LG C1 OLED  TV Review

The LG C1 looks almost identical to the LG CX OLED and the LG C9 OLED. The TV looks sleek and looks great in any environment. While the stand takes up a bit of space, it looks great and unique from other TV stands, and it supports the TV well.

The stand supports the TV well and feels very solid. It sits fairly low, so placing a soundbar in front could potentially block the screen a bit. As mentioned, the stand is quite wide, almost as wide as the TV itself, so you'll need a big table or console if you're not wall-mounting it.

Footprint of the stand: 36.1" x 9.4"

The back of the TV is similar to the LG CX OLED, and the plastic bottom half has slight horizontal etchings to give it texture. The top half of the TV and parts of the stand are made of metal. There's a slot in the back of the stand for cable management.

The top part of the LG C1 is extremely thin, while the bottom is thicker. It's still very thin overall and sits close to the wall when wall-mounted, albeit not as flat against the wall as the LG G1 OLED.

The LG C1 OLED TV feels incredibly well-built, much like the LG CX OLED. The metal on the back and in the stand gives it a premium, sturdy feel, and while there's a bit of flex around the inputs, it feels very solid overall. There are no obvious gaps or areas of concern, and we don't think anyone will have any issues with the overall build quality.

Like all OLED TVs, the LG C1 OLED has a near-infinite contrast ratio, as the panel can turn individual pixels completely off. It delivers deeper, inkier blacks than any LED LCD TV, although the Hisense U9DG is close. Unlike traditional LCDs, contrast doesn't vary between individual OLED TVs.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and 'Game' mode.

HDR brightness is okay. As you can see in the EOTF, the overall brightness is on-target, but it may not be bright enough to hit the brightest highlights. The ABL is very aggressive in HDR, which accounts for the variation in brightness and why it gets so dim with scenes that have large areas of brightness. It was especially noticeable and distracting when connected to our PC, as it dimmed any windows that were left open within minutes. Differences in brightness between this and the LG CX OLED may simply come down to panel variation. If you want something that has the new evo panel and gets brighter, then check out the LG G1 OLED.

We measured HDR brightness before calibration, using the 'Cinema' Picture Mode, with Brightness and Contrast set to max, Peak Brightness on 'High', and Color Depth set to 'Warm 50'. All other picture processing settings were left disabled. If you want to make HDR brighter, you can try enabling Dynamic Tone Mapping or setting Auto Dynamic Contrast to 'High', which can help as seen in this EOTF but is highly dependent on the content and even individual scenes.

To get the brightest possible image at the expense of picture quality, use the 'Vivid' Picture Mode, enable Dynamic Tone Mapping, and set Auto Dynamic Contrast to 'High', and leave the other settings as mentioned above. We hit 860 nits in the 2% window using these settings.

HDR brightness is the same in 'Game Optimizer' mode as it is in 'Cinema' mode. We measured slightly less brightness, but it's very difficult to notice a difference with the naked eye. This is normal as measurements can vary slightly between test runs.

This TV has okay peak brightness in SDR, but it's not as bright as the LG C2 OLED. Scenes with small bright areas can get extremely bright, but it struggles with large bright areas, like the ice when watching hockey. Because of this aggressive automatic brightness limiter (ABL), visibility can be an issue with certain content.

We measured SDR brightness after calibration, using the 'Expert (Dark space, night)' Picture Mode, Color Temperature set to 'Warm 50', Peak Brightness set to 'High' and OLED Pixel Brightness at max. The brightness was about the same before calibration.

To get the brightest possible image at the expense of picture quality, you can set the Picture Mode to 'Vivid', set Brightness and Contrast to max, Peak Brightness to 'High', and Auto Dynamic Contrast to 'High'. We hit 489 nits in the 10% window using these settings.

The LG C1 has a wide color gamut for HDR content. It has near-full coverage of the commonly used DCI P3 color space and decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020. While it can reproduce a wide range of colors, it doesn't map them very well, so depending on the signal, some colors may be off the mark.

While we received reports that some owners have C1s with LG's next-gen OLED evo panel, we measured the spectrum of our panel, and from this, it appears our unit doesn't have the evo panel. This checks out, considering the lower brightness and the fact that LG only advertises that the LG G1 OLED has it.

Color volume is decent. It's mostly limited by its lower peak brightness. It can produce dark, saturated colors very well, thanks to its high contrast ratio. However, at higher luminance levels, colors start to wash out. New QD-OLED panels, like the one in the Samsung S95B OLED, produce much brighter colors.

Surprisingly, the LG C1 has bad out-of-the-box color accuracy, although this can vary between units. Some other reviews have reported similar findings, so it could be a bad batch. We double-checked our testing equipment and tried adjusting certain settings to rule out interference, but it's just that bad. The white balance is very off, as are most colors, and the color temperature is colder than our target, giving the image a blue tint. Gamma is okay, but some brighter scenes are too bright and darker scenes too dim. If you want an OLED with better accuracy out of the box, check out the Sony A80J OLED.

We also measured the accuracy of the C1 with the Peak Brightness setting turned off, and it improved some of the results:

• White Balance dE: 6.28
• Color dE: 3.5087
• Gamma: 2.27
• Color Temp: 7048.95

The difference is minimal, so for consistency with our other reviews, the posted results are with this setting enabled. The color dE is a bit better, but the mapping is still off, as you can see here. Because the difference is negligible, we recommend keeping Peak Brightness on, since prioritizing a brighter image will result in a more enjoyable viewing experience.

After calibration, this TV has much better accuracy, and it looks fantastic. A few colors have slight inaccuracies, but it's not really noticeable to most people. The white balance is perfect, and gamma follows our 2.2 target for a dark room perfectly. The overall color temperature is perfect. Note that this calibration was done with the traditional D65 white point, not the modified Judd white point that some calibrators are recommending for OLED displays.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The LG C1 has excellent gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect, and the sides of the screen are nearly the same brightness as the rest. Near-dark scenes are even better, but like most OLED TVs we've tested, there are some faint vertical lines in near-dark scenes. They're usually not distracting, and in most moving content, you have to look for them to see them. Unlike LCD TVs, there's usually very little difference in uniformity between different OLEDs, so we don't expect this to vary much.

Note: A few owners have reported seeing a grid-like pattern on their TV in uniform scenes. It's usually not noticeable with real content, but this is a manufacturing defect; if you see it on yours, you should exchange it.

Because this TV can turn off pixels individually, it has near-perfect black uniformity, with no noticeable blooming. Unlike LCD TVs, there's no noticeable variation in black uniformity between OLED panels.

The LG C1 OLED has amazing viewing angles. The image stays accurate even when you move off-center, making it great for wider seating arrangements or if you like to watch sports with a large group of people.

The LG C1 has superb reflection handling. The glossy finish and anti-reflective coating significantly reduce the intensity of direct reflections. Visibility can still be an issue if you have a lot of sunlight, though, due to the TV's relatively low brightness with some content.

Gradients look great. There's some noticeable banding in the grays and greens especially, but it looks good overall. The Smooth Gradation setting helps smooth out gradients a bit, especially when set to 'Medium' or 'High', but it can also cause a loss of fine details when used with high-quality content, so we don't recommend leaving it enabled.

With a WRGB pixel structure, the LG C1 uses four sub-pixels, but all four are never used at the same time. This image shows the red, white, and blue sub-pixels. You can see the green sub-pixels here.

The LG C1 has a near-instantaneous response time, but you may still notice motion blur caused by persistence—that is, the way our eyes track movement.

The LG C1 doesn't have a traditional backlight, and it doesn't use pulse-width modulation to dim each pixel, but it's not flicker-free, either. Like all OLEDs, there's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh cycle. This dip exists on every OLED we've tested, and unlike PWM, it's one line at a time instead of the entire backlight, so it's not noticeable at all.

Update 03/02/2022: We confirmed that the BFI mode works in PC Mode, but you need to disable the VRR feature first.

The LG C1 has an optional black frame insertion feature, which helps reduce persistence blur by inserting black frames into content at regular intervals, typically matched to the frame rate of the content.

To enable BFI, first set TruMotion to 'User Selection', then set OLED Motion Pro to 'High' for 60Hz content, or 'Low' or 'Medium' for 120Hz content. You can also set the BFI to flicker at 120Hz for 60Hz if you wish, although it results in some image duplication.

In 'Game Optimizer' or PC mode, the settings are the same, but note that you can't enable BFI if you have Prevent Input Delay set to 'Boost' or if you have VRR enabled.

The LG C1 can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120fps to make motion look smoother, a feature also known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It looks pretty good; while there were some artifacts with our test pattern, it was much better with real content. To enable it, set TruMotion to 'User Selection' and set the 'De-Judder' and 'De-Blur' sliders to 10. If you care about motion interpolation, then look into the Sony A80K/A80CK OLED.

Because of the TV's fast response time, low frame rate content can appear to stutter since each frame is held on for longer. If it bothers you, motion interpolation can help.

Unlike the LG A1 OLED, the LG C1 can remove judder from every source. To do so, Cinema Screen needs to be enabled. You can also enable it at the same time as BFI. When OLED Motion Pro is set to 'Low' or 'Medium', it can remove judder, but it won't remove judder when set to 'High'.

The LG C1 OLED supports FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR and is NVIDIA-certified as G-SYNC compatible, and we didn't experience any issues. To enable VRR, turn on Game Optimizer and make sure VRR and G-Sync is toggled for G-SYNC and HDMI Forum and AMD FreeSync Premium is 'On' for FreeSync. Like the LG CX OLED, the VRR range is extended to a minimum of 20Hz when using an HDMI 2.1 source. With HDMI 2.0, it begins at 40Hz.

Update 01/26/2022: We updated the firmware to the latest version (03.25.10) and measured the input lag again using the same settings that we did before. The firmware update doesn't have a significant impact on the input lag, and even though the VRR input lag increased by about 1 ms for each resolution, you won't notice the difference. We've updated the review with the new results.

The LG C1 has a very low input lag as long as it's in 'Game Optimizer' mode. For low input lag with chroma 4:4:4, the input icon has to be changed to 'PC'.

There's a new setting for 2021 models found in the Game Optimizer menu, called Prevent Input Delay. There are two options: 'Standard' and 'Boost'. We ran several input lag tests and found that the 'Boost' setting consistently lowers the input lag by about 3 ms when the TV is running 60Hz compared to the LG CX OLED. It works by sending a 120Hz signal to refresh the screen more frequently, meaning it doesn't affect 120Hz input lag. The published results are what we measured using the 'Boost' setting. On 'Standard', we measured 13.1 ms for 1080p @ 60Hz, 13.4 ms for 1440p @ 60Hz, and 13.0 ms for 4k @ 60Hz.

We experienced a bug while testing input lag, where the TV put itself into 'PC' mode automatically without showing it was enabled. However, we could bypass it to get accurate input lag measurements in and out of 'PC' mode.

The LG C1 supports most common resolutions, but it doesn't support 1440p @ 60Hz natively, so it has to be forced. Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly in any supported resolution, which is important for clear text from a PC, but only in 'PC' mode.

The LG C1 is fully compatible with every feature the PS5 offers.

The LG C1 is fully compatible with every feature the Xbox Series X|S offers. Unlike most TVs, Dolby Vision works on the Xbox Series X up to 4k @ 120Hz, with VRR enabled.

Like the LG CX OLED, the C1 doesn't support the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, but this isn't an issue since the 40Gbps ports can still do 4k @ 120Hz with 10-bit color. The TV can't accept a 4k @ 120Hz signal with 12-bit color because of this limitation, which could improve gradients processing, but it's not a big issue overall.

To enable eARC, go to Select HDMI Input Audio Format and choose 'Bitstream'. Then set Digital Sound Output to 'Auto' and toggle eARC Support.

The frequency response is decent. It doesn't have as much bass as the LG CX OLED, but the overall sound profile is fairly balanced, resulting in clean-sounding dialogue. It also gets quite loud, though there's a lot of compression at higher volumes.

There's a fair bit of distortion. There's not too much audible distortion at moderate listening levels, but it's worse at max volume. That said, distortion depends on the content, and not everyone will hear it.

The LG C1 comes with the newly redesigned webOS 6.0. Instead of the ribbon of tiles from previous versions, it now has a smart hub with various widgets and apps. It's responsive and easy to use.

There are ads and suggested content on the home page, and there's even a dedicated shop page for advertised apps and products. Unfortunately, you can't opt-out.

LG's app store has a wide selection, and the apps run smoothly.

The Magic Remote has been redesigned in 2021 but still has the same great features like the motion-controlled pointer and scroll wheel. The new Magic Remote is slimmer, with more app shortcut keys to streaming apps and voice assistants. The voice command can change inputs, open apps, and perform searches but can't adjust certain settings.

Note: LG Canada advertises a new NFC feature that allows you to tap your phone up against the remote to cast content to the TV. However, it seems that this feature isn't available with American models, so it's likely that the features depend on the region.

There's a single button underneath the bottom bezel at the center of the TV, which powers the TV on/off and changes inputs, volume, and channels.

• Remote
• 2x AA Batteries
• Cable tie
• User manual
• Not shown: Power cable and panel covers for cable management