LG NANO90 – NANO90: The king of LG's 4K NanoCell Series?

The NANO90 has a well done but average design. The entire TV is made of plastic, which unfortunately does not look very high quality. On the whole, the design is rather inconspicuous, so that the cheap plastic does not catch the eye as quickly.

The narrow frame underlines this simple design and hardly distracts from the picture content. The TV is very well supported by the widely spaced feet, so that it has a firm stand and hardly wobbles at all. However, a large table is required to set it up, because of the stand. Between the feet there is enough space for a soundbar, which could upgrade the setup.

The interfaces facing the right edge of the screen and downwards are always within easy reach – even if the TV is wall mounted. Here, it cuts a fine figure due to its shallow depth and narrow frame.

For an almost clean cable management, LG at least provides clips to guide the cables along the stand. If the TV is mounted to the wall, you’ll have to be creative to get the mess under control – there are no cut-outs for cable management or anything similar.

The 10 bit IPSIn-Plane Switching, type of LCD Panel panel is rather something for bright rooms. Because of the not very deep black and the low contrast ratio of 1680:1, the picture quality in dark rooms is not quite as convincing – in fact, the black is simply not deep enough for this, so that it looks rather grey. To improve the contrast ratio, the NANO90 has the Full Array Local Dimming feature. However, it only has 32 dimming zones, which can lead to blooming in dark scenes with bright areas. This is particularly common with subtitles, which can be really annoying.

Due to the IPS panel, the TV has a wide viewing angle with excellent reflection handling, making it ideal for use in bright environments. The peak brightness of ~640 Nits is quite sufficient for this. Unfortunately, the peak brightness is a bit too low for displaying bright HDRHigh Dynamic Range – image/video with more dynamic range (contrast range) highlights. Despite the wide color gamut, HDR content is not displayed as convincingly overall, which is rarely the case in this price category.

Unfortunately, the NANO90’s black is not quite uniform, which makes the screen look dirty in scenes with large areas of the same color. This dirty screen effect is particularly noticeable during sports broadcasts, which means that the TV can only be used for this purpose to a limited extent. The corners also appear somewhat darker than the rest of the picture.

Dolby Vision IQDynamic HDR-format with a color depth of up to 12 Bits and Mastering of up to 10,000 Nits, which can adapt to the ambient brightness is supported as dynamic HDR format – HDR10+License-free, dynamic HDR-format in competition with Dolby Vision is not available.

The NANO90 display has a native refresh rateHertz is the derived SI-unit of frequency with 1Hz=1/s – When talking about TVs this means how many different pictures a TV can display in one second. of 120 HzHertz is the derived SI-unit of frequency with 1Hz=1/s – When talking about TVs this means how many different pictures a TV can display in one second. and an excellent response time of ~4 ms. As a result, there is only a small amount of motion blur even with fast movements. Only OLEDs like the CX can do better here due to their design – but these are usually more expensive than the NANO90. However, the NanoCell’s motion blur can further be minimized by the perfectly implemented Black Frame InsertionProcess that inserts black “blank images” as intermediate images. This makes movements appear finer and clearer. feature, which is particularly beneficial for gamers. Due to the incredibly low response time, stuttering can occur in content with a low frame rate. But this disadvantage does not weigh that much though, as stutter can be corrected by the motion interpolationArtificial calculation of more frames than the source material has to offer. The NANO90 has absolutely no problem with judder; it can remove it from any source.

The backlight is not free of flicker, but it does flicker at a frequencyHertz is the derived SI-unit of frequency with 1Hz=1/s – When talking about TVs this means how many different pictures a TV can display in one second. of 960 Hz, which is perceived by the human eye as continuous illumination and should therefore not disturb.

The NANO90 has actually all the features you need for gaming. The input lag is good with <15 ms and makes the TV feel responsive when you press a button on your gamepad. To keep the input lag as low as possible, it has an Auto Low Latency Mode. When this feature is activated the TV recognizes a running console and switches to the game mode automatically. The wide viewing angle is also advantageous for gaming with several people – sports games like FIFA or local COOP games like Borderlands 3 are thereby super playable in bright surroundings.

Screen tearing can be prevented by a variable refresh rateHertz is the derived SI-unit of frequency with 1Hz=1/s – When talking about TVs this means how many different pictures a TV can display in one second. using HDMI Forum VRRVariable Refresh Rate – synchronizes the display’s refresh rate with the output refresh rate of the graphics card. There are also two HDMI 2.1 interfaces, so the NANO90 is well prepared for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X.

The 2.0 channel 20 W speakers deliver a surprisingly good sound with a nice sound profile. Therefore, dialogues are reproduced understandably and a quite impressive atmosphere is created for a TV in this price range. The basses are ok, but not really something for enthusiasts. If you want to have the best possible sound you should invest in a soundbar, which also has a separate subwoofer to get really powerful basses. When buying a soundbar you should keep in mind that the NANO90 does not support DTSMulti-channel-sound-system (Surround Sound) competing with Dolby Digital. But Dolby formats are supported. Dolby DigitalMulti-channel-sound-system for up to 5.1 channel Surround Sound Plus is available and the HDMI eARC supports Dolby Atmos via TrueHD, which can provide a great sound backdrop from all directions.

Like all other 2020 TVs from LG, the NANO90 is based on the smart operating system WebOS 5.0, which is intuitive to use and can be controlled with LG’s Magic Remote. The remote has a motion sensor, which allows the cursor to be controlled by hand movements. Classic navigation using arrow keys on the remote control is also possible and can be selected according to the user’s preference. Those who find the remote control too complicated can also use the voice assistants. LG supports Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant. In addition, Airplay 2 is available to simplify data exchange with Apple devices in order to stream photos, videos and music onto the TV. All major streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ are also already installed – so the streaming marathon can start immediately.

Moreover, the NANO90 is compatible with Google Home and Amazon Echo, making it ideal for a smart home. By using LG ThinQ AI, the NANO becomes the control center of other existing smart applications that can be conveniently controlled from the dashboard.

There is no twin tuner on the NANO90, but functions like time shift and USB recording are still available.