LG 84LM9600 Ultra HD TV Review

There are big TVs and then there’s the 84LM9600 from LG—one of the only Ultra High Definition TVs (UHD) that’s commercially available in India. The TV is one of the first to support the new 4K UHD resolution – which is four times that of Full HD or 1080p – and hence the name. Since this is LG’s flagship TV, expect everything but the kitchen sink when it comes to features.

Design and build
Calling this 84-inch behemoth ‘big’ is quite an understatement. LG uses its trademark IPS panel for the display, which is backlit using edge LEDs. We expected a full-array LED arrangement given it’s their flagship TV, but despite this, the 84LM9600 still features Local Dimming for deeper blacks and lesser backlight bleeding. The TV is surrounded by a relatively thin bezel, but that doesn’t matter since wherever you look, all you see is screen and more screen. There aren’t any physical or touch sensitive menu buttons on the front apart from the illuminated LG logo. The buttons are instead placed around the back. The stand is designed well and supports the massive TV quite well, with the usual little wobble that’s found on most LED TVs. There’s some amount of flexibility in terms of a swivel function.

Just one word – Overwhelming!

Physical connectivity isn’t quite what we expected. You get the same amount of rear connectors as you would on a 40K LG Smart TV. We certainly expected a lot more in this area. On the sides, we have three USB ports for hard drive connectivity as well as four HDMI connectors. Below that, we have two AV-in connectors for Composite and Component along with RF-in, VGA, PC audio-in, LAN and finally, a Coaxial/Optical combo port for digital audio-out. The TV also comes with Wi-Fi built-in so you don’t need a separate dongle as well as support for Intel’s WiDi technology. WiDi basically lets you clone your laptop screen on your TV wirelessly and with the newer Ivy Bridge CPUs, you can now stream Full HD content as well.

We expected a bit more in terms of physical ports

Features
The 84LM9600 falls under LG’s Cinema 3D line of televisions, so you get the well-known FPR passive 3D technology baked right in. LG bundles along four pairs of 3D glasses as part of the bundle. The TV also features LG's Dual Play technology that allows both the players of a split-screen game to view their version of the game in its entirety, without actually having to split the screen. We’ve covered how this worked in depth in our 55LM8600 review. You also get 2D to 3D conversion, which works decently, but the result is obviously not as good as native stereoscopic 3D.

Plenty of customisable setting

The panel supports a maximum resolution of 3840 x 2160 or 2160p. The only way you can actually play video at the native resolution is if you connect a PC to it with an HDMI 1.4 port – so any of the newer discrete graphics cards will easily handle this resolution. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other commercial devices yet that support this, so all your game consoles and HD media players still run at 1080p, while the TV does the up scaling.

Plenty of apps to choose from

Like most high-end LG TVs, you get two remotes – one regular and one motion sensor based. The motion sensor remote comes handy when surfing the net or when you’re in the app menu, as selecting items becomes easier. In case you aren’t able to get the hang of it, no worries, LG has provided a jog dial as well as navigational D-pad to make life simpler. The USB ports support hard drives in the NTFS files system and we have DivX HD support too, so all your ripped MKVs and most other video formats playback without a hitch. You can even choose to view these videos in 3D if you’re feeling adventurous.