My home entertainment experience has completely changed since unboxing the LG G3 OLED TV. While a full review of the set is still to come (we’re in the process of putting the G3 through our rigorous tests), I couldn’t wait to shout out about how it actually changed my experience of watching movies.
Its superior image quality really stood out to me while watching a series of close-ups in Netflix’s new film Hunger (if you’re looking for more foodie thrillers like this then here are five more worth considering). Tight frames of different peoples’ mouths chewing, slurping and licking their lips during a scene that depicted a fine dining experience made me visibly recoil.
My old TV didn’t do that. I would feel more detached from the image on-screen – I certainly can’t remember the last time I smacked the air as if I was trying to get rid of something that was in the room… The extra visceral quality of a crisp image triggered such a physical reaction in me that it made me stop to consider what had just happened. I found it to be almost like an immersive 3D experience, just without the virtual reality headset.
If you’re like me and are excited for when VR finally does become mainstream (I like to picture a reality not too dissimilar from the one depicted in Ready Player One), then you’re probably looking for a TV that can get you as close to a fully cinematic experience as possible – and the G3 delivers on that.
I feel like it’s also worth pointing out that the LG G3 model I was using was 65 inches. Given that this is certainly a large TV, this will have likely added to the immersive effect that it had on me. Unlike a projector – the scale of which can feel intimidating when faces the size of a couch are looking down at you – if you don’t have a huge room to watch in, the LG G3 65-inch has a subtler impact.
Getting hands on with the LG G3 TV
The LG G3 OLED is the company’s latest flagship 4K TV and as someone who hadn’t made the leap to recent high-end TV at home yet, I gotta tell you: the hype over the new screen that will make this one of the best OLED TVs on the planet feels justified.
Of course, if you have experience with high-end TVs, this won’t come as a surprise to you. But if you’re one of the huge number of people out there thinking of upgrading from a mid-range LCD TV or similar (like me), there is an astounding difference – I just wish I had made the switch sooner.
What stands out to me the most in my viewing experience with the LG G3 OLED TV so far is its immersive effect, which is made possible by the massive degree of picture detail, and more importantly from the whole new levels of contrast this model has.
LCD TVs have have come a long way in recent years thanks to mini-LED tech, but if you’re trying to decide which TV technology is better, then – for me – OLED is the one to look out for. If you’re asking yourself ‘what is OLED?’, it basically means that each pixel acts as its own backlight, which makes a starkly visible difference to the overall picture.
The G3 series is a game-changing improvement on the LG G2 OLED, with upscaling and HDR tone mapping performing better than its predecessors and some other high-end TVs – but the biggest difference comes from it having LG’s brightest OLED screen we’ve ever tested.
The G3 became available to pre-order in the US on 6 March, but we got a sneak peek at it a few days earlier. During our early-impressions LG G3 OLED TV review testing time, we were blown away by its brightness, which is around 1,300 nits in real-world tests. For comparison, the excellent LG C3 reaches just over 800 nits, so the G3 is over 50% brighter.
All the latest OLED technology and next-generation features are packed into the LG G3 TV, although you’ll have to pay for it. This new model is priced higher than its predecessor (the G2), but when considering that it is so much brighter, the increase already looks justifiable to me.
