LG 65UB9500

Pros 4K content and 1080p upconversion are crisp and sharp. WebOS is extremely fast when switching sources and apps.

Cons Expensive. Poor black levels. Lots of light bloom. Bottom Line The LG UB9500 series' quick-switching WebOS interface and excellent 4K upconversion can't get past its below-par contrast and light bloom issues, or its very high price for an LED TV line.

By Will Greenwald The LG UB9500 series is one of a small handful of Ultra HD (UHD, or 4K) television lines the company is producing in 2014. It's also one of the first HDTVs to use LG's new WebOS interface, a menu system based on HP and Palm's earlier mobile device operating system. It's not curved or OLED, like LG's superlative (and incredibly expensive) 55EA9800, but it's ambitious. Unfortunately, that all can't make up for a disappointing picture, and with a very high price of $4,299.99 for the 65-inch 65UB9500 model we reviewed, its poor black levels and notable light bloom are serious flaws. You can find a better HDTV for less if you don't mind going with 1080p instead of 4K—and considering the lack of 4K content or any sort of media standard for it, that's not a big drawback—such as the attractive and full-featured Sony KDL-60W850B.

Design
Simplicity continues to be the hallmark for high-end 2014 HDTV designs. The 65UB9500 looks elegant, with flat black 0.3-inch bezels framing the screen, highlighted by a curved, matte silver-colored lip on the bottom edge that holds a light-up LG logo and the stereo speaker grilles. The sides of the HDTV are a reflective chrome color, but no reflective design elements actually face the viewer; they're just small touches you'd only notice when looking from an extreme angle. The entire screen sits on a U-shaped, curved metal stand that holds it up steadily with no wobble. The stand doesn't let the screen pivot, however, and its unusual shape with a large bar in the front, two small legs in the back, and no support in the middle means you must be very careful when placing the HDTV near the edge of a surface.

All four HDMI ports and three USB ports are easily accessible, sitting facing left on the back of the HDTV. The ports are clearly marked, with two blue USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, and individually labeled HDMI ports for HDCP 2.2 (for 4K content), MHL (for mobile devices and other display accessories that can get power through an MHL-equipped HDMI port), and 10-bit (for cinephiles' video sources capable of 10-bit color). The remaining ports sit facing downward, and include a composite video input (for use with a 3.5mm adapter), a PC video input, an optical audio output, an Ethernet port, and an RS-232C port for integrating into a control system.

LG continues to use its Magic Remote design for its high-end HDTVs. The included remote is a very simple, curved device that lacks any number pad or playback buttons. Instead, it controls an on-screen cursor like an air mouse through motion tracking. The remote has a large direction pad for more conventional on-screen menu navigation, framing a clickable scroll wheel that doubles as the confirmation button. The few other controls on the remote include Power, Home, Back, Live TV, Volume Up/Down, Channel Up/Down, On-Screen Remote/Input, 3D, Mute, and four color buttons. Finally, a Voice button activates voice commands with the remote's built-in microphone, located just above the navigation pad.

WebOS
The 65UB9500 is one of LG's first HDTVs to use the all-new WebOS operating system. While it shares the name of the Palm/HP mobile OS, and its lineage can be traced back to Palm smartphones and HP Touchpads, this smart HDTV interface is a completely different beast.

WebOS is colorful and accessible, appearing helpful as soon as you turn on the HDTV for the first time by walking you through the setup with a friendly cartoon penguin and extremely simple prompts. Once you've entered your Wi-Fi network (or plug in an Ethernet cable) and, optionally, tell the HDTV what cable or satellite provider you use, you can start using WebOS's connected features.

Apps, services, live television, and each video source are displayed as large, colorful tabs that appear as a single, linear line spread across WebOS's three main screens, accessible by moving the cursor left or right. The center, and default, screen shows your most commonly used sources and apps. The left screen functions as a history of what you watch. The right screen offers a full selection of every source and app available to you. Each screen is visually distinct, with the history screen showing full thumbnails of what you've been watching, the main screen showing large, colorful tabs overlaid on the active source or service, and the right screen showing smaller tabs with the rest of the screen changing color and displaying art and more information about each selection. It's intuitive to use, if not to navigate; since most selections are icon-based and apps don't seem to be organized with any particular logic on the right screen, you'll flip back and forth through the tabs a few times before you get used to what each item means.

Apps and services can be slow to load initially, but switching between them is remarkably fast. It takes barely a few seconds to jump from YouTube to a Web page to live television and then back to YouTube. It even keeps track of what you're watching on different media services, and holds your place when you switch. I flipped back and forth between Adventure Time on Cartoon Network and Goat Simulator Let's Play on YouTube several times without missing a beat.

WebOS currently has a generous selection of apps and services, with all of the usual suspects present. There's the aforementioned Web browser and YouTube, along with Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and Vudu. The LG Store offers hundreds of other apps and games, and serves as a portal to access movies and television shows through a variety of on-demand services. The HDTV also supports networked media playback through DLNA and screen sharing through Miracast and WiDi. You can even use Skype with an optional $100 camera.

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