Hello everyone it's SpawnPoIint and today we're taking a closer look at LG's 42-inch C2 and seeing
if this new smaller tv could make the ultimate desk setup monitor. It's got some serious gaming
focused features like 4k, hdmi 2.1, 120 hertz and vrr but it's also a great size for using as
a laptop or a pc monitor today we will pretty much cover it all including what it's like to
use as a productivity monitor for text photo and video editing as well as what the gaming mode is
like watching movies and the pros and cons of the lg c2 i think this 2022 tv will be one of if not
the most popular tv this year but it's not perfect and i will cover some of those issues
in today's review i also wanted to mention that box very kindly load me this tv so i
could make this video i have a link to their website below if you wanted to check them out
so first and foremost this is a tv that means it comes with all of the usual features you would
expect from a tv things like four hdmi 2.1 ports a remote control satellite input and the home
dashboard and this is where you navigate through all the streaming apps you've got installed and
the c2 does an incredible job at being a tv it looks sleek with the almost borderless design
it's lighter slimmer and takes up a pretty small footprint for its size it's also got the new a9
gen 5 chip which i can already say is far faster that we've seen before navigating around the home
screen or the app launcher is snappier and there's little to no lag now we've not had a 42 inch model
before so i cannot compare its weight to the c1 equivalent but a quick look at the 55 65 and 77
inch models you can see there's a huge saving on weight the 77 inch model which i have the c1 on
my wall is now six kilograms lighter so the c2 comes with a 4k oled display and with thanks to
its self lighting pixels is capable of producing deeper blacks and incredible contrast ratio and
this means pretty much everything that you view on it just looks awesome with these inky blacks
and no light bleed or blooming and the colors look great as well and provided you tweak it in
the settings which i will cover later the picture is sharp punchy and overall really enjoyable to
watch and for watching movies and tv shows this screen has once again blown me away not only does
it look good but from the content i've watched so far it runs really smoothly motion appears to be
good but i've definitely seen some slight judder depending on the movie that i'm watching i have
found that tweaking the true motion settings does help and there is the option to enable motion pro
but this massively darkens the screen and whether you're using this for gaming movies or work the
view and angles are stupidly good to the point that you can sit at pretty much any angle and
still view what's on the screen you won't lose any contrast color or brightness and talking of
brightness even though the 42 inch model does not have the brightness boost that we get in the 55
inch or larger models this is still adequate for most rooms and i don't think you'd be disappointed
right so to see whether the 42 inch screen could be used as a productivity monitor i've
hooked up my 2021 macbook pro now the c2 does not come with a usbc port so i will be using
the hdmi port instead although on the macbook it is unfortunately limited to 60hz and first
impressions coming from using a 38 inch ultra wide everyday this feels massive the width isn't really
the problem it's the height that's most noticeable and having a screen this size means being able to
snap multiple windows side by side which could be a huge productivity bonus and using the full
width of the screen and seeing the entire timeline for video editing is just ridiculous but there are
definitely downsides to using the screen of this size and that's when you're using a single app or
document the screen can sometimes feel slightly too big like here where i've got a single word
document in the middle of the screen making no use of those 42 inches as for the text clarity
well this is one of the most important things when using a tv or monitor i can tell you now
it is really good with it being a 42 inch screen the ppi is better on this than the larger screens
i did need to reduce the sharpness to zero as the default setting of 10 added some artifacts to the
edges but after this tweak i'm really happy with how it looks on the screen and i would have no
issue with using this screen to write documents or read text now the macbook screen is pretty hard to
beat when it comes to its color reproduction but i would happily say the colors on this look just as
good i did need to reduce the color slightly on the c2 as it was far too vibrant out of the box
but for editing photos in lightroom and then checking them on the macbook they look pretty
close oh and before i forget make sure you change the input setting to pc changing this in the
device settings will improve the response time of the screen and without this enabled there will be
a very slight delay when moving your mouse around to what you see on the screen something you will
definitely notice and will probably annoy you and another thing i want to talk about is abl or the
auto brightness limiter as unfortunately it is still a thing that means if you don't move your
mouse or you don't swap apps regularly the screen will gradually lower its brightness then as soon
as you move your mouse or you change the view the brightness pops back most of the time this is an
issue when you've got a full white screen so say a web page or a word document and if you're sitting
on a white page for what feels like 10 minutes or so the brightness will gradually lower but
this is actually quite rare for me because i'm always moving around or swapping taps even just
scrolling the mouse on a word document is enough to prevent the abl now i do understand you might
be able to switch this off with a service remote in the settings but it's not something i've tried
myself and it's not a huge issue for me but i can see eye strain being a concern if you're staring
at the screen all day and that's not because of its size or the brightness but because it's a
glossy screen and depending on the apps you're using if it's in dark mode you will likely see
a lot of reflections now the c2 definitely has a far better anti-reflective coating compared to say
the c1 but it is still a large black mirror saying that pretty much every monitor or laptop that you
can buy at the moment does come with a glossy screen so that is kind of normal and a question
i've been asked a lot over the last week is is it too big well this is definitely relative to how
big your desk is and how far you sit from it my desk measurements are on screen now so hopefully
give you an idea of how it looks i then sit around three feet or 90 centimeters from the screen
i'm probably about one foot too close here so if my desk was deeper or i sat further back it would
be perfect now although the macbook and the c2 are capable of 120 hertz the macbook is limited
to 60hz over hdmi now there may be adapters out there that takes a signal from thunderbolt to
displayport to hdmi but from the research that i've done over the last week i couldn't find
the right answer if this is something you can do please let me know in the comments
but if you're using a pc that supports 120hz over hdmi the c2 will be perfect for working on and
unfortunately you're not able to wake the tv from sleep via a laptop or a pc there's no standby mode
like we'd normally see with a monitor which means you do need to switch it on and off separately but
one workaround is to use the apple home kit and you can switch this on instead of using the remote
sure is not ideal but it definitely works well in my situation the c2 also has airplay
and screen mirroring built in so if you don't want to directly connect a device to it you can
essentially stream your macbook ipad or iphone straight to it so playing games on the c2 is
nothing short of incredible i honestly think this is going to be the best 2022 tv that's optimized
for gaming first up is packing some of the most requested features for gamers including 4k and
120 hertz support vrr a llm freesync and g-sync compatibility and whether you're wanting to use
it for the ps5 xbox series x or pc gaming this is the tv that does it all then we've got the game
optimizer mode which is a really cool feature that a click of a button shows you the current stats of
the game that you're playing things like if vrr is enabled what frame rate you're running at and
the selection of profiles that you can choose for different games and then the full game optimizer
area includes settings for reducing the blue light mode dark room mode and input lag then if you want
to edit the picture settings you can do this from here too oh and if you do use the game mode it
will lock some of the options under the picture settings so things like noise reduction and true
motion now as we all know we've had vrr on the xbox series x since launch but we've recently
had it enabled on the playstation 5. this means games run even smoother and in some cases faster
take spider-man where the developers have now enabled the 120hz and vrr support and it looks
insanely good on the lg c2 the motion is perfect and there's no screen terran or judder at all and
the response time on the c2 is as fast as it was on the c1 so it's rapid and every action or input
that i've tried is noticeably instant and then there's input lag which is incredibly low which
is essential for any fast-paced or competitive gaming like call of duty but there's one thing
that i need to mention that could be a big deal for you and that's the unfortunate removal of bfi
at 120 hertz or black frame insertion it's not something that i've tested or i can report having
a personal issue with but i understand this could be a problem for some users who have used in the
past now there is a really cool feature that pc users will now benefit from and that's the ultra
wide aspect ratio support so by going into the game optimizer mode you can now see there's an
extra option here to change you can go between 16 by nine 21 by nine or 32 by nine that will
work on any of those supported games but one of the biggest advantages of the lg oled over other
tvs is the fact that it comes with four hdmi 2.1 ports that means you can essentially use it for
the playstation 5 and xbox series x while still having two spare ports for connecting to an avr
or soundbar apple tv macbook pro or anything else i mentioned during my unboxing video that i would
show you all of the picture settings that i use so here they are now i've not calibrated the tv
with anything externally i've simply tweaked it for my own viewing experience generally i
start with the isf expert bright mode and i edit it from here i find that's pretty accurate and
works well for me so if you want to pause this section of the video and write down any of the
settings i'm using you can do so some of these settings include sdr content on various streaming
apps dolby vision content which looks insanely good and finally gaming sources again these are
for my own personal preference but as i know a lot of you have asked i thought i'd share them
also make sure you turn the energy saving mode and true motion off or at least reduce it to a very
low number i then usually have my oled brightness set to around 85 to 90 very rarely at 100 and some
of you might want to use the oled motion setting but for me is far too dim the picture instantly
reduces the brightness while what i assume is about 50 percent now the c2 does come with support
for google assistant alexa as well as apple's home kit this is great for adding it to scenes routines
or just controlling it from your phone here for example i can turn my tv on and off from the apple
homekit that's without needing to grab the remote or i can create a scene where it turns all of my
lights on and off as well as the tv lg do have their own app called thin iq this does pretty
much the same thing so if you're not using a smart home setup already this app will be useful for you
this year lg have added two new picture modes so we've got picture in picture as well as picture
by picture which allows you to display two inputs at the same time now i've used picture by picture
before on my 38 inch ultra wide and that's where i've had my ps5 and my macbook running
at the same time but unfortunately i couldn't get this to work on the c2 it appears only one
hdmi input can be used any one time so that means the possibility of having say a ps5 and a macbook
doesn't seem to be the case so will burning be a problem with the c2 well i've been using oled for
years since the c7 in 2017 and i can say i've never had a problem that doesn't mean burning
isn't real it just means the way that i use it has not caused any issues if you're using this
for gaming watching movies or streaming tv shows i don't think you've got anything to worry about
but even with my perfect record for no burnings i would still be cautious using as a monitor we
know burning is caused by having a static image on the screen for long periods of time so things like
the top navigation or the dock or sidebar could be a problem but we'd be talking about hundreds
and hundreds of hours without changing the screen at all if i was to use this purely for working on
my macbook i would likely hide the dock as well as a navigation bar just to be on the safe side
saying that there are various oled care protection options in the settings features that will make it
almost impossible to damage the screen things like pixel refreshing logo brightness and pixel
shifting now most tvs come with speakers built in that's not unusual but having speakers on a
monitor is a huge bonus now when you're watching tv you'll likely use the inbuilt speakers on this
which is packing a 2.2 channel down firing setup and you know what they sound good
sure they're not as powerful or as clear as a dedicated soundbot or speaker setup but they're
okay and as the c2 supports bluetooth you can pair a bluetooth headphones like the airpod max
you'll now be able to listen to whatever you're streaming on the tv let's take a quick look at
web os 6.0 which is the operating system that the tv is shipped with we've got the home screen where
any connected devices or smart home appliances are listed and then we've got the app launcher
which shows you all the installed apps things like netflix amazon and disney plus it all looks okay
and is relatively intuitive but one thing that is noticeably different on this year's model is
just how fast and snappy it is navigating around and scrolling through the apps is now effortless
kind of how it should be and that's down to the new a9 gen 5 chip that we have inside and it
makes using the home screen app launcher and the settings far less frustrating now this issue might
not be for everyone but if you have two lg tvs in the same room you might have a problem with
turning them on and off the remotes can be set up so they only control one tv at a time but
pressing the power button will still control any tv within sight a workaround for this is either
to press the physical button on the back of the tv or you can use the app instead but to make the c2
the ultimate productivity monitor given its size it would have been nice to have seen a usbc and a
display port too but with all of that said and all these awesome features for gaming and productivity
is the 42-inch screen big enough or too big and i think this depends on how big your desk is and
how far you sit from the screen for me sitting at around three feet from the screen the 42-inch
is probably too big for playing games like warzone yes it's immersive but i tend to lean forward when
i play and it just feels too big but now when i sit back in my chair and i'm away from the screen
it is perfect so i think for console gaming is probably fine but if you're sitting closer on say
a keyboard or mouse you might struggle i reckon a 32 to 38 inch is probably the optimum size for me
to play fps gaming but given the size though i still think the 42 inch c2 is the ultimate desk
setup monitor if you've got a desk that's deep enough and you want the best of both worlds an
awesome screen for working on during the day and a gaming focus tv for those evening sessions the
c2 is the one to buy i do think it's overpriced though i actually think it needs to be about 200
pounds or 200 cheaper to be valued for money and if you're not bothered about the 42 inch size and
you're happy with say a 48 inch i would just go for the c1 instead but let me know in the comments
if you would buy this 42 inch oled or if you would go bigger or smaller and if you did enjoy today's
video check out my desk setup tour as it covers everything on this desk obviously apart from the
c2 and thank you for watching please like sub and follow me on instagram and twitter until next time