Guys every time I sit down to write a review I give it everything I mean sometimes I can be a
little extra but as my late father was fond of telling me anything worth doing is worth
doing well but this review this one's a little different the LG G4 OLED Evo is
something special so it deserves a special review because guys LG did it they finally did it stick
around hey welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and I hope you don't mind if I wax a little poetic
today see I've been reviewing TVs for a while now I've watched Titans fall I've seen a phoenix
rise from the ashes and today I can now say I've watched an underdog claw their way up and take a
big win the LG G4 OLED TV is only the second TV I've thoroughly tested this year but I have zero
doubt it is a finalist for the best TV of 2024 after all the comparisons and shootouts are over
I won't be surprised if the LG G4 takes the throne but whether it does or not it's already a winner
because it represents a monumental achievement for LG by the end of this video you'll know
exactly what I mean but for now we need to get on with this TV review so so let's have some fun now
for sure LG has the new OLED M Wireless series of the same build but I still tend to think of
the gallery series here as LG's flagship and as LG's flagship TV it's got the best of everything
built in it's got LG's OLED Evo technology with micro lens array panel a hardware and software
combo that delivers the brightest punchiest OLED picture available on the market it's got four HDMI
2.1 inputs with support for up to 4K 120 HZ input signals with variable refresh rate including free
sync and Nvidia G-Sync certifications it's got LG's gaming dashboard HGiG under .1 millisecond
input lag time the list of tech acronyms go on and on and on it's got just about everything you could
want and then some the only thing it's missing is an ATSC 3.0 tuner and I just can't bring
myself to docket points for that perhaps the most important feature though is the brains of the LG
G4 operation that would be LG's a11 AI processor 4K now I'll be getting into why LG's processing is
such a Triumph later in this video so be sure to stick around for that because it's everything now
there are only two things with which I'm not just wildly in love with when it comes to the LG G4 two
things well maybe three things that are very much a matter of subjective opinion with which you may
very well disagree so let's just get those out of the way so we can get on with the champagne party
here one is LG's web OS It Is by no means a bad user interface and in fact I appreciate that the
only ads that do appear here are for Content that you can watch no retail ads and that goes a long
way with me I'm just not in love with the look and feel of this it's it's little things like the fact
that the streaming app section is comprised of the smallest icons on the page I think they should be
the biggest thing on the page because that's what I really want to see and I think that's what most
folks are there to use and while I appreciate tremendously frequent updates that keep the OS
running smooth and the app sporting the latest features the app updates come so frequently
that it seems like I can't go two days without having to approve an app update before I can
start watching TV I'm also over the magic motion remote this is not a new comment for me I know it
makes LG different and it helps it stand out but it's just not my cup of tea and then there's the
TV sound which can be impressive in many ways but which I found to be frustrating more often
than not amazingly using LG's AI sound feature is the best sounding option available but in all of
the stock audio modes I found dialogue to be both too low in loudness compared to other sounds and
difficult to understand at times it's true the audio can be impressive in its expansiveness and
virtual surround effects and it's got some bass I watched a couple of segments of a couple of Star
Trek movies and you could sense the rumble of the ship's engines for sure but the the core of the
sound the Fidelity I'm hoping for is just I don't know I'm pretty picky it's decent but believe it
or not the much less expensive high sense u8n sounds far better to me and that's the thing
you spend this much money on a TV you want it to sound really good at all times but I'm willing to
forgive the LG G4 for all of that I mean I prefer to use an Apple TV box with my TVs anyway I almost
always have at least a soundbar connected and as for the remote well there's just no way I
would want to miss out on this picture quality so if this picture quality comes with this remote
so be it I'll live and I will live quite happily because the unmitigated truth is the LG G4 OLED TV
more than earns every penny you spend on it with its picture quality alone the G4 is the finest TV
LG has ever made and I'm inclined to say it has the best picture quality I've ever seen now hold
on I know some of you out there may be picking your jaws up off the floor because I have given
similar praise to the Sony A95L OLED TV and make no mistake I'm not making a final determination
on which is better between the LG G for and the A95L until I have put them head-to-head but the
reason I say I'm inclined to say that LG G4 has the best picture quality I've ever tested in a
TV is because by some measures it does do things the Sony A95L simply does not do and depending
on what your preferences are for picture quality there's a good chance that you will prefer the G4
if it's stacked up against the Sony A95L but that Battle Royale is scheduled for a future
date it's time to get down to Brass tax with the LG G4 here and Brass tax may as well be code for
what's coming next which is of course numbers for Knit nerds now if you're not a super TV geek and
you don't want to hear about things like peak brightness and HDR tone curve adjustments EOTF
tracking and such worry not you can skip ahead to the picture quality section of this review by
clicking the time code link down below I'll sum up my findings and you'll still know everything
you need to know about why the picture quality is so outstanding on this TV but for those of you who
get geeked when I bust out the Spectro and the Colorimeter and the Cowman well here we go okay
so here's the deal Nit Nerds the peak brightness measurement numbers on the LG G4 are borderline
meaningless that's because the test patterns we have to work with are of zero interest to the a11
AI processor which makes all the decisions about how brightness is going to work on this t TV and
it only works when there's real content on the screen so I'll go ahead and read some numbers
off here but stay focused on the color accuracy color gamut the white balance all of which you
already know are going to be excellent because the peak white light measurements I'm about to get to
will not be telling us about how bright this TV can be and I will explain more about that later
with that said here's the old measurement rundown with the charts included feel free to pause the
video on the chart of your interest as we're gonna run through this stuff pretty fast in stock SDR
filmmaker mode Peak brightness from a 10% window a reminder that this doesn't mean anything just
saying for reference came in at 361 nits that's after turning the Eco setting off depending on how
you tweak the settings though or if you choose a different picture mode this number can go as
high as 650 nits two white balance in SDR stock filmmaker mode came in exemplary Delta e around 1
for 30 and 100% stimulus and even if you max out the brightness it holds to under a Delta
e of two on the high side which again is exemplary grayscale as perfect as I've ever seen coming out
of the box just incredible color primary accuracy again as good as I've seen without a calibration
just astonishing we'll throw up some more SDR measurement charts for you but the long and the
short of it is that there weren't any errors over a Delta e of two if they were even that high and
anything under three is supposedly not discernible by the human eye anyway so to see these results is
just I mean as accurate as it gets out of the box guys so satisfying to see this happen in
real time when I measured but honestly I'm most impressed with low luminance color performance
this was an issue in Prior years and it appears LG solved for it I don't know how they did it but
that's an achievement worth recognizing now in HDR grayscale tracking was perfect it followed
the EOTF perfectly even at its brightest the color temperature stayed pure just unreal Peak
brightness and I'll repeat I cannot stress this enough this measurement means very little I almost
don't even want to read it but 1,500 nits at various window sizes up to 10% and then it falls
down to 235 at full screen for me doesn't matter though this is the brightest OLED TV out there
and by a not insignificant margin color matching in HDR was impeccable even with luminance error
it was still excellent close to a reference grade display already and we've got 97.5% DCI 3 and 73%
BT.2020 UV color gamut coverage that's one place where we see the WRGB OLEDs coming in uh under QD
OLED that bt2020 color coverage for which honestly there is precious little content to take advantage
AG one more thing before we move out of the knit nerd section here I want to explain why it is that
the brightness measurements don't tell us much about how bright the G4 can get part of the new
processor and processing this TV is outfitted with involves pixel level picture analysis and
part of that analysis includes some very specific decisions around how brightness is applied to the
picture so rather than break the image down into a bunch of zones and then make brightness decisions
around that the a11 AI processor takes a look at each pixel within the context of the whole
image in doing so it's able to achieve a higher average Picture level while also maintaining
bright highlight detail so when you combine LG's brightness booster Max with the fact that you can
manually adjust how the TV applies tone mapping which you can see right here you can choose to
make HDR content brighter than it's specified to be if you want or or you can choose to view it
exactly as it was meant to look which by the way is best viewed in a dark environment so
this solves a pain Point folks often have with HDR content looking too dark in their viewing
environment in addition to helping the TV achieve higher overall brightness or average Picture level
than any other OLED TV that I've tested today the trick though is that that processing work is
not applied when we're looking at white boxes on the screen it only kicks in when you're watching
actual content now I suppose that LG could have programmed the G4 to recognize when a test pattern
is on the screen and tell it to max out at all costs but they didn't in a future versus video
I'll show you how the G4 looks much brighter than competing OLEDs even competing OLEDs which measure
as brighter TVs thanks to the processing work at play here but even without that comparison
you can probably see here that the G4 is capable of incredible brightness we actually brought in
much brighter studio lights just so that we could bias this shot correctly without these brighter
studio lights we'd have to expose for the TV and the rest of the room would look extremely dark
in comparison kind of a fun problem to have and honestly it's one we didn't expect to run into
with an OLED TV we thought we'd need these new lights for the 4,000 nit and higher mini LED sets
that are on the way but here's the LG G4 showing us that OLED TVs are very much at home in a bright
viewing environment just as well as they can be optimized for darker viewing environments too
okay so for those of you who may have skipped the knit nerd section here's a quick summary of what
we have learned the LG G4 is capable of being one of the most accurate TVs we've ever tested should
you choose one of the more accurate picture modes like filmmaker mode and we've learned that the G4
is the brightest OLED TV we've tested to date when it's asked to be and that's a key distinction the
G4 can be dialed in to work in Darker viewing environments and it can be optimized to work
extremely well in bright rooms as well you don't have to choose one or the other you can have both
you just need to put in a little work optimizing some picture settings so that you can have the
picture you want when you want it this is all owed to an unprecedented level of flexibility
that the G4 offers and how it's set up see a lot of folks have been complaining that HDR
content looks too dark when they view it in a normally lit room in truth the HDR image is
being displayed exactly as it's supposed to be the problem is that it was programmed to be viewed in
a dark room the lg4 allows you to override those HDR parameters a bit so that you can
raise the overall brightness of the TV and still get dazzling HDR height highlights thanks to the
ge4 Stellar processing color accuracy and color saturation is incredible low luminance color is
excellent the motion processing is outstanding I mean there's not a whole lot more I can say
about this TV other than to say that it's one of the best if not the best TVs that you can
buy in 2024 and it has precious few peers too no matter what kind of panel type we're talking about
in short it's the most capable and versatile OLED TV I've ever for tested and I'll add that it is a
significantly more capable TV than last year's G3 OLED so if you're wondering if it's worth paying
more for the G4 I'm going to have to go ahead and say yes this time the G4 is quite an achievement
and offers more Revolution than Evolution this year and to make the G4 an even more enticing
option LG offers a 5year warranty on the G4 and that warranty includes burn-in protection
so any concern that this TV's immense brightness capabilities could end up being a liability is
significantly waylaid knowing that if there is a burn-in issue in spite of all the Productions that
LG puts into place it will be covered in the first 5 years of ownership I think that shows a pretty
tremendous amount of confidence on LG's part which I think fairly translates into confidence for the
owner as well now let me come back around to why I think LG deserves all this special acknowledgement
for the achievement that the LG G4 OLED represents watching LG inch closer and closer to Sony's
revered processing year after year and each year I've had to say LG is getting closer but Sony's
still got them this year though is different while LG's best processing and Sony's best processing
each offered different versions of Excellence I've got to put LG right up next to Sony now the motion
the clarity the color the detail man the detail LG's got it all sewed up in the G4 and that is a
big deal folks because now that we have LG hitting just as hard as Sony in the processing Department
I think we're going to see each company pushing to outdo each other and that kind of competition
tends to breed Innovation so congrats to LG for creating one of the finest consumer televisions
ever made the LG G4 is absolutely gorgeous and is worth every cent you'll spend on it it
makes everything that you watch or play look it's absolute best better than many of you will have
even thought possible and because it's an OLED it looks good at virtually any angle from any seat in
the house frankly if there was a way to give an extra gold star to my unreserved editor's choice
award I totally would or you know what I mean maybe I just did thanks as always for watching
everyone there's lots more coverage of the LGG for coming up so subscribe now so you don't miss it if
you like this video please click that thumbs up button and please share your thoughts and
questions down in the comment section so that I can address them in future videos thank you so
much I'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like
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