LG's new G5 TV delivers nearly perfect picture quality. Here's what makes this premium OLED so special.

Business Insider

27-06-2025

I review lots of TVs every year, and as performance improves across the board, it's becoming harder for flagship models to stand out. But LG's G5 doesn't have this problem. Simply put, the G5 OLED offers the best picture quality I've ever seen from a consumer TV. Panasonic's upcoming Z95B has a chance to surpass it, but for now, the G5 is the premium 4K TV to beat.
Using LG's latest OLED panel technology, the G5 balances perfect contrast with high brightness, sharp detail, rich colors, and wide viewing angles. This is the kind of high-end image quality that makes home theater nerds like me geek out. The G5 also has solid smarts via LG's webOS interface and some cool new perks like AI voice recognition.
However, the G5 isn't quite perfect. Though the set's image performance is nearly flawless, it does have some minor issues with color gradients and over-brightening. These imperfections are subtle, though, and the displays' many strengths outweigh them. I also wish LG's webOS placed less emphasis on shopping recommendations, but I'm more than willing to ignore an ad here and there if it means getting such a fantastic viewing experience.
It's also important to note that this is an expensive display. Most people will be satisfied with a cheaper midrange OLED, like LG's C5 and C4, or Samsung's S90D. But premium sets like the G5 aren't geared toward most people. This is a pricey TV built for enthusiasts willing to spend top dollar on top picture quality and design. And in that sense, it's the best TV of its kind.
The TV has an elegant design, but a stand costs extra
LG's G5 is available in 55, 65, 77, 83, and 97 inches, with list prices ranging from $2,500 to a whopping $25,000. For this review, I tested a 65-inch unit, which retails for $3,400. With the exception of the 97-inch model, all sizes offer the same specifications. The 97-inch model uses a different kind of OLED panel, so it can't get as bright as its smaller counterparts.
The G5 uses LG's One Wall design, which allows it to be mounted with virtually no gap. A bracket is included in the box to accomplish this, so you don't need to buy one separately. On the downside, LG doesn't include a traditional pedestal stand, so if you don't want to mount the G5, you need to purchase a stand on your own. LG sells a stand for $106 (which was used for this review), and the G5 is compatible with many of the best TV stands made by third-party manufacturers.
Though the G5 looks best when mounted, it still has an elegant style when placed on its pedestal. The display is made of premium materials and has a thin profile that measures just under an inch thick. The build and aesthetics are what you'd expect from such a pricey display and are a clear step up from the cheaper construction of more budget-friendly models.
LG also gets points for including four HDMI 2.1 ports to enable support for up to a 4K/165Hz signal. Many rival brands, including Sony, only include two HDMI 2.1 ports and use HDMI 2.0 for the remaining inputs. This is a great perk for gamers who want to connect multiple systems to the TV, as HDMI 2.1 is needed to unlock the smoothest performance on current-gen consoles and high-end PCs.
LG redesigned its Magic Remote for 2025, and this new version is mostly an improvement. It has a thinner, more traditional shape instead of the bulky body used on past LG remotes, which makes it feel better in hand. Its main selection button, which doubles as a scroll wheel, also feels sturdier, making clicks more responsive. Sadly, the remote is not backlit, which has become standard on some competing TVs from TCL, Hisense, and Roku.
Like past models, the Magic Remote lets you choose between navigating via standard button presses or by using motion controls (the "magic" part) to point the remote at the screen to move a virtual cursor. Unfortunately, there's no way to fully deactivate motion control if you don't like it. Clicking on the directional pad temporarily turns it off, but it gets turned back on if you slide the scroll wheel, and this is too easy to accidentally trigger.
The remote's button layout has also been simplified, and I generally like this more minimalist approach. But there are two odd choices. First, there's no longer an input select button. To switch inputs on the TV, you have to hold down the Home button to pull up a smart hub menu or scroll through the homepage and find the input you like on screen. Second, there's no mute button. You can still activate mute by holding the remote's volume down button, but this means there's no way to rapidly lower the volume instead of fully muting it. These are small complaints, but they just strike me as strange choices.
The G5 delivers a new benchmark for premium image quality
The G5 is the first consumer TV to use LG's new four-stack OLED panel design. This type of screen has key benefits over the standard WOLED panel used on LG's cheaper C and B series TVs. A four-stack design optimizes how an OLED produces color and light, allowing for higher brightness and a wider color gamut — all while maintaining the pixel-level contrast, deep black levels, and wide viewing angles that the best OLED TVs are known for. You can learn more in our QLED vs. OLED comparison.
The results are spectacular, and the TV offers a big leap in brightness over last year's G4 model. In fact, the G5 is now the brightest OLED TV available, dethroning the Samsung S95F. Using the TV's Filmmaker mode with a 10% HDR test pattern (a white box that takes up 10% of the screen against a black background), I measured a peak brightness of 2,410 nits.
That's nearly 1,000 nits more than last year's G4, which is a substantial bump. It's also about 240 nits more than the S95F, which is a more subtle but still noteworthy jump. While such high brightness is impressive, it's important to remember that it's only beneficial in certain circumstances. For example, high brightness gives you more headroom to pump up luminance to help overcome glare in rooms with a lot of ambient light.
It also allows the G5 to produce more impactful and accurate high dynamic range (HDR) images with highlights (like explosions) that pop from the screen. But the G5's full brightness capabilities only get unleashed when watching movies and TV shows mastered for above 1,000 nits. You can learn more about HDR mastering and how it relates to content and TVs in our HDR guide.
Raw brightness is only a part of what makes the G5's image quality so noteworthy. What makes this TV shine is how it's able to precisely harness its brightness and combine it with pixel-level contrast control, inky black levels, and rich colors. I watched a wide range of movies and TV shows across several weeks with the G5, and I've never seen a consumer TV that matches its picture capabilities.
Some of its benefits over other high-end sets are subtle, and it has some flaws that a few rivals handle better, but overall, the G5 rises above the competition. Fiery explosions in high-brightness HDR movies like "Mad Max: Fury Road" radiate from the screen with rich saturation, while deep shadows in the opening sequence of "The Matrix" remain perfectly dark without any halos around lighter elements of the picture.
Tricky sequences in movies like "1917" and shows like "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" that trip up the local dimming backlights on many QLED TVs I've tested are displayed with perfect, uniform contrast. And image quality barely shifts if you're off to the side of the screen, so everyone gets a good viewing experience no matter where they sit.
LG's picture processing continues to improve year after year, and the G5 is able to hold its own against high-end Sony TVs. Lower-quality content like compressed HD YouTube streams and cable TV upscale nicely on the G5. To be clear, they still don't look as good as native 4K sources, but the TV does a good job of minimizing imperfections without introducing an unnatural look.
But as phenomenal as the G5 is, the TV's image quality isn't flawless. When it first hit stores, the G5 had issues with color banding, also called posterization or false contouring. This caused some gradations of colors and dark shades to look blocky rather than smooth.
This problem initially appeared in some Dolby Vision and HDR10 content, but during my testing, LG released a firmware update that corrected Dolby Vision playback. However, some banding still popped up in isolated scenes when watching a small selection of HDR10 videos. But throughout my weeks with the TV, this flaw was very subtle and only appeared in a couple of movies I sampled out of more than a dozen.
After my evaluation period ended, LG released another firmware update in June. This latest version reportedly corrects those lingering problems with HDR10 so long as you use the TV's Filmmaker preset. With all that in mind, I don't consider this to be a major drawback.
Another small imperfection I encountered involved some slight over-brightening in near-black content, which caused dark shades to faintly glow. I noticed this a bit when watching some dim sequences in the Amazon Prime series "The Wheel of Time," but it was never too distracting. This issue is common on OLED displays like this, and the G5 performs about on par with what's expected.
Finally, it's also worth noting that while the G5 rises above competing flagship OLEDs in nearly every way, there is one area where top models from Samsung and Sony still have a slight edge: color volume. High-end OLEDs from those brands use quantum dots, which is a feature the G5 is missing. This allows those TVs to maintain high saturation a bit better when displaying especially bright colors. The G5 improves upon the G4 in this area, but it still can't quite match OLEDs that have quantum dots.
Gamers get cool features like a 165Hz refresh rate and support for Xbox streaming
The G5 is one of the most advanced gaming TVs there is. It supports ALLM (auto low latency mode), VRR (variable refresh rate), and a dedicated Game Optimizer menu that lets you easily adjust settings. The G5 sets itself apart from most competing TVs with its support for up to a 165Hz refresh rate. Most high-end TVs max out at 144Hz. This is only useful for PC gamers with high-end hardware, but it's still a cool perk.
LG is also one of two brands (Samsung is the other) that supports the Xbox app directly through the TV's interface. If you have a Game Pass membership, this app lets you stream Xbox games so you can play them without needing a console. The quality isn't as good as playing a game directly through a system, and playability is heavily reliant on the stability of your internet connection, but it works well enough for casual gaming.
I also tested the G5 with a PS5 using a 4K/120Hz connection, and it delivered excellent image quality and smooth motion. I didn't see any flicker or ghosting with VRR active, which is something I've seen on some QLED TVs. Some flicker did show up when I pulled up the TV's settings menu while playing games, but this went away as soon as I closed the window.
However, I've seen some user reports of banding in certain games when using the TV's HDR Game mode, even after the latest firmware update released in June. But outside some subtle bands in the sky when playing "Cyberpunk 2077" and some slight contouring in menus, I didn't encounter any egregious banding when playing various HDR titles, including "The Last of Us Part 1," "Spider-Man," "No Man's Sky," "Dragon's Dogma 2," and "Baldur's Gate 3."
LG's webOS adds some new AI features, but they're mostly unnecessary
Like all LG TVs, the G5 uses the webOS smart TV system. The platform is easy to set up, as LG guides you through some basic housekeeping items.
The interface has access to all of the best streaming services, though it's missing a few niche apps that some other platforms support, like the Criterion Channel. General navigation is smooth, and I didn't encounter any major lag when moving through services. That said, the interface's design could annoy some users. By default, webOS displays a banner ad at the top of the homepage, and the screen prominently features a row for shopping recommendations.
You can deactivate the banner ad if you navigate through some buried menu options, but this leaves that space unutilized. You can also turn off the shopping recommendations, but this deactivates all of the platform's content suggestions, leading to a barebones interface. It's great that LG offers the option to fully deactivate the ads, but I wish there was a better balance to begin with, so it could display content recommendations while demphasizing some of the sponsored material.
For 2025, LG is touting a lot of new AI features, but most of these functions are just improved iterations of features that have already been available on past-generation TVs. For instance, there are AI picture modes that are meant to enhance the image, especially with lower-quality content, but the adjustments these modes make are unnecessary.
The company has also brought back its AI Picture Wizard and added a new AI Audio Wizard. These features present you with various sample images and audio clips. Based on which ones you select, the wizard learns what kind of picture and sound settings you like the most, and then creates custom modes for you. Again, I highly recommend just using the TV's Filmmaker mode and Standard audio mode to get the most accurate playback, but if you're unhappy with how the G5 looks or sounds, this is worth playing around with.
LG's remote also emphasizes AI more this year, as the microphone button has been rebranded as the AI button. Pressing it pulls up LG's AI concierge. This is supposed to present smart content recommendations based on your viewing habits, but I didn't find them to be all that useful. Holding down the AI button allows you to search with your voice or speak commands to control the TV. The G5 also supports hands-free voice search.
I'm not sure what the issue was, but during my first week or so with the TV, I ran into a lot of server errors and "voice not recognized" messages when using the G5's voice search. Over time, these glitches stopped popping up, and voice search worked consistently. That said, I found the TV's voice recognition to be less accurate and slower than some competing systems, like Roku and Google TV.
On the plus side, the G5 does have a new voice feature that's actually pretty cool. It's called AI voice recognition, and it automatically switches user profiles based on who speaks to the TV. So, if your spouse was using the set and you both have different profiles, once you speak to the TV, it will switch to your personalized home screen with your preferences and recommendations.
Should you buy the LG G5 TV?
Few TVs have left me as utterly impressed as the LG G5. Some competing high-end sets from Sony and Samsung offer better performance in certain aspects, but when looking at picture quality as a whole, the G5 is the best premium display I've seen. Panasonic is set to release a similar TV later this year, called the Z95B, so I'm curious to see how it stacks up. But for now, the G5 is the reigning king of premium TVs.
Though picture performance isn't flawless, the TV's combination of pixel-level contrast and high brightness is unmatched and outweighs any shortcomings. LG's webOS interface isn't my favorite, and I did run into some software issues that ironed out over time, but it gets the job done. The new AI voice recognition feature is also a cool addition.
The G5 is expensive, so it's only suited for big picture quality enthusiasts and those willing to spend extra for high-end design flourishes that you can't get on cheaper TVs. But if you fit that bill, the LG G5 TV earns my highest recommendation.