LG E9 Sound Reviews
A strong trend in recent years is manufacturers shipping TVs with good built in speakers. Sony was one of the first to fit actual speakers inside their TV but also LG has been pioneering with their Harman Kardon tuned speakers starting in their 2014 E6 models. This year also Panasonic jumps on the proper sound bandwagon with a Technics sound solution in their GZW2004. Philips is hitting it home this year in their OLED903 with a Bowers & Wilkins integrated sound bar, perhaps the best in-TV audio you can buy? Let’s check out how this years LG E series OLED are rated by reviewers around the internet.
LG OLED
LG OLED TVs are a phenomenon in the TV industry. They are the plasma TVs of this decade. Standing firm against the domination of LCD VA panels. Although the C range of LG TVs are the value for money champions, the E range of LG TVs competes with the likes of Sony A9G as a premium product.
LG themselves are pitching the ‘A.I.’ sound on the E9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccj0jbqI4Dc&feature=share but is that what makes its audio great?
The perfect E9 review
Let’s look at some popular review sites to see how the E9 fairs. What would you want from a review of an E9 TV? Of course you want to get the gist of the picture quality but since the panel is identical to the C9, the details can be found in other reviews. The perfect E9 review should include:
- A comparison to last years E8 (which is now 40% cheaper)
- A comparison to the Sony A9G, Philips 903 and Panasonic GZW2004
- Performance of different sound sources (music, movies, news)
- Testing the limits (e.g. crowded sound stages, high volume)
What Hi-Fi?
The mamoth of the gadget reviewing industry, known for their ‘lush’ and ‘weighty’ reviews. They describe the sound quality as “impressive weight and power.” They rate the inbuilt sound as a “£500 sound bar”
They could have used some more material to judge the sound quality, the reviewer mostly described the impact of sound effects, no word on musicality of the sound. The AI sound feature is judged as not useful but it remains unclear if the atmos feature also “sacrifices body and solidity”
- Objective: 5
- Persuasive: 4
- Thorough: 3
Bottom line 4/5: This review is conveys the quality of the E9 sound solution, it argues convincingly that the price premium is worth spending if you’re looking for in integrated sound solution. An audiophile will be left with some questions though.
Trusted⚡️Reviews
Trusted Reviews goes into more detail on the TV as a whole, so if you don’t know much about LG TVs and their WebOS user interface, you might learn something from this review.
They get bonus points for brining up the E8, which they deem to have worse sound than the E7 (which would be the true value killer if it was still available). They disagree with What Hi-Fi on the usability of the AI sound, TR feel it adds bass, while WHF said it looses “body and solidity”. They do conclude that results with AI sound are mixed.
- Objective: 5
- Persuasive: 2
- Thorough: 3
Bottom line 2/5: Trusted Reviews cover quite a lot of the TVs functionality, but for a review that tries to cover all aspects of the they could have explained more on the picture quality in various situations, no mention of known flaws of LG with near black handling or brightness flashing, something FlatpannelsHD does go into in their review. Too much time is spent in describing AI sound, but not the basic quality of the sound solution. It’s not really helping you make that purchase desicion.
Other reviews
TL;DR Techradar writes a brief matter of factly review but still praising the TV for its sound quality describing it as “giving an astonishing level of audio separation for internal TV speakers”
Conclusions
The E9 impresses the reviewers with its sound quality, most noted is the spaciousness of the sound and proper handling of sound effects in movie scores. The picture quality of the E9 (all of this years LG OLEDs) is also consistently rated as excellent, which makes the TV a desirable product and a very neat solution for fans of quality sound and vision.
