The LG G3 OLED is a high-end TV in LG's 2023 OLED lineup, sitting above the typically more popular 'C' series LG C3 OLED and the entry-level OLED 'B' series LG B3 OLED, but below the 8k LG Z3 OLED. OLED TVs like the LG OLED G3 are self-emissive; unlike LCD panels found on other TVs, there's no backlight. Instead, an OLED's pixels can change their brightness levels individually and independently of the other pixels, allowing them to display nearly-perfect contrast, with deep inky blacks and no distracting blooming or haloing around bright objects. Like the LG G2 OLED, this TV doesn't come with a stand and is meant to be wall-mounted with the included slim wall mount.
LG promises a 70% brighter image on the G3 over the LG B3 OLED due to the G3's new Micro Lens Array (MLA) technology. The 83-inch variant of the LG OLED G3 doesn't have MLA, so it's promised to be 'only' 30% brighter than the LG B3. The TV comes with the 2023 version of LG's proprietary webOS smart interface and has four full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports, which supports every gaming technology you can think of in 2023. It also has LG's latest 2023 processor, the α9 AI Processor Gen6, which promises improved image processing through LG's Brightness Booster Max and AI Tech technologies, as well as the ability to up-mix 2-channel audio into virtual 7.1.2 channel sound using AI Sound. The TV's 4.2 integrated speaker setup, which uses the TV's Dolby Atmos spatial sound technology, complements this.
The LG G3 OLED is an outstanding TV with no real weaknesses. Its excellent brightness in both SDR and HDR makes it well-suited to watching anything from TV shows or classic movies in SDR to watching the latest hit movies in HDR. Combined with the amazing reflection handling, the TV's high brightness makes it suitable for any room condition, from very bright rooms where its brightness sparkles to dark spaces where its OLED panel, with its perfect contrast and deep inky blacks, truly shines. Its very low input lag makes it optimal for gaming, as your inputs are translated almost instantaneously to the screen, and its superb response time makes it a great choice for any fans of fast-moving content, be it sports or games, as action stays clear and crisp throughout. It supports every gaming feature you can think of, and it also supports almost every audio format. Truly, a versatile TV.
The LG G3 OLED is an excellent TV for watching your favorite shows. It has fantastic reflection handling, and combined with the TV's great peak brightness in SDR, this makes this a fantastic OLED for bright rooms or rooms with glare. Its viewing angle is nearly perfect, allowing the image to remain consistent even when viewing the TV entirely from the side so that the whole family can watch shows, and everyone will have a great viewing experience no matter where they're sitting. The TV has decent sharpness processing, meaning lower-resolution content can look a bit blurry or blocky, but the panel makes up for this with excellent low-quality content smoothing, so your shows will still look great.
The LG G3 OLED is an incredible TV for watching sports with friends. It has exceptional reflection handling, which is great when watching shows in a room with glare, and the TV gets very bright in SDR, so it handles bright rooms beautifully. The TV's viewing angle is superb, so the image remains consistent even when viewing the TV from the side, so those sitting off-center will have a pleasant viewing experience. It has an incredible response time, so motion, like fast-moving players, is crisp and sharp, with no blurring. The TV has great color uniformity, so when watching sports with large areas of uniform color, like hockey, you won't be distracted by annoying smudges or color variations in the image.
The LG G3 OLED is an outstanding TV for dominating your friends in your games of choice. Enabling Game Mode doesn't noticeably affect image quality, so your games simultaneously look great and feel super responsive due to the TVs incredibly low input lag; your inputs are translated to the on-screen action almost instantly. The TV has fantastic reflection handling, and combined with its great peak brightness in SDR, this makes it a fantastic OLED for bright rooms or rooms with glare, so you can game with the lights on or during the day with no issues. The response time is exceptionally low, so no matter how fast the action moves, you won't have any blur or ghosting. Overall this is a standout TV for gaming.
The LG G3 OLED is a remarkable TV for a home cinema setup. It has incredible contrast, with deep inky blacks and no blooming around bright highlights due to its OLED panel. It has great HDR brightness, so bright highlights look great next to the perfect blacks. It also has excellent low-quality content smoothing, so whether you like to watch movies on legacy formats like DVDs or through streaming services like Netflix, your content is free of macro-blocking, and details are preserved. The TV handles judder perfectly, so your movies are judder free. The TV looks great and is color accurate even with minimal calibration, so you'll have an amazing viewing experience almost right out of the box.
The LG G3 OLED is an outstanding TV for dominating your friends in your games of choice. Enabling Game Mode slightly reduces overall HDR brightness, but as this TV has an amazing peak brightness in HDR to start with, this won't negatively affect your gaming experience. The TV has remarkably low input lag with Game Mode on, so games feel super responsive; your inputs almost instantly translate to the on-screen action. The TV can handle all commonly used resolutions with 10-bit HDR, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz. It has fantastic reflection handling, and combined with the TV's amazing peak brightness in HDR, this makes this a fantastic OLED for any room condition; you can game during the day or with the lights off at night for the best HDR viewing experience. The response time is exceptionally low, so no matter how fast the action moves, you won't have any blur or ghosting.
The LG G3 OLED is a fantastic TV for PC gaming, but using it as a PC monitor is trickier. It has a nearly-instantaneous response time and incredibly low input lag, so games are fluid and responsive, with almost no distracting motion blur behind fast-moving objects. Its viewing angle is amazing, so even if you sit in front of the TV, you won't notice any discoloration or dimming at the edges. It gets very bright in HDR, so the latest hit games will look great. It also gets bright in SDR and has amazing reflection handling, so it'll still look great if your office setup is in a bright room or in front of some windows. Unfortunately, like many TVs, it doesn't use a standard RGB subpixel layout, so text isn't very clear when used as a monitor, as Windows ClearType can't fully compensate for non-RGB screens. Also, as with all OLEDs, there's a
We tested the 65-inch LG G3 OLED (OLED65G3), but it's also available in 55, 77, and 83-inch sizes. The 83-inch model doesn't have the MLA focusing layer, so it isn't as bright as the smaller models. Note that the last three letters in the model number (PUA in this case) vary between retailers and individual regions, but there's no difference in performance.
Size | US Model | UK Model |
---|---|---|
55" | OLED55G3PUA | OLED55G36LA |
65" | OLED65G3PUA | OLED65G36LA |
77" | OLED77G3PUA | OLED77G36LA |
83" | OLED83G3PUA | OLED83G36LA |
Our unit was manufactured in March 2023; you can see the label here.
The LG G3 is an incredible OLED TV with exceptional picture quality and is a big improvement over the LG G2 OLED. Its MLA focusing layer allows it to get extremely bright, and its whites get even brighter than the Samsung S95C OLED, although the latter has the edge regarding bright colors. Unlike past years, there's a large performance gap between the LG OLED G3 and LG's mid-range TV, the LG C3, so we can't as easily recommend that you just get the 'C' series TV as we did in 2022. You'll pay a premium for this TV but get premium performance. Currently, its only real competitor is the previously mentioned Samsung.
See our recommendations for the best OLED TVs, the best 4k TVs, and the best TVs for watching movies.
The LG G3 OLED and the Samsung S95C OLED are two fantastic OLED TVs. They're very close in performance, each having a slight edge over the other in some way, although the S95C might barely have the edge. The LG G3 is the brighter OLED of the two, can reach a higher peak brightness than the S95C in HDR, and performs better in SDR when bright content takes up a large portion of the screen. However, the LG G3's HDR brightness drops quite a bit in Game Mode, while the S95C maintains its brightness well in that mode. Also, while the LG G3 is generally brighter out of game mode, the S95C can output much brighter colors overall, so, typical of Samsung panels, its colors will be 'punchier' than the G3's. Combined with the S95C's wider color gamut, it will be the more vibrant TV in most cases. Both TVs are fantastic for gaming, but the S95C officially supports 4k @ 144Hz, giving it the edge over the 120Hz G3. Note that the LG G3 OLED now supports DTS audio formats, so this is something to consider if you listen to many DVDs or Blu-rays, which tend to have their audio tracks encoded in DTS.
The LG G3 OLED is better than the LG G2 OLED. While they're nearly identical, the G3 has the edge in the one area that counts: it gets dramatically brighter than its predecessor in HDR and SDR, so all content will look more vibrant on the G3 over the G2. Note that the LG G3 OLED now supports DTS audio formats when the G2 doesn't, so this is something to consider if you listen to many DVDs or Blu-rays, which tend to have their audio tracks encoded in DTS.
The LG G3 OLED is better than the LG C3 OLED. They're both nearly identical, except that the G3 doesn't come with a stand, instead having a slim wall mount included in the box and a fully flat profile that allows the TV to be completely flat on the wall when wall mounted. In theory, the G3 can also get much brighter than the C3; however, in practice, you won't see much difference except in certain contexts, such as when bright white clouds are displayed. They both offer DTS audio support this year, a clear improvement over both preceding models.
The LG G3 OLED is much better than the LG C2 OLED. In past years it was commonplace to recommend the 'C' series TVs over the more expensive 'Gallery G' series TVs, as they had most of the performance of the higher-end model for a lower price. However, things are different this year: the LG G3 is much better than its 'C' series counterpart and is much better than the LG C2 OLED from 2022. While the G3 and C2 are still similar in many ways, the G3 gets dramatically brighter, potentially making the otherwise great-looking C2 look dim. So all content will look much more vibrant on the G3 over the C2. Note that the LG G3 OLED now supports DTS audio formats when the C2 doesn't, so this is something to consider if you listen to many DVDs or Blu-rays, which tend to have their audio tracks encoded in DTS.
The LG G3 OLED and Samsung S95B OLED are two high-end OLED TVs with similar performance but some contrasting differences. The LG G3 OLED is brighter than the S95B, which is true even in Game Mode, where the LG G3 loses a significant amount of brightness. The G3 is also much brighter than the S95B in SDR, so if you routinely watch TV shows or SDR movies, the G3 will look more vibrant. However, as is typical of Samsung, it has more vibrant colors over the G3, it has a wider color gamut, and can display saturated colors at higher brightness levels than the G3; so the S95B will generally still look more vibrant than the G3, even if the latter can get brighter. Note that the LG G3 OLED now supports DTS audio formats, so this is something to consider if you listen to many DVDs or Blu-rays, which tend to have their audio tracks encoded in DTS.
The LG G3 OLED looks sleek and modern, similar to 2022's LG G2 OLED. It has a very thin bezel and a flat side profile, so it'll be completely flush when wall-mounted. This TV doesn't have a stand in the box; instead, it has a slim wall mount.
The TV doesn't have a stand, as it's designed to be wall-mounted with the included mount. Note that the stand you see in our pictures is third-party, but LG does sell a separate one for the LG G3 if you don't want to wall-mount it. You can also use the LG G2's stand, which you must also purchase separately.
The back of the TV has a very clean, minimalistic look. It's made of textured metal with a metallic silver border at its edges. There are recessed cutouts in the back through which you can funnel cables. The included wall mount can be pulled forward with the TV attached, making it easy to re-arrange cables even after the TV is wall-mounted.
The LG G3 OLED has incredible contrast. As OLED displays like this one use self-emissive pixels instead of a backlight, with each individual pixel able to fully turn itself off, this TV has a nearly infinite contrast ratio. As the pixels can brighten themselves up without impacting the rest of the image, bright highlights are displayed perfectly next to perfect, inky blacks, with no blooming or haloing.
As with other OLED TVs, this TV doesn't have a backlight, but its self-emissive pixels give it the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature with no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a TV that has local dimming.
The LG G3 has amazing peak brightness in HDR. Its highlights reach and sustain a significantly higher brightness than the LG G2 OLED. Unfortunately, its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) is still very aggressive and dims highlights significantly, but even when dimmed, the TV is still quite a bit brighter than its predecessor. The 83-inch model lacks the MLA focusing layer, so it's not as bright.
Setting Peak Brightness to 'Off' reduces the aggressiveness of the ABL feature but also reduces the peak brightness of the panel in all scenes. Note that the TV throttles its brightness in HDR more aggressively than it does in SDR, leading to lower HDR sustained and peak brightness levels with a 50% or 100% window when compared to its SDR brightness levels.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:
Like the LG G2 OLED, the LG G3 OLED is a bit dimmer in Game Mode. It's especially noticeable with smaller highlights, which are significantly dimmer than they are out of Game Mode; bright full-screen scenes, for their part, aren't impacted.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:
Here are the brightness readings with HGiG enabled:
The LG G3 OLED TV has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking. As it's an OLED, its blacks are perfect, and it follows the curve almost perfectly until it approaches its peak brightness. At that point, the TV's tracking acts differently based on the content it's displaying; for content mastered at 600 and 1000 nits, which is the majority of content, the TV clips everything above its max brightness, resulting in a loss of fine detail in very bright scenes. For content mastered at 4000 nits, the TV does tone mapping; however, its roll-off is faster than on the LG G2 OLED, so the G3 won't preserve as many fine details here as its predecessor.
The LG G3 TV has great peak brightness in SDR. It's especially impressive when bright content takes up a large portion of the screen, even when the brightness is sustained, but it also does small bright highlights in SDR better than any other OLED short of the Samsung S95C OLED. The LG is easily bright enough to overcome glare in bright rooms, but its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) still significantly dims bright scenes. Still, it's not as aggressive as ABLs on other OLEDs.
Setting Peak Brightness to 'Off' reduces the aggressiveness of the ABL feature, but also reduces the peak brightness to about 400 cd/mยฒ in most scenes. The Real Scene Peak Brightness in Game Mode, which disables the Peak Brightness setting, is 293 nits.
These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:
The TV has an excellent color gamut in HDR. It has nearly perfect coverage of the DCI-P3 color space most current HDR content uses. Its color accuracy is superior to its predecessors, the LG G2 OLED and LG C2 OLED, with greens as a high point on the LG G3. The tone mapping is also very good overall, even if it's still a bit off on desaturated colors, but barely so.
Its performance in the Rec. 2020 color space, while decent, is nothing to write home about. Here its tone mapping shows issues with saturated colors, and some of its greens and reds are off. If you care about excellent Rec. 2020 color space performance, which is important for future content as Rec. 2020 becomes more prevalent, check out the Samsung S95C OLED.
The TV's color volume is impressive. Like most OLEDs, it displays dark saturated colors well. When it comes to bright colors, its ability to portray bright whites is the best in class in 2023. While still better than the LG G2 OLED, it can't show other colors at a brightness level near its white luminance capability and lags behind the Samsung S95C OLED in that regard.
Color luminance is roughly equivalent in Game Mode. Here are the color luminance measurements in Game Mode:
The LG G3 has excellent pre-calibration accuracy. Its white balance is very good, with some color composition errors in brighter whites. Its gamma is a bit below the target, so the TV is on the brighter side of things by default. Its color temperature is also lower than the 6500K reference, so the TV leans a bit toward red. However, its color accuracy is very good after only minor tweaks.
The LG G3's post-calibration accuracy is fantastic; it's very easy to calibrate. The white balance is almost perfect, except for the brightest white the panel can produce. The TV's brightness looks balanced in a moderate room, and its color temperature is right on the calibration target.
You can see our full calibration settings here.
The LG G3 OLED has excellent gray uniformity. There are faint vertical lines, which is true of all OLEDs. There are also faint pink-ish vertical bands, which, like in 2022, appear to be a common issue with LG's panel technology, but they're extremely subtle, and you're not likely to notice them in actual usage. There are no signs of the grid pattern that some owners saw on their 2021 models and no signs of the Venetian blind effect, which is great.
The LG G3 OLED has an almost perfect viewing angle. Not only is the viewing angle very wide but unlike the LG G2 OLED, there isn't a hint of color shift as you move off-center from the panel. It's a great TV for a wide seating arrangement, as the image remains remarkably consistent when viewing the screen from almost any angle, with no washout or loss of brightness.
The LG G3 OLED TV has fantastic reflection handling. It's better than on the LG G2 OLED, and combined with the spectacular brightness, this makes the TV look great in even the brightest of rooms. Bright reflections have a purple tint to them caused by the anti-reflective coating on the panel.
The LG G3 has only adequate gradient handling in HDR. There's noticeable banding in dark grays, reds, and greens, as well as in bright greens and blues. Note that these results apply to a static image stress test; the HDR gradient handling of the TV fares much better in actual content.
The LG G3 has good sharpness processing with low-resolution or low-bitrate content. The text is a bit blurry, and some small details are lost, but the image is upscaled well overall.
The optimal sharpness settings for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, are as follows:
This TV uses the new panels by LG Display with Micro Lens Array (MLA) technology. These panels are advertised to be brighter than those in the LG G2 OLED without requiring the actual WOLED panel to work harder, making it run hotter and thus more susceptible to burn-in. MLA technology instead acts as a focusing layer in front of the WOLED panel, allowing for a far brighter image. Note that the 83-inch LG G3 doesn't have MLA.
Like all LG OLED TVs, all four subpixels are never lit simultaneously. You can see other subpixel photos here and here.
The LG G3 has an incredibly fast pixel response time. There's very little blur behind fast-moving objects, but due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some noticeable persistence blur. There's some slight overshoot in nearly-black scenes, but this isn't noticeable.
The LG G3 TV 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. Like the LG G2 OLED, LG has removed the 120Hz flicker mode available on the 2021 LG OLED TVs, so it can only flicker at 60Hz. BFI also reduces the TV's perceived brightness, which is noticeable in practice.
Like all of LG's high-end OLEDs, the optional motion interpolation feature works well and is better than most TVs. However, it also introduces what is commonly known as the 'soap opera effect', which will annoy some people. Motion appears significantly smoother, with less persistence blur, thanks to the higher frame rate, but again, there are some noticeable artifacts in busy scenes.
As with all OLEDs, due to the technology's nearly instantaneous pixel response time, there's noticeable stutter with low frame rate content. It's very noticeable in slow panning shots in movies, although some people are more sensitive to it than others. The black frame insertion feature and the motion interpolation feature can help reduce the appearance of stutter, but they both have their drawbacks.
The TV 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. Like the LG G2 OLED, the Real Cinema setting has to be enabled to remove judder. Sadly, movies aren't judder-free when BFI is enabled because the black frame insertion (BFI) feature can only flicker at 60Hz on the G3.
The TV supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and is G-SYNC compatible certified, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source. It works well across a wide refresh rate range, even when it drops very low, as the TV supports Low Framerate Compensation (LFC).
There's some flickering when VRR is enabled, as was reported on the LG C2 OLED in 2022. It's noticeable in low and fluctuating frame rate situations on a near-black screen. See a video of this flickering in action here. There's a setting on the TV called Fine Tune Dark Areas, and increasing it raises the black level and makes content brighter, reducing the perceptible flicker. It does affect image accuracy, however.
The TV has 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 good enough for most gamers. These results are with the Boost Mode setting set to 'on' in the 'Game Optimizer' menu, 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. The input lag is also higher at 1920x1440 when using a 4:3 aspect ratio versus the original aspect ratio, with an input lag of 27ms at 120Hz and 13.8ms at 60Hz. For lower 4:3 resolutions, like 640x480 or 320x240, the input lag is unaffected between running at 4:3 versus using the original aspect ratio.
To get the lowest input lag with Chroma 4:4:4 support, you need to set the input to PC with Game Mode enabled. The LG G3 also now has the option to enable 4:4:4 Pass Through in the 'Game Optimizer' settings, resulting in Chroma 4:4:4 support with the lowest input lag. Enabling 4:4:4 Pass Through disables motion interpolation settings.
This LG G3 OLED 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 supports, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4K @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also has four ports supporting HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, which is great if you have multiple HDMI 2.1 consoles or want to connect a PC.
This TV is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, and both HDMI Forum VRR and Freesync. All four HDMI ports support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, which is great if you have both consoles or a PC you plan on using with the TV.
Like with the LG G2 OLED or LG C2 OLED, All four HDMI ports support 48Gbps bandwidth. It allows you to send 4k @ 120Hz signals with 12-bit color and full chroma 4:4:4, which is great for PC users.
This TV supports a plethora of audio formats, which is great. It supports DTS audio formats, which is great if you like to watch DVDs or Blu-rays, as they tend to use DTS for their main audio tracks.
The TV has a surprisingly good frequency response, at least for a TV. The TV has an integrated 4.2 speaker system, providing a certain amount of surround sound experience. Sadly, like with most TVs, it lacks in the bass department. That's too bad, as otherwise, the sound holds up on the LG G3, even managing to sound good up to the TV's loud max volume.
This TV has decent distortion performance. The speakers are good at handling distortion when being fed multiple simultaneous frequencies, as seen in their low levels of intermodulation distortion. It doesn't perform as well when dealing with distortion from individual fundamental frequencies (THD). IMD sounds worse to human ears than THD, so this TV sounds pleasant overall, as its level of intermodulation distortion is very good.
The TV runs the 2023 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.
The LG G3 OLED has an identical Magic Remote to 2022's LG G2 OLED. The remote can still be used as a pointer, making it very easy to navigate through menus. The TV supports hands-free voice control through microphones on the TV itself. Voice control is buggy, and it can't do everything the LG G2 OLED was capable of, like switching inputs or changing the backlight, although opening apps or searching the web works fine. LG may fix this through a firmware update in the future.