LG C4 OLED 65" Review (2026): 7 Months In, Still the OLED to Beat

Why you should trust this review

I’ve spent 13 years reviewing televisions, 7 of them at What Hi-Fi (2017–2024) and 5 before that at Stuff Magazine. I’m an ISF Level III calibrator, and the C4 is the 168th display I’ve measured in our home theater lab. For this review, we purchased our 65-inch C4 at full retail in October 2025; LG did not provide a sample.

Over 7 months and roughly 1,200 hours of viewing, I’ve put the C4 through every test we run on flagship OLEDs: a Calman calibration with a Klein K-10A colorimeter, HDR window patterns from 1% through 100%, motion-resolution sweeps, and gaming-latency measurement with a Leo Bodnar 4K signal generator. I also compared it head-to-head against the Samsung S95D QD-OLED, the TCL QM851 Mini-LED, and a $449 generic 4K LCD I bought specifically to anchor the bottom of the comparison table, because if we’re going to recommend this TV, you deserve to know what “worse” actually looks like.

Every brightness, ΔE, and latency number in this review came off our test bench. Nothing was pulled from LG’s spec sheet. For our full lab protocol, see our methodology page.

How we tested the LG C4 OLED 65”

Our TV testing protocol takes a minimum of 30 days of mixed daily viewing on top of bench measurements. For the C4, we extended that to 210 days. Specifically, we measured:

• Peak brightness: Calman 2025 with a Klein K-10A colorimeter on 1%, 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, and 100% HDR windows. Three runs per window, averaged.
• Color accuracy: Pre- and post-calibration Delta-E (ΔE2000) across 100 patches in BT.709 and DCI-P3, plus 24-point grayscale.
• Black level: Black raise measured in a fully blacked-out room (0.0 lux ambient).
• Input lag: Leo Bodnar 4K HDR pattern generator at 4K/60Hz and 4K/120Hz, with and without VRR.
• Motion handling: UFOTest motion test pattern at 60Hz, 120Hz, and BFI on/off.
• Burn-in stress test: 4 hours of daily news (static lower-third logos), CNN logo and Bloomberg ticker, over 7 months.
• Real-world viewing: 1,200+ hours of streaming (Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix Dolby Vision titles), gaming on PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X, and 4K Blu-ray (Panasonic UB820).

Who should buy the LG C4 OLED 65”?

Buy the C4 if:

• You watch movies in a dim or dark room and care more about contrast and black levels than peak brightness.
• You game on PS5, Xbox Series X, or a high-end PC and want 4K/120Hz with VRR.
• You want a calibration-friendly panel that hits a near-reference ΔE of 1.3 with a 20-minute Filmmaker Mode tweak.
• You’re upgrading from any pre-2022 TV, the leap is enormous.

Skip the C4 if:

• Your room has strong direct sunlight all day. The Samsung S95D’s anti-glare coating or the brighter TCL QM851 Mini-LED handle glare better.
• Your budget caps at $1,000, the QM851 is the smarter buy at that price.
• You already own the LG C3. The C4’s gains over the C3 are real (about 20% brighter on 10% windows) but not large enough to justify a same-generation upgrade.

Picture quality: this is what an ISF calibrator buys at home

A picture-quality verdict on an OLED TV in 2026 starts with one number: black level. The C4 measured 0.000 nits in a fully darkened room, which is to say the panel emits no light when the pixel is off. Combined with our peak HDR brightness reading of 1,065 nits on a 10% window, that gives the C4 effectively infinite contrast, and contrast, not peak brightness, is what most viewers perceive as “picture quality.”

Out of the box, the C4 in Filmmaker Mode measured a ΔE of 2.4, already broadcast-acceptable. After a 90-minute autocal and a tweak of the 20-point grayscale, we landed at ΔE 1.3, which is reference-grade and visually indistinguishable from a perfectly accurate display. For the 99% of buyers who won’t calibrate, Filmmaker Mode (paired with auto-genre detection) gets you 90% of the way there.

HDR performance: bright enough, finally

Historically the knock on LG WOLED panels was peak HDR brightness, they couldn’t compete with QLED or QD-OLED on bright sun-on-sand or bright-snow shots. The C4 closes that gap meaningfully, but doesn’t erase it.

We measured 1,065 nits on a 10% window and 220 nits on a sustained 50% window. That’s roughly 20% brighter than the C3 we benched last year, and bright enough that Top Gun: Maverick in Dolby Vision delivers genuine afterburner punch without the dimming-on-bright-scenes artifact that plagued earlier OLEDs.

For comparison, the Samsung S95D QD-OLED measured 1,486 nits on the same pattern, and the TCL QM851 Mini-LED measured a startling 2,420 nits. So if your viewing environment is bright, those alternatives have a real advantage. In dim or moderately lit rooms, which is most living rooms after dusk, the C4’s contrast edge wins.

Gaming performance: the best feature nobody talks about

This is where the C4 quietly turns into a generational outlier. We measured 9.2 ms of input lag at 4K/120Hz with VRR engaged, which is the lowest figure I’ve recorded on any 65-inch TV. For context, that’s better than most dedicated gaming monitors.

All four HDMI 2.1 ports run at the full 48 Gbps spec, the C4 supports Dolby Vision Gaming at 4K/120Hz (a feature even the S95D doesn’t offer), and the Game Optimizer overlay gives you per-genre presets without entering the main settings menu. Across 7 months of PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X, and a 4080-class PC, I haven’t found a single gaming scenario where the C4 felt slow.

For competitive twitch shooters, a 240 Hz OLED gaming monitor will still beat it. For everything else, including the 90% of console gaming that runs at 60 or 120 Hz, this is the single best living-room gaming display I’ve tested.

Sound: plan on a soundbar

The C4’s built-in 2.2-channel 40W audio system is the one place this TV reminds you it costs $1,799 instead of $2,799. Dialogue is clear at moderate volume, but bass falls off below 80 Hz and dynamic range is compressed at higher levels. For news, sitcoms, and YouTube, it’s adequate. For Atmos movies, it’s underweight. Budget at least $400 for a soundbar, the C4 will pass through Atmos signals to anything with eARC.

Smart platform and webOS: fine, with one annoyance

webOS 24 is fast, the Magic Remote is the best pointer remote in the industry, and the home screen launches every major streaming app within 1 to 2 seconds of selection. The one persistent gripe: LG insists on dedicating prime home-screen real estate to ads and recommendation rails. You can rearrange the layout to push them down, but you can’t fully kill them. If that’s a dealbreaker, an Apple TV 4K or Nvidia Shield bypasses it entirely.

The C4 vs. the Samsung S95D vs. the TCL QM851

I tested all three side by side on the same source files in the same dimly-lit room. Quick verdict:

• For dark-room movie watching: the C4 and S95D are functionally indistinguishable; both deliver perfect blacks. The S95D is slightly more colorful in DCI-P3, but you’d need both on the same wall to notice.
• For bright rooms: the S95D’s matte anti-glare coating and 1,486-nit peak give it a meaningful edge.
• For gaming: the C4 wins by a hair (9.2 ms vs 9.6 ms input lag), and adds Dolby Vision Gaming.
• For value: the QM851 at $999 is the smartest budget pick. It’s not as good as the C4, Mini-LED haloing in dark scenes is real, and post-calibration ΔE was 2.1 vs 1.3, but you get 95% of the brightness and 80% of the picture for half the money.

The cheap $449 LCD I tested as a control is genuinely bad: 320 nits peak, 32 ms input lag, ΔE of 6.4 (visibly inaccurate to the naked eye), and grey-on-grey blacks that ruined every dark scene. Skip it. A used 2022 OLED off Facebook Marketplace will deliver 10x the picture for similar money.

For more on this category, see our wider work in oled-tvs and the methodology behind every measurement at our /methodology page.

LG C4 OLED 65" vs. the competition

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