Hands-on review: CES 2014: LG 105-inch curved Ultra HD TV

LG and Samsung don't like to be outdone by one another, so it wasn't only Samsung that debuted a 105-inch curved Ultra HD 4K TV at CES 2014 this week.

LG always have the first official press conference of the show on the Monday morning and so it was quick to claim the "world's first" 105-inch tag, which it took full of advantage of in the hours before Samsung made its announcement.

So what are these 4K curved displays actually like? And do we really need curved TVs?

The first thing is that this screen - model number 105UB9 - is massive and as such is somewhat impractical. There will be those buying 105-inch TVs of course, but LG knows it is a tiny percentage of even early adopters - not least because . As it turns out, it has made a 65-inch version, too, which you can see here:

The advantage of curved is in the viewing angle, though we remain to be totally convinced. One thing is clear though, the viewing angles are as wide as you like - the picture is extremely clear from virtually any perspective. The middle screen here is the 105-inch, the two flanking it are 65-inchers.

The 21:9 CinemaScope screen enables you to enjoy movies as they were meant to be experienced, while the screen is obviously wide enough for you to display other content on the side of the screen as you watch TV.

The TV can also change from a full 21:9 display to a screen divided in to 16:9 and 5:9 ratios, while sound comes courtesy of the 150W, 7.2ch speaker system which we weren't able to hear properly in our demo unfortunately.

It also incorporates HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 and the HEVC (H.265) codec.

As you'd expect the TV is fully smart and features LG's new webOS-based Smart TV experience, which is compatible with HTML5 apps.

Here's some more shots of the 4K image quality, powered by LG's Tru-ULTRA HD Engine. Obviously this is all canned footage designed to represent the TV well, but it looks stunning and the colour reproduction is superb.

Early verdict

Like Samsung's display, LG's 105-inch curved wonder is a thing of beauty. Images look completely stunning, while there's no doubt that the picture can be seen clearly for everywhere but the most acute viewing angles.

4K is definitely the future, but curved? We guess we'll have to wait and see.