LG G4 (OLED65G4) review: Spectacular images for film and game fans alike

LG makes some of the best TVs around, but the LG G4 has its work cut out to improve on one of our favourite sets from 2023, the LG G3.

However, having spent a couple of weeks putting it through its paces, I can safely say that the LG G4 is not only one of the most impressive OLED TVs on the market, it’s one of the industry’s top performers, full stop.

It delivers home video sources with exceptional precision and functions as a fantastic TV for gaming thanks to support for features such as 4K/120Hz, VRR and a dedicated onscreen game menu. If you can afford it, it should be right at the top of your TV wishlist.

LG G4 review: Key specifications

READ NEXT: Best Freeview boxes

LG G4 review: What you need to know

The LG G4 sits towards the top of LG’s 4K OLED TV range, above the mid-range C4 but below the wireless M4 series. It’s the successor to last year’s LG G3 and uses a premium WRGB OLED 4K panel, complete with LG’s Brightness Booster Max technology. This places a micro lens array (MLA) behind the screen to improve the efficiency with which light emerges and then uses an advanced processor to deliver optimum performance.

The panel can handle 4K/120Hz and even 144Hz for gaming, and offers a huge range of gaming-specific features, while its smart features come courtesy of WebOS 24. This carries an exhaustive range of streaming apps, including Freeview Play.

HDR support encompasses HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision (but not HDR10+), while the built-in audio system supports Dolby Atmos playback and an upmixing system capable of creating a virtual 11.1.2-channel count.

LG G4 review: Price and competition

At the time of writing, the 65in LG G4 I’m reviewing here costs £3,099. That’s in the upper reaches of what you’d expect to pay for a TV of this size and £600 more than the C4 (£2,499). There’s also a 55in model available, which will set you back £2,199, along with 77in (£4,299), 83in (£6,499) and 97in options, with the latter priced at around £25,000.

The G4’s closest rivals are the Samsung S95D and Sony’s flagship OLED from last year, the Sony A95L, both of which use RGB Quantum Dot OLED panels. The 65in S95D is available for £2,999 following a recent price cut, while the A95L is also priced at just shy of £3,000.

LG G4 review: Design, connections and control

The G4 features a distinctive premium ‘Gallery’ design that’s especially well suited to wall hanging. It’s not as truly monolithic in its sculpting as Samsung’s S95D and QN95D but it’s trim enough to look elegant when flush to the wall.

While the LG G4 is designed predominantly with wall mounting in mind, it can be bought in either wall mount or desktop mount versions. The desktop stand takes the form of an excellently built, centrally positioned square metal plinth, connected to the screen by a neck that features a removable back so that you can run your cables through it. If neither of LG’s mounts suit you, the TV supports a VESA 300×300 bracket.

All of the connections are positioned for access from the side and are numerous and well specified, particularly the four HDMI ports, all of which can handle 4K/120Hz, 144Hz and VRR feeds.

These are joined by three USB ports, an aerial socket, a CI (common interface) slot, an optical digital audio output and an Ethernet port. Alongside these wired jacks are Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless connection options.

The G4 is controlled by LG’s Magic Remote, which allows you to select options on the screen by pointing the remote like a wand at the icon you want to select. There’s also a vertical wheel in the centre of a standard set of left, right, up and down navigation buttons that allows you to quickly navigate up and down the vertically listed options in the onscreen menus.

The remote carries direct access buttons for the Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Rakuten apps, and there’s support for voice control using either LG’s ThinQ system or Amazon Alexa via a mic button on the remote and a far-field mic built into the TV.

One last design point is that LG makes a flat-backed, forward-facing soundbar, the USG10TY (£1,000), which is specifically designed to be hung on the wall under a 65in or 77in OLED G4.

READ NEXT: Best indoor TV aerials

LG G4 review: Smart TV platform

The G4 carries the latest version of LG’s webOS smart platform, which is one of the most thoughtful and user-friendly smart systems around. The amount of intelligently compiled content you can access from the homepage has been improved from last year’s version, as has the support for multiple user profiles, where different members of your household can set up their own home screens and picture preferences. The TV can even learn what users of each profile like to watch, and make different recommendations accordingly.

The best addition to webOS for 2024, though, is the built-in AI-boosted ‘help desk’. This allows you to troubleshoot issues or improve the way things look or sound by asking the TV questions in a remarkably in-depth and interactive way.

The latest webOS platform continues to impress with the sheer volume of apps and streaming services it supports. All the big hitters are present and correct, including Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV and Disney+. The UK catch-up services are all there too and can be accessed via the Freeview Play umbrella app.

All the apps carried within webOS support the best picture and sound features available, be it Dolby Atmos sound, 4K resolution or Dolby Vision/HDR10 high dynamic range video support.

LG G4 review: Image quality

We’ve already seen some fearsome TV picture quality this year from more than one model – OLED as well as Mini LED – by LG’s arch-rival Samsung. LG has no intention of letting anyone else steal its thunder with home cinema enthusiasts, though.

The LG G4 delivers an out-of-the-box SDR picture performance that’s as good as it gets. For starters, its new Alpha 11 AI processor seems to have found more sharpness than last year’s G3 series managed. This is especially true with upscaled HD content, where it does a better job of intelligently detecting source noise and removing it before creating a remarkably crisp 4K image. Before die-hard film fans start to worry, the G4’s outstanding upscaling is also very astute about retaining the feel of any grain an HD source might contain.

Even native 4K playback yields a marginal improvement over the way it looked on the G3. This seems to be down to the extra refinement the G4’s new processor finds in how it manages both colour and contrast, and leaves good 4K sources looking incredibly dense with detail and texture.

So long as you don’t stick with the Eco picture preset and switch to the Cinema or Filmmaker Mode presets, the G4 delivers SDR content with a gorgeous combination of potency and, above all, accuracy. No colour looks too rich or out of place, no blends end up looking blocky or striped, skin tones are rendered with enough shading subtlety to avoid becoming plasticky, and the sense of contrast is phenomenal.

My subjective impressions of the G4’s performance are backed up by objective tests I carried out using Portrait Displays’ Calman calibration software, G1 signal generator and C6 colorimeter. In the most accurate Filmmaker Mode preset, the G4 handled Calman’s Multipoint Grayscale and Color Checker tests incredibly well, delivering DeltaE 2000 average errors of just 1 and 1.3 respectively. Outstanding results in a world where errors under three are generally considered to be imperceptible to the naked eye.

Another great strength of the G4 is its range of picture presets. There’s something for every taste, room condition and content type, all of which are set up with more sensitivity and image understanding than the similar presets of most rival sets.

Also of interest to users willing to see what LG’s new advanced, AI-driven picture processing can do is the way the brand’s AI Picture Pro system can now be used with any source. Previously it was predominantly limited to just broadcast fare, but it can now do its thing with streamed and external sources, too.

To mark this moment, LG has added a couple of significant new tricks to the AI Picture Pro engine. One subtly adjusts incoming images to make them look more like the way your eyes perceive the real world, with emphasis on the most important image subjects and objects, while the other attempts to intelligently enhance ‘colour theory’, where makers of films and TV shows use colour to create different moods, feelings and emphases.

Applying the new AI Picture Pro mode to 4K Blu-rays certainly delivers; I got a slightly stronger sense of image depth and a stronger sense of colour separation. What AI Picture Pro does won’t suit everyone, and it doesn’t always get things completely right, but it’s well worth trying with different sources.

READ NEXT: Best TV under £500

LG G4 review: HDR picture quality

The G4’s pictures enjoy phenomenal brightness for an OLED TV. The brightest highlights of HDR images erupt forth with an intensity that many thought OLED technology would never be capable of.

I measured peak brightness on a 10% HDR window of just under 1,500cd/m², which is an extremely impressive score. Taking a variety of brightness measurements across a range of HDR window sizes and picture presets, the G4 achieved a brightness increase of between 50 and 150cd/m² (depending on particular picture configuration) over its predecessor.

That doesn’t advance LG’s OLED brightness story as much as the S95D advances Samsung’s QD OLED story, however. The Samsung model leaps up to almost 1,800cd/m² from last year’s 1,400 or so. Despite this, the way LG’s new Alpha 11 AI processor uses the light available to the panel yields HDR images of even more breathtaking precision and finesse than the SDR ones we’ve discussed previously.

Alongside the brightness peaks are black levels as deep as any we’ve ever seen from an OLED TV and freer of noise and ‘near black’ compression artefacts. There’s also even more finesse about the way the G4 picks out the amount of light to infuse into everything from the subtlest shadow detail to the most intensely saturated colour. My Calman tests found the G4 delivering 98% of the DCI-P3 colour spectrum used during the creation of most of today’s HDR content.

The range of greyscale points and colour tones the G4 can find between these extremes just feels bigger, more refined and, as a result, more natural and immersive than anything else the OLED TV world has to offer right now.

Making the glories of this light control all the more spectacular is the quality of the G4’s dynamic tone mapping option. This does a better job of mapping non-Dolby Vision HDR sources to the screen’s extreme capabilities than the G3 did, contributing to both the image’s extreme dynamism and subtlety of image reproduction.

Having sung the praises of the tone mapping system, I should add that the LG G4’s exceptional brightness and contrast means it can also deliver a stunningly fulsome display of ‘native’ HDR mastering with tone mapping set to static. It exhibited remarkably little evidence of clipping (loss of subtle shading and detail in peak bright areas) even when I was watching titles mastered to 4,000 nits.

One issue associated with very bright TVs is that their intensity can cause judder to look exaggerated with 24fps film sources. Yet another string to the Alpha 11 chipset’s bow is how good its Cinematic Motion option is at massaging away judder without generating distracting processing effects or smoothing action too much.

It’s hard to find anything negative to say about the G4’s pictures, in truth. Its pictures are not as blazingly bright and dynamic as those of the Samsung S95D, but the out-of-the-box precision LG’s set offers will strike many as a great compensation for this difference in picture ‘aggression’. And in any case, there’s no way whatsoever that you can accuse the G4 of not looking bright and intense.

I felt that there was some very slight loss of shadow detail with the G4’s darkest picture presets, and while watching the set in a completely blacked-out room I occasionally noticed the silver frame glowing slightly as it reflected the onscreen pictures.

That’s it, though. Overall, the G4 ups (albeit only subtly with the most accurate presets) LG’s already beloved OLED picture quality once again, while also introducing an intriguing extra picture processing feature or two.

To test the LG G4 OLED we used Portrait Displays Calman colour calibration software.

LG G4 review: Gaming

LG has long led the way when it comes to making its premium TVs as attractive to gamers as they are home cinema fans. The G4 fully benefits from this, kicking off with the fact that all four of its HDMI ports can support 4K/120Hz, variable refresh rates and even handle the PC world’s 144Hz refresh rates.

The G4 also carries a Game preset that instantly reduces input lag to just 12.9ms, along with Game Dashboard and Game Optimizer menu screens devoted to giving you a shortcut to information on the game signals you’re receiving and various tweaks you can apply to your gaming experience.

VRR support takes in both the official AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync formats and, finally, the HDMI ports can handle Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), where the TV will switch in and out of its Game mode depending on whether your console or PC is outputting a game or video source.

READ NEXT: Best TVs for gaming

LG G4 review: Sound quality

Sound hasn’t been a strong point of LG’s recent OLED TV ranges but noticeable improvements have been made here, despite the 60W, 4.2-channel system not having undergone any major physical changes from last year’s model.

Bass is more consistently present and impactful, instantly giving action scenes a more cinematic and natural sense of scale. As well as being more forceful, bass is better controlled, delivering lifts and drops in frequency more astutely, and showing more sensitivity to how forceful low frequencies should sound from moment to moment.

This can’t completely stop very deep, loud and extended bass sounds from suffering with a bit of distortion, and the sound’s scale can start to slide away rather than keep expanding as action or horror scenes head towards a particularly potent crescendo. But the overall sound feel is significantly more impactful.

LG has managed to stop bass falling away as much when using its AI Sound Pro setting this year, too, making it easier to enjoy the virtual 11.1.2-channel soundstage the mode can conjure from any audio source. I wasn’t able to pick out each one of these channels, but the mode certainly created a much wider, bigger soundstage, with surprisingly accurate detail placement.

The G4’s system sounds more natural and balanced, without so many of the slightly harsh or forced moments it’s been associated with in previous iterations. Dialogue sounds a little clearer and more rounded with AI Sound Pro on, too. So effective is the AI Sound Pro mode overall, in fact, that I preferred it to the G4’s native Dolby Atmos setting.

A couple of final points to note are that the G4 supports LG’s wireless (and lossless) Dolby Atmos transmission system, and carries LG’s WOW Orchestra feature, where the TV’s speakers can join forces with those in LG’s latest soundbar range.

LG G4 review: Verdict

After seeing how far Samsung managed to move its QD OLED technology on with the S95D range, I started to wonder if LG’s dominance of the OLED TV world might be coming to an end. The G4 proves there’s still plenty of life in the OLED race yet, though.

LG hasn’t managed to increase the G4’s brightness as much as Samsung’s been able to increase the brightness of its S95D, but pictures still look phenomenally dynamic, rich in contrast and punchy. Crucially, the G4’s new chip isn’t just focused on the extremes of the G4’s images. It also paints light and colour between its extremes with the sort of understanding that only comes from years of working to satisfy home cinema fans.

The set also offers good-looking presets to suit the far-from-ideal room conditions many of us often have to watch TV in. It does so while simultaneously providing a well-presented and content-rich smart TV system and partnering its glorious pictures with a genuinely effective sound system.

If the spectacular Samsung S95D and beautifully refined LG G4 are representative of the sort of TV improvements we can now expect to get every year as the brands’ relatively new OLED rivalry ramps up, it’s fair to say home cinema fans are entering a truly golden age.