Samsung and Sony need to up their game if they want to beat our new recommended OLED TV

It’s a turbulent time in the world of OLED TVs, at least when it comes to the business dealings of the big players.

This year we've had TCL buying a 51 per cent stake in Sony’s home entertainment business, and Panasonic selling its European TV division to Chinese firm Skyworth.

But when it comes to the products themselves, the most recent big event for our reviewers was the arrival of the 65-inch LG C6 in our test rooms.

Why? Because after testing the TV and running it head-to-head with its predecessor, as well as a number of Award-winning rivals, it proved to be not just a five-star set but also well worthy of a place in our best OLED TV guide.

Yes, just now the 65-inch LG C6 overcame expectations and entered our list as the recommended new OLED for people who want the latest and greatest hardware.

If you’re wondering why I say overcame expectations, the answer’s pretty simple; when we first saw the 65-inch LG C6 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas at the start of the year, it was one of the least interesting OLEDs in LG’s new range.

Unlike its larger, 77-inch and above, siblings, it doesn’t have a next generation Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel. It just has a basic WOLED.

And while LG has given it a new CPU, the hardware, including its speaker setup and design are largely identical to the older LG C5.

So, all-in-all, a very tepid upgrade at first glance.

But there’s a reason, after 50 years of reviewing AV hardware, that our team of experts remain gainfully employed. Specifically, a specification sheet never tells the full story.

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The moment we turned the LG C5 and C6 on in our viewing rooms and ran our standard suite of comparative tests we noticed improvements on the new model.

Despite a fundamental lack of notable hardware changes, the C6 was immediately brighter than the C5, especially while running our Pan stress test. Here, a wealth of detail in the brightest part of the setting sun, lost on the C5, was visible on the C6.

But it wasn’t just the extra nits LG has managed to eke out of the panel that impressed. Colours are better rendered, with characters’ skin tones in particular holding a greater sense of vitality.

But most surprising of all, running our Blade Runner 2049 audio test, despite having the in-built speaker system, optimisations to the tuning and processing help the C6 deliver a much better performance than any other recent LG set we’ve tested.

Bass is undeniably light, with the booming synth track lacking the impact it should, but the speakers manage to avoid distorting and are controlled enough to not completely ruin the scene – an achievement beyond many of the TVs we test, including expensive OLEDs.

The improvements make the LG C6 feel like a proper step forward for the 'step-down' OLED line, rather than the iterative update we expected based on its specifications.

So much so, that our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, boldly stated in our review: “The improvements aren’t so massive that an owner of a recent C-series model (or one of its closest competitors) should feel the need to immediately upgrade, but if you are in the market for a step-down OLED, the LG C6 is the new benchmark. And it’s a benchmark that its rivals will find very hard to match, let alone surpass.”

Notice the final part. While it’s too early to tell if arch-rivals Sony and Samsung are up to the challenge, we can safely say they’ll have to come out all guns blazing to do so. A minor update to the models we've already reviewed likely won't do the job.

Either way, we’ve already got a fantastic new step-down OLED to recommend in the shape of the LG C6. Hats off to the LG TV department, you have kicked the year off with a bang!

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