I’ve finally seen the LG G5 OLED TV in action, and the upgrade over the G4 is much bigger than I expected

The 65-inch LG G5 OLED TV standing on a grey table. On the screen is an image from boxing TV show 'A Thousand Blows'

(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)

Having missed CES this year, I’ve had to wait longer than usual to get my first look at LG’s new TVs, but I finally got the chance last month at a London event for reviewers.

I have to say that up until that point, I was a little underwhelmed by the G5 – frankly, I think LG did a pretty poor job of selling it during the pre-CES video briefing I tuned in for, with way too much focus on AI and personalisation and far too little on picture quality. I’m pleased to say, though, that having now seen the G5 in action, it looks like a really big step forward for the range and a much bigger upgrade over the G4 than that TV was over the G3.

While LG Electronics will never confirm such things, we know that it has moved from the MLA OLED technology of the G4 to a new Primary RGB Tandem (aka Four-Stack) OLED panel for the G5, and the results are striking. Yes, peak brightness is a little higher on the G5 than the G4, but the improvements to full-screen brightness and colour reproduction are far more obvious and have a much more profound effect on overall picture quality.

In the demo session, which also included the G4, Samsung S95D and Sony A95L, the G5 definitely looked slightly brighter than its rivals in small peaks, but when an explosion filled the screen, the difference between the G5 and G4 (and S95D for that matter) was stark, with the G5 offering an intensity that its predecessor was nowhere near to matching. The A95L fared better, but while it appeared to be in a similar brightness ballpark to the G5, it couldn’t match it for bright detail – the texture of the explosion and, in a later clip from Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the bats swarming in front of a bright cave exit, looked vague on the Sony whereas they were clear and controlled from the LG.

These intensely bright images also demonstrated the G5’s improved colour reproduction, with the TV retaining its cinematic warmth (all of the TVs were in their Filmmaker Mode except for the Sony, which was in its equivalent Professional Mode) right the way to the brightest parts of the picture. The Sony QD-OLED, in particular, looked rather blue/green in the bright white areas.

Impressively, this colour consistency extends down to the darkest parts of the picture, too, with the G5 reproducing the gold-embossed writing on the dimly lit spine of a book with a warmth that none of the other sets could match. Shadow detail looked exceptional, too, with the G5 digging up picture information in the darkness that the other TVs missed. The G4 was already good in this area, but the G5 definitely looks better.

All told, the G5 looked exceptional through all of the demos, with a degree of dynamism and consistency that none of the other TVs could match. Demo sessions such as this can never be fully trusted (there’s a strong suspicion that the Samsung S95D in particular wasn’t setup to look its best), so we will need to complete our full, comparative review before passing final judgement, but I went from something approaching ambivalence towards the new G5 to a feeling that it could be a huge step forward for the G series and perhaps even the best TV of 2025. Stay tuned for that full review, which will be on its way very soon.

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Tom Parsons has been writing about TV, AV and hi-fi products (not to mention plenty of other 'gadgets' and even cars) for over 15 years. He began his career as What Hi-Fi?'s Staff Writer and is now the TV and AV Editor. In between, he worked as Reviews Editor and then Deputy Editor at Stuff, and over the years has had his work featured in publications such as T3, The Telegraph and Louder. He's also appeared on BBC News, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and Sky Swipe. In his spare time Tom is a runner and gamer.

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