Pros
- Excellent overall image quality
- Great for gaming
- High levels of contrast in bright rooms
Cons
- Very similar to the C4
- Remote is harder to use than before
- AI Assistant is not compelling
The LG C5 OLED TV may be the highly anticipated follow-up to last year’s excellent C4, but perhaps the company was too distracted by AI to make a big deal of it at CES. The TV didn’t receive the splashy press debut accorded to its big brother, the G5; instead, it was hidden away at the company’s private, invite-only booth in Las Vegas.
That’s a shame because the C5 is thrilling to high-end TV buyers in its own way, with the deep contrast expected of OLED and the bright, saturated colors demanded of today’s movies and video games. But this does pose the question: Is the C5 better than the C4? Regarding the numbers I tested at our New York City lab, I can point to the differences on a chart. Yet, in my comparisons of four different OLED TVs, including last year’s Samsung S95D and the LG G5, I found they all looked very similar — and all superb. The new G5 was capable of one thing: getting a lot brighter, which I found made the most difference with gaming. It’s up to you if paying around $600 extra for the G5 over the C5 is worthwhile to you.
Nevertheless, the LG C5 is a great way to watch your favorite movies, play video games or follow your favorite sports team. That said, if you’re in the market to buy a TV now, it’s worth looking at last year’s TV. There’s very little to separate these two models, aside from the $1,000-plus difference in price in favor of the C4.
Also read: Best TVs of 2025
LG C5 OLED TV sizes and series comparison
I performed a hands-on evaluation of the 65-inch LG C5, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series. All sizes have very similar specs and should provide very similar picture quality.
Get thin, OLED
Unlike the G5, which is much chunkier front-to-back, the C5 panel is quite thin at 0.25-inch, with a textured back that resembles black marble. Like last year’s TV, the panel is attached to a much thicker base containing the inputs, circuit boards and such. The overall design aesthetic is “loft apartment chic,” but remember that when that TV is wall-mounted or placed on a unit, you’ll never see more than the front of the screen itself.
The biggest change this year is the remote control — that huge, fluted wand has been replaced by a more traditional bar. You might be saying, “Goodbye, hyperactive moth cursor,” but no, the Magic Remote capability is still there. And as described below, some of the remote redesigns aren’t exactly magical.
Get smart, AI TV
Holding down the home button brings up the inputs, but would have rathered a dedicated button
The TV uses LG’s WebOS for streaming and navigation, which I found straightforward, with all of the popular streaming services made available. Like most TVs today, the LG C5 has a gallery mode that also includes the ability to create your own AI art or upload a photo gallery.
LG’s AI Concierge opens with the AI button
The company is all-in on “Affectionate Intelligence” and one of the biggest machine-y features this year is the AI Concierge. The concierge purports to do everything AI because, of course, it does, but it could end up being as useful as ordering pizza from a DVD player.
One thing it claims to do is learn your viewing history so it can suggest programs you might like. Yet, every streaming service does this natively already, so what would be more useful is tracking all the shows I am currently watching so I can go back to them easily, as Google TV can.
I tested the AI feature of the LG C5, and it can currently tell you the time or the weather, take you to an app that plays the show you want, or do limited web searches. Like any assistant it’s a little finicky; for example, a search for Severance took me to a 2007 horror movie, while saying “Play Severance” brought up the Apple TV show first.
Lastly, most of the C5’s TV setup routines are typically tedious, just a series of click-through screens. However, I did find the C5 (and G5) unintentionally amusing. The TV has its screen reader turned on by default, which is usually helpful for the vision impaired, but the robotic voice speaks too fast to be intelligible. Instead, it sounds like it’s reciting side effects in a pharmaceutical commercial. “Do-not-use-the-Magic-Remote-if-you-are-allergic-to-the-Magic-Remote!”
Dolby Vision, check
The OLED panel features the company’s Brightness Boosting tech and has been UL-certified as “Glare-Free,” for what it’s worth. The C5 comes with a 120Hz native refresh rate for smoother motion and Dolby Vision and HDR 10 for more vivid gaming and movie-watching.
- 120Hz Native (VRR 144Hz)
- Four HDMI inputs with HDMI 2.1, HDCP 2.2
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- Optical digital audio output
- RF (antenna) input
- RS-232 port (minijack, for service only)
- Ethernet (LAN) port
While LG was one of the first adopters of the NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) standard, the company has not included tuners in its TVs since 2023.
With that new remote, which is all decked out in AI livery, there comes a new challenge. There is no longer any obvious way to change inputs. If you use your TV as a switch, which many high-end users do, this becomes more tedious. I used the THINQ button and the input shortcut there. But a dedicated input button on the remote would cut the time to change inputs by at least a third. You need to hold down the Home Hub button to access inputs.
Trying to mute the TV is also a challenge, as you have to hold the volume button down for a few seconds. Through a quirk in my setup routine, the TV didn’t register the cursor, so it then became a “normal” remote. Don’t ask me how I did that — I can’t say. Though I did try to replicate it and failed, the experience was better.
High-end OLED (and mini-LED) comparison: LG C5 vs. LG C5 vs. Samsung S95D vs. LG C4 vs. TCL QM850
TV and movies
While LCD and its derivatives keep getting brighter and brighter every year, gains in OLED’s brightness have been less dramatic. While the more expensive G5 is noticeably brighter than the G4, the C5 is just a little better than the model before it. That said, most content is not designed to be eye-searingly bright; this may not even translate to differences when you’re watching streaming content. During movies from Netflix and Fandango, and when set to their respective Filmmaker modes, the LG C4, LG C5, LG G5 and Samsung S95D all behaved very similarly. I also compared the TVs against a TCL mini-LED (in Imax mode); it was the only one that demonstrated significant differences.
Read More: How We Test TVs
The opening scene of It Part One is a great test of a TV’s capabilities with its high-contrast images, and I was a little surprised to see the four OLEDs perform at a similar level despite their price differences. As Georgie starts to descend the stairs into the basement, you see an area of wall next to the railing with some low-level shadow detail. The C4, C5 and TCL shadows looked a little more detailed than with the G5 and Samsung, but it was only by a smidgen — I had to look really hard. In the intercut shots of his brother, Bill, the view through the windows looked much brighter and more blue on the TCL than the OLEDs. The drawbacks of LCD technology were also on display in the cellar, as there was a little bit of blue hazing in completely black areas of the screen. This is something that the OLEDs didn’t do; the pixels were simply turned off and appeared black, as expected.
Watch this: LG C5 vs. LG G5: Which OLED Gives the Most for Your Money
After inconclusive results with the OLEDs and It, I tried two colorful and very dynamic movies, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Mad Max: Fury Road. During Spider-Man, the colors and brightness of the OLEDs were very similar again — even during the overwhelming Super Collider sequence at the 24-minute mark.
Meanwhile, in Mad Max (4:48) there is a chase scene as the War Boys wrestle with Max in a water-filled room that is lit overhead. At the right of the screen, a blue flame briefly appears. It looks a little brighter in this red and green scene on the G5 versus the others. The C4 and C5 looked very similar.
I next streamed The Avengers: Age of Ultron and saw the differences between the mini-LED TCL QM850 and the OLEDs. The opening scenes of the team assaulting a Hydra base look brighter than the OLEDs, though they’re not as cinematic-looking. They’re quite nice, though.
I followed that up, then, with a 4K Blu-ray test disc from Spears and Munsil comprising mostly static footage and, apart from gaming, here is where the C5 and G5 showed the differences in performance. The C5 still looked very good, with deep contrast and plenty of color saturation, but the G5 showed where the extra $600 was going: brighter images and clearer, less-green snowy fields. Most movies don’t look like test discs, but at least I could finally see a difference between the two.
Bright room
Light output in nits
| TV | Brightest mode (HDR) | Accurate mode (HDR) | Brightest mode (SDR) | Accurate mode (SDR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LG G5 | 2,813 | 2,297 | 1,030 | 412 |
| LG C5 | 1,434 | 1,187 | 480 | 288 |
| TCL QM851 | 3,183 | 3,183 | 3,084 | 1,262 |
| Hisense U8N | 3,175 | 3,175 | 3,168 | 1,112 |
| Samsung S95D | 1,734 | 1,666 | 544 | 265 |
| LG G4 | 1,799 | 1,420 | 792 | 792 |
| LG C4 | 1,213 | 968 | 414 | 390 |
The C5 is a little brighter than last year’s C4 — and I measured a maximum brightness of 1,400 vs. 1,200 in Vivid mode. Yet what makes the C4 even better suited to use in a bright room is its improved screen coating. In a lit room I found that the C5 was better than the C4 at rejecting reflections, while the Samsung S95F was the best of the lot. The downside to the Samsung, in particular, is that, without the slightly shiny screen coating of the other TVs, the shade of black could look gray in direct light.
Gaming
I played several different games on my four-TV setup, and it was here that the biggest differences between the G5, in particular, and the rest of the lineup appeared. While the C5 looked as good as the higher-end Samsung S95D during games, it didn’t stand up to the G5. Pixel response times of the C5, as tested with the Leo Bodnar test units, were only average — about 13ms. The best I’ve seen is around 9ms on TVs like the Samsung S95D or the Roku Pro Series. These discrepancies probably won’t be noticeable during play, but I know that after playing FPS games on all four OLED screens, the tiny differences in response gave me motion sickness.
Uniformity and viewing angle
I found that the C5’s picture was not only uniform with both solid color and black or white but also stayed consistent when viewed off-axis. This is consistent with most OLED TVs, which don’t have the image clouding or viewing angle problems of LCD screens.
Picture settings and testing notes
In testing — both in measurements and in the real world — it became apparent that the C5 is slightly improved over the C4, mostly in terms of a little more brightness and better color accuracy. The test comes up as Poor when it comes to Gamma. This is because we use a 2.2 gamma as the basis of our test — this 2.2 curve looks better in lit rooms and also gives better shadow detail in a cinema-like environment. Gamma 2.4 may be an industry standard — which the C5 meets — but in our tests, 2.2 gives a better experience.
The C5’s measurable color is a little better than last year’s, but only by a percentage point and was not really detectable by the eye. As before, Filmmaker mode proved to be the overall best picture mode on the C4. Cinema mode was a close second, but it enables some smoothing, which can create the often undesirable soap opera effect.
LG C5 test measurements
| Test | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Black luminance (0%) | 0.000 | Good |
| Peak white luminance (SDR) | 480 | Average |
| Avg. gamma (10-100%) | 2.43 | Poor |
| Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) | 1.06 | Good |
| Dark gray error (30%) | 0.66 | Good |
| Bright gray error (80%) | 1.31 | Good |
| Avg. color checker error | 1.03 | Good |
| Avg. saturation sweeps error | 1.00 | Good |
| Avg. color error | 1.08 | Good |
| 1080p/24 Cadence (IAL) | Pass | Good |
| Input lag (Game mode) | 13.63 | Good |
| HDR10 | ||
| Black luminance (0%) | 0.000 | Good |
| Peak white luminance (10% win) | 1434.00 | Good |
| Gamut % UHDA/P3 (CIE 1976) | 99.3 | Good |
| ColorMatch HDR error | 17.01 | Good |
| Avg. color checker error | 1.64 | Good |
| Input lag (Game mode, 4K HDR) | 13.00 | Good |
Portrait Displays Calman calibration software was used in this review.
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Pros
- Excellent overall image quality
- Great for gaming
- High levels of contrast in bright rooms
Cons
- Very similar to the C4
- Remote is harder to use than before
- AI Assistant is not compelling
The LG C5 OLED TV may be the highly anticipated follow-up to last year’s excellent C4, but perhaps the company was too distracted by AI to make a big deal of it at CES. The TV didn’t receive the splashy press debut accorded to its big brother, the G5; instead, it was hidden away at the company’s private, invite-only booth in Las Vegas.
That’s a shame because the C5 is thrilling to high-end TV buyers in its own way, with the deep contrast expected of OLED and the bright, saturated colors demanded of today’s movies and video games. But this does pose the question: Is the C5 better than the C4? Regarding the numbers I tested at our New York City lab, I can point to the differences on a chart. Yet, in my comparisons of four different OLED TVs, including last year’s Samsung S95D and the LG G5, I found they all looked very similar — and all superb. The new G5 was capable of one thing: getting a lot brighter, which I found made the most difference with gaming. It’s up to you if paying around $600 extra for the G5 over the C5 is worthwhile to you.
Nevertheless, the LG C5 is a great way to watch your favorite movies, play video games or follow your favorite sports team. That said, if you’re in the market to buy a TV now, it’s worth looking at last year’s TV. There’s very little to separate these two models, aside from the $1,000-plus difference in price in favor of the C4.
Also read: Best TVs of 2025
LG C5 OLED TV sizes and series comparison
I performed a hands-on evaluation of the 65-inch LG C5, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series. All sizes have very similar specs and should provide very similar picture quality.
Get thin, OLED
Unlike the G5, which is much chunkier front-to-back, the C5 panel is quite thin at 0.25-inch, with a textured back that resembles black marble. Like last year’s TV, the panel is attached to a much thicker base containing the inputs, circuit boards and such. The overall design aesthetic is “loft apartment chic,” but remember that when that TV is wall-mounted or placed on a unit, you’ll never see more than the front of the screen itself.
The biggest change this year is the remote control — that huge, fluted wand has been replaced by a more traditional bar. You might be saying, “Goodbye, hyperactive moth cursor,” but no, the Magic Remote capability is still there. And as described below, some of the remote redesigns aren’t exactly magical.
Get smart, AI TV
Holding down the home button brings up the inputs, but would have rathered a dedicated button
The TV uses LG’s WebOS for streaming and navigation, which I found straightforward, with all of the popular streaming services made available. Like most TVs today, the LG C5 has a gallery mode that also includes the ability to create your own AI art or upload a photo gallery.
LG’s AI Concierge opens with the AI button
The company is all-in on “Affectionate Intelligence” and one of the biggest machine-y features this year is the AI Concierge. The concierge purports to do everything AI because, of course, it does, but it could end up being as useful as ordering pizza from a DVD player.
One thing it claims to do is learn your viewing history so it can suggest programs you might like. Yet, every streaming service does this natively already, so what would be more useful is tracking all the shows I am currently watching so I can go back to them easily, as Google TV can.
I tested the AI feature of the LG C5, and it can currently tell you the time or the weather, take you to an app that plays the show you want, or do limited web searches. Like any assistant it’s a little finicky; for example, a search for Severance took me to a 2007 horror movie, while saying “Play Severance” brought up the Apple TV show first.
Lastly, most of the C5’s TV setup routines are typically tedious, just a series of click-through screens. However, I did find the C5 (and G5) unintentionally amusing. The TV has its screen reader turned on by default, which is usually helpful for the vision impaired, but the robotic voice speaks too fast to be intelligible. Instead, it sounds like it’s reciting side effects in a pharmaceutical commercial. “Do-not-use-the-Magic-Remote-if-you-are-allergic-to-the-Magic-Remote!”
Dolby Vision, check
The OLED panel features the company’s Brightness Boosting tech and has been UL-certified as “Glare-Free,” for what it’s worth. The C5 comes with a 120Hz native refresh rate for smoother motion and Dolby Vision and HDR 10 for more vivid gaming and movie-watching.
- 120Hz Native (VRR 144Hz)
- Four HDMI inputs with HDMI 2.1, HDCP 2.2
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- Optical digital audio output
- RF (antenna) input
- RS-232 port (minijack, for service only)
- Ethernet (LAN) port
While LG was one of the first adopters of the NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) standard, the company has not included tuners in its TVs since 2023.
With that new remote, which is all decked out in AI livery, there comes a new challenge. There is no longer any obvious way to change inputs. If you use your TV as a switch, which many high-end users do, this becomes more tedious. I used the THINQ button and the input shortcut there. But a dedicated input button on the remote would cut the time to change inputs by at least a third. You need to hold down the Home Hub button to access inputs.
Trying to mute the TV is also a challenge, as you have to hold the volume button down for a few seconds. Through a quirk in my setup routine, the TV didn’t register the cursor, so it then became a “normal” remote. Don’t ask me how I did that — I can’t say. Though I did try to replicate it and failed, the experience was better.
High-end OLED (and mini-LED) comparison: LG C5 vs. LG C5 vs. Samsung S95D vs. LG C4 vs. TCL QM850
TV and movies
While LCD and its derivatives keep getting brighter and brighter every year, gains in OLED’s brightness have been less dramatic. While the more expensive G5 is noticeably brighter than the G4, the C5 is just a little better than the model before it. That said, most content is not designed to be eye-searingly bright; this may not even translate to differences when you’re watching streaming content. During movies from Netflix and Fandango, and when set to their respective Filmmaker modes, the LG C4, LG C5, LG G5 and Samsung S95D all behaved very similarly. I also compared the TVs against a TCL mini-LED (in Imax mode); it was the only one that demonstrated significant differences.
Read More: How We Test TVs
The opening scene of It Part One is a great test of a TV’s capabilities with its high-contrast images, and I was a little surprised to see the four OLEDs perform at a similar level despite their price differences. As Georgie starts to descend the stairs into the basement, you see an area of wall next to the railing with some low-level shadow detail. The C4, C5 and TCL shadows looked a little more detailed than with the G5 and Samsung, but it was only by a smidgen — I had to look really hard. In the intercut shots of his brother, Bill, the view through the windows looked much brighter and more blue on the TCL than the OLEDs. The drawbacks of LCD technology were also on display in the cellar, as there was a little bit of blue hazing in completely black areas of the screen. This is something that the OLEDs didn’t do; the pixels were simply turned off and appeared black, as expected.
Watch this: LG C5 vs. LG G5: Which OLED Gives the Most for Your Money
After inconclusive results with the OLEDs and It, I tried two colorful and very dynamic movies, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Mad Max: Fury Road. During Spider-Man, the colors and brightness of the OLEDs were very similar again — even during the overwhelming Super Collider sequence at the 24-minute mark.
Meanwhile, in Mad Max (4:48) there is a chase scene as the War Boys wrestle with Max in a water-filled room that is lit overhead. At the right of the screen, a blue flame briefly appears. It looks a little brighter in this red and green scene on the G5 versus the others. The C4 and C5 looked very similar.
I next streamed The Avengers: Age of Ultron and saw the differences between the mini-LED TCL QM850 and the OLEDs. The opening scenes of the team assaulting a Hydra base look brighter than the OLEDs, though they’re not as cinematic-looking. They’re quite nice, though.
I followed that up, then, with a 4K Blu-ray test disc from Spears and Munsil comprising mostly static footage and, apart from gaming, here is where the C5 and G5 showed the differences in performance. The C5 still looked very good, with deep contrast and plenty of color saturation, but the G5 showed where the extra $600 was going: brighter images and clearer, less-green snowy fields. Most movies don’t look like test discs, but at least I could finally see a difference between the two.
Bright room
Light output in nits
| TV | Brightest mode (HDR) | Accurate mode (HDR) | Brightest mode (SDR) | Accurate mode (SDR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LG G5 | 2,813 | 2,297 | 1,030 | 412 |
| LG C5 | 1,434 | 1,187 | 480 | 288 |
| TCL QM851 | 3,183 | 3,183 | 3,084 | 1,262 |
| Hisense U8N | 3,175 | 3,175 | 3,168 | 1,112 |
| Samsung S95D | 1,734 | 1,666 | 544 | 265 |
| LG G4 | 1,799 | 1,420 | 792 | 792 |
| LG C4 | 1,213 | 968 | 414 | 390 |
The C5 is a little brighter than last year’s C4 — and I measured a maximum brightness of 1,400 vs. 1,200 in Vivid mode. Yet what makes the C4 even better suited to use in a bright room is its improved screen coating. In a lit room I found that the C5 was better than the C4 at rejecting reflections, while the Samsung S95F was the best of the lot. The downside to the Samsung, in particular, is that, without the slightly shiny screen coating of the other TVs, the shade of black could look gray in direct light.
Gaming
I played several different games on my four-TV setup, and it was here that the biggest differences between the G5, in particular, and the rest of the lineup appeared. While the C5 looked as good as the higher-end Samsung S95D during games, it didn’t stand up to the G5. Pixel response times of the C5, as tested with the Leo Bodnar test units, were only average — about 13ms. The best I’ve seen is around 9ms on TVs like the Samsung S95D or the Roku Pro Series. These discrepancies probably won’t be noticeable during play, but I know that after playing FPS games on all four OLED screens, the tiny differences in response gave me motion sickness.
Uniformity and viewing angle
I found that the C5’s picture was not only uniform with both solid color and black or white but also stayed consistent when viewed off-axis. This is consistent with most OLED TVs, which don’t have the image clouding or viewing angle problems of LCD screens.
Picture settings and testing notes
In testing — both in measurements and in the real world — it became apparent that the C5 is slightly improved over the C4, mostly in terms of a little more brightness and better color accuracy. The test comes up as Poor when it comes to Gamma. This is because we use a 2.2 gamma as the basis of our test — this 2.2 curve looks better in lit rooms and also gives better shadow detail in a cinema-like environment. Gamma 2.4 may be an industry standard — which the C5 meets — but in our tests, 2.2 gives a better experience.
The C5’s measurable color is a little better than last year’s, but only by a percentage point and was not really detectable by the eye. As before, Filmmaker mode proved to be the overall best picture mode on the C4. Cinema mode was a close second, but it enables some smoothing, which can create the often undesirable soap opera effect.
LG C5 test measurements
| Test | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Black luminance (0%) | 0.000 | Good |
| Peak white luminance (SDR) | 480 | Average |
| Avg. gamma (10-100%) | 2.43 | Poor |
| Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) | 1.06 | Good |
| Dark gray error (30%) | 0.66 | Good |
| Bright gray error (80%) | 1.31 | Good |
| Avg. color checker error | 1.03 | Good |
| Avg. saturation sweeps error | 1.00 | Good |
| Avg. color error | 1.08 | Good |
| 1080p/24 Cadence (IAL) | Pass | Good |
| Input lag (Game mode) | 13.63 | Good |
| HDR10 | ||
| Black luminance (0%) | 0.000 | Good |
| Peak white luminance (10% win) | 1434.00 | Good |
| Gamut % UHDA/P3 (CIE 1976) | 99.3 | Good |
| ColorMatch HDR error | 17.01 | Good |
| Avg. color checker error | 1.64 | Good |
| Input lag (Game mode, 4K HDR) | 13.00 | Good |
Portrait Displays Calman calibration software was used in this review.
LG C5 OLED TV Review: Great Picture; Now Wait for the Price Drop
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