The Bravia 9 and LG G4 are no doubt stellar displays in 2024, but perhaps the most under looked option for movie enthusiasts and gamers especially, has got to be the LG C4. With improvements to brightness, speed, and features, can LG finally produce a meaningful upgrade to the C1? Let’s find out.
It’s fair to say that upgrades to the C series over the last few generations have been uninspired to put it lightly, but this year is appears to be different as LG is offering substantial upgrades for buyers in many different areas thanks to the use of an improved display allowing for higher HDR brightness especially in high APL scenes, a newer processor to improve performance, and importantly for PC gamers a higher 144Hz refresh rate decreasing latency and creating an even clearer image in motion than ever before.
Not only that, but with new ways to tweak the image to your liking or improve its accuracy as well as the ability to greatly improve color luminance in game mode, The LG C4 finally represents a significant upgrade over older non MLA WOLED displays. PC Gamers in particular should pay close attention to this TV as it might just be one of the best displays for gaming in 2024 thanks to its higher brightness than most OLED monitors and great features.
For this review I’ll be using an X-Rite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, Color Checker Display Plus colorimeter, Calman Ultimate, Portrait Displays Video Forge Pro 8K pattern generator, a Sony RX100 VII 1000fps camera, an SM208 Screen Luminance Meter, & a Sony Cinema Line FX3 mirrorless video camera. All together at least $12,000 worth of testing equipment alone and of course years of experience testing displays.
Disclaimer: This unit was purchased and this review is 100% unsponsored.
Now real quick before we pencil-dive into the review, here’s a quick look at the details.
Overall the specs are similar to previous years models, but it does get a nice bump in refresh rate for PC gamers moving from 120 to 144Hz, a newer processor, and a brighter OLED display, which should make it a significant upgrade.
Let’s get straight to the point, the LG C4 comes in a pretty standard ECO friendly cardboard box and only requires one person to unbox and set up. It can be a bit slippery to lift thanks to the foam astroglide protective layer, so it may be easier to just cut the bottom open and lift the box over the TV. Once it’s out I just laid it flat on its box, screwed in the legs, and plugged it in.
Unfortunately LG still has the power cord permanently stuck to the TV, the same old remote that feels like it never quite tracks how I would expect when using it as a wand, and the TV still feels like it's constructed in a cheaper manner than its 55” and larger brothers, but to be fair it works great, its light, and the picture is excellent.
Alright, now it's time to get to the juicy testing starting with color. Over the last few years LG has made a concerted effort to improve their color brightness especially on their MLA panels, but unfortunately the 42” C4 is using an older non MLA evo panel, so the improvements in color luminance for movie watching will be pretty small, however for gaming this isn’t necessarily the case. Don’t get me wrong LG does a great job of producing accurate looking colors especially in SDR, but sometimes in HDR they can fall short of QD OLED, especially in game mode where their TVs have typically reduced color brightness likely to combat potential burn in.
Thankfully this year I was able to bypass this limit by putting the TV in Filmmaker Mode and then enabling game mode in the settings. For some reason this unlocks its full potential without noticeably increasing latency even when tested with a 1000 FPS camera. This is a huge upgrade. Gamers rejoice!
Of course one staple of LG OLEDs for me has always been their impressive accuracy making them a great choice for professionals or display enthusiasts looking to get as close as possible to the creators intent, and how does the 42” LG C4 fair?
Testing Deep Dive - sRGB Gamma 2.2
Out of the Box sRGB follows EOTF, but has color inaccuracies measuring far too blue.
Thankfully with some adjustments you can get excellent SDR accuracy.
Testing Deep Dive - HDR DCI-P3
The default HDR mode also has quite a few issues with over brightening HDR content.
By enabling Filmmaker Mode and white balancing the TV you can get much better HDR accuracy with correct brightness and color temperature.
Thankfully not only is LG’s FMM pretty accurate out of the box, tracking EOTF brightness curves very closely, and giving a fairly well balanced white point, but this year they have given professionals an enormous amount of options to tweak the image allowing me to get nearly perfect measurements. This means you can expect to see movies, TV, and games almost as if you were in the room with the creators as long as the TV can keep up brightness wise and is fed a clean high quality image.
The only weakness LG still has is their inability to reach 100% DCI-P3 coverage in HDR testing (the color space used by most HDR movies). This means that if you put an LG OLED like the C4 next to a competing Mini LED or QD OLED there will be times where it doesn’t look as vibrant or saturated, but this is highly dependent on the content.
Testing Deep Dive - Color Volume SDR and HDR
LG still struggles to reach 100% DCI-P3 in HDR.
Brightness remains LGs biggest challenge in 2024 as they go up against increasingly more impressive Mini LED TVs, but thankfully this year LG has made significant improvements to their average brightness in HDR scenes. Last year I got to use the 42” LG C3 extensively, and I can tell you with certainty that the 43” LG C4 is noticeably brighter in almost all tasks.
Testing Deep Dive - Brightness
The LG C4 is over 20% Brighter in a 10% Window than the C3 based on my previous testing.
The 42” C4 is roughly half as bright as the 55” G4 in this HDR game.
Now unfortunately they still fall far short of the more expensive G series equipped with their brightness boosting MLA (Micro Lens Array), and the SDR brightness can be underwhelming, especially in brighter APL scenes, but I think the improvements are substantial enough to satisfy most buyers who intend to use the display in a gaming or movie room.
Coming in at a smaller 42” size and bumping the refresh rate up to 144Hz could make the C4 an excellent option for PC gamers especially considering you there are no Display Stream Compression issues thanks to the four 48Gb HDMI 2.1 ports. But is it actually fast enough?
The answer is yes. In fact this 42” TV is close to even the fastest 4K 240Hz OLED monitors money can buy making this excellent for gaming in terms of latency.
Additionally the motion performance of the LG C4 is magnificent to behold. It absolutely crushes LCD based displays offering very clear images in motion especially at 144Hz which is a noticeable upgrade over the 120Hz of the LG C3.
Overall in terms of gaming the LG C4 has finally made the upgrades necessary for it to not only be a great TV and console gaming device, but potentially one of the best PC monitors money can buy, even for gaming online where only the fastest OLED monitors on the market could compete in terms of clarity and speed.
Text clarity remains a weak point for LG WOLED displays as their extra white subpixel can make images appear to have some issues around their edges like shadowing or chromatic aberration resulting in colored outlines.
Green, Red, White, Blue LG C4 subpixel arrangement
That said, overall this issue will not be very noticeable at a reasonable viewing distance, and the 4K resolution combined with excellent glossy coating makes for a very clear picture. In fact, let me take a moment to gush over LGs chosen coating. Not only does the glossy coat allow for a very clear and vibrant picture, but unlike QD OLED it does not light up magenta or gray in brighter environments. This means you can get an excellent picture in almost all viewing conditions, but you may want to watch out for very bright lights that could reflect in the image, but alas we are at the mercy of the laws of physics here.
LG’s C4 Glossy Finish: Reflection & Ambient Light Handling
Unfortunately LG still has issues where getting too close to the panel on the C series this year can lead to the viewing angle issues rearing their ugly head. Specifically the center of the display may look slightly magenta tinted and the edges can look slightly green tinted. The further away you get the less of an issue this becomes, but viewing at an angle can make the entire TV appear slightly green. This issue has been almost entirely eliminated on newer MLA panels, but unfortunately the C4 is not equipped with one.
Additionally LG still has some vertical banding on gray screens, which typically can be mostly resolved by running a manual pixel clean, but this doesn’t always work on all panels.
Vertical Banding Before Pixel Clean
Once again LG pretty much nailed the audio. On most audio presets you do get a fairly natural and neutral sound which yes is a little lean on the bass as to be expected, and won’t be matching the clarity, sound staging, or imaging that an expensive audio setup can provide, but overall it's great for a TV.
LG has a pretty solid software experience. I’ve never had an issue with them badly messing up features or performance with updates. There is a lot of room to customize your experience, and overall the speed is acceptable. The speed still could be improved, and I know many people are getting concerned over ads, but thankfully LG does give options to disable ads.
Ok, so is the 42” LG C4 worth buying in 2024? The answer is yes, especially since it has recently dropped in price. To summarize why, the LG C4 has excellent FMM accuracy, improved brightness, a higher refresh rate for a lower latency, more clear gaming experience, lots of new options, the ability to unlock full color brightness in game mode, great sound, a non offensive menu experience, and a fair price.
Now I'd like to see LG upgrade the entire C series next year to MLA panels to improve brightness and uniformity, but for PC gamers, console gamers, and even film buffs the C series offers an excellent picture this year all things considered, making it something I can happily recommend to almost anyone.
