The LG E9 has good peak brightness with SDR content. Small highlights are brighter than last year's LG E8 or LG C8, but this results in a slightly more aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), which dims the screen significantly when larger areas of the screen get bright.

This TV, just like the C9, has a new Peak Brightness setting, that adjusts how the ABL performs. If you set it to 'Off', most scenes are displayed at 273 cd/m², except when the entire screen is bright, in which case the luminosity is sustained at 245 cd/m². Increasing this setting to 'Low', 'Med', or 'High' increases the peak brightness of small highlights.

We took our measurements after calibration in the 'Expert (Dark Room)' Picture Mode, with Gamma set to '2.2' and Color Temperature set to 'Warm2'. These were also the settings that gave us the brightest image.