LG 65-Inch Evo G4 OLED TV Review

If you’re searching for a high-end TV for your home theater and you’re willing to pay a premium for the best possible color and black levels, you want an OLED. And if you want the best OLED on the market, it’s hard to beat the LG Evo G4. It’s about as bright as the excellent Samsung S95D, but its colors are more accurate out of the box, its design is a little sleeker, and its webOS interface is easier to use. It’s also the first G-series TV to come with a table stand, so you don’t have to mount it like previous models. At $3,399.99 for the 65-inch model we tested, the G4 shares the same price as the S95D, and its advantages push it past Samsung’s rival to earn our Editors’ Choice award for top-of-the-line OLED TVs.

Design: The First G-Series TV With a Table Stand

The G series has always been meant for wall mounting, and the G4’s simple design reflects that. Only a thin metallic band runs around all edges of the screen, making it effectively bezel-less when most other premium TVs maintain narrow bezels along their bottom edges. The panel is also very thin at just an inch deep, and flat along the back to enable nearly flush wall mounting. The only departure from its perfectly rectangular design is a tiny bump on the bottom edge of the screen to hold the IR remote sensor, indicator LED, and far-field microphones.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

If you do want to mount the G4 very close to the wall, you’ll probably want to figure out cable management first. All ports sit in a shallow, L-shaped recess on the left side of the back of the TV and aren’t easily accessible with a very thin, fixed wall mount. Two HDMI ports (one eARC) and a USB port face left, while two more HDMI ports, two more USB ports, an Ethernet port, an optical audio output, two 3.5mm ports for RS-232C home theater integration and the included IR blaster, and an antenna/cable connector face down.

The G4 is the first in its line to include a table stand, which is as minimalist as the rest of its design. It’s a simple dark gray metal rectangle that attaches to the screen with a tube-shaped neck that offers two height options depending on whether you want to incorporate a soundbar. This is a welcome addition, because previously the only alternative to wall mounting was to settle for a third-party stand that would likely disrupt the elegant look.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

LG’s Magic Remote remains the workhorse controller for the company’s high-end TVs. It’s a slightly curved black wand with a circular navigation pad in the middle surrounding a clickable scroll wheel. Volume and channel rockers sit above the navigation pad with a number pad further up, while four color buttons and dedicated service buttons for Amazon Alexa, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, LG Channels, Netflix, and Sling sit below. The remote functions as an air mouse, letting you control an on-screen pointer by waving it, but you can also browse menus like normal with the navigation pad. The air mouse function is useful, especially for using the TV’s web browser, but it causes the minor annoyance of occasionally making the pointer appear when you move the remote around too much with normal use.

WebOS: Feature-Filled and User Friendly

LG’s webOS smart TV platform is a powerful system that enables loads of features on the G4. Most major streaming services are available on the TV, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, Max, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube (though Crunchyroll isn’t supported). It can connect to computers over Miracast/WiDi and iPads, iPhones, and Macs over Apple AirPlay. Multi-View enables split-screen and picture-in-picture viewing of multiple sources. This feature is a bit limited, supporting only one HDMI source alongside an AirPlay stream, Spotify, or YouTube, but not other apps. WebOS also has a built-in web browser, and it’s actually easy to use with the Magic Remote’s air mouse.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

We like webOS better than Samsung’s Tizen OS smart TV platform, though both are proprietary to their manufacturers and share similar interface elements. Samsung generally buries its picture settings a menu layer or two deeper than webOS and other platforms, and Tizen tends to feel overbearing when you want to make adjustments.

WebOS on the G4 should support hands-free Amazon Alexa thanks to the TV’s far-field microphone, but Amazon’s virtual assistant wasn’t yet enabled at the time of testing.

Performance: Bright, Vivid, and Lifelike

The LG Evo G4 is a 4K OLED TV with a 120Hz refresh rate. It supports high dynamic range (HDR) in Dolby Vision, HDR10, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It features Wi-Fi 6E for streaming media, and an ATSC 1.0 tuner for over-the-air broadcasts up to 720p, but no ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p or 4K broadcasts.

We test TVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. Samsung’s S95D wowed us with the brightest picture we’ve seen in an OLED TV by far, but the G4 is neck-and-neck on that front. Out of the box, with an HDR signal in HDR Cinema mode, the G4 shows a peak brightness of 243 nits with a full-screen white field, 1,103 nits with an 18% white field, and a blazing 1,510 nits with a 10% white field. That’s in line with the S95D (321 nits full-screen, 1,060 nits 18%, 1,613 nits 10%), which means both TVs are on close to equal footing with many high-end LED TVs in terms of light output. The mini-LED Hisense U8N blows them out of the water with more than double the peak brightness of both OLEDs put together at 2,755 nits for an 18% field, but its trade-off is light bloom and blacks that aren’t as inky or detailed.

SDR luminance levels are significantly lower, which is typical for almost all TVs, with peak brightness of 322 nits full-screen, 454 nits 18% field, and 458 nits 10% field.

(Credit: PCMag)

The above charts show the G4’s color levels with an SDR signal compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards, and with an HDR signal compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards. Colors are wide and accurate in both cases. Whites are spot-on, and all SDR colors and most HDR colors come very close. Magentas in HDR run a bit warm, but not significantly. In comparison, the S95D’s colors drift a bit more and show cooler whites. 

The G4’s picture quality is incredible across the board. In the “Lion” episode of BBC’s Dynasties, the greens of the savanna grass, the blues of the sky, and the tans and browns of the animals all look detailed and natural. Sunny shots show plenty of light while the hides of cows are dark and detailed in the same frame. In a stormy shot with trees silhouetted against a cloudy sky, the trees appear almost black but still retain enough texture in the shadows, and even the green of the leaves.

The Great Gatsby is a good test for any TV’s contrast, and the G4 excels. In the party scenes, black suits are extremely dark while preserving their cuts and contours cleanly. The whites of shirts, lights, and balloons also look very bright in the same frame, while showing strong highlight details. Against these extremes, skin tones look vibrant, varied, and balanced.

The demonstration material on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc looks fantastic, which isn’t surprising considering the G4 is exactly the type of high-end TV the content is meant to help show off. Landscapes show loads of detail whether they’re morning, midday, sunset, or dusk. Colors are natural and lifelike, and vividly pop in shots of bright objects against completely black backgrounds. And, thanks to OLED technology, these shots show no light bloom whatsoever.

Gaming: OLEDs Are Always the Fastest

Once again, an OLED TV proves to offer some of the best performance in gaming. Using an HDFury Diva HDMI matrix, we measured an input lag of 5ms with Game Optimizer mode. That’s below the 10ms threshold we use to consider a TV to be among the best for gaming, but not as low as we saw on the C3 or the S95D. Diving into the Game Optimizer menu and changing the Prevent Input Delay setting from Standard to Boost fixed that, dropping the G4’s latency to sub-1ms. That’s in line with the other two OLEDs, and below what we can actually measure. When Game Optimizer mode isn’t turned on at all, input lag is 80.7ms.

Speaking of Game Optimizer mode, it’s more than a latency-cutting picture mode. It enables a pop-up quick menu specifically designed for gaming, similar to the Game Bar on Samsung TVs. It shows the current source’s status including refresh rate and if VRR or AMD FreeSync (both are supported) are turned on, and provides easy access to more common motion-focused settings.

Top of the OLED Mountain

The LG Evo G4 is simply the best-looking OLED TV we’ve tested, which also makes it one of the best TVs we’ve tested in general. Its picture is fantastic, rivaling the Samsung S95D and many high-end LED TVs in brightness but with more accurate colors. It’s also the first G-series TV to include a table stand, so you don’t need to mount it just to enjoy its sleek design. It’s quite expensive, but if you want the best picture possible, the LG Evo G4 earns out Editors’ Choice award. If you want OLED picture quality but don’t want to spend as much, last year’s LG Evo C3 and Samsung S90C can still be found for much less.