Nearly two years later I’m still using the LG CX 48 inch OLED TV as my main computer monitor.
I use it for productivity for word docs, spreadsheets, and web browsing.
To entertainment, watching youtube videos, movies, or playing games on PC,
or the PS5. Even after turning off some of the advanced burn in protection features, and with
4600 hours of usage, I still haven’t experienced any OLED burn in yet. To improve eye comfort
using such a large screen this close, I did also recently add some bias lighting to complement my
lightbar, both of which have been helpful during late night sessions. And I installed some new
software that makes using a large TV nearly perfect for multi-tasking, watching videos,
and even screen sharing during video conferencing. Hi I’m David and here’s my two year update.
For my settings, I've had the TV at about 45 OLED light brightness during PC use. And I’ve also
turned off the burn in protection features like Logo luminance and the ABSL in the service menu,
which has 100% improved my experience, eliminating those brightness fluctuations
that was my biggest pain point with this TV as a monitor. Even still with those features
turned off the last couple months. I don’t see any burn in flipping through these flat color tests.
I say this with caution as 2 years is still a relatively short period of time, especially with
people normally keeping their computer monitors 5+ years. So, I do still expect burn in eventually,
even with these newer OLEDs, but with me using it very heavily with static content
it hasn’t been an issue yet. On the other hand, image retention is something that on
the rare occasion I’ll notice. For example, If I leave a high contrast white title bar on screen
for 5 hours, I can notice this slight dark blemish on the grey color tests as simulated here. This
is a pretty rare occurrence for me based on my workflow and only notice it when I purposefully
look for it with these tests. And even when it does happen, turning the TV off and allowing it
to run the automatic pixel refresher fixes it. So, while image retention is a thing with OLED,
it hasn’t really been an issue for me. On the down side, dead pixels have gotten worse.
As you can see several of them along the edges of the screen. I think this is actually a
manufacturing defect with my particular unit that would be covered under warranty from LG. But it
hasn’t really bothered me that much, so I just live with it. As for the large size, I’ve gotten
used to using a 48 inch screen in close proximity, to the point where I don’t think I could go back
to a single smaller 27 or even 34 inch ultrawide. Keeping in mind, I treat this TV like an ultrawide
monitor setup tiling applications across the display. This is not comfortable to web browse
or read word docs full screen this close. At most I’ll use like 75% of the screen on a single app
for photo editing or spreadsheets. But most of the time that upper space is just for the random
console or calculator. My only real complaint would be with the pixel density and the RWBG
subpixels that make text and images not as crisp and exhibit some color fringing. It’s
not terrible, but compared to my 1440p screens or how spoiled we are with phones these days,
it’s the one thing tempting me to move to those 40 inch ultrawides with 140 PPI, compared to the low
92 PPI on this TV. I am planning on trying out the new LG 42 inch C2 TV when they go on sale
here in Canada as it will help a little with this issue, but I do wish that higher 5K, 6K or even 8K
resolutions eventually do become more common. But with GPU and HDMI bandwidth limitations
I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I still also have the minor complaints about the lack of
true monitor features like no standby and others, but I covered those in my 6 months later review
that you can watch linked below if you missed that. One small hardware addition I made was
adding a cheap IKEA tradfri smart light behind the TV, which I just lazily command striped in place.
This in combination with the light bar on top help provide that nice soft ambient lighting to improve
my eye comfort late at night. On the software side, I have made notable changes to my FancyZone
layout to accommodate more application sizes. I have my basic 6 zones that simulate an ultrawide,
letting me arrange my typical setups from a single main app with reference material on the sides.
A side by side setup when working on two documents at the same time. An ultrawide window for
reviewing a long video timeline. A taller window for reviewing multiple lines of code. And a couple
larger window shapes perfect for photo editing, spreadsheets, or just watching the casual video.
One newer feature with Fancy Zones, is the ability to activate this all with a simple
right click of the mouse, instead of needing to hold down the shift button all the time,
which I found really streamlines the experience into a single hand.
Next up for videos, If I’m watching a movie, I’ll kick back and watch it full screen, but for random
casual videos I find it more convenient to keep them in smaller windows since I’m still sitting
so close. For that I use this Windowed Chrome addon that gives you more video size options for
all your web videos, such as maximizing the video to the window size which is perfect for reddit,
or I can also pop out a separate window and drop it into one of my larger fancy zone, and of course
I still have the option to do full screen as well. The other issue I solved was Screen Sharing during
video conference on Microsoft Teams. This free app called Region to Share in the Microsoft Store,
lets me share a section of my screen instead of the entire screen. So, anything I drag into that
green highlighted area gets shared while keeping the rest of the area private just like having
a multi monitor setup. You can easily change the share size, move it into a different position, and
use it in combination with those fancy zone for simple collaboration. And lastly, with my taskbar
hidden to help avoid burn in. I hated how slow the hide and reveal animation is by default. Turning
off animations in Windows, makes this so much more usable and responsive. So in the end. I’m still
loving this TV as my main computer monitor. It’s not perfect and it’s not going to be for everyone.
But I still haven’t found a real upgrade from it for my workflow. I had considered the new Samsung
43 inch QN90B, and the Alienware OLED Ultrawide, but ended up cancelling those orders since they
didn't feel like good upgrades for me. And I’ll probably grab the LG 42 inch C2 when it’s in stock
here, but it’s an expensive upgrade for what I tell, not a huge change. But that’s for another
video. Hope you guys enjoyed this one. You know what to do. And I guess I’ll see you next year.