a Fantastic OLED, but Only a Small Upgrade Over Last Year

Year in and year out, LG’s C-Series OLEDs make it to the top of many recommendation lists. As someone who reviews TVs for a living, I’ve helped a few friends invest in one, and they’re always incredibly satisfied. The new C5 OLED is poised to continue that tradition, and for good reason.

It’s a bit brighter than last year’s C4, has excellent color accuracy, and produces the kind of deep, inky black levels that OLED TVs are known for. It also boasts more AI features (as does everything nowadays) and a long-needed remote redesign.

However, the changes to the C5 aren’t dramatic. Compared to the C4, this is more of an incremental improvement than a big upgrade. That’s not a bad thing, since the C4 remains an excellent TV, but at full MSRP, there’s little reason to go for the pricier C5 while last year’s model is available for less.

Of course, the C4 will eventually sell out, and the C5 will drop in price as the year goes on. When that happens, the C5 will become a better value and a top contender for the best TV of 2025.

A familiar design, but the remote has been refreshed

The C-Series is one of LG’s most expansive TV lines, so it’s no surprise that the C5 is available in six sizes: 42, 48, 55, 65, 77, and 83 inches. The MSRP ranges from $1,400 to $5,400, but many sizes are already marked down a few hundred bucks, and bigger deals will likely pop up later in the year. My review sample is a 65-inch model provided by LG. All sizes but the 42-inch version use an angled pedestal stand (the 42-inch TV has two widely spaced feet).

The connections are around the left side of the TV (when facing its front) and consist of four HDMI 2.1 ports (with eARC on HDMI 2), three USB 2.0 ports, LAN, optical audio out, RS-232C, RF antenna, and an IR blaster port. The TV also supports Bluetooth 5.3 and WiFi 6E connectivity. The power cable is hard-wired and extends from the middle of the set. The back of the panel has an interesting textured marble look and feel. I’ll admit that I dig it, but am also a bit surprised when cool design elements like this are so hidden, considering few are likely to see the panel’s rear.

One of the C5’s biggest changes isn’t even on the TV itself. It’s a new design for LG’s Magic Remote. I’ve never been much of a Magic Remote fan, so I was excited that a change was in store. While the old Magic Remote had a chunky curved design that was meant to be ergonomic (I never found it to be), the new one has a more traditional rectangular design. It fits more comfortably in my hand, and there are significantly fewer buttons, as the redesign has removed all number functions.

It’s a vast improvement over previous iterations, but it’s still not perfect. For one, it isn’t backlit, which is annoying in a dark room, and there’s no input select button. Instead, you need to navigate through the Home menu to select an input on screen. There also isn’t a dedicated mute button. Muting can still be achieved by holding the volume down button. But by mapping the function this way, it’s now difficult to quickly lower the volume rather than completely mute it. It’s just an odd design choice.

The Magic Remote still has its motion control tech, which lets you wave it around like a wand to move a virtual cursor on the screen. This remains a divisive feature, and there’s still no way to turn it off completely. You have the option to click down on a directional pad to navigate the TV in a traditional manner, but the motion controls get reactivated if you move the scroll wheel. Hopefully, at some point in the future, LG will add a way to fully deactivate the wand and just allow it to be a regular remote.

The C5 delivers great picture quality with a touch more brightness than the C4

TVs — especially those in the midrange class and above — have grown so close in performance that it’s hard to find significant fault with all that much. This is even more true for the best OLED TVs, because no matter the price point, they have perfect black levels at the pixel level (since the pixels can actually turn off) and they’re generally highly color accurate.

The LG C5 is no exception. I measured the C5 using a Portrait Displays C6 HDR5000 colorimeter, G1 pattern generator, Konica Minolta LS-100 light meter, and Calman calibration software. The LG C5 ships in Auto Power Save mode, which has an extreme blue tint and overbrightens most of the midtone grays. For an accurate picture, the first thing you should do is switch into either Filmmaker or Cinema mode. After that, navigate to the energy saving option in the General settings menu and change Energy Saving Step from Auto to Off. This will unlock the brightness adjustments.

In Filmmaker and Cinema modes, high dynamic range (HDR) grayscale accuracy tracks incredibly well. DeltaE (dE) errors, which indicate how close the measurements are to perfect readings (the lower the better), were under the perceptible value of 2.3. The C5 covers 98.6% of the P3 color gamut and 73.34% of BT.2020, both improvements over last year’s C4. Standard dynamic range (SDR) performance is equally impressive, with an average grayscale dE of just 1.9, a gamma of 2.21, and 98.7% coverage of Rec.709 (the standard SDR color gamut used for most cable, satellite, and live TV streaming services).

In SDR with brightness set to 100, the C5 puts out 410 nits in a 10% window. If you plan on watching SDR content in a suitably dark room, a brightness setting of 11 brings light output down to 104 nits, just above the target of 100. If you prefer a slightly brighter picture for your SDR content, a setting of 40 brings light output up to 202 nits.

With an HDR signal, the LG C5 is capable of a bit more brightness than last year’s C4. Where the C4 measured just under 1,000 nits with a 10% window, the C5 hit 1,174 nits. The 200 nit improvement is enough to see a difference, and HDR content pops a bit more. But it still isn’t competing with the C5’s big brother, the G5, which can hit over 2,000 nits, or flagship Mini LED TVs from Hisense and TCL that can surpass a whopping 4,000 nits.

What does this brightness mean with actual content, though? Small, bright portions of the screen (called specular highlights) sparkle and add life to the picture when watching HDR movies and shows. This is especially true because of OLED tech’s ability to light a single pixel at a time. I was lucky to have my review period line up with the premiere of “Andor” season two, and just the opening title sequence, where the word Andor appears amid a space sky littered with stars, looked stunning. The blaster fire from the stolen TIE prototype lit up the Yavin IV night, as did the resulting explosions against the dark landscape.

Dark shadows also provide great detail. The piano against the back wall of Sapper Morton’s home in the early scenes of “Blade Runner 2049” stands apart and gives the image great dimensionality. On less capable TVs, the piano in this sequence tends to meld into the wall.

Colors on the C5 looked lush and rich. The hills of the Shire and the forests around Rivendell in “Fellowship of the Ring” were inviting and realistic. And the fireworks at Bilbo’s birthday celebration sparkled with light and color to the delight of all.

There have been some reports of display-related posterization/false contouring (blocky rather than smooth gradations of colors and shadows) when watching certain HDR10 videos on the C5. However, this didn’t occur during my testing, even when watching several dark/near-dark scenes in “Blade Runner 2049” and “Deathly Hallows Part 2” that can be tricky for some TVs to handle. It’s possible the C5 may display some contouring in isolated instances, but this appears to be tied to specific conditions rather than being a widespread flaw.

Like the C4 and past C-Series models, the C5 uses a traditional WOLED panel rather than a Quantum Dot OLED (QD-OLED) panel, which is used on some competing Samsung TVs, like the comparatively priced S90 series. The main shortcomings of WOLED when compared to QD-OLED are color volume and brightness. As such, I expect Samsung’s new S90F to be a bit brighter and have slightly wider color capabilities than the C5.

The marginal difference in color gamut won’t make much of an impact, but the jump in brightness should allow the S90F to deliver more sparkling highlights in certain HDR content. I’ll be testing the S90F in the coming weeks, so check back for details on how it compares to the C5.

The LG C5 is a very capable gaming TV

In the past, I’ve recommended the Samsung S90D to friends and readers as a gaming-centric television. It set itself apart from many direct competitors by supporting cloud gaming through the Xbox app with Game Pass, allowing access to a vast catalog of games without a console. It also has a high 144Hz refresh rate with PCs. Both of those features were missing on last year’s C4.

But the C5 levels the playing field. It now supports cloud gaming through the Xbox app and a 144Hz refresh rate with PCs. It also uses Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium variable refresh rate (VRR) technologies.

I played “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” through the Xbox app with a wired Gigabit connection, and overall was impressed. The image still isn’t as detailed as it is when playing the game locally on my Xbox Series X, and streaming causes some posterization (likely from compression), especially in dark portions of the screen, but the game was responsive. I would still opt for a console to get the best visuals, but using the app is a great way to get your gaming fix without dropping a few hundred dollars for a Series S or X.

Another small drawback to using cloud gaming instead of a console is that LG’s Game Optimizer menu is only available with an HDMI connection. I’m a fan of the Game Optimizer menu, which displays frame rate, VRR, latency, and black stabilizer information while making access to these gaming features quick and easy. Pressing the settings button on the remote will open the Game Optimizer menu instead of the usual settings menu you get while watching regular TV.

The one issue with the default Game Optimizer Picture Mode is that its color leans very blue. This does make the image appear brighter, but it causes the colors to be inaccurate. To bring the color accuracy in line with Filmmaker Mode, under the Picture menu, you can go to Advanced Settings, then Color, White Balance, and change Color Temperature from 0 to Warm 40. I also switched Color Gamut from Native to Auto Detect, and boosted OLED Pixel Brightness in the Brightness menu up to 100 (from the default of 80).

New AI features are mostly unnecessary, but Voice ID is a cool addition

This year, LG is touting a few new AI software features for its webOS smart TV system. A new AI Sound Wizard joins the previously available AI Picture Wizard. These modes let you customize your picture and sound settings by viewing different images and listening to different audio clips. Based on which images and audio clips you select, the system learns what kind of picture and sound elements you favor and then creates custom settings based on your preferences.

While that sounds cool in theory, these modes generally introduce unnecessary adjustments. If you’re unhappy with any of the TV’s built-in presets, it could be worth giving the AI Wizards a whirl, but you can get the most accurate performance by simply choosing the TV’s Filmmaker picture mode and Standard sound mode.

A more interesting addition, though, is the ability to have up to 10 different user profiles with unique preferences and content recommendations. Each profile can be tied to a Voice ID (after you agree to share your biometric data), so the TV will automatically switch to your profile when you speak into the remote. In my experience, it only took a few seconds for the profile switch to happen. The profile is linked to your LG account, and the settings and layout preferences are saved in the cloud, so you could sign into your friend’s C5 when you visit to pull up your own preferences easily (as long as there’s space to add your account).

That’s a niche example, but the ability for a family to easily switch between profiles so kids can access the apps most interesting to them, while one of their parents can later speak into the remote and call up their profile setup is an intriguing one.

Otherwise, LG’s webOS smart TV system remains much the same as it was last year. That is to say, it gets the job done but isn’t likely to wow you. You get access to all of the most popular streaming apps, and navigation speed is solid. The interface’s emphasis on ads and shopping recommendations is a bit of a drag, but you can disable these from appearing through the menu system.

While sound performance is lacking, Auracast inclusion is a welcome perk

There are few TVs out there with sound I would call decent. It’s an inherent flaw due to the thin design of modern displays, and very few are able to overcome it. Unfortunately, the C5 falls victim to this common pitfall. While dialogue can generally be heard clearly, the sound is thin and a bit tinny. If you’re buying a set like this, it’s worth adding a soundbar to the package to enhance the overall performance. Or better yet, an AVR with a full surround sound system.

On that note, the C5 does have an interesting feature that I hope to see added to more TVs: Auracast support. Samsung started to support it with select models in 2023, but it’s nice to see it on the C5. Auracast allows the TV to transmit over Bluetooth to any number of devices at the same time, as opposed to being limited to a single device. I tested this with a few different Auracast-capable headphones and earbuds, including the JBL Tour One M3 headphones, Earfun Air Pro 4 earbuds, and the LG xboom Buds.

In the Sound menu, you can turn on Auracast broadcasting and select a quality level: 16kHz, 24kHz, or 48kHz. Then, from your headphones app, you can connect to the broadcast signal with any number of devices. With the JBL and the LG headphones, the process worked flawlessly with audio playing through both, and I could watch without distracting my family or worrying about being too loud for my neighbors late at night. The Earfun were a bit tricky to get to work, but that was a fault of the earbuds and their app, as opposed to the C5.

There’s also no lag between headphones and the TV, so the Auracast connection could help people better control the intelligibility of what they’re watching.

Should you buy the LG C5 OLED TV?

I have no doubt that the LG C5 will eventually become one of the top midrange TVs of 2025. But right now, it’s hard to recommend it over the less expensive C4. The C4 is still available everywhere at a generous discount, and it’s likely to remain in stock for several more months.

While the C5 is a fantastic TV and in every way equal or better than the C4, its improvements aren’t earth-shattering or breathtaking enough to justify spending significantly more on it. (As of writing, the 65-inch C5 is $1,000 more than the C4.)

As soon as the C5 gets a bigger discount, though, it deserves strong consideration. With its performance improvements (however minor), the inclusion of Auracast, new AI and profile features, Xbox app support, and the new Magic Remote design, the LG C5 has a lot to offer.