LG G5 OLED TV assessment: taking OLED efficiency to a different degree

LG OLEDs are persistently among the greatest TVs you may get, and I’ve misplaced depend what number of occasions I’ve advisable them to household and mates. Add the LG G5 to that listing. It’s LG’s high-end gallery-style TV, designed to look refined and glossy mounted on the wall — which it achieves because of its slim profile and flush mounting. Its black ranges are deep and inky, and shade and grayscale accuracy are spot on. It delivers a stunning, participating picture that makes a standard film evening one thing particular.

Most spectacular in regards to the G5 is its important bump in brightness over final 12 months’s G4. Over the previous couple of years, quantum-dot OLEDs from Samsung and Sony have provided brightness corresponding to LG’s WOLED (or white OLED) designs, however with higher shade quantity at excessive brightness. LG wanted an replace to compete, and with a brand new kind of OLED panel, it does. It’s a formidable leap ahead.

The panel expertise that offers the G5 this leap is Major RGB Tandem OLED. It has 4 emissive layers (purple, inexperienced, and two blue) as an alternative of the three layers (yellow and two blue) utilized in LG’s earlier WOLED TVs. The additional layer permits for extra mild with out utilizing as a lot energy, and the devoted purple and inexperienced layers assist enhance shade purity. The G5 nonetheless has a white subpixel, as do non-Major RGB Tandem OLEDs, for added brightness.

LG Show (the corporate that makes Major RGB Tandem OLED panels for LG Electronics and others) claims the expertise can rise up to 4,000 nits, which rivals some high-end mini-LED TVs from TCL and Hisense. The 65-inch LG G5, in my testing, didn’t obtain that lofty quantity, however it nonetheless measured over 2,400 nits from a ten % window. That’s practically 1,000 extra nits than the G4, and nearly as good as mini-LED TVs simply a few years in the past. So specular highlights — a streetlight or the reflection of the solar off of the ocean waves — are brighter.

However it’s not simply in regards to the excessive brightness. The key advantages of OLED over LED TVs are its pixel-level management and excellent blacks. These good blacks paired with the spectacular brightness of the Major RGB Tandem OLED panel equal an unimaginable degree of distinction. The G5 maintains the blacks in a vivid room effectively, too. It’s a big enchancment over the G4; the MLA layer would replicate the ambient mild and trigger the display to have raised black ranges.

Opinions from earlier within the 12 months identified that the G5 exhibited some points with HDR content material, particularly in darker scenes. Simply-above-black ranges have been just a little elevated, there was some posterization (blockiness) in shadows, and it often had what are known as floating blacks, the place the black ranges in a scene shift relying on what’s on display.

Fortunately, firmware updates have addressed these points. I didn’t see any posterization or floating blacks in shadow scenes in Blade Runner 2049 or Fellowship of the Ring. There’s a minor situation popping out of black, the place as an alternative of a completely easy fade in, it jumps from black to a darkish grey. I might solely see it occur when the room was darkish (any ambient mild coated the impact), and it solely occurs in these fade-in moments, so I’m being extremely essential. I don’t anticipate most will see or be bothered by it.

The LG G5 is offered in 5 totally different sizes — 55, 65, 77, 83, and 97 inches — and all sizes besides the most important use Major RGB Tandem OLED expertise. LG loaned us a 65-inch mannequin with an MSRP of $3,399.99, though it at the moment might be discovered for $1,999.99. The G Sequence, which used to face for Gallery Sequence, is slightly below an inch thick and is designed to hold flush on the wall. And whereas LG included a stand mount with the 55- and 65-inch 2024 G Sequence TVs, it’s gone again to solely together with a wall mount. A desk stand is offered for the 55- and 65-inch G5 for $99.99.

The G5’s connection ports are in an L-shaped cutout within the again panel with sufficient area to route them towards the center of the TV and right down to your sources and energy. It permits you to gather all the cables collectively and run them down your wall in a single bundle, however you’ll nonetheless need to have a cable trough to maintain every little thing wanting tidy, or run them via your wall.

The again panel contains 4 HDMI 2.1 ports (one with eARC) that assist as much as 120Hz variable refresh fee and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) — which mechanically switches to low-latency sport mode when a gaming sign is detected. It additionally has three USB 2.0, 100Mbps LAN, optical digital audio out, and an ATSC 1.0 tuner. (LG stopped together with an ATSC 3.0 tuner for over-the-air 4K broadcasts a couple of years in the past, and it doesn’t appear like it’ll begin once more anytime quickly. Adoption of the expertise, additionally known as NextGen TV, has been sluggish, though TCL, Hisense, and Sony TVs nonetheless ship with ATSC 3.0 tuners.)

If you wish to get full efficiency out of the LG G5 (or any TV, for that matter) with out a calibration, it’s vitally vital that you simply change it out of the default image mode — Auto Energy Save, on this case. Not solely will it trigger the image to look very blue — affecting each grayscale and shade accuracy — its brightness is restricted considerably.

Filmmaker Mode is probably the most correct, with glorious grayscale monitoring in each SDR and HDR and nice shade. Measurements with our pattern confirmed HDR tended a bit blue because the picture obtained brighter and SDR was just a little purple, however these inaccuracies didn’t present in precise use. I’d suggest it for every little thing you watch. Additionally, the primary time you placed on one thing in SDR, HDR10, or Dolby Imaginative and prescient, ensure that to set your image mode to Filmmaker once more, as selecting it for one doesn’t set it as your choice for the others.

Watching films and reveals on the G5 is an absolute pleasure. The multitude of explosions in Mad Max: Fury Street are vibrant and vivid, punctuating the motion of the chase via the desert. On different TVs, they’ll get too oversaturated and look pretend, however the reds and oranges on the G5 look lifelike. The specular highlights are much more spectacular because the chase enters the storm and lightning illuminates the sky.

Past the take a look at discs, the G5 excelled with on a regular basis household viewing. Whereas I like to attract the curtains, flip off the lights, and immerse myself in a film, for almost all of our TV watching, the lights are on. Due to the G5’s brightness functionality, the picture nonetheless pops. Pastries, breads, and muffins on The Nice British Baking Present look detailed and attractive. F1 liveries throughout race weekends are dynamic and detailed as they pace down the monitor, particularly the purple of the Ferrari and papaya of the McLaren. And the G5 handles reflections effectively, with mild from lamps dispersing sufficient that it isn’t too distracting — until there’s a darkish scene, the place a purple hue from the anti-glare coating might be seen.

Even in SDR, the G5 can get vivid sufficient to look at with no issues in a lit room. With out altering any brightness settings, the TV maintains round 330 nits from a 2 % window to a 50 % window earlier than it lowers to 284 nits for a full white display. That’s above the SDR skilled customary brightness goal for a darkish room (which is 100 nits) used when mastering content material, however since most of us watch with some degree of ambient mild, it’s a great degree. If you happen to want extra, you’ll be able to flip off Vitality Saving Step within the Normal menu, which lets you alter the OLED Pixel Brightness setting. With it set to 100 and Peak Brightness set to Excessive, the G5 can attain over 900 nits in SDR.

Why am I giving the G5’s efficiency such reward when it got here in useless final throughout this 12 months’s Worth Electronics TV Shootout? Two causes. First, lots of the points the G5 confirmed at that occasion have since been addressed with firmware updates. As an example, grayscale shade shifts current on the occasion have considerably improved on my mannequin. Second, the TV Shootout’s function is to see how effectively the calibrated rivals measure as much as the $38,000 Sony BVM-HX3110 reference monitor utilized in postproduction, to not take a look at the general efficiency of the TV in a number of real-world viewing circumstances. I’ll additionally reiterate that I didn’t calibrate the G5, because it’s not one thing nearly all of TV homeowners do.

The G5 is a good gaming TV, too. It helps 4K/120Hz gaming on a console and as much as 165Hz with a PC. There isn’t any perceptible enter lag; simply be sure you have Sport Optimizer enabled. Utilizing the Sport image mode will guarantee that’s the case, however it is extremely blue (as sport modes are typically). For extra correct shade, go to Image -> Superior Settings -> Shade -> White Steadiness and alter the Shade Temperature to Heat 40.

If you happen to don’t have the area for a soundbar or, higher but, a encompass sound setup, the LG’s sound will suffice. However it lacks pleasure and didn’t draw me into what I used to be watching. The TV will get loads loud, and dialogue intelligibility is sweet, however its low-end response doesn’t ship the growth.

With the G5, LG has eliminated assist for DTS audio codecs (which regularly have much less compression than Dolby), together with DTS:X. Most streaming platforms assist Dolby, with DTS principally relegated to bodily media, so it’s not a significant situation, though Sony, Hisense, and TCL nonetheless assist DTS. However for people who route their disc participant audio via the TV, don’t anticipate the G5 to go via any DTS audio to your audio system.

LG’s webOS interface works effectively sufficient, however as with all TV OS platforms, nearly all of the display is used for sponsored content material or advertisements. I spent my time on the homescreen deciding on which streaming app to make use of and ignoring the remaining. LG isn’t alone within the proliferation of advertisements on TVs, however it isn’t doing something to restrict it, both.

I’m additionally prepared for LG to retire the magic wand performance of its distant — which lets you management a cursor on display by waving the distant round — or not less than allow us to flip it off. I’ve at all times discovered it irritating to make use of, and the cursor pops up once I don’t need it to. All it takes is just a little jostle as I (or my canine) by chance knock it on the espresso desk or the sofa. The distant additionally isn’t backlit and lacks an enter button. As a substitute it is advisable maintain down the Residence Hub button — which is above the Residence button — to name up the enter choose.

The LG G Sequence has at all times been a formidable OLED TV, however with the introduction of the G5 and Major RGB Tandem expertise, it’s reached new heights. Its picture high quality stands alongside the QD-OLED Sony Bravia 8 II, though I discover the Sony’s Google OS interface simpler to make use of than webOS. The G5’s specular highlights sparkle, blacks are deep, there’s nice shadow element, and shade is superbly correct. When a TV appears to be like this good, the minor drawbacks — webOS, the distant, and the sound — are merely footnotes. The LG G5 has pushed the boundaries of OLED’s skills and delivers a wonderful, participating picture.

Pictures by John Higgins / The Verge