedia content from their smart devices to the LG NanoCell 85 Series. To do this, you’ll have to download the LG Smart Share app on your smart device.

Also, ensure that both the TV and smart device are connected to the same WiFi network. Interestingly, the LG Smart Share app is compatible with various operating systems such as Android OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows OS.

To end this smart features review section, I will be rating the LG NanoCell 85 Series a nine out of ten.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The LG NanoCell 85 Series is a smart television with great performance for enjoying movies and playing video games. Precisely, this TV features a NanoCell display that offers an excellent color gamut and 4K UHD resolution.

Also, the display is made with an IPS panel that allows it to deliver great viewing angles. That’s not all; the display has a low input lag, making the LG NanoCell 85 Series suitable for gaming.

However, this television has mediocre sound performance, and its display offers a disappointing contrast ratio. Apart from these few setbacks, the television is almost flawless.

Hence, if you need a 65-inch television with above-average performance, the LG NanoCell 85 Series is worth considering.

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