I have always liked LG OLED TVs and have recommended them for years. But last year the market started to shift with Samsung’s introduction of its QD OLED technology, and suddenly LG wasn’t the most technologically advanced panel manufacturer anymore, at least not on paper.
While the colors of LG’s displays were top notch, one major downside to LG OLED panel technology was that it didn’t tend to get very bright. Samsung’s QD OLEDs did, which forced LG to go above and beyond what it had been doing before. Competition is, clearly, a good thing, because the G3 sheds the low brightness stigma of LG panels.
While that does come at the cost of consistent color accuracy across the whole panel, that tradeoff is minor in the grand scheme of things, and LG’s price positioning and the overall performance of the G3 makes it one of the best OLED televisions on the market today.
LG G3 – Design and Build
LG televisions nailed the slim, thin bezel look years ago and the company hasn’t deviated from that in the G3. From the front, this is an attractive television that is basically entirely just the display surface with next to no bezels and a form factor that allows it to slide up against a wall and almost disappear into it.
A lot of OLEDs, at least to this point, have some level of bump-out in the back to accommodate the processing, but the G3 manages to keep basically the same one-inch thickness the entire way around. In a word, it’s beautiful.
A word of warning, though: the G3 is meant to be wall-mounted and it doesn’t come with a stand unless you specifically ask for it or add it to your cart. The listing on Amazon, for example, defaults to TV-only, but the stand can be added for no additional cost. On Best Buy, however, you might not notice it doesn’t have a stand and to add one is a separate cart item that adds $150 to the price.
This is the first television I’ve reviewed where the stand isn’t included as a default and where the television is clearly meant to find its home on a wall. I don’t love that, and it’s one of the few downsides to the G3. I like media consoles and setting my televisions up on them because I find it to be a better way to assure it stays at the right viewing angle. It’s way too easy to mount a television too high on a wall, and a quick look around the living room of every single one of my friend’s houses is a testament to that.
Looking around the backside of the G3, you’ll find four HDMI 2.1 ports, all of which are capable of delivering 4K at up to 120 frames per second. There are also three USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and a digital optical audio input. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack on the G3, but it does have built-in WiFi (support for 2.4 and 5 GHz) and support for Bluetooth 5. HDMI 1 is the eARC/ARC port, which you’ll certainly want to use to connect your audio since that is a far superior option to digital optical audio and in the absence of a headphone jack.
Cable management with the G3 is outstanding. Cables are routed into cutouts in the design that provide a ton of room to maneuver them into place. Once they are routed down the back and through the stand (or into your wall), LG includes panels that can be easily snapped into place and which leave the rear of your television looking totally flat and without any cables sticking out.
The LG G3 voice assistant support is powered by Amazon Alexa, but it can also work with Google Assistant and Apple Home Kit.
LG G3 – The Remote
LG’s remote hasn’t changed much in the last few years and it is one of the largest on the market now that Sony has significantly downsized its once-mammoth options. Compared to a Samsung remote, LG’s feels positively enormous and I wonder if it requires this size because operating an LG is akin to using a Wii, making this need to be basically a Wii remote.
If you’ve never used an LG television before, while you can navigate menus using traditional directional pad commands, you can also wave the remote around to make a cursor appear on the screen and you can navigate controls that way. The backside of the remote even curves in a bit to give you additional purchase through your pointer finger, a lot like a Wii remote does.
It’s kind of neat at first, but I eventually tire of it. It’s a fun idea and has been a cornerstone of LG’s webOS smart TV interface for as long as I can remember, but I don’t think it really adds to the experience. If the tradeoff to lose this would be to shrink down the remote, I think that would be a more than fair compromise.
In addition to the number pad (which you probably will never use), the remote includes all the traditional options like pre-installed shortcuts, four customizable shortcut buttons, a directional pad, and – somewhat unusual to find now – a scroll wheel that can be clicked to function as the main “okay” button.
It’s an inoffensive remote that I think could benefit from a redesign.
LG G3 – Software and UI
In talking about the remote, I already touched on the user interface a bit, but outside of the ability to control it with the wave of the remote, the actual day-to-day operation of the webOS smart TV interface is very much akin to the experience you’ll find on Vizio’s SmartCase or Google TV.
Yes, there are ads, but you can deactivate most of the “suggested” options to basically strip away anything except the bare interface. Apps are pre-installed and there is a great range of options that covers pretty much everything you’ll want to find.
Navigating, selecting, and loading apps is about as fast as I’ve come to expect from a smart TV and the voice remote function works well right out of the box with no configuration.
The display options are fantastic. If you want to really customize your viewing experience, LG lets you do it with multiple built-in options as well as fine-tune control over specifics. Most televisions do have this level of control at this price level, but there are exceptions. For example, Samsung TVs have extremely poor customization control, so it is worth pointing out when a manufacturer does a good job in this regard.
LG’s Game Bar and Game Optimizer returns in the G3, and I’ll get into the details of this menu down in the gaming section, but it’s fantastic and I’m glad to see it.
Overall, WebOS isn’t going to wow or dazzle you, but it’s a perfectly functional smart TV operating system that delivers exactly what you need without you having to wait long for it.
LG G3 – Picture Quality
The quality of movies, television, and video games displayed on the LG G3 is fantastic. I mentioned it already, but LG has been making OLED televisions for a long time and it really has this end of the market cornered. Colors are fantastic and never look over-juiced in any particular spectrum, which makes watching anything feel akin to seeing it in real life.
I didn’t notice any judder, but you might notice some stuttering in slow-panning content. It wasn’t particularly noticeable to me, but some people are more susceptible to it than others. Because each pixel can be controlled independently, as with all OLED panels, there is no halo or blooming to be seen from bright objects set against a black background at any point.
Color accuracy impresses, and in testing the G3 was able to cover 100% of sRGB, 94.3% of DCI-P3, 94% of Adobe RGB. That’s very good coverage of three gamuts, especially considering most people will only really care about the sRGB coverage. Additionally, the LG G3 had an average delta E of less than 2, which is super impressive – less than four is considered outstanding.
Most computer monitors aren’t this good outside of those designed for color-accurate work, so seeing this level of color accuracy in a big 65-inch display destined for a home in your living room is quite a treat. Additionally, since it scores so well here, there is no reason that you couldn’t use the G3 as a giant computer monitor. You certainly can, and I tested it in this capacity – if you like the idea of one giant panel, it works like a dream.
The G3 takes another step forward with its brightness, which can peak at well over 1,000 nits. It wasn’t that long ago that we were impressed to see around 600 nits of peak brightness on an OLED, so seeing LG push its televisions even further beyond in response to encroaching competition from Samsung’s QD OLED is really great. I comfortably watched television and played games on the G3 with it right next to a bright open set of windows without concern. There is some glare though, so just be aware of that. While bright, it’s not going to be the best experience if you have bright lights shining directly on the display from right behind your sitting position – that is to say, avoid putting it directly across from open windows.
I am not sure if it was just the review unit I received or if this is due to juicing up the brightness, but the color uniformity across the whole display has taken a bit of a dip compared to my previous experiences with LG OLED panels. The LG C2, for example, exhibited really excellent panel uniformity with nothing dipping below nominal performance. The G3, however, has great performance in the center of the display but this dips as we move away from the center.
If we were looking at a monitor designed for color-accurate work, this would be a problem. However, for a large television, you’re not going to notice this in day-to-day use. Movies, televisions, and video games regularly look absolutely fantastic to the naked eye, so this dip in uniformity performance is only going to be a factor for those who are considering the G3 as a computer monitor.
Also, please note that panel uniformity is one of the least consistent factors for any television, and one unit can perform very differently from another. If this is an important factor to you, make sure to test your specific unit upon receipt.
LG G3 – Gaming Performance
OLED televisions aren’t just great for color accuracy, they also have the fastest pixel response time on the market. Because each pixel can be individually controlled and turned on and off nearly instantly, that means gaming on an OLED is, right now, an unbeatable experience.
With consoles and PCs, the LG G3 gives you blur-free, pixel-perfect gaming with gorgeous contrast and outstanding color. HDR gaming is also fabulous and LG’s panel meters the brights and the darks extremely well. While sometimes the really good contrast can result in blacks being a bit too black, you can adjust this with the Black Stabilizer in the LG Gaming menu.
The LG Gaming Menu is a feature that is only available when the television is in Game Mode and provides you with your current frame-per-second numbers, whether VRR is on or off, and allows you to toggle game-specific settings like boosted low latency, the aforementioned black stabilizer, and other game optimization settings.
This menu has been a mainstay in LG OLED televisions for a few years now and it remains one of the best-looking and most functional on the market. There are still some manufacturers who have not implemented any sort of menu like this to monitor your gaming, and of those that do it, LG is the best right up next to Samsung.
There really isn’t much else to say about gaming on the LG G3: it’s flawless. It transitions from bright areas to darks quickly and seamlessly, it’s bright, HDR looks fantastic, and it’s overall in my top two favorite panels on the market for gaming in 2023.
LG G3 – Audio Quality
I am really surprised how good audio quality can get from a television that’s an inch thin, but LG has me questioning my reality with how good its AI-powered audio experience is. I’m not going to say you shouldn’t get a separate audio system like a soundbar or a set of dedicated speakers to really get the most out of your viewing experience, but I’m also not going to downplay how much better this TV sounds compared to how LG’s OLEDs used to sound.
Sure, the bass is the most obviously missing aspect of the audio experience, so if you really value that deep rumble that you need to enjoy movies like Dune, the built-in speakers aren’t going to be enough. But if all you do is watch sports or news and when you play video games, you’re using a headset, you probably will be pretty satisfied with what LG has done here. In particular, voices are really well-defined and it’s quite easy to hear what people are saying, generally a major complaint with some audio experiences.
LG G3 – The Competition
LG’s G3 is up against the top-end televisions from the competition, including the A95K from Sony and the S95C from Samsung. All three of these televisions are similarly priced, have similar or identical connectivity options, and all three offer fantastic viewing experiences, so it’s going to come down to the smart TV operating system you prefer. Samsung and LG have the superior gaming menu, but of the two, LG has the better smart TV OS. Sony is going to have the best overall picture quality thanks to its superior processing, so while it shares the same panel with Samsung, how that image is displayed is going to be slightly better with Sony.
All three of these televisions are fantastic, so you’re going to have to decide which one is right for you based on how you intend to use it. The LG C3, which is almost $1,000 cheaper, is another solid option with similar performance to the G3 and is more tuned for gaming and for use as a monitor.
