Speaker 1: Hey everyone, this is the LG C3 OLED tv. It has excellent picture quality, plenty of features, and yeah, it's expensive, but the price doesn't completely break the bank. Let's take a look. So in my test, OLED TVs have the best picture quality, better than any LCD or Q L E D tv. LGS C series has historically performed really well and the C3 is no exception. I compared it to competitors from Samsung, Sony, and yes, even hiring TVs from LG itself new for 2023 and the C3 more than held its [00:00:30] own. I'll get to those tests in a little bit. But first, let's talk about design. So the first thing you'll notice when you encounter the C3 in the wild is it's really thin, really minimalist. That's part of that OLED technology. It doesn't need a back light, so it's really thin when seen from the side.
Speaker 1: The other advantage of the C series in particular is it's really, really light. This is a 65 inch model I got here and this thing only weighs about 40 pounds. It's basically feather light that includes the stand now, the stand itself, really minimalist. Again, really small footprint. So as [00:01:00] I said, this is a 65 inch size, but the C3 comes in a lot of other screen sizes much more than any other OLED series. It goes from 42, 48, 55, 65, 77, and yes, an 83 inch size. So plenty of different sizes there. Note that the smaller sizes, this 42 and 48 inch are a little dimmer according to lg. So you wanna take that into consideration. One thing I did love about the design is the remote control. This is a really old school remote. LGS had it for years. It's got a lot of buttons, big numeric keypad, [00:01:30] just not the easiest thing to use.
Speaker 1: You can wave around the remote on the screen to get to a lot of different smart TV functions. But overall, I prefer the simpler clickers from Samsung or Roku. So now I'm gonna talk about those menus, smart TV and streaming. So lg, like most TVs, has a built-in smart TV system. It's proprietary. They made some improvements for 2023 compared to last year, but it's still pretty cluttered. I don't love this big ad at the top of the screen here. Most of what I care about is buried way at the bottom with those app menus. Between the two of them, they're these new things called [00:02:00] cards for stuff like games or smart home. You can delve into those features if you want, but not super useful in my opinion. Of course, you do get all the standard streaming apps on this tv, including Netflix, max and a bunch of others. So really no major missing pieces there. But I think in general, for ease of use, you wanna plug in a Roku or another smart TV system, especially on a tv. This expensive
Speaker 1: As you'd expect on a high-end tv. The L GC three has plenty of features around back connectivity is also excellent. There's four H [00:02:30] D M I, all of them are 2.1, so you can plug the Xbox Series X or the PlayStation five into any of those inputs and get full bandwidth, full 4K 120 hertz capability. So that's nice to see. Really no missing features on this TE television. Again, from a high-end tv, that's pretty much what I'd expect. So the C3 is great for gaming. There's a game optimizer setting that's a separate picture mode that gathers in all of the settings that gaming nerds like me like to see in one place. So it confirms whether you have variable refresh rate, that 120 [00:03:00] hertz 4K type setting, and also you can switch between different gaming picture modes. So that allows you to again, fine tune the image while you're gaming, specifically when you're playing a game. Of course, it also detects automatically when you plug in a console. Another nice feature. So all told one of the better gaming TVs out there. Again, plenty of adjustments to make in this game optimizer mode.
Speaker 1: So when I took the C3 into the lab, its image quality was excellent. I compared it to a couple of higher end TVs from Samsung [00:03:30] and lg. And I also compared it to a Sony TV that cost pretty much the same. Those are 20, 23 models. It also looks really similar to the 2022 c2. So you can save a little bit of money there if the C2 is still available. Now compared to the 2023 models, I preferred the C3 a little bit over the Sony. Its image quality, very similar but very slight increase in brightness on the best picture modes on the lg. So winner there as you'd expect. The more expensive Samsung and LG G three models were better, [00:04:00] but that's because they're brighter, about 60% brighter according to my measurements. Now that brightness sounds like a lot, but when you see it side by side, sure those do definitely have more pop. But taken out of that comparison lineup, I still think the C3 has excellent picture quality and most people will rather save the money, especially cuz the price difference between the C3 and those step up models pretty steep. So that's a quick look at lgs, c3, OLED tv. I'm David Kazmi from cnet. If you liked what you saw, leave a comment. Be sure to check out the links below for more details.
