LG C4 OLED  TV Review

The LG C4 OLED has good HDR brightness. It gets bright enough for most highlights to pop, but it's not bright enough to properly display very bright highlights. Still, it delivers an impactful HDR experience. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller, specular highlights due to its aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL).

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Cinema
• OLED Pixel Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 100
• Auto Dynamic Contrast: Off
• Dynamic Tone Mapping: Off
• Expression Enhancer: Off
• Peak Brightness: High

Note that the 42-inch and 48-inch models don't have LG's Brightness Booster technology, so they don't get as bright as the bigger models do.

The LG C4 OLED is noticeably dimmer while in Game Optimizer. It's still bright enough to provide an impactful HDR gaming experience, but you notice the drop in brightness compared to the TV's other picture modes.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game Optimizer
• OLED Pixel Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 100
• Auto Dynamic Contrast: Off
• Dynamic Tone Mapping: HGiG
• Expression Enhancer: Off
• Peak Brightness: High

The LG C4 has okay SDR brightness. It gets bright enough to handle glare in a bright room, although it's better suited for a moderately lit room. Fortunately, the TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter isn't aggressive in SDR, so you don't have to deal with the screen dimming considerably when large areas of brightness are present.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Dark Space, night
• OLED Pixel Light: 100
• Peak Brightness: High
• Color Temperature: Warm 50

If you like what this TV offers but wish it were brighter, take a look at the newer LG C5 OLED.

The LG C4 has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV displays bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use lighting zones and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no blooming when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

The LG C4 is an OLED and has no backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as a TV with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how it compares to a TV with local dimming.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and when the TV is set in Game Optimizer.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has incredible black uniformity with no blooming or halo effect around bright objects.

The LG C4 has very good SDR color volume. Its coverage of the DCI-P3 color space is outstanding, and it covers the majority of that space, only struggling a bit with some very light colors. Unfortunately, its coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space is more limited.

The TV has good color volume. It displays dark, saturated colors very well, and its ability to display bright whites is outstanding. It doesn't display other colors as brightly as it does whites, but it's still enough to display bright and vibrant colors.

With the TV set to Game Optimizer, there's a visible decrease in color luminance, and you can see the measurements below.

• White Luminance: 991 cd/m²
• Red Luminance: 98 cd/m²
• Green Luminance: 310 cd/m²
• Blue Luminance: 32 cd/m²
• Cyan Luminance: 340 cd/m²
• Magenta Luminance: 127 cd/m²
• Yellow Luminance: 409 cd/m²

The LG C4 has excellent pre-calibration accuracy. Its white balance is amazing, with just a bit too much red in all shades of gray. Gamma is very close to our target of 2.2, but bright scenes are a bit too bright. Color temperature is superb, but it's warmer than our target of 6500K, and color accuracy is outstanding, with only very minor inaccuracies in whites, lighter yellows, and lighter cyans.

The TV has exceptional accuracy after calibration to the D65 white point. The white balance and gamma are now essentially perfect. Color accuracy is even better than before, with no noticeable inaccuracies, and color temperature is incredibly close to our target of 6500K.

You can see our full calibration settings.

The LG C4 has excellent accuracy in HDR before calibration. Its white balance is fantastic, but there's not enough blue and too much red in some brighter grays, which makes its color temperature slightly warmer than 6500K. The TV's color accuracy is excellent, but there are some mapping errors throughout, most notably in some reds and magentas.

The TV has incredible accuracy in HDR after calibration. Its white balance is a bit better now, and its color temperature is nearly perfect. Colors are also more accurate than before, but there's still some very minor mapping errors, and reds are a bit undersaturated.

The LG C4 has excellent PQ EOTF tracking. Some darker shadows and mid-tones are a bit brighter than intended, but the TV tracks the curve very closely. With content mastered at 600 or 1000 nits, there's a very small roll-off to preserve some detail in highlights. With content mastered at 4000 nits, there's a much more gradual roll-off to preserve detail in very bright highlights.

The TV has excellent low-quality content smoothing. There's no noticeable macro-blocking in dark areas, and details are preserved well.

The LG C4 is impressive when upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are clear enough, but very fine details are hard to make out.

Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 16
• Super Resolution: Off

The TV has very good HDR native gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in bright grays, dark grays, and bright greens, but all other colors have minimal banding or no banding at all.

The LG C4 has exceptionally low input lag when set to Game Optimizer with 'Prevent Input Delay' set to 'Boost,' resulting in a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between the actions on your controller and what happens on screen. For chroma 4:4:4 to work properly, you must set the input label to 'PC,' or the '4:4:4 Passthrough' setting must be enabled.

If you're a retro gamer, you can see the input lag results in 4:3 @ 60Hz below.

• 640x480: 27.2 ms
• 800x600: 33.8 ms
• 1024x768: 26.8 ms

The LG C4 supports all common formats. It displays chroma 4:4:4 properly, which is important for clear text from a PC.

There are two settings you can use to passthrough proper chroma 4:4:4. The first is to change the input label to 'PC.' The second is to enable the '4:4:4 Passthrough' setting in the 'HDMI Settings' menu. Both of these options work the same and lock you out from using the 'Peak Brightness,' 'Noise Reduction,' 'MPEG Noise Reduction,' 'Smooth Gradation,' and 'Real Cinema' settings.

The TV supports FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR and is certified as G-SYNC compatible, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source.

The LG C4 delivers sharp motion at its maximum refresh rate of 144Hz. There's a bit of overshoot when some shades transition from a dark state to near black, but these transitions settle quickly, so you don't notice it.

The TV delivers sharp motion at 120Hz. There's a bit of overshoot when some shades transition from a dark state to near black, but these transitions settle quickly, so you don't notice it.

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is fantastic. Most transitions from one RGB level to another are nearly instantaneous, but it's slightly slower when transitioning from blacks. There's also still some noticeable persistence blur due to the nature of a 60Hz refresh rate.

The TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Optimizer to get the lowest input lag.

The TV is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, FreeSync Premium Pro, and Dolby Vision gaming. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Optimizer to get the lowest input lag.

Unfortunately, due to the TV's nearly instantaneous pixel response time, there's stutter with low frame rate content, which is most noticeable during slow panning shots.

The TV removes judder when watching 24p movies or TV shows when the Real Cinema setting is enabled, even from sources that can only send a 60Hz signal, like a cable box. Unfortunately, movies and TV shows aren't judder-free when BFI is enabled because the BFI feature only flickers at 60Hz.

The TV has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects when watching all types of content.

The LG C4 doesn't have a traditional backlight and doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim each pixel, but it's not completely flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh rate. This differs from the PWM flicker on TVs with LED backlights and occurs on every OLED we've tested. It's not noticeable, and most people won't be bothered by this, but it can still bother people who are extra sensitive to flicker.

The TV has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. It can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate.

The TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to help improve the appearance of motion. It works well with slower scenes but struggles with fast-moving action, so there's noticeable haloing and artifacts present in busier scenes, especially if you use the settings too aggressively.

The LG C4's direct reflection handling is alright. It reduces the intensity of direct reflections a little, but glare from lamps or windows opposite the screen is still distracting.

The LG C4 OLED has exceptional black levels in a bright room. Black levels are barely raised in a room with ambient lighting, and they remain deep and punchy.

The TV's amount of total reflected light is amazing. Its glossy screen finish significantly reduces the intensity of indirect reflections, and there's no light banding or other distracting artifacts.

The TV has decent perceived color volume in ambient lighting. Colors shown at all levels of luminance are still vibrant and saturated in a bright room since they only lose a small amount of saturation from ambient sources of light. That said, high-luminance colors do lose some saturation in very bright contexts, although it's hard to notice unless you look closely.

Like all OLED TVs, the LG C4 has a fantastic wide viewing angle. This makes it a great choice for a wide seating arrangement, as the image doesn't wash out or degrade when viewed at an angle.

There's a noticeable green tint on the C4 we bought and tested. It's a widespread issue that impacts almost all LG OLED panels but varies widely from unit to unit. LG Electronics has confirmed to us that our unit is about as bad as it gets, and anything worse wouldn't pass LG's quality control checks. Although it varies between units, most people won't see this issue on their TV. This issue also isn't new or exclusive to the C4, as it's been an issue on LG TVs for a few years now.

The TV has great gray uniformity. There are some very faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

The TV uses a WOLED panel with a RWBG pixel structure where all four pixels are never lit at the same time. Due to its subpixel layout, it has minor issues with displaying text on Windows since ClearType isn't well optimized to non-RGB subpixel layouts, but most users won't be bothered by this.

The white subpixel does an excellent job helping the TV display bright whites, but it dilutes the color purity of greens and reds.

The LG C4 TV supports the full 48Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1 on all four HDMI ports. This allows you to take full advantage of multiple high-bandwidth devices, like if you own both current-gen consoles and a high-end gaming PC.

The TV supports many audio formats, including DTS audio formats, which is great if you like to watch DVDs or Blu-rays, as they often use DTS for their main audio tracks.

The TV has a very sleek and modern design. It's very similar to 2023's LG C3 OLED, but the back has a unique stone-like finish. The TV's bezels are incredibly thin, so you barely see them while watching.

The included stand on the 65-inch LG C4 is identical to the stand on 2023's LG C3 OLED. The TV wobbles a bit when pushed on, but it quickly recovers, so this doesn't cause any issues. The stand lifts the screen about 2.7 inches above the table, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen. The 83-inch model uses a bigger stand, and the 42-inch model uses two wide-spread feet instead of a stand.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 18.5" x 9.0"

The back of the TV is made from plastic that is grainy to the touch and has a unique stone-like finish that really separates it from other TVs. Outside of that, the back is the same as the LG C3 OLED, with a large plastic central panel that houses the inputs. The inputs face the right which makes them easy to access if you have the TV on the stand, but they're still hard to reach when the TV is wall-mounted.

The back of the TV has clips that you can funnel cables through, and then they can be put through the clip on the stand to help with cable management.

The build quality of this TV is incredible overall. There's a bit of flex near the VESA mounting points, but this is common and doesn't cause problems. The TV looks and feels premium.

The TV runs the 2024 version of LG's proprietary smart interface, webOS. The interface is fast and easy to use, and it supports user profiles, so you can customize the home page for different users. LG promises at least four years of webOS updates on their TVs, and the C4 is expected to receive webOS 25 towards the end of 2025.

The TV has a bug that causes the occasional black screen when changing resolutions and refresh rates frequently in a short period. The only fix for this is to unplug and re-plug the TV, but this is unlikely to happen with real-world usage.

There are two settings in the 'Home Settings' menu, namely the 'Home Promotion' and 'Content Recommendation' settings. These settings remove the top banner ads and suggested content from the home screen. This gives your home screen a clean look, but there's no way to remove ads from the apps page.

The LG C4 OLED TV has the same Magic Remote as the LG C3 OLED. You can use the remote as a pointer or use the traditional buttons to control the TV. The TV also supports hands-free voice control through microphones on the unit itself. You can use your voice to change inputs, open apps, search for content, and ask for the weather and time.

A single button is on the bottom of the TV in the middle. You can use it to turn the TV on or off, change inputs or channels, and control the volume.

• Remote (with 2x AA batteries)
• IR blaster
• User manuals
• Stickers

The TV has an alright frequency response. The TV speakers produce a small amount of bass, but it's not enough to have much impact on the viewer. The sound profile is well-balanced enough that the dialogue is clear, but the TV doesn't get very loud, and there are compression and pumping artifacts at maximum volume.