LG G4 OLED  TV Review

The LG G4 OLED has excellent HDR brightness. It gets bright enough for highlights to pop and 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

There's no noticeable difference with HDR brightness when the TV is set into Game Optimizer.

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 G4 OLED has good SDR brightness, and it gets bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. 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

For even better SDR brightness, consider the newer LG G5 OLED.

The LG G4 has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV displays very 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 G4 is an OLED and doesn't have a 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 G4 has good SDR color volume overall. Its coverage of the DCI-P3 color space is great, but it does struggle a lot more with the wider BT.2020 space. As colors become lighter, the TV struggles, so it doesn’t display light colors as well as it does darker ones.

The LG Evo G4 has great color volume. It displays dark, saturated colors very well, and its ability to display pure whites is unrivaled. It doesn't display other colors as brightly as it does whites, but it's still enough to display vibrant colors with impact.

With the TV set to Game Optimizer, there's no visible difference in color luminance.

The LG G4 has incredible pre-calibration accuracy. The white balance and color accuracy is superb, with no noticeable issues at all. Color temperature is only slightly warmer than our target of 6500K, and gamma is very close to our target of 2.2, with only very bright scenes being a bit too bright.

After calibration to the D65 white point, the TV has exceptional accuracy. The white balance is essentially perfect, and color accuracy is even better than before. Gamma is also nearly perfect, with all scenes being displayed properly, and the color temperature is very close to our target of 6500K.

See our full calibration settings.

The TV has excellent HDR pre-calibration accuracy. Its white balance is solid overall, but there's a bit too much blue in most grays, which makes its color temperature a little bit too cool. Colors are accurate for the most part, but there are some inaccuracies throughout, especially with some blues and reds.

The TV has superb accuracy in HDR after calibration. Most issues with white balance have been fixed, and its color temperature is now closer to the 6500K standard. Color accuracy is slightly better, but there are still some minor mapping errors throughout.

The TV has very good PQ EOTF tracking. Some shadows and mid-tones are slightly brighter than intended, but the TV tracks the curve very closely. With content mastered in 600 or 1000 nits, there's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, but since the TV is bright enough to display content mastered at those levels, a roll-off isn't necessary. With content mastered at 4000 nits, there's a 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 G4 does a great job at upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are clear enough, but very fine details are still a bit hard to make out.

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

• Sharpness: 12
• Super Resolution: High

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

The LG G4 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. For chroma 4:4:4 to work properly, the input label must be set 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: 34.2 ms
• 1024x768: 26.9 ms
• 1280x960: 26.9 ms

The LG G4 supports all common formats, and 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,' and 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 TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 144Hz is fantastic. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly, so fast motion is very sharp.

The TV's CAD at 120Hz is outstanding. It displays fast-moving objects without noticeable blur, so fast motion is clear.

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 nearly instantaneous pixel response time of the TV, 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. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some persistence blur at 60Hz, but it's not noticeable when watching movies or shows.

The LG G4 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 is very different 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 LG G4 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 G4 does a great job of reducing the intensity of direct reflections. Reflections from direct sources of light, such as a lamp, are dimmed considerably, so they blend in well with the rest of the image.

The LG G4 does a decent job retaining its black levels in a bright room. Blacks become more raised as the amount of light in your room increases due to its MLA layer, but they remain deep enough that they don't look too gray.

The TV has exceptional reflection handling. Its glossy screen finish significantly reduces the intensity of both direct reflections and indirect reflections. There are also no distracting artifacts caused by the TV's reflection handling.

The LG G4 has alright overall color volume in a bright room. Colors displayed at low and medium luminance levels are nice and saturated, but it does struggle a lot more with showing colors at higher levels of brightness due to its reliance on its white subpixel. However, there’s not a large difference between color volume in a dark room and a bright one, especially with high-luminance colors, so you don’t lose very much color saturation in a well-lit room.

The LG G4 has an incredibly wide viewing angle, so the image is consistent from almost any angle, making it an excellent choice for watching TV in a group setting.

The TV has very good gray uniformity. If you look closely, there are some faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't as noticeable after the TV is broken in or when viewed from a normal viewing distance.

The LG G4 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.

What really separates the TV from other WOLEDs is the use of Micro Lens Array (MLA) technology. MLA acts as a focusing layer in front of the WOLED panel, allowing it to get much brighter without the TV having to run hotter. MLA adds a slight haze to the screen, but the haze isn't noticeable at all when watching the TV. Note that the 97-inch model doesn't have MLA technology.

The 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. Unlike the LG G3 OLED, the LG G4 doesn't support ATSC 3.0 for 4k over-the-air, as LG has dropped that feature on their 2024 models.

There have been widespread reports of black screens, lines, or fuzziness issues with the HDMI 2 port that occur when switching from the TV's native apps to a device plugged into HDMI 2. We tested for this during our initial testing phase and extensively retested the port again to see if we encountered the problem. After further testing, we didn't experience this issue, so it's not a problem that affects every unit.

The TV supports a ton of audio formats. It supports 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 LG G4 has a very sleek and modern design. It's essentially the same as last year's LG G3 OLED, with very thin bezels and a flat side profile, which means it's completely flush when wall-mounted.

Unlike the LG G3 OLED, a stand is included with the 55-inch and 65-inch models in North America, so you don't have to purchase a third-party stand if you don't plan on wall-mounting it. In some other regions, you can get the 55-inch and 65-inch models with either a stand or a wall mount.

The stand is small but made from metal, and although there's a bit of wobble when the TV is pushed on, it recovers quickly and doesn't cause any issues. The stand can be adjusted to two different positions. The low position lifts the TV about 2.28", which brings the screen very close to your table. The high position lifts the TV about 3.94", so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 19.1" x 10.4".

The back of the TV has a very clean and minimalistic look. It's made of textured metal with a metallic silver border at its edges. There are recessed cutouts in the back that can be used to funnel cables through, and those cables can be funneled through the intuitive stand for cable management. If you want to wall-mount the TV, you can still do so, but the 55-inch and 65-inch models don't come with LG's Slim Wall Mount.

The LG G4 TV has outstanding build quality. It's made of metal throughout, so the construction is solid, and the TV doesn't flex except for some very minor flex in the middle of the back panel. It does wobble a bit more than other LG OLEDs with a stand, but this doesn't cause any issues.

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 G4 is expected to receive webOS 25 towards the end of 2025.

Unfortunately, the TV has a couple of bugs. Sometimes, the TV doesn't properly switch out of the Game Optimizer setting, so you're locked out of settings that should be available in other picture modes. To fix this, you can turn Game Optimizer on and disable ALLM and VRR. When you do this and switch to a different picture setting, everything works as it should.

The second bug causes the occasional black screen when changing resolutions and refresh rates frequently in a short period of time. The only fix for this is to unplug and re-plug the TV in, 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 G4 has the same Magic Remote that came with the LG G3 OLED. The remote can be used as a pointer, or you can use the traditional buttons to control the TV. The TV also supports hands-free voice control through microphones on the TV 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 repeater
• User manuals

The LG G4 OLED TV has a good frequency response. Its sound profile is well-balanced, so dialogue is easy to understand, and unlike most TVs, it actually produces a small amount of bass. The TV doesn't get very loud, but it still sounds good near or at max volume.