LG G1 TV review: Can OLED picture quality get even better?

Hey everybody, this is LG G one OLED TV brand new for 2021. One of the best TVs I've ever tested the problem. It ain't cheap all the TVs have the best picture quality of any television But they're expensive to begin with and this G one is even more expensive. This is a 65 inch version here. There's also a 77 and a 55 inch version. This 65 is $500 more than the mainstream c one series for 2021 to LG makes the difference. This g one has a gallery design Really slim, great looking on the wall, and it also has a new Evo panel. That's right, a brand new OLED panel exclusive to this television and LG lineup. We'll get to all that in a minute. Let's talk about design though. This thing is really, really nice looking, but really it's designed to be hung on the wall. So you see the stand here, these little legs. LG doesn't include them in the box. The only reason this thing is here is because there's another $100 worth of legs that you have to buy separately to attach it if you want to put it on this stand right here. So this comes in the box. It's actually Actually a specific wall mount just for this television. There's instructions and everything for connecting it to your wall comes with screws, even a template. Generally at a TV this expensive you're gonna pay a pro to hang it. I didn't hang it here for this video. But when I was at CES a couple years ago, LG debuted a TV just like this. [BLANK_AUDIO] You can see here it's super duper thin when on the wall. So that's really what you're going for is this ridiculously thin look, hugs the wall this thing sticks out only an eighth of an inch from the wall. Yes. Less than an inch from the wall. This TV is that's unique among any television out there. Again, if you're wall mounting, this is really the nicest most minimalist sleekest look, you're gonna get. Is it worth the extra money? Well, you can hang a standard OLED TV on the wall and it's super thin too and it looks really good and unless you're going right up against the wall and staring at the side. It's hard to tell the difference, but you're gonna actually spend the extra money for this television to get that better Evo panel. That gallery look is a really nice bonus. So LG did a couple new things for 2021 as well. This is a new remote control, very similar to the old one holding the hand really nice but it's less of a peanut shaped more of a standard oval. Still a whole bunch of buttons on here. It's a little bit complex compared to Samsung and Roku remotes. It does have the cool ability to flip back and forth. On the screen here., you can see I'm controlling it really easily. It's got a little cursor here and he can even go back into the menu and I'll show you what the home screen looks like. So LG redesigned the homepage for 2021 this is brand new. This first time I've seen it on this television. I don't really love it. The other one kind of came up from the bottom here, it let you watch the rest of what you're going on without, obscuring the whole screen. This one takes up the whole screen, like a lot of other home pages and there's just a lot of stuff on here you can see I'll scroll down. It's got channels on here, a little shopping some thumbnails from various apps, you can keep going. So Pretty standard design actually with a lot of home pages on streaming devices, for example, or anything, maybe the fire TV and video shield, but what, I really liked that minimalist look on a television itself, it's not a huge deal. Oftentimes you're gonna connect an external streaming device to this TV anyway, if you don't, you do get a good selection of apps. Plenty to see here. There's also an app store where you can download them you know, all the major apps are accounted for. They do have Dolby Vision, 4k, of course streaming included with the built in apps, so that's nice. You don't even mess around with HDMI for those. Of course you do have input selection here so you can give HDMI you can jump right to various devices that are connected. [MUSIC] So, another feature built into this TV is Alexa and Google assistant, both voice assistants are available. Yes, they're available on the remote by pressing a button, but one of the step up features on the G one is, they have the far field my capability too as you can see. Alexa, [MUSIC] Turn off the lamp. [MUSIC] Got a little lamp here off camera. So of course you can turn that feature on and off if you don't want this TV to be always listening but you know it does have a nice little extra there if you don't want to use a standalone speaker like an echo or Google Home. So in addition to those smart features the connections on his TV as you'd expect for high end olade are state of the art. It has 4k 120 hertz input on all four HDMI. It also has variable refresh rates. So those are the next gen gaming style features that you want with a PlayStation five or Xbox series x. The TV also has a ATSC 3.0 tuner. So yes, once those next generation 4k over the air three broadcast come to your neck of the woods, this TV is gonna be ready of course, most people by that point if you wanna watch that, you can always buy an external tuner and connect it to any TV but It's nice to have that built into the G1 I wasn't able to test it. Those aren't available in my area yet but maybe coming later this year. One of the nice things about the connections on the back of this TV you can see in keeping with that wall hugging style this channel where you can kinda snake the HDMI and the power cables along the back of the TV, and then they spit out the bottom here for a clean installation. So let's get to the picture. OLED has better picture quality than LCD. We've seen that for the last few years. This TV is no exception. It's picture quality is phenomenal. OLED uses a self emitting technology that means each of those 4k pixels, all 8 million of them. Are self-limiting they're each their own little miniature lights. And the idea is that allows it to have excellent quality even from off angle and it has basically perfect black levels. So you get that combination of great dark areas, really nice, bright white areas, and none of that blooming or off angle issues you get on a lot of LCD TVs. He's.>> So what's so special about LG is new Evo panel? The company says that it has improved the pixel structure itself. So it's a new luminous element that improves the red, green and blue pixels and also allows them to have a narrower wavelength. The idea according to LG is improved color and better brightness. Yes. So how does it look? I'll tell you right now the brightness improvement is pretty darn subtle. So I mentioned the G1 against last year's CX or C10 OLED TV, the best TV I tested last year. slight improvement on the G1 yes, it is a little bit brighter. But it's really not that much of a difference. Yes, it showed up in my measurements of white areas in particular highlights in HDR material. But in a side by side comparison, I really had a hard time telling looking at the exact same material on each one. It was tough telling difference. Both were a little bit brighter, a little more visibly brighter than the Vizio OLED that I had on hand to test But again, all three looked really, really good. The G1 may be slightly better but again, if you're looking for value, that step down mainstream C Series is gonna give you better bang for your buck than the G1. That Neo panel really didn't prove to be a super game changer. One of the things that I did like is the gaming features that they've added for 2021. Now this TV of course has those connectivity extras 4k 120 VRR that you'd expect, but LG also added a new game mode called, The game optimizer which I really liked it offers a few different picture presets just for gaming and they're specified for example, first person shooters strategic games RPGs. You can choose the ones that you like. There's also a Screen there, that shows you all of the gaming features in one place. You can see whether variable refresh rate is turned on. You can check for even, an input lag setting, that improves the responsiveness of the television, relative to your controller. Again, an excellent, overall gaming tv, really looks spectacular on my task. So, the LGG one superb design, really slim gallery design that Neo panel really, really nice, has excellent overall picture quality, arguably the best I've ever tested. However, it's really not a huge step compared to previous LG OLED displays And the less expensive version this year I'm guessing, haven't tested it yet. We'll see but again, I think this is gonna be a really small gap between those. Jeewan is still an excellent television, if you want to pay up for that style, and if you really like to have the very, very, very best picture quality. But again, for most people I'd be recommending saving a few hundred dollars at least, and getting the mainstream molded. So that's a look at LG G1 brand new for 2021 OLED television on David Katzmaier for CNET