LG C1 OLED Review: The Best HDR Display for PC Gamers?

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed yes it's finally time after many requests from your over the last couple of years we are finally getting around to reviewing an oled display to properly see how it compares to the latest lcd gaming monitors we get a ton of questions about oleds pretty much weekly so hopefully this review and the data we've gathered will answer your burning questions and we'll show how this technology fares in our current monitor test suite for today's review i went out and bought what many people believe is the best oled screen for gaming and the most suitable candidate for usage as a pc monitor the lg c1 oled this is lg's latest generation of oled tvs designed primarily for content consumption and brilliant hdr but in the smallest 48 inch option the one we bought for testing today it may also be usable as a monitor that's something we'll have to figure out big shout out to our patreon and floatplane members who allow us to purchase things like this for testing the lg c1 is one of the best oled displays for gaming because it combines the technology with a 3840 by 2160 resolution and an actually usable refresh rate of 120 hertz the vast majority of oled monitors are designed for professionals so they are capped to 60 hertz and often cost thousands upon thousands of dollars that's not the case here the c1 not only supports our 120hz refresh it also includes both g-sync and amd freesync support bringing the variable refresh rate tech we see with virtually every gaming display these days it's also not outrageously priced for a high-end display at 1500 us dollars and often it's on sale for below that while there are serious gaming specs here and lg has done a great job of supporting the gaming market with their oled line the c1 is still primarily designed to be used as a tv it has smart tv functionality so you can run apps directly on the tv itself a built-in tuner and lots of image adjusting features like ai processing and all that stuff it also lacks some of the convenient features we enjoy with most monitors like displayport connectivity in any case we are not reviewing this as a tv we're assessing this as if it were a monitor you would choose to use with a pc and other input devices if you're interested in how this compares as a tv to other tvs i'd recommend checking out a website like ratings that will thoroughly assess that for you first up the design as this is a tv the design used here is quite different to most monitors we look at the stand for example is basically a strip of metal that runs along the bottom edge of the display connecting very low down to the display itself there is no adjustability here whatsoever you can't even tilt the display into the position you may want so forget height adjustment or anything of the sort lg expects you to use this as is or wall mounted and honestly using it with the included stand isn't too bad given its size i don't really miss height or tilt adjustability aside from the lack of ergonomics this is a beautifully designed product built to emphasize the large display in all its glory with slim bezels and an even slimmer depth for the top section while this area is ridiculously thin there is still a chunkier section at the base that houses all the electronics and ports which uses a more utility focused design rather than something elegant the exterior material is also super premium with a mixture of metal glass and good quality plastic one of the big differences between the c1 and most monitors is the finish used on the display the c1 is a glossy glass display which tends to make colors pop and increase the clarity and crispness of the image in contrast most monitors use a matte anti-glare finish which diffuses the light to some degree to cut down on reflections in bright environments with modern anti-glare coatings still providing excellent clarity what this means in practical use cases is that the lg c1 has increased clarity and wow factor in darker environments but tends to be a lot more reflective than a monitor with an anti-glare coating among tvs the c1 is one of the better displays at reducing direct reflections with its treatment of the glossy finish however ultimately you will still see much more clear and defined reflections in a well-lit room than you would from a normal monitor most of which only reflect general diffuse light rather than defined mirror-like reflections how annoying this will be will depend on your setup and tolerance for reflections i personally found it somewhat irritating in my office but not a deal breaker and often it's not that noticeable when focusing on the content being displayed the other major consideration when buying the c148 inch is the size 48 inches is far larger than most normal monitors and that's something you'll need to factor in firstly you'll need a large desk the unit overall is 107 centimeters wide and the stand itself is 84 centimeters wide so you'll need to make sure it fits but then on top of that the actual screen itself is about 105 centimeters wide and 60 centimeters tall which is massive for desk usage in comparison a standard 32 inch display is only 70 centimeters wide and a 34 inch ultra wide only 80 centimeters wide so this 48 inch tv is 25 centimeters wider than an ultra wide in addition to being significantly taller pixel density is not an issue 48 inch 4k is the same density as 32 inch 1440p so the c1 is usable with 100 scaling it's just so wide that the entire screen may not fit in your field of view with standard desk viewing distances i normally sit about 60 to 70 centimeters away from my 34 inch ultra wide so that's about an arm's length but found that distance uncomfortably close with the c1 i needed to be more like one meter away or greater this presents some problems for desktop usage as you'll need a deep desk or to figure out something custom to have the c1 and your keyboard and mouse on the same surface i actually think this is one of those rare cases where the c1 should be curved for closer viewing distances similar to most gaming ultrawides just so the edges are better and more clearly in your field of view obviously this wouldn't work well for a tv that most people view from a reasonable distance which is why lg has kept it flat so we've already found a few challenges with using the c1 as a monitor the glossy finish and its size but there's another important factor as well and that's text clarity the c1 uses lg's wrgb sub pixel layout meaning that in addition to the normal red green and blue sub pixels for each pixel lg are also including a white sub pixel to improve brightness and other aspects to display quality however in the modern world of subpixel text rendering anytime the pixel structure differs from rgb text clarity tends to suffer to some degree i still found the c1 to produce generally great text but it was inferior to the ips displays i use daily though the windows clear type utility can fix this to some degree wrgb is not nearly as bad as bgr for clarity but it's still something to keep in mind for ports the c1 includes four hdmi 2.1 ports in addition to several other ports including three usb both analog and optical audio output ethernet and an antenna input for the tuner the key thing to talk about here is hdmi 2.1 is this facilitates up to 10-bit by 2160 resolutions at 120 hertz however it's also the only way to access this refresh rate meaning you'll need a modern graphics card either from nvidia's rtx 30 series or amd's rx 6000 series or newer to get the most out of the c1 older gpus with only hdmi 2.0 support will be limited to 60hz using full rgb so for monitor usage it would have been nice to see displayport with dsc however this was never going to happen on a tv-focused product impressively though despite being an hdmi only display i had no issues with variable refresh rate support on either amd or nvidia gpus as both technologies are supported and as hdmi 2.1 is included here of course there are no issues using this display with the latest game consoles without limitations as for the on-screen display it's a tv so there is a complex array of menus including smart tv features and a wealth of settings however i'm going to ignore the vast majority of smart functionality as i literally don't care about it when their c1 is hooked up as a monitor you don't even have to connect it to the internet if you don't want to although i'd advise you do so you can receive firmware updates the osd is controlled through a remote control which uses a combination of buttons and a wand-like pointer control the menu is easy to navigate but naturally has lots of things to adjust and there is a setup process that will guide you through a lot of it outside of that i'd recommend making sure hdmi deep color is set to 4k in the hdmi settings and that the game optimizer mode is used so that variable refresh rates are enabled 120hz is accessible and input lag is reduced you won't find things like cheat crosshairs in this tv but you will still find blue light filters and we'll talk more about optimize settings later so far we have already dived into some of the challenges of using the lg c1 as a monitor but make no mistake as we begin talking about image quality you'll quickly see why people want to use this display as a monitor and we'll start here with response times noting that the c1 does not have any overdrive controls being a self-lit oled panel response times are incredible at 120 hertz this is what i would describe as a true one millisecond display it's not a situation where lg advertises one millisecond then kind of cheats to get that figure using ridiculous overdrive settings that badly hurt image quality no this is what a real one millisecond display looks like on average straight out of the box the c1 can hit a 1.3 millisecond response time average with no overshoot even with our stringent and updated response time testing methodology for 2021. when you combine the response time and overshoot results it's no surprise that the c1 gets very close to producing instant response times as illustrated by a double digit cumulative deviation average normally this is in the mid triple digits for lcd based monitors now i wouldn't necessarily describe the panel as having instant transitions as there is a slight curve to the response but it's as instant as we can get with modern display technologies lg is not lying or even bending the truth when they say the c1 has a one millisecond response time it absolutely 100 does on average even after gamma correction and when measuring 97 of the response curve this helps deliver excellent motion clarity with the only blur you'll see in motion attributable to the modest 120hz refresh rate with a sample and hold display like this 120hz isn't fast enough to deliver a completely clear image in motion as you'll see from this ufo test a 240hz display with worse response times will generally have better overall clarity as the image is updated twice as often but this is the best 120hz experience we've got and of course 240hz is not achievable on any current 4k display so the c1 gives elite motion clarity among the 4k displays of today on top of producing outrageous response times at 120hz the c1 does an excellent job of holding that performance throughout the entire refresh range i tested at 100hz 85hz and 60hz as well noting no significant change to performance at any of these refresh rates there is a very small reduction to performance at lower refreshes but this is hardly significant at all this means a perfect experience while gaming with a variable refresh rate in comparison to other displays the lg c1 humiliates lcd based monitors in the response times it can produce even the fastest monitors i've tested like the samsung odyssey g7 and hp omen x27 don't come close to what the c1 is able to achieve when viewing average performance across the refresh range the c1 is in the ballpark of three times better than the next best product with lower overshoot to boot this is an incredible result that puts lcd panels to shame the most striking graph you'll see illustrating the motion clarity benefits of an oled panel is the cumulative deviation chart lcds simply do not get close to oleds in how they can replicate the ideal instant response the c1 oled actually gets quite close to an instant response while none of the lcds do we're looking at results in the range of seven to ten times better than a modern high performance ips display and over five times better than the fastest va and tn panels we've tested so that's pretty incredible in an apple's travels comparison at 120 hertz the lg c1 obliterates the competition nothing else comes close and it obliterates everything harder at 60 hertz while most monitors get slower at this lower refresh rate the c1 blazes through virtually unchanged with no increased overshoot the good news is that when running the display in its game optimizer mode input lag is very low i recorded less than one millisecond of processing delay although i should note that you have to be in this mode to achieve this sort of result using other modes substantially increases input lag with processing in excess of 20 milliseconds but in the input lag optimized mode this oled competes with the best lcds in terms of total input lag as transition times are lightning fast on the other hand power consumption is very high not a great comparison as most monitors here are a lot smaller but relative to a 32 inch panel this 48 inch oled typically uses two to three times the power in bright desktop usage the c1 does include a backlight strobing mode which i guess in this situation should be called black frame insertion as the oled panel doesn't have a backlight in any case you know what i mean it can strobe the image to improve motion clarity this feature is called oled motion pro and it has a variety of settings but only works at fixed refresh rates including 120hz and nicely 60hz as well the good news is that this mode is essentially perfect when running at 120hz and using the high setting the image is totally clear and free of any strobe crosstalk double images or overshoot and clarity is great whether we're looking at the top middle or bottom of the screen as the oled panel's response times are so fast that strobe timing is a lot simpler brightness is impacted to some degree but the motion clarity on show here smashes the best lcd monitors the only way this feature would be improved is if it worked in conjunction with variable refresh rates and i guess if it was a bit brighter as well moving on to color quality the c1 oled is a wide gamut display but not the widest we've seen the focus here is clearly on dci p3 supporting 96 of that gamut in our testing but the gamut does not extend beyond dci p3 to support adobe rgb or any other gamuts of course p3 makes the most sense for a tv that's focused on film and television but it doesn't make it as versatile as today's best lcd monitors that have 80 rec 2020 coverage the lg c1 only sits at 70 coverage factory calibration is awful and by this i mean the c1 looks bad when you take it out of the box and don't change a single setting the default mode is clearly not concerned with being accurate in any way with a strong blue tint incorrect gamma and high delta ease it does clamp the color gamut to srgb rec 709 by default in the sdr mode which is how it should be but the white point is far off accurate leading to poor results across most of these tests in comparison to other gaming monitors the c1 is the worst out of this bunch for factory grayscale calibration although color check accuracy is more mid-tier however that's not to say the lg c1 is an inaccurate display overall because if you fiddle with the numerous settings you can actually improve performance substantially rather than going through each setting individually here are the settings that i settled on and there are a lot of them with these settings at play i was able to massively improve delta e performance across the board with better white balance and overall better greyscale results gamma performance still wasn't great but generally you should be able to achieve a much more accurate image by messing around with the modes while the settings are used still focused on the game optimizer mode to keep low input latency the expert modes are the most accurate without needing as much adjusting beyond that i was able to calibrate the display further using display cal leading to better results this is one of several ways to calibrate the c1 and is the standard way we calibrate monitors for testing however for the best results i'd actually recommend using calman's built-in lg tv workflow which will hardware calibrate the display a much more robust system that will work with many different inputs though this does require paid software the weakest aspect to image quality is brightness when displaying a full white image the lg c1 oled is a dim display thanks to its automatic brightness limiter or abl a result of under 200 nits will be insufficient in many brighter environments and when combined with a glossy panel this is not a great result for reflections you can achieve slightly higher results when switching away from the game optimizer mode but at best i wasn't able to push the c1 above 200 nits full white so it's still well below most lcds in addition to low full screen brightness the abl is quite annoying for desktop usage as moving and resizing windows will adjust the brightness of those windows in a noticeable way as such depending on the average picture level or apl of the display the brightness may vary to as high as 250 nits or so and it will always be fluctuating between about 170 and 250 nits this is the unfortunate reality of using an oled and it was distracting when using the display for desktop apps that are uniform and often fairly bright however the abl is well optimized for games and video so it's unlikely you'll notice the brightness changes when using the c1 for content consumption minimum brightness is good if you want to use the c1 in a dark room without burning your eyes not that an oled is really capable of that and of course showing a contrast graph would be a bit pointless as the oled screen has an effective infinite contrast ratio obliterating lcd panels in the process as an oled can deliver far more rich inky blacks however what i will show instead is a black level chart which illustrates how the oled screen compares to various lcd technologies when the display is calibrated to 200 nits nothing else comes close to the oled's black levels uniformity and viewing angles were both great with my c1 oled unit there were some slight tint differences depending on the area of the panel being tested which is expected for an oled uniformity will also depend on how close you sit to the monitor as the closer you are the more you'll see the impact of viewing angle differences rather than the uniformity of the display itself if you stand back you'll see the tv is quite uniform before talking about the hdr experience it's worth discussing the permanent burn-in risk associated with oled displays this is one of the major drawbacks that prevents the c1 from being well suited to desktop usage along with the brightness and abl issues desktop usage frequently includes viewing static images whether that's the taskbar or just general application windows like the navigation bar in chrome these all present a risk of burn-in as static content is bad for an oled how long it will take to burn in the display when using it as a desktop monitor is unfortunately not something i can answer as it will take years to figure that out even with 24 7 usage but i would expect that with a normal pc desktop setup that the c1 will burn in faster than with mixed content and general content consumption like movies or games i'd check out ratings burn-in tests for a better idea of how long this may take there are some mitigation strategies in place some the c1 uses itself and some you can do yourself for example the c1 implements pixel shifting and logo dimming to improve the lifespan of the tv and dims the entire panel when long periods of static content is detected however i found that the pixel shift feature is pretty annoying as it can cut off vital information from the desktop at times depending on where the image is shifted to so it might need to be disabled for desktop usage further hurting burn in i'd also recommend some usage habit changes in windows like using a darker mode enabling screen savers and setting the taskbar to automatically hide the lg c1 is a fantastic hdr display as it's an oled each individual pixel is self-lit providing the best contrast ratio possible from a modern display technology not only does the c1 meet our hdr checklist but its effective zone count of over 8.2 million dwarfs the best full array locally dimmed lcd monitors that top out at around a mediocre 1152 zones in comparison in practice this leads to no blooming or haloing when viewing hdr content that has bright and dark areas on the screen at the same time any pixel that needs to be black is fully switched off so even the most punishing hdr scenes like starry nights or small lights on a dark street looked perfect and amazing the best hdr monitors for gaming like the pg32uqx from asus with its mini led backlight struggle badly and have visible blooming in areas where the lg c1 oled looks immaculate it's a real night and day difference which leads to an excellent image quality in hdr content like when discussing contrast in the sdr section of this review there's not much point showing hdr contrast graphs as this oled is able to achieve infinite contrast even in checkerboard tests where the pg32uqx tops out around a four thousand to one contrast ratio that lcd screen is good but it honestly doesn't come close to the c1's ability to show black and dark shadow detail if you would all care about black levels and the ideal single frame contrast result you need to go oled the drawback is the same as the sdr section as well brightness full screen sustained brightness is poor and in our testing actually is worse than in the sdr mode at just 140 nits lcd panels crush this oled in its ability to show a very bright image that takes up the entire screen however the lg c1 is competitive at showing bright highlights when measuring a 10 white window our c1 unit was capable of 775 nits of brightness which is bright enough to show dazzling highlights in a lot of hdr content but isn't as good as the best lcd panels oleds can appear brighter to your eye than these numbers would suggest due to their deeper than lcd black levels and extremely high contrast ratio so in my experience an oled can get away with lower brightness than an lcd can but it's still one area that oled tech needs to improve this is how the c1 oled handles brightness across various window sizes any scenes with a high apl will be relatively dim however like we've been discussing the c1 is capable of decent brightness in smaller areas the average picture level of a lot of film content tends to be below 25 where the c1 can achieve nearly 400 nits ultimately i think this is a good level of brightness for hdr but not the best though i still feel the overall hdr experience is outstanding when combined with the contrast ratio and dimming ability so there you have it our review of the lg c1 oled as a monitor and how it stacks up against other popular gaming displays in our test suite it's certainly been interesting testing something outside the usual range of lcd panels we see in monitors when buying something like the c1 for use as a monitor i generally think people will fall into one of two categories and my recommendations for each category are quite different so let's break it down if you use your gaming monitor exclusively for content consumption so playing games watching movies or enjoying hardware unboxed youtube videos then i do believe the c1 oled is worth considering and does offer a lot to buyers the combination of image quality hdr experience and motion clarity is simply unmatched by today's lcd panels nothing based on lcd technology can get even close to this oled in response times the c1 offers neat instant transitions with no overshoot and that allows for perfect backlight strobing as a result the c1 destroys its competition in motion offering the best experience i've ever seen at 120hz or below this is excellent for gaming and when you combine it with lg's inclusion of variable refresh rate support and the low input lag mode there's not a lot missing for gamers it may not be as smooth as a 240hz monitor at a lower resolution but there's nothing at 4k that approaches what this display can do then you throw in the excellent hdr functionality which is great for both gaming and watching hdr videos effectively zero black levels infinite contrast self-lit pixels it doesn't get better than that for hdr in terms of contrast and dimming and there's virtually no hdr scenes that look bad on an oled the only weakness here is brightness it doesn't get as bright as the best lcd monitors in hdr scenes but i still feel brightness overall is sufficient for breathtaking hdr again nothing comes close to this for the combination of hdr and gaming prowess which is why i could recommend it as a content consumption pc display however if you use your monitor for things outside of content consumption think web browsing productivity work or really anything that involves desktop applications then in my opinion the lg c1 is a poor choice there is zero versatility to this display it's basically built for viewing content and that's it which is fair enough as it's designed as a tv not as a monitor during my testing i found the automatic brightness limiter annoying when using desktop apps and the generally low level of brightness is insufficient for brighter environments especially combined with the glossy finish that reflects your surrounds it's also massive and requires a larger than normal viewing distance that may not work with a lot of desktop setups i don't think this is as big of a deal for content consumption where you're focused on the center of the massive screen but the sheer size can make content in the very outer edges hard to see at closer viewing distances like for example if you had snapped a desktop app into one of the corners it's also not quite as clear as the best 4k ips panels of today due to its wrgb subpixel layout its gamut isn't as wide as the best lcds it has poor default calibration that requires a lot of osd tweaking and its lack of display port limits the full 4k 120hz experience to only the newest graphics cards there's zero ergonomic adjustment here either due to the fixed stand and perhaps most concerning of all use with a desktop environment will lead to lots of static content on the screen increasing the risk of permanent burn-in relative to more dynamic usage so personally for me as someone that uses my gaming monitor for both work and content consumption the lg c1 oled is not a good option there's just too many drawbacks and annoyances here if the c1 was a bit smaller i think 42 inches or less would be a lot better and if it was brighter without the annoying limiter then i would be much more strongly considering it but overall it does seem that oled technology isn't quite ready for use as a true desktop monitor at least in this sort of product however again i think this is a great content consumption monitor and with the current terrible state of the hdr monitor market you really won't find anything close to as good at its 1500 price tag so if that's all you're going to use your monitor for then yeah the lgc1 is pretty great anyway that's it for this testing of the lg c1 oled thanks to our patreon and floatplane members who support us and contribute to us allowing us to buy things like tvs for testing if you want to support the channel you can do so by buying some merch like this new hardware unavailable stuff that i've got on here we also of course have patreon floatplane if you want to sign up get access to our discord community our monthly live streams behind the scenes videos all that good stuff anyway thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 410,775

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: Qtve0u3GJ9Y

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DrKrFfXx]

OLED monitors can't come soon enough.

[u/_maxt3r_]

Want 32" 4K size, gimme that sweet DPI

[u/DoggyStyle3000]

When is the 42" Oled coming?

[u/ender7887]

I can’t wait for micro-led panels. Has all the advantages of oled and the brightness of a Qled. Only disadvantages is that they’re super expensive and hard to manufacture for the time being.

[u/Solace-]

I really disagree with the idea of calling a 48 inch tv a good pc gaming display. It’s simply way to big to use as a monitor. Take a measuring tape and check for yourself. Chances are, unless you have the deepest desk you can buy, you'll be sitting significantly too close to it. Not only will it be horrible for your eyes, but you won't be able to process all the information on the screen either.

I'm not saying it's a bad tv, but it's a very poor monitor replacement for practical use. Especially if you're playing anything remotely competitive and want to use a mouse and keyboard comfortably. Burn-in is a real thing and happens too. For normal use as a tv it's essentially a coin flip as to whether that will happen or not, but with a pc the chances are higher.

[u/SmoneyD]

Would it be with getting the CX at s much cheaper price than the C1.. is the brightness that different? Also the C1 has the new/better OS. Not sure if it would justify $500-700 extra

[u/Sunagwa]

Using a C9 55 inch since release. No going back. The gaming monitor market is a joke. As for the main points of controversy...

Size: If you can make space it's not an issue, at all. I've always felt this one is exaggerated. I understand if you don't have the space but in almost every case the argument is that it's to big to sit to close to. Yah. So don't sit so close to it. Problem solved. Again if you don't have or are unwilling to make space that's reasonable just don't act like sitting three feet from the screen is the only option.

Burn in: Legit problem that you'll have to consider the pro and cons of. All I can say is I've had mine since release, I have well north of 10k hours logged, several thousand of which are in a single game (Anno 1800) with the same UI and I have zero issues so far.

Just my humble opinion based on my experience with both this OLED and multiple over priced gaming monitors.

[u/InLoveWithInternet]

I’m lost.

This would be nice for a living room, except PC games are far from living room friendly. And it’s too small for a living room.

It’s too big for a desktop PC station.

[u/Ozqo]

Why does the brightness go down as the window size increases?