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LG C1 OLED 55"

This TV is best in class when it comes to watching movies and playing games.

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It is of course no secret that LG with its OLED panels has ruled the TV world in recent years. This year's screens C1 and G1 Evo (of which the latter is the more expensive, brighter premium panel) have taken another small but welcome step forward, towards an even better film / TV/ game experience. If you are looking for 2021's best OLED TV for movies, and only for watching really good quality movies, then the Sony A90J is the one to buy. It has the best picture for movie viewing, only. With what I can think are very small margins, but still. Right should be right.

The Sony OLED is absolutely friggin fantastic at color neutrality and especially at motion handling, which means that film in 24p flows in a way that makes it the best TV of the year - for movie-watching only. If, on the other hand, you, like us at Gamereactor, intend to both watch movies and play a lot of games on your OLED, there is in the same simple way no doubt at all that the LG C1 and G1 are by far the best choice you can make.

The LG C1 houses as many as four HDMI 2.1 ports, which is double the amount compared to the closest competitors. It is 1300 euro cheaper than the Sony (which is of course based on an LG panel) and it has a much better system for handling game graphics. We are talking full support for G-Sync and Free Sync Premium here, fixed VRR-issues, 9.2 milliseconds in input lag (measured using our reliable LeoBodnar box), and "Game Mode" setting options that make the LG C1 the optimal OLED for gaming. Sony and Panasonic's counterparts have more than double the amount of input lag as well as clearly slower response time and no support for G-Sync or Free Sync.

The LG C1 also offers the TV world's by far the best built-in operating system in the new WebOS, which is as reliable, functional, fast, and troublefree as it has been for the past five years. New for WebOS 2021 is a smoother start menu for structuring your favorite shows and apps, as well as even faster contact with connected devices such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / PC. The new, updated Magic Remote is also the best in class and just as fast, accurate, and durable as usual.

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LG C1 OLED 55"

The picture then? Brilliant. There is a new Tru Motion filter for interpolating 24p material and it now works clearly better than ever before with a minimal amount of added artifacts and extremely little of that soap opera effect that interpolation of this type usually entails. The contrast is superb, the blacks are fantastic, as usual, the movement handling is brilliant as well as the sharpness. The brightness has not been upgraded any since last year, which is a little disappointing, but on the other hand, I, who have used OLED in my home for seven generations now, have never had any real problems with not having more brightness in my OLED:s. I have just replaced an LED screen that I had in the living room where I used 45% of its brightness, which for me makes the whole nits-hysteria in the TV world right now extremely exaggerated.

The sound is improved in the C1 compared to the CX, too. The stand now helps to transport the resonance from the speaker elements and it works really well, even though I thought in advance that it sounded like pure marketing nonsense. In terms of design, the LG C1 is also the most stylish in its class with its thin frame, super-narrow body and very nice table stand in brushed aluminum.

The only negative I can think of after a month of using the LG C1 is that our TV was a bit too red-tinted out of the box. In the operator settings, we calibrated it and got rid of the reddish tint in around two minutes (via Color Facts) but still, it's something I think should be mentioned here.

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For those of us who both watch movies and play games on our TV, the LG C1 is without a doubt the world's best TV right now. The game mode is nothing but superb and together with class-leading operating system, the market's best remote control, improved sound, and brilliant interpolation in Tru Motion mode, it is, of course, easy for me to highly recommend this TV.

LG C1 OLED 55"
09 Gamereactor UK
9 / 10
+
It has an amazing operating system, the picture quality is excellent, the sound has been improved.
-
It was a little red-tinted out of the box.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score


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