LG OLED 55C6V review

LG's OLED TVs have always known how to make an impression. With their ultra-slender bezels, super-slim curved panels and rich, vibrant colour reproduction, even the very best LED TVs looks monstrous when you shuffle them up them side-by-side. The new LG OLED C6V is no exception, and its razor-thin 5mm panel and attractive, see-through stand design make it look as though it's simply floating in mid-air.

It bulks out toward the bottom of the set, where you'll find all its ports and connections, but that doesn't detract from its overall loveliness, making the 55in model on test here look almost every bit as good as you’d want, given its eye-watering £2,299 asking price. I say almost, as its stand is actually quite flimsy, since it’s made from plastic rather than metal. Its brushed, metal-effect finish does go some way to help mask this, but at this price I expect perfection.

Still, once it's installed in your living room, you're probably not going to care too much, especially if you opt to have it wall-mounted. Available in 55in and 65in screen sizes (with the 65C6V costing a whopping £3,799), I would expect image quality to be nigh-on identical across both models.

Picture quality

One of the main attractions of buying an OLED TV over a traditional LED set is its superior image quality. Since every LED pixel produces its own illumination on an OLED TV, it doesn't need any local-area dimming zones or huge edge-mounted backlights to illuminate the panel like traditional LED TVs. Instead, each pixel can simply turn on and off as required, producing pitch-perfect blacks. Indeed, every picture mode I tested hit perfect 0cd/m2 black across the board, and they all covered 100% of the sRGB colour gamut as well, which isn't surprising given its Ultra HD Premium certification.

The only downside to buying an OLED TV is that they're generally not very bright. On Standard, for instance, I measured a peak brightness of 235cd/m2 with our standard calibration tests, and even the ISF-approved Bright Room mode only hit 215cd/m2. This is almost half as bright as Samsung's KS9000, and it makes the C6V rather ill-suited to bright, sunlit rooms.

Switch over to HDR content, however, and it's a completely different story. Using a small white test pattern that took up 10% of the screen, my colorimeter measurements shot up to a huge 710cd/m2. That fell to around 450cd/m2 when I used a 25% white pattern, and 250cd/m2 on a 50% white pattern, but these are still very impressive scores for an OLED set, and come in just under the KS9000's measurements, which topped out at 820cd/m2.

As a result, my 4K Blu-rays of The Lego Movie and Batman vs Superman both looked excellent, with light beams, torches and fiery debris practically popping out of the screen. That brightness does come with a bit of caveat, though, as the actual level of detail on show in those bright areas was pretty poor. Indeed, the raging fires in the penultimate fight scene of Batman vs Superman were just one big white mass most of the time, showing very little evidence of the oranges and reds that were visible on the KS9000.

Things improved once I'd dialled down the contrast and tweaked the brightness settings slightly, but the gains were marginal. You're also limited to only three picture modes when viewing 4K HDR content (HDR Bright, HDR Vivid and HDR Standard), which seems quite stingy compared to its regular set of ten.

This is surprising, as OLED TVs should have better contrast than normal LED sets. However, in practice, the C6V struggled to accurately reproduce all the different shades of white and black, whites suffering the most, clipping much earlier than I would like. Turning on dynamic contrast only made this worse. HDR Standard mode produced by far the best results on this front, displaying more individual shades before they petered out altogether, but it's still not as good as I was expecting.

Motion and Colour Management

The C6V's motion handling was also a little hit and miss. While its TruMotion setting managed to make some of our test 4K Blu-rays look slick and smooth, other scenes produced all manner of glitches and artefacts, often wiping out film grain as it tried to keep up. It also tended to lurch from one frame rate to another, speeding up only to slow down a few seconds later. As a result, you'll probably need to dip into its settings menu quite frequently to adapt it as necessary (or just turn it off completely).

At least LG provides a comprehensive colour management system on the C6V, providing plenty of options for fine-tuning your set once you get it home. In addition to two and 20-point white balance options, you also get individual RGBCMY colour options that let you adjust the tint, saturation and overall luminance of the screen. You'll need a colour calibrator to get the most out of these settings, but they're a welcome addition nonetheless.

Buy the LG OLED 55C6V now from Currys

WebOS and remote

I only wish that LG's webOS 3.0 interface wasn't quite so infuriating to use. As much as I love its card-based Home menu, which displays all your apps, sources and menu shortcuts along the bottom the screen using bright, colourful icons, once you get into the picture settings options, they’re extremely fiddly to use, and make adjusting the C6V a bit of a pain.

The remote is partly to blame here, as its main scroll wheel and navigation buttons sit too low on the handset for my liking. When I wanted to click the scroll wheel for OK, my thumb naturally gravitated too high and hit the Search button instead. I don’t like that the Home button isn’t placed centrally, and it would have been nice to have the Settings and Source buttons higher up as well. Luckily, the remote's built-in gyroscope means you can use motion controls in addition to its traditional buttons. Just give it a bit of a shake and a pointer appears on the screen, making it a little easier to navigate and activate individual menu settings.

Smart apps and Freeview Play

Luckily, most of LG's smart TV apps can be accessed without having to touch the general picture settings, so hopefully you won't have to deal with the UI too often. And it’s good to see that the LG’s offering is comprehensive.

You'll find all the major streaming and TV catch-up services here, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Now TV, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Wuaki and Google Play Movies and TV, plus you can also access Demand 5 content through its built-in Freeview Play interface. You can read more about Freeview Play here, but it essentially adds a built-in catch-up interface to the normal Freeview channel guide, allowing you to scroll back up to seven days and pull up programmes you might have missed without having to open a dedicated app.

Admittedly, Samsung has a slightly wider range of additional apps on its latest TVs, including a dedicated Demand 5 app, plus PlayStation Now and TuneIn Radio (albeit at the expense of Now TV), but LG’s selection is still excellent. You can also download Plex and Deezer apps for free in the LG app store, but you'll need to have a subscription to each respective service before you can use it.

Ports and speakers

You won't find yourself short on ports, either. The C6V comes with three HDMI 2.0a inputs, one with ARC support, an adapter for component and composite connections, three USB ports, one of which is USB 3, optical S/DPIF, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an Ethernet port. There are also antenna and satellite connections.

Its pair of 40W Harmon Kardon-branded speakers do a decent enough job of trying to make your films sound as good as they look, but ideally, you'll want to connect the C6V to an external sound system. If you are going to use the TV's internal speakers, make sure you switch on its SmartSound option, as film audio sounded terribly dull and muddy without it.

Verdict

Ultimately, the C6V's greatest flaw is its price. While £2,299 is still a heck of a lot cheaper than last year's OLED sets, it's still a lot of money for a TV that comes with so many caveats; so many niggles. I really want OLED to succeed as a mainstream TV technology, but when Samsung's flagship 55in KSS9000 costs just £600 less, LG needs to make a much stronger case if it's going to persuade people to part with their cash.

Buy the LG OLED 55C6V now from Currys