LG OLED C1 Review & Rating

As an upper mid-range model, the LG OLED C1 positions itself between the somewhat weaker and more attractively priced LG OLED B1 and the flat LG OLED G1 Evo from the Gallery series.

The direct competitors of the LG OLED C1 include Sony’s A80J OLED home theater TV, Samsung’s brighter QN90A, and Philips’ 806 model with Ambilight.

In terms of design and workmanship, LG relies on excellent quality for this model as well. The stand and front are made of metal and emphasize the elegant and high-quality appearance of the LG OLED C1. The back of our LG OLED model, the LG OLED65C19LA to be precise, is pure white.

Only the stand seems a bit big to us and doesn’t look quite as chic on the back when you take a closer look at our 65-inch C19 variant.

On the other hand, the included base offers the LG OLED TV a stable hold and robustly counteracts wobbles. The size of the screen area is nicely accentuated by the narrow edge.

If you don’t have the necessary space on your sideboard or living room wall at home, you can comfortably mount the LG OLED TV on the wall due to a low device depth.

Nevertheless, you should make sure to leave a certain distance between the case and the brickwork. The reason: Some interfaces are aligned towards the back and will otherwise be difficult to reach.

Apart from the 48, 55, 65 and 77 inch sizes, the C1 model also comes in an 83 inch size for the first time. So, if you have the spare change for the maximum size of this LG TV, a monster of a screen is waiting for you.

Basically, the C1 starts with a 120Hz 10-bit OLED panel ex-works. However, this is not always the case. According to our information, some C1 models are also shipped with the Evo panel, which actually works in the G1 model.

Unlike LG’s Gallery model, however, the OLED Evo panel in the C1 is controlled differently and thus not brighter compared to the standard version. Nevertheless, the Evo panel benefits the Smart TV in terms of durability. You cannot influence which panel you will get in the end.

As usual for OLED TVs, the C1 has a theoretically infinitely high contrast and of course a perfect black level. LCDLCD = Liquid Crystal Display – a type of screen using liquid crystals for creating the image displays are clearly at a disadvantage in this respect. Our guide reveals the details of OLED, VA, IPS and other panel types.

Combined with a high color space coverage, OLEDs have an immensely good picture quality – especially with HDR-supported content.  Thanks to the strong gray and black uniformity, you also do not have problems with the so-called dirty screen effect or blooming.

On the other hand, OLEDs struggle with a lower overall brightness in comparatively bright surroundings compared to high-end LED-LCD TVs like Samsung’s QN95A. The 760 nitsSI unit of luminance: 1 nit = 1 cd/m² – The best way of measuring and comparing a TVs brightness   on the C1 simply cannot keep up.

Under normal conditions, reflections and specularity are less of an issue as long as there is no significantly brighter light source shining directly onto the screen. However, the OLED screen of LG’s OLED C1 is not completely free of reflections. You can conjure up a lot more quality on the screen’s surface via the picture settings in a model of this price range.

A very wide viewing angle ensures that image content hardly loses any quality. A full-length movie or series program is thus comfortably possible even in large groups.

Computing operations are performed by the powerful Alpha9 Gen4 AI processor. This provides the C1 with more than enough power reserves that the TV can unleash for visual optimization and image processing.

Friends of HDR 10+ or HDR10+ Adaptive are basically left out in the cold with LG. The manufacturer from South Korea relies on Dolby Vision IQ to optimize compatible HDRHigh Dynamic Range – image/video with more dynamic range (contrast range) content and dynamically adapt it to the ambient brightness.

The ABL – abbreviated for Automatic Brightness Limiter – shows slight conspicuities in dark scenes and sudden changes. The OLED Evo panel could remedy this. However, we cannot say for sure at the moment.

A very short response time under 1 ms lets the motion handling of the 120 HzHertz is the derived SI-unit of frequency with 1Hz=1/s – When talking about TVs this means how many different pictures a TV can display in one second. panel react immediately. Perfect for all sports fans and gamers, since blurry movements are hardly noticeable.

The disadvantage: A high response time tends to mean more image jerking – so-called stutter. This is especially noticeable in slow camera movements.

The correction is usually made by the frame interpolation. The better this works, the less such jerks are noticed by the viewer and the more trouble-free the viewing experience is.

A disadvantage of the calculation of intermediate frames is again the fact that an optical impression called soap opera effect can occur.

The OLED C1 again mercilessly removes the differently long display of single frames – called judder – from all available sources.

As you can see in the graph on the left, our in-house measurement confirms LG’s low response time stated by the manufacturer.

The deviation is ~0.2 ms in our case.

Gamers will get their money’s worth with LG’s OLED C1. The model from the C-series really shows off in terms of gaming features. In short: You truly have the whole range of possibilities at your disposal.

Starting with the aforementioned motion handling with a low delay, you can make your way through your favorite game with an input lag of about 12 ms at 4k@60Hz.

Four full-fledged HDMI 2.1 interfaces are also on board. Gaming at 4k with 120 HzHertz is the derived SI-unit of frequency with 1Hz=1/s – When talking about TVs this means how many different pictures a TV can display in one second. and an input lag of about 5 ms is thus possible.

So far, only owners of an Xbox Series X can fully enjoy this feature and also benefit from Dolby VisionDynamic HDR-format with a color depth of up to 12 Bits and Mastering of up to 10,000 Nits gaming at this point. You can also take a look at our buying guide for the best TVs for the Xbox Series X.

To enable the low input lag, the C1 has ALLM. In addition, you can enjoy VRR, AMD Freesync Premium and the equivalent from Nvidia called G-SyncVariable Refresh Rate for Nvidia graphics cards – goodbye to annoying screen tearing.

All in all, LG offers the best implementation of gaming specs in our opinion and is also a real pioneer in terms of gaming updates.

As TVs have become flatter over time, the casing has become increasingly smaller as a so-called sound box. Although manufacturers can design more freely as a result, this fact is ultimately at the expense of an immersive soundscape.

We also observed this in the LG C1. Although the 2.2-channel sound system sounds decent with a total of 40 watts of power, it is not as powerful in terms of bass. This is especially noticeable in action-packed movies.

Thus, you cannot expect a sound that carries you away with the C1. However, dialogs sound clean and are reproduced intelligibly.

If you turn up the speakers on the C1 to the limit, the sound sources overdrive and only deliver very distorted tones. However, the quality is absolutely sufficient for normal everyday use.

You will usually use a device of this price range together with either a soundbar or a large home theater system with an AV receiver. The C1 model offers quite a few options for this. Although you will have to do without DTSMulti-channel-sound-system (Surround Sound) competing with Dolby Digital as audio formats, you will benefit from uncompressed Dolby Atmos in the Dolby True HD codec thanks to the HDMI eARC connection.

Meanwhile, version 6 of WebOS has found its way onto LG’s current TV devices. The smart TV manufacturer did not reach a milestone, but still offers a good operating system. You can navigate through the dashboard intuitively and tidily and access a large selection of apps and streaming services.

As is now common for other large smart TV manufacturers, LG also displays ads diligently on the screen.

Using the Magic Remote in its new design, you can control the C1 easily and surprisingly simply. Alternatively, you can use voice assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, or you can use the input keys on the remote control in an unconventional way.

You can also connect other smart home applications with LG’s AI ThinQ interface, display them on the dashboard, and control them via the Magic Remote. A built-in twin tuner provides you with a time shift and USB recording function. Apple Airplay 2 is also available.

You can see from the so-called EOTF curve of our stepped brightness measurement before the screen calibration of the C1 that the TV displays some areas a bit darker and others a bit brighter than desired.

At a lower brightness, our results are below the bright setpoint curve in yellow. Simply put, the curve shows whether the TV displays different brightness ranges as necessary.

If you look at the color gradient on the right, you can see that the device does not reproduce the color values as accurately as necessary. The reason: The screen needs a mixture of differently colored OLED subpixels to generate most colors.

Currently, however, the pixels are not well matched to each other. This leads to more or less strong color deviations in the display. In short: If the basic colors do not match, this naturally affects the entire color representation.

Overall, the image reproduction is much more accurate after the calibration. The individual brightness levels are now reproduced more accurately by the C1 and displayed as intended. Of course, the error rate is also correspondingly low.

As you can easily see, the result is still not perfect. Although there is still room for improvement, we can say that the picture quality has visibly improved.

As you can see, you practically can’t avoid calibrating a TV in this price range. Therefore, we explicitly advise you to deal with this issue when buying expensive devices in order to really get the most out of your TV.

In contrast to the measured values before the HDR calibration, the measurement in the conventional SDR brightness range is clearly above the desired setting over the entire curve.

This means that the TV output was too bright in many brightness ranges and we readjusted these areas. You can also see this in the error output in the bar chart at the top right. You can also see from the RGB balance below that red, blue and green are not exactly on top of each other.

As was already apparent with the color gradient before the HDRHigh Dynamic Range – image/video with more dynamic range (contrast range) adjustment, the individual color values here also deviate relatively strongly from our setting standard.

In this case, however, not the values for red and green tones, but especially the values for blue and magenta. Finally, we can also say here that the individual color values are not particularly well distributed to each other overall.

Also after the calibration in the SDRStandard Dynamic Range – image/video with a conventional gamma curve (opposite: HDR) – “normal” videos room, all values make a positive leap upwards. The brightness range is almost completely in the target range and is now displayed cleanly by the C1.

Display errors have decreased significantly. The color balance now also gives a considerably cleaner image.

The adjustment also brought significant progress in terms of color accuracy. Only the blue tones are not displayed quite correctly. Red and consequently also magenta are now reproduced more accurately by the TV. The magenta tone still has a residual error due to the deviation of the blue pixel.

Although also not quite perfectly balanced, we could still correct the display quality upwards.