LG G6 OLED TV: Color Banding Be Gone?

The LG G6 OLED TV represents a notable advancement over its predecessor, the LG G5, offering superior picture quality and processing capabilities. Testing revealed significant improvements in reflection handling, screen brightness, and color accuracy. Crucially, the G6 largely addresses color banding, a flaw where distinct steps appear in color gradients, making them look blocky instead of smooth.

Color banding, a problem that has affected many OLED televisions, was put to the test using scenes from "The Green Knight," "La La Land," and "Lawrence of Arabia." In HDR10 content, the G6 consistently outperformed the G5, displaying smoother gradients in sunset skies and other complex scenes. This improvement was particularly evident in scenes with large areas of color.

However, a surprising discovery was made when testing in Dolby Vision HDR. In a specific scene from "The Green Knight," the LG G5 exhibited less color banding than the G6. While this anomaly was limited to particular Dolby Vision scenarios, it highlighted an area for potential improvement in the G6's performance, even as it was praised for its overall dark scene handling and black levels.