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Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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Credit:
Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
Reviewed's mission is to help you buy the best stuff and get the most out of what you already own. Our team of product experts thoroughly vet every product we recommend to help you cut through the clutter and find what you need.
Learn more about our product testing
With an exquisite picture and exhaustive features, the LG C3 OLED is an incredible TV for movies, gaming, and everything in between. Read More
From its perfect black levels to its shimmering highlights, the G3 is a phenomenal TV for movies, games, and everything in between—especially if you plan on wall-mounting it. Read More
The LG G2 is one of the brightest OLED TVs ever made. Its world-class performance and impressive features are ideal for A/V and gaming enthusiasts. Read More
The LG C2 OLED is one of the best TVs we've ever seen. It's spectacular for movies and games, especially if you don't have a bright living space. Read More
LG TVs are consistent top performers in our Best TV roundups, year after year. They’re the most prolific manufacturer of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs, and they’re fantastic at making them.
Even as other companies join the OLED game, LG still offers the widest selection at the lowest price points, alongside a solid crop of more traditional LED TVs. For most people, the best LG TV you can buy is the LG C3 (available at LG) . It’s not their fanciest model, but it gets you nearly the same impeccable picture quality at a more practical price tag than their high-end LG G3.
The LG C3 combines the unbelievable performance of an OLED with an array of exciting features.
Excellent contrast and out-of-the-box accuracy
A gaming powerhouse
Attractive wall-mounted design
Lackluster tabletop configuration
Lags behind QD-OLED in some ways
So-so streaming platform
Incredible contrast
Sensational color
Ready for next-gen gaming
Lackluster stand design
Occasional pink tint during off-angle viewing
World-class picture quality
A top-tier gaming TV
Wafer-thin design
Not as bright as top-shelf QLED TVs
Slight off-angle color shift
Our lab is outfitted with much of the same equipment you would find at a factory that manufactures and calibrates televisions.
Michael Desjardin is a senior staff writer and has been a member of the Reviewed tech team since 2014. A film enthusiast and TV expert, he takes picture quality seriously but also considers use cases, price point, and features.
We measure things like peak brightness, black level, hue, and so on.
To further our scientific approach to TV testing, our Cambridge, Massachusetts, laboratory is outfitted with much of the same equipment you'd see at a factory that manufactures and calibrates television.
Our hardware includes a Konica Minolta CS-200 tristimulus color meter, an LS-100 luminance meter, a Leo Bodnar input lag tester, a Quantum Data 780A signal generator, and more Blu-rays than we can keep track of. For software, we use CalMan Ultimate, the industry standard in taking display measurements and calibrating screens to standard specifications.
We’ve spent years perfecting our testing process. We collect detailed scientific data to satisfy curious video engineers. But we also test with an eye toward the average person's viewing experience.
We measure things like peak brightness, black level, hue and saturation for primary and secondary digital colors, and more. As we do, we prioritize features based on how the eye prioritizes vision. For instance, humans detect brightness before color, so we score brightness more heavily than color.
We also just spend a lot of time just watching and using each TV. We play video games together at lunch. We get a feel for how easy it is to dial up streaming video service, connect a Blu-ray player to watch movies, find the ports and buttons, and more.
When we recommend TVs, we recommend the series instead of specific models. For instance, the LG C2 comes in several “models” that are just different sizes of the same TV. We’ve tested and love the image quality and features of the C2, but we leave it up to you to choose the size that’s right for your space.
Just like speed alone doesn’t make a car good, raw specs like pixel count and measured brightness don’t automatically make a TV great.
Trying to buy a TV is can be confusing, but a little education can go a long way. Here are some important TV terms, with a focus on what LG excels at.
Flat screen TVs have long been made with a combination of LED lighting over an LCD display. What that means is that light-emitting diodes shine behind a thin layer of liquid crystal. Electric stimulation changes the form of the crystal to generate an image, and the LED light shines through it.
Other fancy features can improve an LCD display. “Local dimming” can help the TV’s contrast by changing the intensity of the light behind the screen in certain areas, when it’s appropriate to the picture being shown. Quantum dots are brightly colored microcrystals that produce intense reds and greens when illuminated, for more vivid color.
OLED stands for “Organic Light Emitting Diode.” It’s a unique technology that combines the light source and the image into one layer. OLED panels have sub-pixel layers that can produce light and color individually.
Among other things, that means that black options on screen can be represented by simply shutting off the pixels behind it, for a truly dramatic effect, and greater contrast with the lit parts of the screen.
The current standard resolution for TVs is 4K—specifically, 3,840 x 2,160 pixels. 4K resolution is part of UHD, but it’s not the whole package.
UHD stands for Ultra High Definition, a comprehensive set of picture improvements that get the most out of what you’re watching. In addition to 4K resolution, it also features Wide Color Gamut, which can display many more shades of color than regular HD TVs.
High Dynamic Range (or HDR) refers to a range of brightness and color far beyond the standard. HDR TVs can have many times the brightness and 30% more color production than non-HDR TVs. The top HDR formats are HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision. All of the LG TVs reviewed here support all three.
Hertz (Hz) is a measurement for how many times a television screen refreshes in a single second. This “refresh rate” can affect the smoothness of the motion you see. If a TV's refresh rate is 60Hz or 120Hz, it scans and updates picture information 60 or 120 times per second. A higher refresh rate is better, but not always necessary.
WebOS is LG’s smart platform. Both the current and previous versions WebOS are a little slow, and full of sponsored content. WebOS isn’t terrible, and it’s certainly not a reason to avoid buying a TV. But we prefer to do our streaming from a game console or a streaming stick instead of directly through the TV.
Michael Desjardin graduated from Emerson College after having studied media production and screenwriting. He specializes in tech for Reviewed, but also loves film criticism, weird ambient music, cooking, and food in general.
Michael Garrett Steele has been writing and editing professionally since 2013, and has been a part of Reviewed since 2020. An MFA in music composition, Garrett has lent audio expertise to everyone from Independence Community College to Bethesda Softworks, informing reviews of audio equipment and services. Garrett also covers tech, drawing on experience working everywhere from IT helpdesks to enterprise architecture sales. Steele has also become a go-to reviewer for minor plumbing fixtures since covering bidets for Reviewed in early 2020.
Our team is here for one purpose: to help you buy the best stuff and love what you own. Our writers, editors, and lab technicians obsess over the products we cover to make sure you're confident and satisfied. Have a different opinion about something we recommend? Email us and we'll compare notes.
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