The 2 Best OLED TVs of 2025

Important specs

The LG C4 Series stands out for its combination of great picture quality, a robust feature set, and availability in a large range of screen sizes—for prices that are more affordable than those of most of the OLED TVs sold today.

It delivers a terrific OLED picture without a terrifying OLED price tag. The C Series is one of the more affordable series in LG’s OLED lineup. Only the B Series is cheaper, and it’s more limited in brightness, features, and screen sizes.

OLED TVs are renowned for their perfect black levels, which allow them to produce excellent screen contrast, commendable color purity, and much wider viewing angles than similarly priced LCD TVs can provide. In addition to checking off those boxes, the C4 is a good bit brighter than previous C Series models, peaking around 1,300 nits—on a par with last year’s top pick, the Samsung S90C.

The C4’s total color volume—the full range of billions of colors it can create—doesn’t match that of our upgrade pick, which uses quantum-dot technology, but its extra brightness helps it achieve splendidly rich hues when displaying HDR video. This TV can really pack a visual punch, even if it’s not as bright-room-capable as some of the competition.

Where the C4 looks best is in the traditional OLED realm of a dim or darkened viewing space, where it can show off its flawless black levels. When you set it to the Filmmaker Mode picture mode, you can expect anything you watch or play to look rich and accurate.

Gamers have loved the C Series for years, for good reason. The C4 offers low input lag, terrific response time, a great collection of gaming features, and four HDMI 2.1 inputs. While that last item is not a strict necessity, it’s always nice to have more than two HDMI 2.1 ports, because one of them may be taken by an eARC-compatible soundbar.

While testing the C4 with our Leo Bodnar input-lag tester, during 4K 60 Hz gaming we measured around 12 milliseconds of input lag, which is very good. You can expect about half of that while gaming in 4K at 120 Hz.

Because the HDMI 2.1 inputs support auto low-latency mode (ALLM), the C4’s excellent Game Optimizer dashboard turns on by default when you connect a game console. Game Optimizer shows you information about your frames per second (fps), aspect ratio, VRR format (such as AMD FreeSync), and so on. I found it very useful to view and tinker with my gaming settings while playing Star Wars Outlaws on the PlayStation 5—which looked gorgeous on this TV, for the record.

Dolby Vision support makes the C4 an especially good choice for movies and video games. Unlike any of Samsung’s comparably priced OLED TVs, LG’s C4 offers compatibility with the Dolby Vision HDR format, in addition to supporting basic HDR10 and the broadcast-based HLG formats. Although we don’t think the absence of Dolby Vision compatibility is an outright dealbreaker, its presence is definitely a huge plus—and we’ve received feedback from many readers who say that it’s essential on a high-performance OLED.

Most 4K Blu-ray discs look their absolute best in the Dolby Vision format, and it’s also essentially the default form of dynamic HDR for streaming apps—the alternative being Samsung’s HDR10+, which is much less common. While Prime Video hosts content in both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, apps such as Disney+, Max, and Netflix support only the Dolby Vision format, so having a compatible TV is important.

Additionally, Xbox gamers can, for a one-time fee, enable Dolby Vision for Gaming on Xbox Series S and Series X consoles, making AAA games look better than ever.

This OLED TV is definitely a jack-of-all-trades. From a bird’s-eye perspective, the C4 isn’t the absolute best OLED TV for any one thing. It isn’t as bright or as colorful as some of the pricier models (like our upgrade pick). It isn’t as good at mitigating ambient light as Samsung OLED screens that have a matte finish. And it isn’t calibrated as accurately as Sony’s Bravia 8 out of the box, nor is it quite as good at upscaling lower-resolution content as that TV.

But unlike all those other TVs, the C4 has no serious flaws or sticking points, and it’s available in a wide range of screen sizes: The 42-inch model could work as an office or gaming monitor on a desk as easily as the 83-inch model could be the centerpiece of your home theater setup, offering versatility that most OLED TVs only dream of.

The C4’s carbon fiber construction ensures that even the largest sizes are durable and safe from warping yet light enough that you can easily carry your TV by yourself (though that might not be advisable with the largest sizes).

Features such as Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, and an integrated 2.2-channel speaker system add a welcome degree of flexibility, especially now that the webOS smart-TV platform supports Chromecast. The C4’s speaker system won’t outperform a good soundbar, but it’s still a good sight better than what the average TV delivers in that regard.

The webOS smart-TV platform has everything you need. LG’s webOS smart-TV platform is not our favorite smart-TV platform. (We gave that award to Google TV, which is more customizable and has fewer annoying ads). But webOS is fine. At least it’s no longer missing major apps like ESPN+ and Twitch, and on the C4 it’s very responsive and quick to load, even on Wi-Fi.

My longstanding complaint with webOS has more to do with the navigation experience, but it’s too subjective to be called a flaw. Some people may love using the infrared-based Magic Remote to select and click with an on-screen cursor (like using a Nintendo Wii), but it’s not for me. You can still use directional buttons for navigation, but if you wiggle the clicker too much, you’re right back in cursor mode. I just don’t like it.

However, if your intention is simply to watch stuff on apps like Max, Netflix, or Prime Video, webOS won’t slow you down.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The C4 doesn’t offer the best possible color performance. Our upgrade pick, the Sony A95L, uses a QD-OLED panel, which employs quantum dots. Last year’s top pick, the Samsung Q90C, had a QD-OLED panel as well. And all of our LCD TV picks have quantum dots. Noticing a pattern?

Quantum dots go a long way toward giving TVs—whether they’re OLEDs or LCDs—a big boost in color saturation, which is especially important when they’re displaying 4K HDR content that has a wider color gamut than standard HDTV content. Because the C4 is an OLED TV, it offers naturally good color coverage, but it doesn’t have quantum dots and thus isn’t as vivid as a QD-OLED display in head-to-head comparisons.

You can’t watch 4K over-the-air broadcasts without an additional device. The C4 is equipped with an ATSC 1.0 tuner instead of a newer, ATSC 3.0 tuner (also called NextGenTV). In fact, none of LG’s 2024 TVs have ATSC 3.0 tuners.

This isn’t a major problem because 4K broadcasts aren’t available everywhere in the US yet, and it’s not one of the more common ways to watch 4K content. But the older tuner does harm the C4’s future-proofing to a small degree. If you want to be able to receive 4K broadcasts, you need to buy a separate ATSC 3.0 tuner.

You may see tinting during wide off-angle viewing. Like all OLED TVs, the C4 provides excellent horizontal and vertical viewing angles—much better than LCD TVs can muster. However, at some wider viewing angles, the C4’s OLED panel makeup can sometimes introduce a greenish tint.

Some viewers have reported seeing this tinting only while watching from extreme angles, while some have stated that they don’t see it at all. I’ve primarily watched the C4 in the Filmmaker Mode picture mode, and I haven’t noticed this tinting myself, but buyers and other reviewers have reported it enough that it’s worth mentioning as a potential flaw.

Recommended settings

If you want the C4 to look as accurate and cinematic as possible, use its Filmmaker Mode, preferably in a dimmer or darkened room. If you’re watching in a brighter room, we recommend the ISF Expert Bright picture mode, which maintains a lot of Filmmaker Mode’s accuracy while adding more general brightness from scene to scene.

Whichever mode you’re watching, you should also turn off the TV’s TruMotion and Motion Eye Care settings (if they’re not already off) to avoid introducing the soap-opera effect. I also advise turning off LG’s various AI settings (AI Brightness, AI Acoustic Tuning, and AI Recommendation) and setting things like OLED brightness and volume level yourself.