LG CX OLED TV Review

Alongside the LG BX, the LG CX OLED is one of two entry-level TVs in LG's 2020 OLED lineup. It's a direct replacement to the LG C9 OLED and sits below LG GX OLED. Since there aren't many OLED TVs on the market, its main competitors are other LG TVs, the Sony A8H OLED, and the Vizio OLED 2020. Its LED competitors are the Samsung Q90/Q90T QLED and the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2020.

The LG CX has a sleek design with a premium feel to it, and it looks very similar to the LG C9 OLED. The silver metal on the back is a bit darker than its predecessor, but it has the same stand that allows the TV to sit close to the table.

The stand is very solid, and the TV doesn't wobble all that much. It's almost as wide as the TV, so you need a big table to place it on. Also, since the TV sits so low to the table, placing a soundbar in front of it could potentially obstruct the screen.

Footprint of the 55" TV stand: 36" x 9.6".

The back is identical to the LG C9 OLED and LG C8 OLED. The top part that holds the panel is solid metal, and the bottom part that holds the inputs is textured plastic with horizontal lines on it. There are both side-facing and back-facing inputs, and there's a plastic cover on the stand for cable management. If you plan on wall-mounting it and want a similar TV with a dedicated wall mount, check out the LG GX OLED.

The borders are thin and aren't distracting.

The top half of the LG CX is very thin, but it gets thicker at the bottom, where the inputs are housed. It shouldn't stick out much if you wall-mount it.

The LG CX has an outstanding build quality, much like the LG C9 OLED. The front of the stand and the top half of the back are made out of metal, but there's a bit of flex on the top half of the TV. The back of the stand and the panel holding the inputs are made out of solid plastic that feels like metal.

Like all OLED TVs, the LG CX has an infinite contrast ratio since it can turn off individual pixels, resulting in perfect blacks.

Since the LG CX doesn't have a backlight, it doesn't have a local dimming feature. It can dim pixels individually, so bright objects and subtitles are displayed perfectly, with no visible blooming.

The LG CX has decent SDR peak brightness, but it may not be enough to combat glare from direct sunlight. It has an Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) that significantly dims the screen when large areas get bright, so that's why the 100% window is significantly less bright.

Like the LG C9 OLED, the LG CX has a Peak Brightness setting, which changes the way the ABL performs. With this setting turned off, most scenes are between 294 to 308 cd/m², with 166 cd/m² in the 100% window. Turning this setting to 'High', which is what we tested with, makes most scenes brighter, but large areas are less bright.

The measurements were taken post-calibration in the 'Expert (Dark Room)' Picture Mode, with OLED Light to '100' and Peak Brightness to 'High.' Before calibration, the TV was slightly less bright.

If you don't care about image accuracy and want the brightest image possible, we got 480 cd/m² in the 2% window in the 'Expert (Dark Room)' Picture Mode with Dynamic Contrast set to 'Medium', Peak Brightness on 'High', and OLED Light and Contrast at their max.

If you often watch in a bright room or take the TV outside to watch a game, the Samsung The Terrace can get much brighter to combat glare.

The LG CX has decent HDR peak brightness, but it may not be enough to bring out some highlights in HDR. There's quite a bit of variation when displaying different content, and it gets the least bright with large areas, which is caused by the aggressive ABL.

The measurements were taken in 'Cinema' Picture Mode, with OLED Light to '100', Peak Brightness to 'High', and Color Temperature to 'Warm 2.'

If you want an even brighter image and don't mind losing image quality, use the 'Game' Picture Mode with Dynamic Contrast set to 'Medium', Peak Brightness on 'High', and OLED Light at its max. We got 823 cd/m² in the 10% window using these settings.

This TV has impressive gray uniformity, but this may vary between units. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for sports fans. Uniformity is improved in near-dark scenes, but like other OLED TVs, there are some faint vertical and horizontal lines which could be visible in near-dark scenes in very dark rooms.

The LG CX has great viewing angles, and the image remains accurate when viewing from the side. This TV is great for a wide seating arrangement. The LG BX OLED has slightly wider viewing angles, but this may vary between units.

Since this OLED TV can turn off individual pixels, the black uniformity is perfect.

Just like the LG C9 OLED, the LG CX has outstanding reflection handling as it has an anti-reflective coating. You shouldn't have any issues placing this in a bright room.

Update 12/08/2020: We remeasured the accuracy after calibrating our spectroradiometer. The review has been updated.

The LG OLED55CXPUA has great out-of-the-box color accuracy, but this may vary between units. Most colors are slightly inaccurate, and white balance is a bit off, but it's hard to notice. The color temperature is colder than the 6500K target, so colors have a blue tint to them. Overall, the gamma follows the target fairly well, but some bright scenes are too bright.

Update 06/30/2020: We have confirmation from CalMAN that the LG CX now supports auto-calibration.

After calibration, the color accuracy is nearly perfect. Any color or white balance inaccuracies aren't visible without the aid of a colorimeter.

You can see our recommended settings here.

This TV upscales 480p content well, with no obvious upscaling artifacts.

The LG CX upscales 720p content, such as from cable boxes, well with no upscaling artifacts that we noticed on past OLED TVs.

1080p content looks almost as good as native 4k content.

Even though it has an RGBW pixel structure, there are no issues displaying 4k content since every pixel has all four sub-pixels in it.

The LG CX is a 4k TV and doesn't support an 8k signal.

With an RGBW pixel structure, the LG CX 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-pixel in our alternative pixel photo.

This TV has an excellent color gamut. It has near-perfect coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content and decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space. It's very slightly improved from the LG C9 OLED.

In 'Cinema' mode, the EOTF follows the PQ curve well until it rolls off at its peak brightness. In 'Game' mode, it follows the target almost the same, but there's a sharper roll off, which you can see here.

If you find HDR too dim, you can change Dynamic Contrast to 'High' and you can see the EOTF here. Enabling Dynamic Tone Mapping is inconsistent in how it changes the brightness, and it made the screen darker when we measured the EOTF.

Despite having an excellent color gamut, the LG CX's color volume is only decent. It can't produce extremely bright colors, but with an infinite contrast ratio, it can display dark, saturated colors.

Excellent gradient handling, but there's still some banding in most colors. Enabling the Smooth Gradation feature doesn't affect the test pattern but can help reduce banding in real content. Enabling this feature can cause some loss in details.

The LG CX doesn't show any signs of temporary image retention, but this may vary between individual units.

This test is only indicative of short term image retention, and not the permanent burn-in that may occur with longer exposure to static images. We're currently running a long-term test to help us better understand permanent burn-in. You can see our results and read more about our investigation here.

Unfortunately, like most OLED TVs, the LG CX isn't immune to permanent burn-in. However, we don't expect people who watch varied content to have any issues, but rather it's a problem if there are constant static displays, like if it's used as a PC monitor.

This TV has three features to help burn-in risk. Enabling Screen Shift option, and setting Logo Luminance Adjustment to 'Low' may help with this. There's also an Pixel Refresher that can be run manually if needed.

If you're concerned about burn-in and you prefer an LED TV, check out the Samsung Q90/Q90T QLED.

You can read about our investigation into this here.

The LG CX has a near-perfect response time, but you may still notice some motion blur. With the refresh rate at 120Hz, motion blur is noticeable in most content, as you can see here.

Update 06/25/2020: We incorrectly stated that this TV was flicker-free, it's not. Although the flicker isn't at all noticeable, there is a slight dip in brightness every 8ms.

The LG CX OLED doesn't use Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and is technically flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness every 8 ms, which coincides with its refresh rate but isn't noticeable.

Update 05/26/2020: 120Hz BFI only works properly in Game mode. Since BFI isn't available when G-SYNC is enabled, to display a 4k @ 120Hz signal with BFI, you have to disable VRR from the source and manually enter Game Mode. In any other picture mode, 4k @ 120Hz signals skip frames, causing duplications when BFI is enabled.

This TV has a Black Frame Insertion (BFI) feature to improve the appearance of motion. To turn it on, set TruMotion to 'User' and OLED Motion on 'High'. The 'Low' and 'Medium' settings offer less aggressive BFI, resulting in a brighter screen.

The LG CX Series can interpolate lower-frame rate content, such as from movies or TV shows, up to 120fpsz. This is known as the 'Soap Opera Effect' and helps improve the appearance of motion.

Motion looks clear with no visible artifacting. It interpolates 30fps content a bit better than 60fps content, but this shouldn't be very noticeable with real content.

See here for the settings that control the motion interpolation feature.

Since it has such a fast response time, lower-frame rate content can appear to stutter as each frame is held on for longer. This can be noticeable during panning shots.

Enabling the OLED Motion or motion interpolation features can help mitigate this problem.

Update 06/03/2020: We retested 24p judder with different BFI settings and found that the LG CX can playback 24p content without judder, with BFI enabled, but only with certain BFI settings.

This TV can remove judder from all sources, such as Blu-ray players or native apps. When watching 24p content (like movies) with BFI enabled, the LG CX can still play them without judder, but only if BFI is set to 'Low', 'Medium', or 'Auto'. 60p content can also be played with BFI, without judder, but only when BFI is set to either 'Auto', or 'Medium'.

Update 08/19/2020: We confirmed that it supports HDMI Forum's VRR. With the Xbox One S connected, we disabled the FreeSync setting and enabled the G-SYNC setting on the TV. The Xbox showed VRR as still working, meaning it was working with HDMI Forum VRR.

Update 07/08/2020: Support for FreeSync has been added in the latest firmware update (version 03.10.20). It works as intended at 4k @ 60Hz, but we couldn't get it working at 4k @ 120Hz using our Radeon graphics card.

The LG CX OLED has a 120Hz refresh rate, it supports HDMI Forum's VRR to reduce screen tearing, and it's G-SYNC compatible with newer NVIDIA graphics cards. G-SYNC stops working on all resolutions below 40Hz, and at 120Hz on a 4k resolution, there's some minor glitching.

For G-SYNC to work, the TV must be on 'Game' mode with Instant Game Response Time enabled.

Update 11/03/2020: We retested the input lag with an HDMI 2.1 source, including 4k @ 120Hz.

Update 08/06/2020: Numbers for input lag reduced by 0.5ms to compensate for delay with the computer.

Update 05/26/2020: Input lag was retested with our "RTX 2070 Super" computer because the laptop had an issue with it. The numbers are all updated, though most haven't changed by any significant margin (0.1-0.5ms).

This TV has really low input lag in 'Game' mode, and it stays low with VRR enabled, which is great for gaming. It also stays low with a 4k resolution, which makes it a good choice for Xbox One X or PS4 Pro owners. With an Xbox plugged in, it automatically enables the Auto Low Latency Mode and it turns on HDMI Deep Color Mode, but you have to enable Instant Game Response first for ALLM to work.