lg It has been revealed in 2025 OLED is one of the TV lineup and models announced lg g5One of its flagship 4K OLED models. The LG G5, the successor to the LG G4 in 2024, is one of the Best OLED TV from last year, and looks to offer a number of upgrades over the G4 – but there’s one upgrade suggested by LG that particularly caught my attention, and it’s not one of the biggest and flashiest features.
First of all, let’s talk about the attractive features. LG G5 will be the world’s first amd freesync and NVIDIA The TV is G-Sync certified at 165Hz, a step up from the G4’s top 144Hz refresh rate, which would put the G5 in new territory in comparison. best gaming tv (Although 144Hz and above is only relevant to PC gamers). It’s worth noting, however, that the G5 won’t support Dolby Vision and 165Hz at the same time.
The G5 will feature LG’s new Brightness Booster Ultimate technology, which also appears on the high-end wireless LG M5. 4K OLED TVs in LG’s 2025 TV lineup, and LG says the G5 (and M5) are three times brighter than its entry-level B-series of OLED TVs (but offers no further comparisons to more directly comparable sets Has not been done).
However one interesting absence this year is the use of micro-lens-array (MLA) technology within LG’s OLED range (including the G5), which helped provide a brightness upgrade compared to the W-OLED panels in previous models, such as the LG G4. of. 2024. Yet LG claims the G5 will be the brightest G series yet, which suggests this new brightness booster technology and the recently revealed ‘Four Stack’ OLED panel will go a long way.
The 2024 LG G4 achieved 1,489 nits of peak brightness (measured at 10%) hdr Window) compared to the LG B4’s 656 nits, so hopefully we’ll see a big brightness increase if it gets close to being a full three times brighter.
However, although this all sounds great, it’s actually another area of ​​shine that makes the G5 an exciting prospect, and the one I’m most looking forward to seeing in action – and that’s its fullscreen brightness. LG claims that the G5 will have 40% more fullscreen brightness than its predecessor G4 and this could be a gamechanger.
fullscreen brightness in short
Brands often quote peak brightness numbers when discussing a TV’s brightness levels. Hisense And tclthose who make something Best Mini-LED TV On the market, numbers up to 10,000 nits are being quoted. Although OLEDs are some way off this number, there are signs that OLEDs could start reaching 3,000 nits, with Philips being among the first to say that its sets could reach this figure.
Measuring peak brightness, however, is done by shining a bright light onto a very small portion of the screen, between 2-10% of the total screen area. But when it comes to watching TV, fullscreen brightness (that is, how uniformly bright the entire thing can be) is just as important.
Fullscreen brightness is important for many types of movies and TV shows, but the really big game is gaming, where you want to see clarity and rich colors on the entire screen at the same time to get the full viewing experience. Just as importantly, fullscreen brightness is important in helping to deal with the reflections you might see in bright visual environments – such as a room filled with lots of natural light – because the brighter the image, the more likely you are to see glare. That will affect any reflections, so you can only focus on what you need to see.
Fullscreen brightness has never been a strong suit for OLED, often hovering between 200-300 nits on most flagship OLEDs, compared to the 600-800 nits you’ll find on high-end mini-LEDs. adopts inventive measures such as Samsung S95D‘s, 2024’s TechRadar Choice Award Winner for TV of the YearOLED glare free anti-reflection technology to effectively beat reflections, and that’s just using a matte screen instead of adding glare.
LG G5 – ‘Brightest’ OLED ever?
When we measured the LG G4’s fullscreen brightness, the result in Filmmaker mode was 257 nits, which is impressive for an OLED, but still much lower than the 318 nits achieved by the QD-OLED. SAMSUNG S95D. And both models were quite bland for his liking Hisense U8N And Samsung QN90DThe Mini-LED sets achieved results of 805 and 659 nits, respectively, in Filmmaker mode.
While OLED isn’t likely to reach mini-LED levels of fullscreen brightness anytime soon, the 40% fullscreen brightness increase in the G5 is still interesting. If true, we should expect the LG G5 to hit over 350 nits in Filmmaker mode, and while that’s still not mini-LED levels, it’s significantly better than mid-range OLEDs and flagship OLEDs from years past. That’s a significant increase compared to , and it should be very visible to the naked eye.
It’s worth noting that this is also estimated based on data from Filmmaker mode, which is one of the dimmer preset picture modes available, but we prefer it here at TechRadar because of its accuracy. Bright picture modes like Standard and Cinema have the potential to be even brighter still, and I think during my own testing, these may have been necessary under our bright test room lighting.
We were extremely impressed with the overall picture quality of the LG G4 and awarded it our five out of five lg g4 review And while there were reflections present, overhead lighting wasn’t a major problem. So if the LG G5 can improve on this even further With higher overall brightness, it could add itself to the rare group of OLEDs that can handle any bright room, making it a more versatile set overall.
final thoughts
Over the past few years, LG hasn’t been on top of the OLED world in our testing; Samsung has it. While LG offers more OLED options, Samsung’s models were so good, we chose this one Samsung S90C And the Samsung S95D will be our TV of the Year in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Brightness was a key factor in both of these cases, as both models pushed OLED brightness levels to new heights that we couldn’t ignore. However, importantly, this doesn’t mean we don’t like LG’s OLEDs any less – they’ve simply arrived at the post.
If LG can really push the G5 to brightness we haven’t seen before, especially fullscreen, then could we see LG reclaim its OLED crown in 2025. I’m eager to get my hands on the G5 to see if it can take the new OLED even further, and the first thing I’m doing is setting up some lights to see if its new brightness Is real.
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