Is 8K on an OLED worth £15k from your wallet?
8K TV | £14,999| whf.cm/LG_Z3
While the unfettered imagination of LG’s OLED design department means there are more expensive LG TVs out there, for all but the truly super-rich the 77in Z3 represents the realistic pinnacle of the South Korean brand’s current TV range.
Why? Because it uniquely (apart from an 88in sibling) combines LG’s latest excellent Brightness Booster Max OLED technology with an 8K resolution that actually delivers four times as many pixels as a 4K TV. Needless to say, the performance potential of this all-singing, all-dancing tech partnership is mouthwatering – but in a world where even 4K content is far from omnipresent, is the 8K resolution really worth it?
While you don’t need to be super-rich to afford the Z3, it certainly helps. Its £14,999 price looks even higher in 2024 thanks to some serious price erosion elsewhere in the king-sized TV market. You can now get respectably performing 75in 4K LCD TVs for less than a grand, and Samsung’s flagship 8K 75in TV currently costs about a third of the 77in LG Z3.
Perhaps most pertinently of all, the 77in model from LG’s own G3 OLED range, which uses the same premium Brightness Booster Max technology that the OLED77Z3 does, currently costs only £3699. This means, basically, that you are paying more than £11,000 to combine Brightness Booster Max with an 8K rather than 4K resolution.
We’re a bit torn over the LG OLED77Z3’s design. In some ways it’s lovely; the frame around the screen is beautifully minimal, and the ‘multi-layered’ effect of the rear panel has an almost architectural, Sydney Opera House-like appeal. The whole thing is phenomenally well built too, and a nice recessed wall-mounting point allows you to hang the screen flush to your wall.
We’re not the biggest fans of the reflective ‘mirror finish’ of its rear though, and despite the recessed wall mount the screen’s rear is surprisingly deep by OLED standards, meaning the screen still sticks out quite some distance from your wall. Also, while it’s nice to find the TV shipping with feet rather than them being a hard-to-find optional extra, those feet look a bit low-rent for such a premium screen.
We would also stress that building the TV, whether you wall hang it or put it on its feet, is not a job for the faint-hearted or weak-backed. You will want to handle your £15,000 inve
