LG C5 OLED evo hands-on review: the gamer’s TV
The OLED TV you'll want for your gaming setup
LG C5 OLED evo is a true gamer’s TV. Its four HDMI 2.1 ports will support all your consoles and a gaming desktop. PC gamers should especially consider this TV with its higher-than-average 144Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support that’s exclusive to LG TVs.
It’s not nearly as premium or innovative as other LG TVs I’ve seen in my LG G5 OLED evo hands-on review or LG M5 OLED evo hands-on review, but the LG C5 continues to deliver class-leading image quality with its WOLED panel, which is a little brighter than last years LG C4.
Just don’t expect an affordable price, with the 42-inch model starting at $1,399. This is a high-end television with a high-tier price, but you get what you pay for with fantastic picture quality, quad HDMI 2.1 connectivity, and smart AI features.
Pros
✅ 📺 Fanastic picture quality with excellent brightness, contrast, and color
✅ 🏃🏻♂️ Exceptional motion redering for gaming
✅ 🔌 Four HDMI 2.1 ports for all your consoles and gaming PC
Cons
❌ 🥱 No big panel jump to micro-lens array or tandem OLED technology
❌ 💡 New WOLED panel only adds a small brightness jump
🤏 Wafer thin. The LG C5 is thin as a wafer when you look at it from the side. It’s even thinner than the LG G5 and LG M5, but it’s not as uniformly svelte as its higher-end brothers. It has a bumped-out section towards the bottom that houses the TV’s power supply and processing components. Still, the LG C5’s thinnest section is a showcase of how thin OLED display technology can be.
📺 Sticking with WOLED. The LG C5’s WOLED panel isn’t drastically different from the one the LG C4 used last year. LG has only confirmed that the C5 will feature a higher brightness, but no actual figures to suggest how much brighter it will be. It’s a real disappointment that LG didn’t give the C5 a micro-lens array panel or four-stack OLED like on the G5 and M5. Also, like years past, the smallest 42- and 48-inch versions of the LG C5 don’t get any brightness increase.
🖼️ Picture perfect. The LG C5’s WOLED panel might not use new technology, but it still looks fantastic. There’s enough brightness to make the techno-infused wilderness of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered look realistic, especially during the sun-drenched daylight. Conversely, this OLED gaming TV’s perfect blacks helped drive the dark mood of Last of Us: Part 1’s mission at night. Colors in both dark and bright scenes also offered up plenty of saturation without causing any textures to clip into strange artifacts. Of course, the OLED panel also makes motion look fantastic without any judder or stutter.
🔌 4x HDMI 2.1. LG’s OLED evo TVs continue to deliver class-leading connectivity with four gaming-ready HDMI 2.1 ports. That’s enough ports to plug in a PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X, gaming PC, and the future Nintendo Switch 2 simultaneously. The LG C5 also offers a 144Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync support on all four of those HDMI 2.1 ports. Just getting four HDMI 2.1 ports is a rarity among LG’s top-tier competitors like the Sony Bravia 9 and TCL QM851.
🧠 AI processor. The LG C5 features a new Alpha A9 AI Processor Gen8, and its biggest upgrade is a new focus on AI everywhere in webOS 25. The new interface has AI literally built into every facet, like AI Search for content, AI Concierge suggesting shows, and an AI Chatbot you can summon to adjust your TV settings for you. LG’s neatest AI feature, though, has to be automatic account-switching, which automatically shuffles the home screen icons and suggestions to your liking as soon you speak anything to the AI assistant.
💰 High-end price for high-end hardware. The LG C5 isn’t the cheapest TV around. You can easily buy a 55” TCL QM6K for $799 or Hisense U7N for $749. However, the LG C5 offers a much better picture with its OLED display rather than a mini LED panel, and you also get much better device support with four HDMI 2.1s. The LG C5 is more expensive, but you also get what you pay for with better-quality hardware and software.
The LG C5 offers every gaming feature you could want.
🎮 Gamer’s TV. The LG C5 offers every gaming feature you could want. It supports cloud streaming with Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Amazon Luna. It also has a deep Game Optimizer menu that lets you fine-tune your gaming picture on top of giving you live stats about your gaming frame rate and settings.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.
