LG OLED55C14LB 55 inch 4K UHD HDR Smart OLED TV (2021 Model) with Advanced α9 Gen4 AI processor, SELF-LIT OLED, Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Atmos, built-in Google Assistant and Alexa, Black

Product Information

Steveykay said:I can’t believe the LG OLED55CX does not have BBC iPlayer - possibly now the most popular BBC channels in the UK and I certainly wouldn’t buy it knowing it needs an external streamer box to receive BBC iPlayer.For me (and a lot of tv watchers) it’s irrelevant I watch 99% of my tv via Sky which has all of the Apps. Oddly, while the Magic Remote made sense with the old-style webOS, it feels a little at odds with the new full-screen webOS v6.0; the on-screen cursor is an almost redundant affectation. LG’s AI Picture Pro picture system has had a deep learning performance bump this season which allows it to better optimise and analyse images in real time; it seems HD upscaling is also a beneficiary. The strength of the LG OLED55C1 is its all round ability to cover a number of bases with superb picture quality, excellent smart TV system and class leading gaming features. It offers many things to many users and performs at an extremely high level in all the disciplines. Addendum. In fact, Sony offers essentially the same TV at the same price but with catch-ups included. Why would you buy the LG? Because you like playing with your dongle?

Users in the US will also find Hulu and Vudu in the app selection, although Vimeo is missing, while Australian buyers get the likes of Telstra TV Box Office, Foxtel and Stan. Standard is the go-to recommendation for most content, and works fine with studio broadcasts and sports coverage, but Vivid, often reviled because of its heavy saturation, is a real crowdpleaser too, particularly with superhero movies that use a denuded colour palette and animations designed to pop. Percentage Luminance drop at 35 degree horizontal angle from the centre of the screen with 50% white outputThis year’s C-class model is the CX, here reviewed in 55in OLED55CX guise. We’ve already tested and loved it at the new 48in size, but is it similarly superb at this more cinematic scale? It certainly is. Pricing Also, the Freeview hub is on channel 100 of freeview and collects on demand shows and players. What happens if you view channel 100 on this TV?

A Cinematic Movement option that controls the level of frame merging is particularly effective, and all but eliminates the horrid soap opera effect (if you’re a fan, Smooth is still available).What Hi-Fi?, founded in 1976, is the world's leading independent guide to buying and owning hi-fi and home entertainment products. Our comprehensive tests help you buy the very best for your money, with our advice sections giving you step-by-step information on how to get even more from your music and movies. Everything is tested by our dedicated team of in-house reviewers in our custom-built test rooms in London, Reading and Bath. Our coveted five-star rating and Awards are recognised all over the world as the ultimate seal of approval, so you can buy with absolute confidence. Image gradations are effortless, thanks to improvements in dynamic tone mapping. We spotted fewer errant halos around high contrast highlights. Pictures look smoother, almost photographic. You stare into its images, rather than look at them.

Having already tested LG’s 65in GX and 48in CX models, we knew what to expect from this 55in CX: a superlative performance that isn’t vastly different from last year’s C9 but does improve upon it in a few important ways. LG has also clearly done some work on its motion processing for 2020, and while it’s still a touch behind Sony, the CX and its siblings do a good job of sharpening and smoothing motion without making it look unnatural. The key picture presets here are Standard, Vivid, and Cinema Home. All three impress. There’s also a dedicated Filmmaker Mode, regular Cinema, Eco, plus some ISF settings – Expert (Bright Room) and Expert (Dark Room). I am also very surprised that Whathifi did NOT criticise LG more for their product’s serious deficiency.There are seemingly small, but significant improvements to picture handling too. The set runs the brand’s 4th-gen Alpha 9 image engine, with AI enhanced image processing. It’s astonishingly powerful. The set’s latency performance is very good for gaming. We measured input lag at 12.6ms (1080/60) with Game mode on. LG C1 review: Sound quality The HDMIs are better specified here than on rival TVs. For starters, they’re officially HDMI 2.1 certified, and while that isn’t the guarantee of support for all next-gen HDMI features you might expect, the CX does support those likely to be of concern for the next few years, including eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), HFR (High Frame Rate), ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate).

I am also very surprised that Whathifi did criticise LG more for their product’s serious deficiency. The C1 also delivers lovely, naturalistic HDR. Peak highlights were measured at 750 nits using the Standard image present and a 5% measurement window (better reflecting how highlights typically appear on screen). This isn’t as perky as the new 'OLED Evo' panel on the G1, but it’s not far off at all. As we did with the 65-inch version we factory reset the LG 55C1 and then measured the picture presets to find which is the most accurate to the industry standards, out of the box, so we can view content as it was mastered and intended to be seen. Like all recent LG OLED TVs, the best preset for this is Filmmaker Mode (FMM) which switches off all unwanted processing with accurate colour and white balance retained. ISF bright and dark modes are also accurate for colour and white balance, but they do have picture processing switched on as a default, so you would need to switch these off manually. Filmmaker Mode is a one-button press solution that is free from any tampering from processing. It has no motion interpolation switched on and hits gamma BT.1886, D65 white and Rec.709 colour for SDR and BT.2020 colour, and ST.2084 PQ EOTF for HDR. On the C1, the out of the box OLED Pixel Brightness in FMM is set to 25 which equals 100 nits for dark room viewing, however, you can adjust the brightness to match your room conditions. The way the set combines excitement and realism is its greatest strength. It’s sharp and detailed without ever giving the sense of over-enhancement, and colours are bright and vivid when they need to be (the contrasting blue and red light strips on the floor and ceiling of the plane’s interior at the start of the film, for example) but also effortlessly balanced and natural. You never question the CX’s interpretation of the source material, and that’s one of the greatest compliments that can be paid to a TV.

Conclusion

Switching to standard HDR10 with The Hunt from the Apple TV app, and while there’s the inevitable slight drop in crispness when compared to watching a disc, the picture is still undeniably lovely. Percentage luminance drop at 35 degree horizontal angle from the centre of the screen with 100% white output Moving to the Rec.709 HD colour gamut coverage, we can see that the results are very accurate with some very small, invisible errors in the graph. Red is slightly oversaturated and magenta has a slight hue error towards red, but as our DeltaE errors are an average of 0.9, these are invisible when watching TV and film content. FMM is again very accurate and even with some variance between panels, it has proven to be very consistent on LG models we have tested so far. Calibrated