The LG GX is a new TV in LG's 2020 lineup with a unique 'Gallery' design. It's a very thin TV that comes with a wall-mount instead of a stand, and it's meant to sit flush against the wall. Picture quality is excellent; like any OLED, it can individually dim pixels, resulting in an infinite contrast ratio and perfect black uniformity. It displays a wide color gamut for HDR content, but it has an aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter, so large areas aren't bright. It has variable refresh rate (VRR) support, a near-instant response time, a Black Frame Insertion feature, and low input lag for gaming. Unfortunately, like any OLED, it has the risk of permanent burn-in, which can be an issue if you watch content with static elements all the time, like the news, but it shouldn't pose too much of a problem if you watch varied content. Lastly, it has wide viewing angles, which is great for wide seating arrangements.
Note: We bought the optional stand with the TV for testing and didn't use the included wall-mount. We've read reports of people having a hard time setting up the TV, but this isn't something we test for. If you experience any issues, let us know in the discussions. If you don't plan on wall-mounting it, the LG CX OLED is a very similar TV that comes with a stand and costs less.
The LG GX OLED is an amazing all-around TV. It's an ideal choice for watching movies in a dark room because of its nearly infinite contrast ratio and perfect black uniformity. Gamers should enjoy the 120Hz refresh rate, VRR support, near-instant response time, and low input lag. It also has wide viewing angles if you want to watch the big game in a wide seating arrangement. Unfortunately, it has the risk of permanent burn-in, so it's not ideal to use as a PC monitor because of the static elements of most user interfaces.
The LG GX OLED is an incredible TV for watching movies. It has a nearly infinite contrast ratio and perfect black uniformity, so movies in a dark room look amazing. It upscales lower-resolution content well, and it removes 24p judder from any source. Sadly, because this TV has a near-instant response time, lower frame rate content may appear to stutter.
Great for TV shows. The LG GX has very wide viewing angles, great if you walk around while watching your favorite show. It has outstanding reflection handling but may not get bright enough to combat glare in well-lit environments. It upscales lower-resolution content, such as from cable boxes, without any problems. Unfortunately, it has the risk of permanent burn-in, which may be an issue if you constantly watch content with static elements, like the news.
The LG GX is excellent for watching sports. It has a near-instant response time, resulting in minimal motion blur, and it has wide viewing angles if you want to watch the game with a large group of friends. It performs well in bright rooms because it has outstanding reflection handling, but it doesn't get bright enough to combat a lot of glare. Our unit has a uniform screen with no dirty screen effect, but this may vary between units.
Outstanding for video games. The LG GX has a 120Hz refresh rate and VRR support to reduce screen tearing. Its response time is near-instant and it has a Black Frame Insertion feature. Input lag is also incredibly low. Also, it's amazing for dark-room gaming because of its nearly infinite contrast ratio. Sadly, it has the risk of permanent burn-in if you constantly play video games with an interface that has a lot of static elements, but we don't expect this to be an issue for most people.
Excellent for HDR movies. The LG GX has an infinite contrast ratio, displaying extremely deep blacks, and it has perfect black uniformity. It displays a wide color gamut for HDR, but it may not get bright enough in HDR to truly bring out highlights. Lower frame rate content may appear to stutter because of its near-instant response time. However, it can remove 24p judder from any source.
The LG GX is excellent for HDR gaming. It's packed with gaming features like VRR support, near-instant response time, and low input lag. HDR content looks good because it displays a wide color gamut, but it doesn't get very bright in that mode to truly make highlights stand out. Due to this TV's nearly infinite contrast ratio, it displays perfect blacks, great for dark-room gaming.
The LG GX is an excellent choice to use as a PC monitor. It has wide viewing angles, low input lag, and near-instant response time. It also displays chroma 4:4:4, which is important for reading text. Sadly, it has the risk of permanent burn-in, so static elements from a computer's interface may damage the screen over time, but this shouldn't be a problem if you watch varied content.
The LG GX OLED is a high-end TV in LG's OLED lineup. It's a new TV in 2020 and it sits right below the LG WX, which is an even thinner TV that comes with an external box instead of having the inputs on the TV. Its main competitors are the LG CX OLED, the Sony A8H OLED, and the Samsung The Frame 2020.
The LG GX has an incredible design. It's very thin and the TV has a uniform thickness throughout. There are tapered edges where the front and back panels meet, which allows the TV to sit flush against the wall when wall-mounted, making it look like a picture frame. It comes with LG's Flush Wall Mount, and you can buy feet separately if you don't want to wall-mount it.
LG sells feet you can buy separately for this stand, which is what we did, and they hold the TV well. If you don't plan on wall-mounting it, then consider the LG CX OLED, which is a very similar TV that's cheaper and it comes with a stand.
Footprint of the 55" stand: 45.4" x 10.7".
The back of this TV is made out of metal. In the photo, there's a cover where the dedicated wall-mount goes, and you can also VESA-mount it if you choose. There's an L-shaped panel covering the inputs and it allows you to route wires to the center of the TV if you wall-mount it. There's also cable management through the optional feet.
The LG GX is very thin and won't stick out when wall-mounted. It's even thinner than the Samsung The Frame 2020.
Since this TV 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 GX has okay peak brightness. It gets bright enough to combat glare in moderately-lit rooms, but it may not be good enough for a bright environment. Because of its aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), its brightness isn't very consistent across different content and it quickly becomes dim with large, bright areas.
We measured peak brightness before calibration, although we normally take the results after calibration. This is because calibrating the TV significantly improved the 100% peak window up to 269 cd/m², while the other results only slightly improved by one or two nits. Since calibration changes per unit, not every TV would get brighter like ours, and some may get dimmer.
We measured the SDR peak brightness in the 'Expert (Dark Room)' Picture Mode with OLED Light at its max and Peak Brightness setting on 'High'. We got the brightest image possible with these settings, as seen in the 10% peak window test.
Decent brightness in HDR. This TV gets bright enough to bring out small highlights in HDR. However, like in SDR, it quickly loses its brightness as large, bright areas cover the screen because of its aggressive ABL.
We measured HDR peak brightness in the 'HDR Cinema' Picture Mode with OLED Light at its max, Peak Brightness set to 'High', and Color Temperature set to 'Warm 2'.
If you want the brightest image possible, set the Picture Mode to 'HDR Vivid' with its default settings.
The LG GX has excellent gray uniformity. There's very minor dirty screen effect in the center, but it shouldn't be distracting during sports. However, like most OLED TVs, there are faint vertical and horizontal lines that may be visible in near-dark scenes.
Note: Gray uniformity may vary between units.
Just like the LG CX OLED, the LG GX has outstanding reflection handling. You shouldn't have any issues placing this opposite a window.
Update 12/08/2020: We remeasured the accuracy after calibrating our spectroradiometer. The review has been updated.
Decent out-of-the-box color accuracy. Most colors are slightly inaccurate and white balance is off, which affects shades of gray. The color temperature is slightly cold and for the most part, gamma follows the target curve well, except extremely bright scenes may be too bright.
We had to calibrate the TV twice because we had difficulty calibrating the 5% and 10% gray stimulus levels while being connected to HDMI 1. We calibrated it again through HDMI 2, so these results are taken from HDMI 2. The color accuracy only slightly improved and you can see our original results from HDMI 1 here:
Note: Color accuracy may vary between units.
After calibration, color accuracy is almost perfect. Any remaining inaccuracies are almost impossible to spot with the naked eye and the color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target.
We originally calibrated the LG GX through HDMI 1. While trying to calibrate the 10% gray stimulus, it heavily affected the 5% gray stimulus to the point where the screen looked blue. This made it difficult to get a proper image post-calibration. We recalibrated it a second time on HDMI 2, and even though it slightly decreased the final score, it resulted in a better final image. You can see our original results here:
You can see our recommended settings here.
The LG GX has an RGBW pixel structure, but all four pixels are never used at the same time. The image above shows the white, blue, and green subpixels. You can see alternate pixel pictures here: Photo 1 and Photo 2. This pixel structure isn't ideal for use as a PC monitor because it affects the way text is displayed.
Excellent color gamut. This TV 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.
The EOTF follows the target curve fairly well until it rolls off at its peak brightness. The EOTF in 'Game' mode is almost the exact same.
If you find HDR too dim, enable Dynamic Tone Mapping and set Dynamic Contrast to 'Medium'. It resulted in a bit brighter image, as you can see in this EOTF.
Okay color volume. Thanks to its nearly infinite contrast ratio, it displays deep, saturated colors well. However, it struggles to display brighter colors.
Good gradient handling, but it's not as good as the LG CX OLED. There's noticeable banding in grays and greens and a bit in reds and blues. Setting Smooth Gradation to 'High' helps smooths out gradients in real content, but it didn't affect the test pattern. Setting it to 'Medium' or 'Low' doesn't affect the gradients all that much. If you want an OLED TV with better gradient handling, check out the Sony A9S OLED.
The LG GX doesn't have any temporary image retention, even after displaying a high-contrast static image for 10 minutes.
Note: Temporary image retention may vary between units.
Unfortunately, like most OLED TVs, the LG GX 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 Automatic Pixel Refresher that can be run manually if needed.
You can read about our investigation into this here.
The LG GX has a Black Frame Insertion feature that helps improve the appearance of motion. For it to flicker at 60Hz for 60fps content, set TruMotion to 'User' and OLED Motion to 'High'. It always flickers at 120Hz for 120fps content if you have TruMotion enabled with OLED Motion on any setting. The BFI feature doesn't look as good with 120fps content as it does with 60fps content (above photo) and the crosstalk is bad, so there may be some motion artifacts.
The LG GX can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120fps, which is known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It does a good job at smoothing out motion and it doesn't stop interpolating even in busy scenes, but this may lead to artifacts with fast-moving content. However, the artifacts are hard to notice and not too distracting.
See here for the settings that control the motion interpolation feature.
Due to the TV's very quick response time, there's noticeable stutter with lower frame rate content because each frame is held on longer. Enabling the motion interpolation feature can help reduce this issue.
The LG GX removes 24p judder from any source, as long as Real Cinema is enabled. It can remove judder from 24p content with OLED Motion set to 'Auto', 'Low', or 'Medium'. However, it doesn't remove judder with OLED Motion set to 'High' becauses the backlight flickers at 60Hz. With 60p content, you have to set OLED Motion on 'Medium' or 'Auto' because 'Low' doesn't remove judder completely.
The LG GX supports variable refresh rate technologies to reduce screen tearing. With an Xbox One S connected to the TV, we disabled the FreeSync setting and enabled the G-SYNC setting. The Xbox showed VRR was still working, so we were able to confirm the TV supports HDR Forum VRR.
Find out more about the VRR settings here.
Update 11/04/2020: We've retested the input lag at 4k @ 120Hz with chroma 4:4:4 and VRR using an HDMI 2.1 source. The results are consistent with the LG CX OLED's.
The LG GX has the same low input lag as the LG CX OLED. It's the lowest with VRR enabled, which is great. To achieve the lowest input lag possible, you have to be in 'Game' mode. The TV has an 'Auto Low Latency Mode' that automatically switches into 'Game' mode when a game from a compatible device is launched. For it to work, simply enable Instant Game Response. Sadly, you can't use the motion interpolation feature in 'Game' mode.
If you're using this TV as a PC monitor and want the lowest input lag possible, set the input icon to 'PC' in the Home Dashboard.