I recently purchased a new television sold by LG, the C1 model. The quality of this television is unlike anything that I've ever seen before, and it is a perfect companion to my Apple TV 4K, iPhone, and iPad.
For the past eight years, I've been using a 65" Panasonic plasma television in my home theater room. It was a fantastic TV when I bought it in 2013. It supported 1080p HD, and because it used plasma technology, the blacks on the screen were pitch black, resulting in very nice color contrast. That was the last year that Panasonic made a plasma TV, and many in the industry were upset to see that TV go because the picture quality was so good. But a lot has changed in the TV world since 2013. Televisions with 4K have improved while also becoming more affordable. Better yet, TVs that support high dynamic range (HDR) along with 4K can produce pictures that look truly lifelike.
What prompted me to upgrade was actually my iPhone and iPad. As I have upgraded those devices over the last eight years and I've seen their screen quality improve over time, I've noticed more and more what my Panasonic TV was lacking. For example, I've been able to record 4K video on my iPhone for some time now. Recording 4K at 30 fps was introduced with the iPhone 6s in 2015, and recording 4K at 60 fps (which looks even more realistic) was introduced with the iPhone X in 2017. Thus, I've been taking video at 4K for my home movies for many years, but I haven't had a good way to view that video at its full quality. That has changed recently as the screens of the latest models of the iPad Pro and the iPhone have improved to the point where you can really see the difference in 4K HDR video. For example, when I look at these home movies on the 2021 models of my iPad Pro and my iPhone 13 Pro, they looked so much better than they did on my Panasonic 1080p TV. And all of this made me wonder if I would appreciate the difference when watching movies and TV shows that were created to take advantage of the latest 4K HDR TV technology.
As a result, I've been in the market for a new TV for a few months, and after reading tons of reviews and talking to lots of people who use different types of 4K televisions, I finally decided to get the 2021 version of the LG C1 series TV. And boy am I happy that I made this decision. This TV is simply stunning.
LCD/LED or OLED
For most consumers, the only televisions worth considering right now either use LCD/LED or OLED technology for the screen. LED is a type of LCD screen, and while LCD televisions previously used multiple methods of producing light, I believe that all current LCD televisions use LED technology. Thus, for the purposes of buying a new television today, there is no difference between an LED or an LCD television. The major advantage of LCD/LED over OLED is that LCD/LED is cheaper. Additionally, in some circumstances, LCD/LED can be brighter (which is useful if you are watching TV in a room that has lots of light, such as light coming through windows). The disadvantage of LCD/LED is that HDR is far less dramatic, with less of a difference between dark areas and bright areas on the screen. LCD/LED can still look quite good — for example, the high-end fifth generation (2021 model) 12.9" iPad Pro uses an LED screen and it is very impressive — but it is still not OLED quality.
OLED provides a superior picture. All of the iPhone 13 models use an OLED screen. If you look at something that should be black on both an iPad's LED screen and an iPhone's OLED screen, the iPad screen ends up looking gray by comparison. Similarly, rich colors look better on an iPhone's OLED screen. There is more contrast between light and dark colors on an OLED screen.
So why isn't OLED the best technology for everyone? The problem is that it can be much more expensive, and the price difference is especially substantial with larger TV sizes. For example, because my Panasonic TV was a 65" TV, I decided that I wanted to get the next size up for a new TV. One of the best LCD/LED televisions is the Hisense ULED Premium 75-Inch U7G. A 75" model of that TV costs $1,199.99. On the other hand, the 77" LG C1 TV that I purchased, which uses OLED, costs over twice as much, about $2900. Because I plan to use this new TV for many, many years, I decided that the price premium was worth it for me, but I know that it will not be worth it for others.
The best type of room to use for any OLED television is a room where you can control the light. We use the back room in my house as a home theater room, and while there is a single window in that room, we have long had that window covered with a black-out shade and then covered with a dark curtain. Thus, the only light in that room comes from the sconces on the walls, which I can dim. (I use a Lutron dimmer switch that is HomeKit compatible, so it is easy to dim the lights from my iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV remote, etc.) With this setup, I can easily get that room very dark or completely dark, so I can take full advantage of an OLED screen.
If you want an OLED television but you need to use it in a room that you cannot get completely dark, you may want to consider an OLED television that can get especially bright, such as Sony's Bravia XR Master Series A90J. As Chris Heinonen of Wirecutter explains, "Sony added an aluminum sheet to the OLED panel to dissipate heat more effectively, a design change that allowed the company to increase the panel’s brightness. As a result, the A90J produces brighter highlights than any other OLED TV we’ve tested, so images really pop off the screen." But you pay quite a bit for this improvement. The 65" model costs $4000, and the next available size is 83" which costs $8200.
Picture quality
Although not as expensive as that Sony model, this LG television is still expensive. As a result, even though all of my research told me that this TV would be perfect in my home theater room, I still had some hesitation. Would I decide that the substantial price was only a minor improvement over my Panasonic plasma television?
No. Not at all.
The picture quality on this LG television is stunning. Amazing. Lifelike. Incredible. Suffice it to say that if I had truly appreciated how much of an improvement this would be, I would have started looking into a TV upgrade long ago.
Most of what I have been looking at on this LG television comes from my Apple TV 4K. (I also have DirecTV.) Of course, not all content is in 4K, and not all 4K content uses impressive HDR. But one of the first things that I watched on this new TV was one of the best shows you can watch to push any screen to its limits: the show Tiny World on Apple TV+. I already knew how amazing that show looked in HD on my plasma television. But the same show on this LG C1 is one of the most incredible things I've ever watched in my life, on any screen. Everything looks ultra-realistic. The colors pop. The details are incredible. But it is not just nature shows that look great; lots of other shows on Apple TV+ also look amazing, such as the show Foundation.
I initially ran into problems viewing some high-end 4K content on other services such as HBO and Netflix, but I solved that by changing the HDMI cord that connected my Apple TV 4K to this LG television to a Belkin Ultra HD High Speed HDMI 2.1 Cable. (I'll explain this more in a future post.) Once I changed the HDMI cable, I was able to appreciate amazing shows that support Dolby Vision on other services. For example, this past weekend, I started watching Cowboy Bebop and The Witcher on Netflix, two shows that look fantastic on this television.
The home movies that I take are no match for the production quality of these movie and TV shows, but they feature my family and friends, so in my heart, they are better. And they have never looked better. The new iPhone 13 models, including my iPhone 13 Pro, support Dolby Vision Video up to 4K at 60 fps. I can take videos on my iPhone, load them into Final Cut Pro on my Mac to select the best clips and add some transitions and titles, and then export the final movie to my Apple TV library on the iMac in my study. The Apple TV 4K in my TV room can stream that video so that I can watch it on the LG C1. And the results are great. For example, I know that I'm biased, but my videos of my daughter's 8th grade volleyball games are almost ESPN quality. OK, maybe ESPN2.
Inputs
Whenever you get a new television, you want to make sure that you have all of the inputs that you need. The television includes four HDMI inputs. Three of them are on the right if you are looking at the back of the TV (the left when you are looking at the screen). A fourth HDMI input is a little closer to the middle.
My current system setup is to have three video sources (Apple TV 4K, DirecTV, a Blu-Ray DVD player) connected to the LG TV using three of the four rear HDMI inputs. I use the fourth input to connect to my receiver, which connects to my speakers.
Sound
If you are going to spend the money to buy an LG C1 television of any size, but especially a larger size such as the 77" I purchased, you probably won't be using the built-in speakers on this TV. Having said that, for the first few days that I had this TV. I didn't have my sound system hooked up yet, so I used the built-in speakers. And they were fine, with nice stereo separation.
One of the four HDMI inputs on the back of this TV supports eARC (HDMI 2). This refers to Audio Return Channel, and it means that a single HDMI cord can send video/audio to the TV but can also send audio out from the TV to a receiver. I have an HDMI cord running from this LG TV to an Onkyo TX-SR494 AV Receiver, a receiver that supports 4K Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos. The speaker setup in my TV room is only 5.1 — the left, center, and right speakers, a rear left and rear right speaker, and a subwoofer (an Energy 5.1 Take Classic Home Theater System that I've been using since 2014). Thus, I don't have overhead speakers to support some of the more advanced configurations such as 5.1.2 or 7.1.2 or 9.1.2, which I'm sure allow Dolby Atmos to really shine. (The final ".2" on those refers to two speakers on the ceiling.) Having said that, movies and TV shows that support Dolby Atmos sound great on my 5.1 system, and are noticeably better than shows that don't use Dolby Atmos.
Dolby Atmos isn't just good for movies and TV shows. It is also great for music. As an Apple Music subscriber, I have access to a huge library of songs that support Spatial Audio, which is really just Apple's version of Dolby Atmos. I've known for some time that Spatial Audio sounds great on my AirPods Pro. But with my new TV and receiver, I'm also appreciating Spatial Audio in my home theater, and songs sound great. For some songs, I actually prefer using Spatial Audio on AirPods Pro with noise cancellation because the experience seems more immersive. But with other songs, it sounds better using this TV sending Dolby Atmos to my receiver — and of course, that is better when you want to share music with someone else sitting on the couch.
Suffice it to say that while the reason to get the LG C1 is the screen, it also does a great job passing along audio to a receiver to pass along to speakers. Whether you have a somewhat older and more simple audio configuration like I do or you have the latest-and-greatest audio gear, this television will fit right in.
The LG interface — webOS 6
The LG C1 is a smart television and contains its own interface. I typically just ignore it because when I press the power button on my Apple TV 4K, it turns on the LG television and also turns on the receiver, so all that I see is the Apple TV interface. But let me say a little about the LG interface because you will use it sometimes.
LG televisions use an operating system called webOS. That operating system was originally designed for the Palm Pre, an early iPhone competitor. When Palm went away, LG purchased webOS, and that means that something originally designed for a tiny smartphone screen is now used to control what is sure to be the largest screen that you own.
webOS 6 supports apps, just like an Apple TV. For example, webOS includes a web browser app — and after using it for a little bit, you will likely realize that navigating web pages on a TV interface is far inferior to using Safari on your iPad and simply sharing the screen to the TV. There are also apps for many popular streaming services such as Netflix, HBO Max, and even Apple TV+. Because of these apps, you could use this LG TV without connecting it to any external streaming devices. And for my first few days with this TV, that's exactly what I did.
But it didn't take me long to miss the superior interface on the Apple TV 4K, which is much faster and easier to navigate when you want to jump around from app to app. The LG interface is also quite busy and uses lots of space to display information that I deem irrelevant. Including ads, although you can turn many of those off if you dig down into many levels of the TV's settings.
You cannot move or change the order of most of the interface. That's a shame because some of the most useful elements are the apps that you use to launch services like Netflix or HBO or Apple TV+, but those app icons are very small compared to the other items on the screen. Fortunately, you can reorder the apps to keep the most relevant ones near the front of the list.
Navigating the webOS interface using the LG remote is rather cumbersome compared to the current version of the Apple TV remote. The LG remote has tons of buttons, but for many functions you need to control a cursor on the TV screen by moving around the remote in mid-air, something that I had never experienced before with a remote. At first, it seemed neat. But after a few days, it became somewhat clunky to have to move my wrist around to move a cursor. I often found myself moving the cursor too far over or not far enough.
I realize that I am being somewhat harsh on webOS, but that's really just in comparison to the Apple TV. I've seen much worse interfaces on other streaming devices and cable boxes. As noted above, I also use DirecTV, and its interface is nothing special although I've learned to live with it. If you need to use the LG's native interface, it is fine, but it is not great.
One more note about the interface: it supports AirPlay. Thus, you can share the screen of your iPhone, iPad, or Mac directly to this TV screen. Of course, if you have an Apple TV hooked up to this TV, the Apple TV itself also supports AirPlay, but it is nice to see AirPlay built-in to this device.
Price
I bought this TV from Amazon. The buying experience was unlike anything else I've ever purchased from Amazon. I picked a delivery window, and on the delivery day, the Amazon app on my iPhone gave me updates on how close the truck was to my house. When they arrived (right at the beginning of my delivery window), a huge moving truck-style vehicle pulled up at my house, not a typical Amazon delivery van. As an Amazon Prime member, for no extra charge, the folks who delivered this TV actually brought it into my house and placed the TV (still in its box) in my home theater room in the back of my house. That was nice because this is a big TV and you need two people to move it around.
The current prices for this TV on Amazon are as follows. 55": $1,296.99. 65": $1,796.99. 77": $2,896.99. 83": $4,996.99. When I looked around, the Amazon price was as good or better than any of the other stores selling this television.
Conclusion
I'm not a fan of the webOS interface on this television, but if you have another streaming device such as an Apple TV, you can mostly ignore webOS. And that's the only part of this television that didn't blow me away. The reason that you buy a TV like this is for the picture quality, and I cannot emphasize enough how amazing this television looks. Whether I'm watching blockbuster movies, nature shows, TV series, or my own home movies that I shot with my iPhone, everything looks incredible. I still remember when I purchased my first HD television back in 2002 (a rear-projection, 57" Toshiba 57HDX82). HD looked so much better than standard definition that I found myself seeking out HD content to watch, no matter what it was, just because HD looked so much better than anything I had previously seen on a television. It's almost two decades later, and I'm once again having the same feeling. I'm seeing content on my TV screen that is so amazing that I find myself once again seeking out more 4K HDR content just for the eye candy.
If you are like me, buying a big screen TV is a once every 8-10 years purchase. Thus, when you decide that it is time to upgrade, you want to get something that you are going to enjoy for a long time. I have no doubt that this is a TV that I will enjoy for a long time. If you are in the market for a new television, I give the LG C1 my highest recommendation.
Click here to get the LG OLED C1 Series television from Amazon.
