As we recall, LG has amazing TV wallpapers from the OLED series, not to mention the 8K OLED lines. However, the new LG G1 Gallery series is the most advanced and promising in terms of features of all existing ones. In general, LG has been a pioneer in the production of OLED TVs since the introduction of the first 55-inch model back in 2012.
LG’s new G series has several lines – these are G16LA and G1RLA. Both are identical and must be supplied to the European market. In addition, there is the G19LA series – this is the German version with a double tuner. Consider a review of the LG OLED65G1 4K HDR TV and get acquainted with its technical specifications.
LG G1 review
But first, let’s go back to 2020 and remember that the G series has received a new design specifically designed for wall mounting. In 2021, the LG G series is blessed with another exclusivity – the new OLED evo panel. With this combination of new OLED materials and the 4th generation Alpha9 processor, improved brightness and superior colors are achieved.
Design
In 2021, the manufacturer developed a special wall mounting for the LG G1 Gallery series. The new G1 2021 TV lines follow the same look and feel, and the Gallery’s design remains unchanged. Ultra-thin screen with a thickness of only 2 cm with a completely flat back. Therefore, the new models fit perfectly to the wall.
A dedicated wall bracket is included. It is identical to the bracket that also comes with the LG GX. This is a fold-out bracket that, when folded, fits neatly into a special recess on the back of the TV. The mount can be pushed forward by about 10 cm.
This is for the convenience of connecting a USB storage device or an optional cable connection. Thus, it is possible to rotate the LG OLED65G1 TV left and right, albeit with some restrictions. The bracket has certain tolerances if there are deviations of the holes in the wall during installation. The bracket allows you to correct inaccuracies and hang the TV straight.
In addition, standard stand legs are available if the model is intended to be placed on a horizontal surface. These feet are identical to those of the 2020 LG GX series . They are located on the left and right sides of the LG G1 TV.
One of the innovations is the additional floor stand of the Gallery. The LG OLED G1 TV’s floor stand is similar to the options from Loewe Bild 7 . The tripod is made of lightweight metal and makes it possible to install the TV anywhere in the room. This is a great alternative to classic installations.
Connections
LG has been offering the user a wide range of interfaces for several years now, so this year there is no reason to change anything in this regard. So the LG G1 received four HDMI 2.1 connections with support for ALLM, VRR, ARC / eARC, 2K and 4K HFR. The 40 Gbps bandwidth is enough to handle 4K @ 120Hz content with 10-bit 4: 4: 4 color depth .
Such parameters are sufficient for game lovers and for future advanced content. OLED65G1 connectors face side or downward for easy wall mounting. The four HDMI connectors are at the bottom. Three USB connectors are on the side. There is also a headphone jack, optical digital output, dual antenna connection (region dependent) and network connection.
And again, the novelty of the year is the external infrared port. IR sensors can be placed in a convenient place and used to control various devices, for example, hidden in a cabinet using the Magic Remote (MR21N). The Bluetooth interface will be useful for those who want to use wireless headphones.
The new version of LG OLED G1 has support for WiSA – a special protocol for wirelessly connecting external speakers. In principle, a convenient solution if you intend to increase the sound volume without using cable connections. However, the proliferation (or implementation) of WiSA technology is progressing slowly due to some limitations.
WebOS 6.0
The 2021 LG OLED G1 TV series is coming with an updated webOS 6.0 operating system . Some pretty big changes were made this time. First, LG is moving away from the concept that the interface should only be in one or two ribbons at the bottom of the screen. The new home screen complements previous versions and is now more like the Android TV principle.
At the top is weather information, tips, and search. This row already occupies a third of the screen, although, according to experts, this is too much. All installed applications are listed below. The third line contains all connections and other sources, as well as the home dashboard.
The fourth row includes TV channels that the user watches regularly. There are also recommendations for content from the three Amazon Prime, Rakuten TV and YouTube apps (may vary from region to region). Fans of the old webOS interface will take a while to get used to. It seems like too much space is wasted.
The settings menus have been completely revamped. The organization of the menu items has been changed and the settings are now better grouped. For example, all settings for brightness, color and sharpness have been combined into their own submenus. This is the approach we’ve seen on Sony TVs before, and most people like it.
Remote controller
The Magic Remote gets a new look in 2021. The manufacturer hasn’t changed the control for a long time. The new design immediately stands out. An intriguing, slightly rounder look replaces the rectangular version. The shape of the remote control holds well in the hand, but pressing the keys in the tactile sense is a little difficult and, for some reason, gives off cheapness.
The layout of the buttons, at first glance, is largely preserved, but there are minor changes. For example, Home and Input are now positioned together above the D-pad. The Settings and Key buttons are located below the D-pad. There are more application buttons, there are now four of them.
The Play and Pause buttons disappeared without much loss. These functions are always performed through the center D-pad. Among the innovations are three keys for voice interaction: a common microphone button, the second for Google Assistant and the third for Amazon Alexa.
The NFC function in the remote control makes it very easy to pair your smartphone with the 65G1 TV. In this variant of connecting a smartphone, you can listen to the sound of the TV on the smartphone or watch the smartphone on the TV. All in all, the new remote control is not very advanced and, in fact, is not groundbreaking new.
Functions
LG’s G1 OLED series is equipped with a single digital TV tuner (DVB-T2 / C / S2) and a CI slot. We are not currently reviewing the German LG G19LA line. It is not possible to watch and record another channel at the same time. It is strange that the manufacturer in such a luxurious series did not install a double tuner, although it would not be too materially expensive.
You can use Apple Airplay 2 and YouTube features to send videos via Google Cast. The built-in media player works well, it supports subtitles and HDR, but has lost DTS support since this year. Now the player cannot transmit DTS via eARC – that’s a shame, are we adopting Samsung’s experience? By the way, LG ThinQ AI now provides a full set of voice commands.
Picture
Image processing in the G1 OLED has been transferred to the new 4th generation Alpha9 processor. The processor has received improved deinterlacing, so now 1080i content looks even better than in previous models. There are fewer artifacts at the boundaries of the contours. Although the previous generations of the chip did not suffer from a lack of quality.
Noise cancellation works very effectively even at the lowest settings, especially when there is random noise in the image. Compression noise (blocking) is well eliminated, and only in extreme cases can something be noticed on the screen. LG claims that this version takes an improved approach to soft gradients of color stripes.
However, these metrics are less good than some of the competition. It is often necessary to set the quality settings to the highest position, especially when playing back dark images. Some visible flicker is sometimes noticeable.
Motion compensation has also received a slight improvement. The previous mode of cleaning up dynamic scenes has been renamed to “Motion Cinematic Processing”. The algorithm uses motion interpolation, but prioritizes the original images based on the analysis. In this way, a good image is obtained, without the usual mistakes or excessive soap opera effect .
For a smoother picture, you can select Natural or Smooth presets. The latter option can still generate an error on the screen from time to time, but the performance on the LG G1 OLED series has clearly improved. The delay appears to have been eliminated.
OLED Motion Pro is OLED’s Black Frame Insertion (BFI) method and has been optimized as well. The algorithm now takes into account dark scenes more, and the slight loss of brightness remains negligible. For games and sports programming, a low or even medium setting is the right choice if you are demanding on the last bit of detail.
SDR quality
LG’s G1 OLED series uses a new OLED (OLED evo) matrix stack. This means that the organic materials used have changed slightly. But in fact, there is no difference in the pixelated shot with the structure of the previous version of the LG GX. The screen has excellent uniformity in both dark and bright images.
There is no mention of the light vertical stripes that can sometimes be seen on OLED panels. For best quality, you can use Filmmaker Mode. In fact, this mode is similar to the “Cinema Image” mode, but with disabled processing of noise reduction and TruMotion. In this variant, the brightness is relatively low (about 100 nits) and the color gamut curve follows the BT.1886 standard.
It is a good choice for viewing dark scenes. For general “public” content, it is still recommended to turn on the Cinema Picture Mode, which has a higher brightness and a 2.2 gamma value with crisp midtones.
HDR quality
The list of supported HDR formats remains unchanged: HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision IQ. The lack of HDR10 + is, as always, unfortunate, but not considered a huge disadvantage. Dolby Vision is now much more powerful than HDR10 Plus.
The focus is on maximum brightness and color gamut. LG says the evo G1 series uses new OLED materials for red, green and blue. Each of the colors now comes with a cleaner base color (lower FWHM).
This state of affairs results in a wider color gamut and higher peak brightness. Unfortunately, this fact still needs to be verified. The peak brightness in the 10% window was recorded at 785 nits. By the way, this number is reached only if a white square is left on the screen for a full minute.
Compared to all OLED displays from last year, this is only a 5% improvement. In other words, this improvement in OLED technology is very small. A completely white field across the entire G1 OLED screen gets a brightness of about 165..170 nits. And this figure is again an average of 18% higher than last year’s models. Thus, when compared with the LG GX TV series, the difference is obvious.
Sound
In terms of sound quality, the LG OLED G1 series adopts a 4.2-channel sound design . The 60W audio system in the G1 OLED is a welcome surprise, especially given its slim design. The package provides impressive volume, pleasant warm sound and good bass.
Of course, you can overload the built-in speakers if you increase the volume too much, but at such levels it becomes inconvenient to listen to the soundtrack. There is an “AI Acoustic Tuning” function that adjusts the sound according to the acoustics of the room within a 30-second procedure that the user must complete in advance.
Dolby Atmos support gives soundtracks of the respective content a clear spatial dimension. And there is even an opinion that this sound system is great for music. To avoid different volumes between different sources, you can automatically adjust the level using the “Automatic Volume Leveling” add-on. There is not much to say about “AI Sound Pro”, many people do not like this function.
Conclusion
As we now know, the LG G1 series is equipped with a new OLED evo panel. In addition to the design of the Gallery G1, this panel is the reason for the higher price compared to the LG C1. But unfortunately, the OLED65G1RLA TV falls short of expectations and in practice only a slight difference to the 2020 GX series.
Color gamut and peak brightness are slightly better. On a completely white screen, the brightness is increased by 20%. Satisfaction with webOS 6.0 is mediocre – a lot of screen space is wasted on useless things. You cannot personalize some of the data on the screen. This may change with a software update.
The picture quality is excellent. There are minor improvements in image processing. LG has made a lot of progress with Trumotion, this should be noted separately. Motion interpolation gives very good results. It produces very beautiful movie-style images or very smooth images according to your personal preference.
Rich colors, ample shadow detail, perfect contrast and several smart features like AI Brightness let you create stunning images from SDR and HDR content on screen.
Superb sound quality with Dolby Atmos support provides excellent music support for movies. Gamers get almost every feature from their wishlist. All this beauty is contained in a beautiful thin case that you can hang on the wall.
Are you unsatisfied with the price? The LG G1 series has a “surprisingly” low price when compared to the LG GX series when it was first introduced. The last series at the start was 800 euros more expensive! So anyone who thinks about design, price and features can not rule out last year’s model.