LG C8 OLED TV Review: A smart cookie and a stunner

I can’t beat around the bush on this one, every time I watch and OLED TV I remind myself why I encourage people to buy them if their wallet is big enough – OLED is stunning.  Simple.

To confirm that view, I’ve been testing the LG 65 inch C8 OLED – And yep, still true.

This year’s OLED from LG is no exception – there’s nothing vastly different in the concept, the look, the design – sure there’s new ways LG is trying to boost the contrast or brightness to get an even better picture, but to the average naked eye it’s just mouthwateringly good.

Under the hood is a new a9 processor from LG, which is where the real power in TVs today sits.  LG Display (a separate company) makes the “screen” and there’s other brands that use those screens to now sell OLED TVs – but do they have the same experience as LG in processing the image coming in from the antenna or input and showing it.  The Alpha 9 is LGs best attempt at a true to life picture with twice as much noise reduction being just one of the features.

The C8 is a step down from the E8 – the big difference being the actual design of the unit – on the E8 the TV sits on a glass panel, almost floating above the stand.  On the C8, the stand is all one unit.  No big deal, but if you are design savvy the E8 might be your go.

How’s the picture?

There’s no getting past it, on picture quality alone, OLED is unrivalled.

Nothing more to say.

Just how Smart is it?

“AI” – “Artificial Intelligence” – “ThinQ”, these are all terms you’ll hear or see in LG marketing – this is their real push in 2018 and beyond.

First and foremost, remember, its 2018 and Beyond.  We’re in the early stages, this AI stuff is barely a baby let alone a toddler.

For now, while it might seem like a “smarter smart” TV sell, it’s really intelligent voice commands.  The TV can understand that when you say “this is too loud” you want the volume down.

Essentially, it’s “smart” enough to know what to do and not require a specific command like “Volume up”.

Look, that’s great, but it’s hardly revolutionary at this stage.  The issue for LG is, this will be a multi year evolution, so we may not see the revolution when it happens.

Content searching is great, sign into Netflix and when you ask the TV to show you “Clint Eastwood Movies” you’ll get suggestions from across services – Stan is not part of that yet, that’s a fingers crossed for an future update.

Google Assistant is the fallback – so if LG’s ThinQ can’t determine the answer, Google will step in and likely serve up some web results.

I found its voice recognition excellent, the natural language understanding to be great, but I rarely found myself bothering to use it.

It’s a sleeper technology I think – we’ll love it when it’s at it’s best – but wait for it to hit the big time before you get too excited.

Tell ’em the price son!

Ouch – at $6,399 it’s not cheap.  Good news, it’s $4,995 now in retail.

Bad news, if you’re a go-big-or-go-home kinda guy, the ten inch problem remains – for the price of a 65 inch OLED you can get a premium LED TV ten inches bigger.

Personally, at 65 inches, this thing is a great size, and I’d opt for the OLED any day of the week.

[schema type=”review” rev_name=”LG C8 65 Inch OLED” rev_body=”LG’s OLEDs are the best TVs you can buy, the stunning picture quality, paired with great design and all new smarts – a winner” author=”Trevor Long” pubdate=”2018-08-07″ user_review=”5″ min_review=”0″ max_review=”5″ ]