This HDR prowess is bolstered by LG’s image accuracy, with the grayscale enjoying equal amounts of red, green and blue, while the static tone mapping tracks the target PQ precisely, thus retaining the content creator’s artistic intent. Colours are equally impressive, covering 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut and accurately hitting all the saturation points.
LG’s Dynamic Tone Mapping is an excellent feature that analyses the incoming HDR signal and adjusts the tone mapping on the fly to get the best out of the OLED panel. The C4 passed all of my tests, producing pictures that had great impact, while still precisely following the PQ curve. There were no signs of clipping in the highlights, and areas just above black were free of crush.
The Filmmaker mode offers highly accurate images for HDR10, HLG and now Dolby Vision as well. When I popped on The Batman, I could immediately see what both the C4 and Dolby Vision were capable of, with the shadowy streets of Gotham City rendered with exceptional precision, and the hallway fight being illuminated by muzzle flashes in a way that only OLED can successfully deliver.
I would expect blacks and shadows to look good on an OLED, but where the C4 really impressed me was in its ability to deliver full-field patterns like the snowy wastes of The Revenant or the desert vistas of Dune without losing detail in the highlights. The first-rate picture accuracy was also evident, with the old-school Technicolor aesthetic of La La Land really popping with wonderful cinematic vibrancy.
To test the Hisense E7N Pro we used Portrait Displays Calman colour calibration software.
LG C4 OLED review: Gaming
The LG C4 is now an even better choice for gamers thanks to its ability to handle frame rates up to 144Hz. If you have a high-specced PC gaming rig you can enjoy buttery smooth movement that’s free of tearing and stutter, along with an incredibly low input lag that goes down to 5ms. However, you’ll need to select 144Hz in the Game Dashboard because the TV defaults to 120Hz.
Otherwise, it’s business as usual on the gaming front, with all four HDMI 2.1 ports supporting VRR (Nvidia G-Sync and AMD Freesync Premium) in addition to 4K/144Hz. There’s also ALLM, which automatically switches to a low latency game mode when a console is detected and offers a choice of six different game modes – Standard, FPS, RPG, RTS, Sports and User.
The expanded Game Bar is excellent, popping up when the Settings button is pressed and offering all the key game-related information and controls in a clearly laid out interface. This also provides access to the Game Dashboard, where you can fine tune your gaming experience via features like Dark Room mode, which helps reduce eye fatigue, or a control for brightening the darker areas of the image.
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LG C4 OLED review: Sound quality
The LG C4 sounds good for an ultra-slim OLED TV considering it only has a 2.2-channel system with 40W of amplification. The AI Acoustic Tuning optimises the sound for your specific environment, Adaptive Sound Control tweaks the delivery based on real-time analysis of the audio, while Dynamic Sound Booster gives the sonics an added kick.
The C4 supports Dolby Atmos decoding, and the processing is capable of generating a great sense of immersion with object-based audio. However, even with non-Atmos soundtracks, the AI Sound Pro processing is capable of giving the soundstage greater dimensionality, while it also makes dialogue clearer by bringing it forward in the mix and improving the overall intelligibility.
