Most of the new TVs are very good. So good that I have a hard time telling my friends, family and readers to spend more than a thousand dollars on any of them.
This is because you can easily get a fantastic TV capable of offering the best picture quality that Amazon, Netflix or Disney + has to offer, such as 4K resolution and Dolby Vision HDR, for much less. That even includes world-class “local” backlighting for deeper blacks and quantum dots for brighter colors. And yet every year, when LG’s first OLED arrives, I am forced to rethink this value-based position.
The LG CX (pronounced “C-10”) is that amazing. From class-leading image quality to great features for gamers, this is the aspirational TV worth spending money on. But the stylus hasn’t budged much from the company’s 2019 models; They could be better purchases since you can catch them at a lower price.
In his house
Unpacking and setup instructions are easy to follow, but be careful: When you put the CX in the holder the first time, you probably think you’re ruining a multi-million dollar TV. You can feel the screen bend slightly when you move it upside down to screw on the base. However, there is nothing to worry about. In my few years of dealing with LG paper thin TVs, I still have a problem. But if I were to mount one on the wall, I would probably hire a professional.
Once you’re outside, take a minute to marvel. “So thin it will scare you,” is how I have come to describe the CX to friends and family. A two-inch-thick base narrows to a few millimeters about a third of the way from the included bracket on the 65-inch model I tested.
Ports, connections, and power are pretty standard for a modern flat screen. You get four HDMI 2.1 ports, three USB, RF, Ethernet ports, and composite video and audio inputs (good for older gaming systems). On the output side, it has 3.5mm and optical audio outputs.
Like all LG TVs, the CX features the company’s own smart operating system, webOS. I still prefer the slightly easier-to-navigate interface of Roku TVs, as in the TCL 6 series (9/10, WIRED recommends), but what’s here works fine. Finding and organizing my favorite streaming apps was easy, and each one worked perfectly.
The best thing about using the LG interface? The included smart remote control, which acts as a Nintendo Wiimote for an on-screen cursor. It makes typing usernames and passwords, also known as the ruin of my existence, much faster.
Movie madness
I’ve been taking a lot of old favorites recently, so the first thing that appeared to me was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD Even by optimizing 480p video, the CX showed how much better dark scenes can be seen on a standard model with an LED backlight.
All thanks to OLED technology. OLED televisions are not “normal” LED-backlit televisions. Instead, each pixel is filled with an organic material that can act as its own backlight when powered by electrical currents. So when an image is black on the screen, there is absolutely no light emitted by the pixels, unlike the LED backlight that is always on, to some extent or another, with non-OLED TVs. These “true” blacks create striking contrast, making some of the most realistic images possible.
The first time you will truly realize the power of LG’s amazing display technology is when you see something in 4K with High Dynamic Range (HDR). The CX is compliant with HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR standards, which means you’ll get the most out of every home-made show on Netflix, Amazon and elsewhere, and many premiere movies.
But regardless of the format you see, the contrast on the CX is surprisingly good, as are the colors. Super bright reds, greens, and blues juxtapose along with incredibly realistic shadows, creating some of the most realistic images you’ll likely get at home. I especially like the new filmmaker mode, which turns off motion smoothing automatically. There are a ton of other picture modes to play and test with, each of them looks good, but I’d stick with cinema mode or filmmaker mode if you’re watching TV and movies rather than games.
I usually don’t mention this in most TV reviews, given the good streaming quality these days, but the CX is a model that might be worth buying a 4K Blu-ray player and discs as it 4K-Blu-ray offers an even higher video bit rate, which means better image quality.
Both this year’s CX and last year’s B9 are compatible with Nvidia G-sync, making gaming look super smooth to those with PCs with Nvidia graphics cards. The CX now also Supports AMD FreeSync, for those with AMD cards. It is good to have both main standards included.
In terms of image, LG has updated the processor inside the CX for 2020, but I really can’t tell the difference between this and last year’s LG OLED models without them side by side. I’m sure they did a little better, but the B9 looked so good that it’s hard to say.
I always hesitate to mention integrated TV speakers, because here at WIRED we are so convinced that you should buy a sound bar. I don’t think LG is worth criticizing for the industry-wide problem, but I will say that CX speakers, like 99 percent of television speakers, sound pretty bad. Don’t use them.
That brings me to perhaps the best thing LG has done with the CX: do it in a smaller size. OLED TVs have extremely low latency, making them excellent for high-end PC gamers. That makes the new 48-inch option for the CX OLED an incredible choice for gamers who want a TV that also doubles as a computer screen. It’s also great for people like my dad, who have smaller TV cabinets designed for flat screen sizes.
Is the upgrade worth it?
The crux of my problem with this year’s LG OLED line is that last year’s models are still amazing. It’s a hard problem to have: LG has done its best to make a better version of what came before, but what came before was so good that it doesn’t really matter. Once it hits televisions this nice, the visual burden falls on the quality of the content, not the television.
In fact, unless you’re looking for the new 48-inch model or have an AMD video card on your PC, it makes a lot more sense to save money and buy an OLED from LG’s 2019 lineup. The CX starts out at a cheaper price than last year’s OLED C9s, but you can still snag a C9 or B9 OLED for cheaper, and you probably won’t be able to tell the difference.
But when those offers run out, when the CX price drops a bit, I don’t think it’s silly to buy the CX if you’re a video nerd. It is a truly remarkable television and the best high-end television for most people. It is one of the only models that definitely looks much Better than you can buy for less than $ 1,000.
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