The gap between big and small OLED TVs is widening – and not the way you think

Small OLED TVs are always something of a curiosity in the world of home cinema.

Where smaller sets traditionally target the affordable market, OLED TVs still tend to boast feature-laden specifications sheets to complement their premium OLED panels. The combination makes them an enticing option for a specific type of buyer.

These include movie aficionados who want the best picture-quality possible, but don’t have oodles of space; and gamers who, since features such as VRR and 144Hz/4K have been added to OLED TVs, often use them as an alternative to a dedicated gaming monitor.

Then there’s also those lucky few who have enough surplus income to invest in a 42-inch OLED for their bedroom or kitchen. None of the What Hi-Fi? team falls into the final group, but many of us fit into the first two.

I have a 48-inch LG C2 in my living room to this day, as that’s the biggest size my Victorian terraced house’s lounge can sensibly accommodate.

It's also a key reason I always put my hand up to help review any small OLEDs I spot in the ever-growing queue of products outside our test rooms.

But this year, having volunteered to help and then spending weeks in our windowless test rooms running them all head-to-head, I found myself – for the first time ever – getting bored.

To be clear, this isn’t because the sets are bad. I find a lot to like about the 48-inch Panasonic Z90B, 48-inch Samsung S90F and 48-inch LG C5. They all perform differently and have their own strengths and weaknesses. So running the three of them head to head should have been an interesting experience; and it was – at least to begin with.

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The issues began when I started comparing sets with the generation before – the most recent being my current work looking at the 42-inch LG C5 (review incoming).

Here, things became rather mundane. Outside a smidgeon of extra brightness here, a dab of better colour-accuracy there and a wealth of not always welcome changes to the TV’s settings menus, there was very little differences between them.

In some instances we spotted new issues that aren’t present on older sets – the biggest being a fresh push to really crank-up peak brightness. During certain test scenes this can cause distracting leaps in brightness in certain parts of the picture and loss of detail. I’ve ranted about this current industry trend and the problems it brings for a while now.

“Incremental” is the most generous description I can give of the upgrades I’ve seen thus far.

And that’s a big problem, as the top-end TV market is otherwise developing and evolving at a frenzied pace. Heck, in the past three years I've seen LG Display’s brightness-boosting Micro Lens Array (MLA) tech launch only to be quickly replaced by 2025’s new Primary RGB Tandem OLED hardware.

Samsung’s QD-OLED technology is also improving at an astonishing rate, as evidenced by the stellar performance of the Sony Bravia 8 II and Samsung S95F. Both these sets offer significant improvements on their predecessors, the Sony A95L and Samsung S95D.

Next year, things are set to heat up even more with the launch of the first wave of RGB Mini LED TVs, which we have had a brief sneak peek at during various press events this year. Many of these promise to be among the first to feature Dolby Vision 2 support.

Add to this the fact that most companies don’t offer 42- or 48-inch models of flagship sets – the LG G5 is the only flagship family this year to come in smaller sizes – and it's undeniable that the performance gap between smaller and larger OLEDs is widening, and making them less and less interesting.

Which is why this year, in particular, I can’t help but feel it’s time companies take a bit more time thinking about ways to improve next year's models. If they don't, it's quite possible that I will find myself once again urging any buyer who has invested in a 42- or 48-inch OLED TV in the past three or four years not to bother upgrading.

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