LG OLED55C8PLA £1999
FOR Brighter, punchier and sharper than last year’s LGS; natural images; upscaling; loads of apps; stylish design AGAINST Sound could be better; tough competition
LG has been killing it on the TV front over the past couple of years. Not only has it been making and selling its own excellent OLED tellies, it has also sold OLED panels to all its rivals, with the exception of Samsung.
But standing still is a sure fire way to get caught by your rivals, and in LG’S case a resurgent Samsung must be of particular concern. Interestingly, LG’S 2018 strategy revolves not around improvements to its OLED panel, but in the brain that drives it – the Alpha 9 processor. A four-part noise-reduction system, frequency-based imagesharpening, object-based contrast enhancement and adaptive colour mapping are all on the menu. The TV can even apply dynamic metadata to HDR formats that natively carry only static metadata, resulting in features that LG refers to as HDR10 Pro and HLG Pro.
There’s also support for high frame rate (HFR) content, although a lack of HFR content makes that more of a potential future bonus, rather than something to get excited about now. Still, this is the most advanced picture processing LG is currently capable of, and that is enough to excite us.
Those smart innards are matched by a smart appearance. There isn’t much room for aesthetic invention in current TV design – they’re essentially big slabs of screen – but LG should be applauded for coming up with something different.
It’s not just the supreme slimness of the screen, but also the elegance of the pedestal stand. It’s a unique, interesting design, particularly in terms of the wide, ridged mouth beneath the screen that, as well as looking rather cool, is designed to funnel sound from the downward-firing speakers out towards the listener.
Rear enclosure
Those speakers and the connections (four HDMIS, three USBS, aerial, satellite, optical and headphone) require a plastic enclosure that’s mounted on the back of the panel. You’re not getting uniform super-slimness, then, but this is undeniably a more stylish TV than the B7 and C7 it replaces.
It’s a shame LG hasn’t updated its set-up process, which is the same one introduced in 2014. It’s quick and streamlined, but looks like it’s running at a relatively low resolution. Not a huge amount has changed with the webos platform. The customisable tab system is pleasant, and the app selection is essentially unchanged, including Netflix and Amazon in 4K HDR, all of the catch-up services and on-demand movies from Google Play TV & Movies and Rakuten.
The Gallery feature, which turns your TV into an art installation, returns with significantly more pictures (46 compared with last year’s 13).
LG is making lots of noise about its Thinq AI, which combines with enhanced voice recognition to make controlling the TV with your voice smarter and more natural. It can certainly prove a useful shortcut to the odd picture setting (“turn on Game Mode”, for example), but we haven’t discovered many uses beyond that.
The webos is definitely faster and more fluid than it’s ever been before, though, making switching between settings, apps and sources a zippy affair.
Back to basics
The C8 is an exciting performer, but you have to turn off many of its superadvanced features to get it performing at its best. The object-based contrast enhancement and adaptive colour features are both activated when you select the Vivid mode. But even after spending a full day tweaking settings, we couldn’t get colours to behave themselves in this mode. Everything looks over-saturated and unnatural, so we’d avoid it entirely. Instead, we recommend Cinema Home for HDR content and Standard for everything else. Each of these needs only a little tweaking – a relief given the mind-bogglingly confusing, almost Kafkaesque picture menus.
This is a markedly sharper, more detailed and punchier picture than that offered by last year’s OLEDS, even without Vivid mode active.
Play the opening of Planet Earth II on 4K Blu-ray and the introductory selection of clips provides evidence of a supremely capable, consistent and natural performer. The snow of the mountains is purer and brighter than last year, and there’s more bright detail, too.
A sun-baked ridge of sand dunes is a gloriously rich, burnished orange, the seemingly endless canopy of a rainforest is lusciously, vividly green, and the ocean surrounding a tropical island combines beautiful, enticing aquamarine around the shore with steadily, subtly deepening shades of blue. It seems that the Dynamic Tone Mapping feature (which adds dynamic metadata to static metadata signals) is playing its part here.
As with last year’s models, the C8 also allows you to experience dynamic metadata thanks to its Dolby Vision support, and in most cases this results in even greater contrast and colours. The Samsung Q9FN is capable of going even brighter and more vibrant, but the C8’s natural subtlety and newly discovered punch is still an absolute delight.
In fact, it’s more than a match for the Sony A1 when it comes to brightness and punch, and that wasn’t the case with last year’s LG OLEDS. The C8 and A1 have a lot in common, the core differences being the way that the Sony slightly exaggerates blacks for greater depth and fuller colours while the LG’S more balanced approach results in more dark detail and brighter peaks. The A1 does deliver better motion, though.
Last year, LG blew us away with the quality of its upscaling, and it’s business as usual for 2018. The stability and control of the images it produces from standard-def signals are significantly greater than any rival is currently able to muster – and it’s good from Full HD too.
Input lag for games is unchanged from last year at 21.4ms. That’s more than fast enough for even super-serious gamers.
It’s all about the visuals
It’s a shame that LG hasn’t upped its audio game, particularly given the Dolby Atmos branding. That audio-funneling stand results in a better-projected and more direct presentation, but tonally it’s quite a thin delivery – both the Sony A1 and Samsung Q9FN are sonically more capable. Of course, our advice would be to partner any new TV with a separate sound solution, which makes the TV’S own sound irrelevant.
The OLED55C8PLA is not a giant leap for LG’S OLEDS. Instead it has improved on last year’s models in a number of small but collectively significant ways. The upshot is an image that’s brighter, punchier and more detailed, while maintaining the black depth and naturalism we love. It’s an exceptional performer that gives the Sony KD-55A1 a run for its money, even if that screen currently comes in at £100 less.
“Planet Earth II on 4K Blu-ray provides evidence of a supremely capable, consistent, natural performer”