Sound and Vision: LG has fixed a key aspect of its C-series OLEDs, but not gone far enough

OPINION: This week, or this week past in fact, I had the opportunity to see some of LG’s 2022 TV line-up ahead of their UK launch in the coming few months.

While there was plenty of talk about new features, higher brightness and processing power like the new Dolby Vision IQ with Precision Detail (which could be a topic for another edition of this column), there was one aspect of the C-Series OLEDs in particular that I liked.

It was the new stand design for the 77-inch model.

You wouldn’t necessarily think a redesign of the plinth a TV sits on would be one of the bigger takeaways from a preview, but it’s been an aspect of the C-Series that felt unaccommodating for a mid-range set that’s meant to have wide appeal to the mass market.

The stand across all of the 2021 C-series efforts was svelte in appearance but also massive in width and this had a few effects. It made assembling the stand and putting the TV together a much longer and slightly confusing experience. Putting a soundbar in front of the TV made things unnecessarily messy, either inconveniencing the TV’s IR receiver or making it harder to get the cables from the soundbar up and around the stand into the TV’s ports. And it also meant that to accommodate the width of the TV’s stand, you needed to have a wide surface or piece of furniture to place it on.

But there is a caveat to all this. The new stand design only appears to apply to the 77-inch model. The 55-, 65- and 83-inch models all keep the previous stand design so the only way you can the new look is if you have room and the pockets to afford the 77-inch set. It’s a shame that the new design doesn’t translate to all the sizes as that would have been much more convenient.

Other design changes for the 77-inch C2 OLED see the rear packaging that holds the TV’s processors, speaker units and connections tidied up. It doesn’t stretch across the width of the rear panel anymore, something that also caused issues with connecting cables, and its centralised placement should make cable management neater and tidier.

What effect this redesign could have on the audio performance is still an unknown as these were still pre-production, not quite calibrated units and audio wasn’t playing. I’ve not been particularly impressed by the sound an LG OLED TV makes since the E-series were still a thing and I suspect not much will change unless LG has come up with a way to improve the performance of its AI Sound Pro processing. Here’s hoping.

What else was there about LG’s 2022 sets?

Other news from the preview was the appearance of the new 42-inch OLED, which goes for the blade feet but is stockier around the back compared to the bigger models. Designed for desktops, counters and other such smaller surfaces, this looked very good in motion and came with the usual 4x HDMI 2.1 slots that LG offers with its C- and G-series OLEDs. This set also comes with evo OLED panel but despite the improvements in brightness this offers don’t expect the levels of brightness in 55- and 65-inch models to be carried over – its size and pixel density prevent it from being so.

I also saw the new G2 and QNED Mini LED, both of which looked promising with the QNED receiving 4K/120 gaming support. There is a 81-inch QNED model but that won’t be available in the UK, unfortunately.

There was plenty more detail to go into but too much for this column alone to handle. With these new sets heading close to release date, we’ll be looking to go much more in-depth with over the next few months.