New sizes and tweaks, but is LG playing it too safe?
It’s a new year, and that means today LG is announcing its latest series of OLED TVs. For 2022, the company is adding new screen sizes, ratcheting up the brightness on the G series, and bringing some additional features — like multiuser profiles — to the webOS software that runs on its TVs.
As for the TVs themselves, after debuting its higher-brightness OLED “Evo” panel on the G1 in 2021, this year Evo will be featured in both the G2 and more mainstream C2. LG says the G2 will deliver higher peak brightness numbers than the C2 through a combination of brightness booster algorithms and better heat dissipation from the TV’s components. But the C2 should still outperform something like the CX from two years ago.
LG is also adding new screen sizes at both extremes. The C series is getting a new 42-inch OLED that the company thinks will be a perfect fit for small bedrooms, offices, or gamers in tight spaces. And there’s an enormous 97-inch 4K model that’s joining the G series. LG has offered 83-inch 4K and 88-inch 8K TVs in the past, but there’s a new giant OLED in town.As usual, every HDMI port on both the G and C series will offer full HDMI 2.1 capabilities — and this time LG really means it.
LG joined the Mini LED bandwagon in 2021, and this year it’s rolling out another wave of its terribly named “QNED” TVs that use the technology for vastly better contrast and black levels than the company’s older LCD sets. It’s notblack and infinite contrast like an OLED, but you can’t get much closer — and Mini LED TVs can crank higher than OLED when it comes to overall brightness.