so we've got to review the lg c2 so i've had it about a week now there's things i love about it
there's things that i find a bit annoying but this is going to be my full review the lg c2
is a phenomenal tv bringing us the best of lg's oled technology and sticking it all into
their most popular shell the c series this tv is meant to be one of the best
for gaming for watching films for watching tv and is it so good in a bright room well we'll see
so first of all let's have a look at the design now what i have with me here is the 48 inch c2
the design on this is actually eerily similar to last year's so with the 48 inch we have this long
stand at the bottom and the tv sits quite low so there probably isn't a lot of room for a sound bar
in front of the tv what is nice is that this stand feels very solid and it doesn't feel like your tv
is going to be going anywhere at the back of the stand we have this little bit of cable management
which isn't the flashiest thing in the world but it's quite functional now what sizes are on offer
well we have the world's first 42-inch oled which ideally is going to be used as a smaller tv for
maybe like a bedroom or a desk and i think that was going to be best for gamers we then have the
48 inch that i have here the 55 inch which is the first with this new stand as well as the 65
inch and the 77 inch and fresh from last year we still have the new 83-inch display too so that's
a massive array of size options for you and if you can't find one there that suits your bill i
mean what are they going to do what are they going to do now having a little look on the back at the
ports the lg c2 is one of very few tvs that has more than one hdmi 2.1 ports hdmi 2.1 is the port
that you need for 8k gaming or 4k gaming at 120 hertz now the lg c2 has four of those ports all
of them 2.1 a lot of other manufacturers only have either one or two ports that are 2.1 and
the other two are normal hdmi 2.0 we also have our usbs and our ethernet cables and everything
like that around the back we have optical audio as well as hdmi earc which is enhanced audio return
channel we have a headphone jack and we have an ir blaster too now the remote is the same as lg's tvs
last year we have this magic one style wii remote thing where you can point at the tv and select it
however you can just use buttons as well we have shortcuts at the bottom of the remote
as well as functionality to create your own shortcuts using the numbers at the top in order
to do that you just need to go into the app that you want to do and hold down one of the buttons
and that is going to store that as a quick access button for you to access later great for apps like
youtube that don't have their own shortcut button on the bottom there is also a voice control button
on the remote and a microphone inside it so you can use that remote to search for things however
the lg c2 now has hands-free voice assistant hi audrey search samuel jones tech on youtube
now this hands-free voice assistant is okay it's not the best thing you've ever seen i'll
be honest with you i much prefer using something like an alexa i find using the voice assistant
is useful if you don't have the remote as soon as you have the remote on you it's much easier just
to use the remote having to say hi lg all the time gets a little bit repetitive and annoying
now that being said you can use the hands-free audio compatibility to add alexa and i've done a
video about that that you can watch now the c2 is running the latest version of lg's web os software
and i have a sort of love-hate relationship with webos there's certain things that i really like
about it and the certain things that i think are just a bit of a pain i don't like how crowded it
is everything you want to access is on sort of one bar um and there's just loads going on personally
i much prefer something like the fire tv operating system where it's just a little bit clearer that
being said when you're on the homepage you can pretty much access anything that you want
because there's so much stuff on the screen there are some very basic customizations you can do you
can change the layout of your apps on that app bar but other than that it's pretty much stuck the way
it is now i have done a video where i get into all of the new features that you can see on the lg c2
and you should be able to click that one here but a couple of highlights would be that integration
with the hands-free audio and a feature that most people have been desperate for for a long time
which is picture and picture now at the moment it's being an early version it's not currently
supported by a lot of the third-party apps and i'll be honest i don't think it's supported
by any of lg's apps either however as updates start to roll out we'll see this feature there
the framework is there and you can sort of see how it's going to work but unfortunately at the
moment it's just not really supported now one of the things you'll notice while going around webos
is how quick it is it is super snappy and sharp now part of this is down to lg's newest generation
processor the a9 gen 5. now that does a whole lot of stuff especially regarding picture and sound
however one of the basic functions of it is to get you around the tv and there's absolutely
no qualms there this tv is perfectly fast i don't think at any point i've been waiting
for things to load apps pop up super quick which i mean is what you'd come to expect when you're
looking at a tv like this now one of the things that most people are going to be interested in
is the picture how good is it and ultimately it is phenomenal and i mean lg oleds have been
phenomenal in their picture for a long long time but this one is just
the next step up first of all if you haven't had an oled before any oled is going to look
fantastic there's something about the way that the blackness of the blacks it just affects the
picture in such a ridiculous way and the reason this is is because on an oled each
pixel is illuminated by itself and when there's nothing on that pixel and it should be black
the pixel switches off entirely it's unlike with an lcd where they have an array of leds at the
back all shining at once and where they have to do local dimming and you get things like blooming
there's none of that on an oled and ultimately this tv takes that oled technology and it just
keeps pushing and advancing it further one of the issues with oleds in the past is something called
crushing blacks what does that mean what it is is that when we get to the dark end of the spectrum
as much as the blacks are black what else in the past have struggled to do is to turn themselves on
but still stay close to black you can get off which is black and then as soon as you switch on
the difference between being on and off is quite big which means in a scene where there's a lot
of shadow detail you're gonna miss out a lot of that because it's all gonna just mush into black
or you can change the settings and it'll mush into grey you're not gonna get the dark blacks and the
detail now lg promised that the lg c2 has improved this and i have to agree i tested this out
using the most famous terrible to watch episode of game of thrones and in theory i shouldn't
have been able to see anything but on this tv it was clear it was precise and i had a phenomenal
time now on the other end of the spectrum from the shadow detail let's look at the brightness
now the lg c2 has the evo panel so in theory this tv is meant to be the next evolution of brightness
on oled and ultimately it does do a fantastic job now this is something i'm not going to be able to
go in in massive detail until i get my hands on a slightly larger oled and i'll explain why so
in theory lg are saying that the lg c2 should have the capability of being up to 30 percent brighter
than the lg c1 and the lg c1 by no means wasn't a dim tv but it certainly wasn't the best and it had
nothing in comparison to an lcd and if you mainly use your oled in a dark room you're probably not
going to care but if you're the type of person who wouldn't get an oled because they have quite
a bright living space this could make a difference now the lg 48 inch and 42-inch they have a much
higher pixel density and because of this it means they're not going to make the most of this new
panel trust me the panel is still there and there are different tests you can do to make sure it has
that new evo panel but it has almost a tighter block in front of it which stops the oled pixels
from being able to shine as bright now if you did want an extra bright oled you're going to have to
go 55 inch and up in order to see the difference from the last year's c1 i compared this 48 inch
to a 55 inch c1 and it's about the same so if this is going to be a significant jump from the 48 inch
to the 55 inch then it's definitely going to be a significant jump from the c1 now we can't talk
about brightness without talking about reflections and unfortunately the lg c2 still suffers pretty
poorly with that and ultimately if you're going to be getting a tv like this because of how black the
blacks are when you have a light shining behind it it's going to act almost like a mirror this
means if you are watching tv opposite a window well you're gonna be watching a window not the tv
now you won't necessarily notice this on bright scenes but as soon as we get into dark scenes
it isn't good so if you do get an lg c2 or in fairness any other oled make sure you have it so
it's not opposite any windows from where you'll be sitting and this is one of the problems with
the lg c2 and any other oled to be honest is that depending on what room you have will depend on
whether this is a sensible purchase if you have a bright room with tons of windows in it and tons
of light sources then watching this thing is going to be infuriating whereas if you have a nice cozy
cinema room then that's going to really take this to the next level for most people in the middle of
those two you're probably going to be fine it's mainly if it's super bright you'll have an issue
now one of the great things about oles is that you don't get things like dirty screen effect and i
did run a test to make sure that this one was the same and obviously it was now the picture is also
assisted by the processor that i mentioned earlier now this processor does things to sharpen images
and to create almost extra depth in shots and i think it actually works very well it's something
that if you didn't have it switched on you're not going to be upset about it it's not going to
dramatically worsen the image but it will enhance it slightly if you have the ai mode turned on
so why not another fantastic thing and i would say an improvement over last year is how colors
are handled on the c2 i honestly think the out of the box picture settings for color are phenomenal
i've had a chat with a few other people that have this tv and someone did get theirs calibrated and
they said the best mode straight out of the box is cinema mode in sdr or cinema home in hdr so with
all of that cleared up let's move on to gaming now the lg c1 was the best gaming tv last year it had
the best features it had the best support and you want to fight me about it come at me it was the
best but this year sony have updated their tvs to have vrr and it's going to be a tighter fight but
what is the c2 like well i mean it's more of the same it's fantastic i did play quite a few
different games on the lg c2 using my xbox and i had a fantastic time the c2 is a 120 hertz display
and it supports vrr freesync and g-sync so whether you're connecting a console to it or you're
connecting uh your gaming pc you're gonna have a pretty good time now certain things that make
this tv even better for gaming than last year are things like i mentioned earlier with the colors
and the shadow detail that could be a massive thing for a gamer and actually probably one of the
only downsides of last year's c1 so the fact that that is so much better this year is a big positive
the c2 might have shot itself in the foot i'll tell you why now one of the issues with gaming is
something that lg have done and now i can't speak for the 42-inch i think this is gonna be where it
really matters but something that other tvs have used for quite a while is something called bfi and
that is black frame insertion now i'm not going to go massively into the technical aspect of what
it is basically in order to improve motion and because of how fast the input lag on this tv is
it's about one millisecond in order to make sure the tv didn't just look horrendous and choppy and
horrible they insert black frames between each frame now you shouldn't notice this while looking
at it but it actually weirdly works very very well now this apparently isn't supported anymore
on the 48 inch nap i don't know about the 42 inch i'm yet to try one now the downside to doing that
is that it can make the display darker and if you're trying to get as much of the display out
then you might drop that feature so maybe that's why they've done it but you have to leave with me
for a long term few months down the road review just to see whether that's something i think has
affected me personally now what is the sound like now the sound is fairly decent if you don't have a
sound system and you're just using it straight off of the tv it's going to be okay now i would always
recommend having an external sound system getting a subwoofer and everything like that just to take
that sound to the next level however if you're not fussed about having a super cinematic experience
then technically this will be fine i think for most people in the day-to-day use you're
not going to be that concerned about the sound it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination
it's just not amazing now they do have an ai sound pro which enhances the sound and creates
virtual surround sound which works okay and you can kind of see what they're doing with it
um however i do think it degrades the quality of the sound ever so slightly
but that's my own personal opinion so i would just recommend sticking with normal obviously we
do have the eoc port for hdmi and optical audio as well you can also use the tv speakers as well as
an external sound system in order to enhance the sound even further and the tv continues its
dolby support with having dolby vision and dolby atmos so if you have a supported sound system
then you can use that to full advantage so lg create amazing oled tvs and each year it just
seems to be a step up and a step up and this is no exception this tv is fantastic for gamers
it's going to be great for watching movies it has a phenomenal picture with improved shadow detail
from last year and improved color accuracy it's phenomenal for gaming with the support for vrr
freesync g-sync 120 hertz and ultimately it looks like a piece of art in itself
now it's not going to be for people who want a super bright tv you're gonna have to move away
from oled to get that at the moment if you're planning on putting this in a room that has
multiple windows and is very bright then i would definitely reconsider this tv for
something that's going to be a lot brighter but if you're in anything other than a ridiculously
bright room or opposite a window directly then this tv is going to be phenomenal and it's going
to blow you away so if you want to figure out what all of the new features are on this tv
click this video here click here to subscribe for more from me and i'll see you in the next one