LG G2 OLED TV Review

The LG G2 OLED has a sleek, modern design to it. The silver borders have a more uniform side profile that helps it to blend in with the décor. Note that the stand shown here isn't included with the TV. LG sells a separate stand if you don't plan on wall-mounting it.

The LG G2 OLED doesn't come with a stand. It's designed to be wall-mounted with the included slim wall mount. We used a third-party stand for our testing, but LG also sells a stand designed for this TV. The previous "Gallery" series stand doesn't fit on the G2.

The back of the TV has a very clean look. It's made of textured metal, with a metallic silver border around the edges. There are cutouts in the back and clips to help with cable management. The included wall mount can be pulled forward with the TV on it, making it easy to swap cables or connect a new source.

The LG G2 OLED has fantastic build quality. The materials used feel premium, and although there's a bit of flex on the back panel near the inputs, it's not an issue. There are some very slight gaps where the bottom corners connect to the TV, as shown here, and here. It gets a bit warm with extended use, but this isn't unusual and won't cause any issues.

Since OLED displays use self-emissive pixels instead of a backlight, the LG OLED G2 has a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Since it can control the brightness of individual pixels without affecting nearby ones, this TV can display bright highlights right next to perfect blacks with no blooming. This is especially noticeable if you're in a completely dark room.

The LG G2 TV has very good peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare in bright rooms, but sadly, large bright scenes are dimmed considerably by the TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). This isn't very noticeable with most regular content, but it's distracting when watching some sports, like Hockey. Setting Peak Brightness to 'Off' reduces the aggressiveness of the ABL feature, but also reduces to the peak brightness to about 300 cd/m² in most scenes.

These measurements are in the 'Expert (Dark Space, Night)' Picture Mode, with OLED Light at 'Max', Peak Brightness on 'High', and the Color Temp set to 'Warm 50'.

If you want the brightest image possible, switching to the 'Vivid' Picture Mode, with Adjusted Contrast at 'Max', Auto Dynamic Contrast on 'High' and the Color Temp set to '0' results in a brighter image, reaching a peak of 581 cd/m² with a 2% window.

The LG G2 doesn't have a backlight, but thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, it's equivalent to a perfect local dimming feature. There's no blooming around bright objects in dark scenes, and bright white pixels are displayed perfectly even if they're surrounded by black pixels. We still film these videos on the TV, so you can see how it performs and compare it with a TV that has local dimming.

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

The LG G2 OLED has impressive peak brightness in HDR, and it's much brighter than the previous generation of OLED TVs, including the LG G1 OLED and the LG C1 OLED. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are still significantly dimmer than smaller highlights due to the TV's aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). It isn't very noticeable when watching regular content, but it's distracting when using the TV as a monitor. Most scenes are displayed at the correct brightness level, and it tracks the PQ EOTF well for the most part. Very dark scenes are crushed a bit. There's a smooth roll-off near the TV's peak brightness, so bright highlights in really bright scenes are preserved.

These measurements are in the 'Cinema' HDR Picture Mode with OLED Pixel Brightness, Contrast, and Peak Brightness all at their max settings, with Color Temperature at ' Warm 50' and all other image processing disabled. By setting Auto Dynamic Contrast to 'High' and enabling Dynamic Tone Mapping, you can get a slightly brighter image, as seen in this EOTF. Note that these settings increase the brightness of darker scenes, but the peak brightness of the display is the same.

The LG G2 is a bit dimmer in 'Game Mode', especially when displaying bright highlights in otherwise dark scenes. It still tracks the EOTF well, though, with a smooth roll-off near the TV's peak brightness.

The LG G2 OLED has excellent gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for watching sports or using it as a PC monitor. There's also very little vignetting. Sadly, there are some vertical bands of color, and there's a pink tint on the left side of the screen. This appears to be a common issue with the new panel technology used by LG Display, and it's not a defect with our specific unit. There are no signs of the grid pattern that some owners noticed on their 2021 models, and no signs of the "Venetian blind effect" either, which is great. Like almost all OLED displays, though, there are some faint vertical lines in very dark scenes.

Since OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the LG G2 has perfect black uniformity, and there's no blooming or haloing around bright objects.

The LG G2 OLED has a fantastic viewing angle. This is great if you have a wide seating arrangement or like to move around with the TV on, as the image remains accurate even at a wide angle. There's no noticeable washout or loss of brightness even at an extremely wide angle.

The LG G2 OLED has fantastic reflection handling. The glossy finish significantly reduces the intensity of direct lights, and it looks great even in a bright room. Bright lights have a slightly purple tint to them, this is caused by the anti-reflective coating on the panel.

The LG G2 TV has great accuracy out of the box. There are very few issues with the white balance or color accuracy. Gamma is a bit high, so most scenes are a bit too dark for a dark room, and the color temperature is a bit cool, giving everything a slightly bluish tint.

After calibrating to a D65 white point, the LG G2 OLED has nearly perfect accuracy. The white balance and color accuracy are both nearly perfect, but there are still some slight issues with saturated reds and bright whites. The color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K calibration target, and gamma is nearly perfect.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The LG G2 upscales DVDs and other 480p content well, with no noticeable issues.

720p content, including most cable TV channels, is upscaled well.

1080p content, including Blu-rays and some consoles, is upscaled well and looks almost as good as native 4k content.

4k content is displayed perfectly, with no dithering or other sub-pixel issues.

This is a 4k TV, it can't accept or display an 8k signal.

Based on the subpixel structure and the spectral power distribution of this panel, this TV uses the new WBE panels by LG Display, which they also call "Ex". These panels are advertised to be brighter, have better heat dissipation, and be less prone to burn-in. All LG G2 units are expected to use this new panel.

Like all LG OLED TVs, all four subpixels are never lit at the same time. You can see other subpixel photos here and here.

The LG G2 has an excellent color gamut. It has nearly perfect coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content, including most UHD Blu-rays. It has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, but it can't display the full range of greens or cyan. Unfortunately, the tone mapping isn't very good, especially when displaying saturated colors, and it doesn't display the creator's intent. If you care about good tone mapping, the Sony A95K OLED is nearly perfect with that.

The LG G2 has okay color volume. It fills out its color gamut well at moderate luminance levels, and it can display dark saturated colors well thanks to its nearly-infinite contrast ratio. Sadly, bright colors aren't as bright as pure white, so they're not as vivid and lifelike as they should be. Newer OLED technology, like the QD-OLED in the Samsung S95B OLED produce much brighter colors.

The LG G2 OLED has excellent gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding, especially in darker shades of green, but it looks excellent overall. The Smooth Gradation feature reduces banding, especially with the 'Medium' or 'High' settings, but this causes a loss of fine details with high-quality content, so it's not recommended to leave this on.

There's some very slight image retention, but it's not really noticeable with regular content. This is different from long-term burn-in that OLEDs can experience.

Even though the LG G2 OLED is likely less prone to burn-in than older OLED panels, there's still a risk. OLED panel technology has significantly advanced since our real world burn-in test, which used 2017 models, so we don't really know just how likely it is that these TVs will experience burn-in. We'll be starting a new burn-in test shortly to try to determine how effective each of these new panel technologies are at reducing the risk of burn-in, so our estimated burn-in risk score may change.

The LG G2 has a nearly-instantaneous pixel response time. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some noticeable persistence blur.

The LG G2 isn't quite flicker-free, as there's a small decrease in brightness that corresponds with the refresh cycle of the display. This is very different from pulse width modulation flicker (PWM) on TVs with LED backlights.

The LG G2 OLED has an optional black frame insertion feature (BFI) that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous pixel response time. Strangely, LG has removed the 120Hz flicker mode that was available on the 2021 OLED TVs, so it can only flicker at 60Hz.

The optional motion interpolation feature works really well. Motion appears significantly smoother, with less persistence blur thanks to the higher refresh rate. There's some noticeable artifacts in busy scenes, but it's better than most TVs.

Unfortunately, due to the nearly instantaneous pixel response time of the LG G2 OLED, there's noticeable stutter with low frame rate content. It's especially noticeable in slow panning shots in movies. The black frame insertion feature and the motion interpolation feature can both help reduce the appearance of stutter, but they both have their drawbacks.

The LG G2 OLED can almost always remove judder when watching 24p movies or TV shows, even from sources that can only send a 60Hz signal, like a cable box. Unlike previous LG TVs, the Real Cinema setting has to be enabled to remove judder. Sadly, because the black frame insertion (BFI) feature can only flicker at 60Hz on the G2, movies aren't judder-free when BFI is enabled.

The LG G2 OLED supports all current variable refresh rate formats, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any source that supports VRR. The VRR feature works across a very wide range of refresh rates. Below about 40Hz low-framerate compensation (LFC) is automatically enabled, so even if your framerate drops very low, you still won't see screen tearing.

The LG G2 has fantastic low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience. Although it's still not as good as high-end gaming monitors, it's better than most TVs, and it's good enough for most gamers. These results are with the Prevent Input Delay setting set to 'Boost', which reduces input lag by 2-3 ms. Like most TVs, the input lag is too high outside of 'Game Mode' for competitive reaction-based games. Unfortunately, the input lag is much higher when sending a 4:3 signal, so it's not great for retro gaming:

• 1080p @ 60Hz: 26.8ms
• 1440p @ 60Hz: 26.9ms
• 4k @ 60Hz: 26.8ms
• 4k @ 60Hz Outside Game Mode: 89.5ms
• 4k @ 60Hz With Interpolation: 85.5ms
• 1080p @ 120Hz: 13.6ms
• 1440p @ 120Hz: 13.7ms

This TV supports all common formats, and it displays chroma 4:4:4 properly, which is important for clear text from a PC. Unlike some other brands, 4k @ 120Hz is displayed perfectly, with no resolution-halving or other issues.

This TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X support, including the variable refresh rate feature on the PS5. It also has four ports that support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, which is great if you have both consoles or are looking to connect a PC as well.

All four HDMI ports support 48Gbps bandwidth, which is an improvement over the LG G1 OLED. This allows you to send 4k @ 120Hz signals with 12-bit color and full chroma 4:4:4, which is great for PC users.

Unfortunately, this TV can't passthrough any DTS formats, which is disappointing as many Blu-rays use this format for their main audio track.

The LG G2 has a decent frequency response. The low-frequency extension is okay, but it still can't produce much deep bass. It gets loud, and it has a very well-balanced sound profile, so dialogue sounds clear.

This TV has decent distortion performance. There's very little harmonic distortion at moderate listening levels, but it increases a bit in the treble range.

The LG G2 OLED runs the latest version of LG's proprietary smart interface, webOS. LG advertises this as version 22, which is a shift from the previous versioning system they used. Internally, it appears that LG still uses the old versioning system, as the "TV Information" page reports the webOS TV version as version 7.1.0. The interface is fast and easy to use, and the new interface now supports user profiles, so you can customize the home page for different users.

Unfortunately, like almost all smart TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the smart interface, and they can't be fully disabled.

The LG G2 OLED has a great selection of additional apps, including the vast majority of streaming services.

This TV comes with the same magic remote found on previous models. The remote can be used as a pointer, making it very easy to navigate through menus. The TV now supports hands-free voice control, through microphones on the TV itself. Unfortunately, there's no physical switch to disable the microphones if you're concerned about privacy. Voice control works well, though, and you can use it to change inputs, open apps, search within apps for content, and even adjust basic settings.

There's a single button located on the bottom of the TV in the middle. With it, you can turn the TV on or off, change inputs or channels, or control the volume.

• Remote (with 2x AA batteries)
• Slim wall-mount
• Wall mount screws (and other accessories)
• Mounting instructions
• User manuals
• IR blaster