OLED took home all awards at HDTVTest's annual TV shootout
Across five categories OLED TVs from Panasonic, Sony and LG beat flagship LCD TVs from Samsung and Sony to take home all of the awards at HDTVTest’s 2017 TV shootout. Panasonic EZ1000 was voted ‘Best TV of 2017’.2017 HDTVTest shootout
This is the third major TV shootout of 2017. At the annual TV shootout in the US, LG’s E7 OLED was crowned ‘2017 King of TV’. At a British ‘QLED vs. OLED’ blind shootout, 29 out of 30 voted in favor of Philips OLED.
And this time, at HDTVTest and AV retailer Crampton & Moore’s annual TV shootout that took place on Sunday August 13 at the Harefield Academy, Uxbridge, OLED TVs won in all award categories. The TVs were calibrated by HDTVTest’s Editor and calibrator Vincent Teoh with assistance from Tyler Pruitt, Portrait Displays, and compared to a Sony reference studio monitor.
5 TVs were included in the TV Shootout:
And the winners are...
Attendees – AV enthusiasts – were asked to rank the TVs from best to worst on 8 parameters (contrast, color, motion, uniformity, video processing, gaming, bright room, HDR). These votes formed the basis for five award categories. OLED TVs took home the win in all five award categories.HDTVTest 2017 shootout winners
| Winner | Runner-up | |
| Best Home Theatre TV: | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (13.67 points) | Sony A1 OLED (12.63 points) |
| Best Living Room TV: | Sony A1 OLED (15.89 points) | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (15.45 points) |
| Best Gaming TV: | LG B7 OLED | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED |
| Best HDR TV: | LG B7 OLED | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED |
| Best TV of 2017: | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (32.99 points) | LG B7 OLED (32.38 points) |
Parameter scores
| Winner | Runner-up | |
| Contrast: | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (4.62 points) | Sony A1 OLED (4.43 points) |
| Colour accuracy: | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (4.70 points) | LG B7 OLED (4.37 points) |
| Motion: | Sony A1 OLED (4.35 points) | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (4.19 points) |
| Uniformity: | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (4.49 points) | Sony A1 OLED (4.10 points) |
| Video processing: | Sony A1 (4.51 points) | Sony ZD9 LCD (3.98 points) |
| Gaming: | LG B7 OLED (4.46 points) | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (4.11 points) |
| Bright room: | Samsung Q9 LCD (4.37 points) | Sony ZD9 (3.77 points) |
| HDR: | LG B7 OLED (4.19 points) | Panasonic EZ1002 OLED (4.11 points) |
While the Samsung Q9 “QLED” LCD is based on edge LED, Sony’s ZD9 (Z9D in the US) employs a full array local dimming LCD system. It has higher peak brightness than all of the OLED TVs but the limitations of the relatively few dimming zones (as compared to the total number of pixels) could seemingly not match OLED’s pixel-level luminance and color control for HDR video.
Vincent Teoh added that Sony ZD9 “suffered due to audience dislike of missing highlight detail”. Sony’s HDR tone-mapping “favoured retaining brightness over detail to replicate director's intent”.
At last year’s shootout, Samsung KS9500 (KS9800 in the US) was voted best HDR TV.
The results of HDTVTest’s 2017 shootout mirror FlatpanelsHD’s findings in reviews where all of the top spots are currently inhabited by OLED TVs, slightly ahead of FALD-based LCD TVs such as Sony ZD9 and Panasonic DX900 but significantly ahead of edge-lit LCDs such as Samsung Q9.
- Source: HDTVTest
