LG G5 (OLED65G5) 4K OLED TV Review (2025)

We are testing a 65-inch review sample of the G5 sent to me by LG UK. This set is representative of what you can buy from a retailer. We do plan to use a retail version of the 55-inch panel size for long term assessment and review in 2025. LG had no input in this review and didn’t see this review until it was published. Our review is based on objective measured data and experienced subjective assessment.

While we are testing the 65-inch version in this review, we would expect other screen sizes to perform similarly, including the 83-inch which features the same Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel technology. The 48 and 97-inch versions do use slightly different panels with lower peak brightness performance.

... full-screen brightness and contrast are a visible step up on the G4

Screen uniformity is very good with a 5% brightness slide showing incredibly faint vertical bands that are only just visible in a pitch-black room. These are completely unseen when watching a dark scene in a dark room. All other brightness levels are also clean and there are no issues seen with dirty screen effect, vignetting or colour tinting to the edges of the panel when viewed directly or from the sides. If you get yourself to very extreme angles you may see a faint navy blue tint, but that’s never going to affect viewing.

Motion reproduction of 24fps content is excellent with the correct pulldown applied with no induced judder or motion blur that is not part of the content. Given the almost near-instant pixel response of OLED, some viewers will see judder more than others and as such they may want to try the Cinematic Motion setting within the Trumotion menu system. This uses AI and some light interpolation to improve the motion judder without the dreaded Soap Opera Effect (SOE) being applied. I can personally still see the interpolation being added, but I am sensitive to this, others will have no issues at all.

You can experiment with the Custom settings and sliders with video content, like sports, to find something that suits you for those types of content, if you still have issues with the Off or Cinematic Motion settings with this type of content. The smoothing settings are best left alone as they add artefacts and a very noticeable Soap Opera Effect.

Broadcast content at 50Hz was also very well displayed with no obvious signs of frame skipping or micro stutter, even with fast cuts or movement in the scenes. The upscaling of this content was also first class with superb straight lines and no signs of any artefacts or ringing to edges or details.

... LG really has caught up to Sony in this regard

Lower-resolution content is superbly handled by the α11 AI Gen 2 Processor and LG really has caught up to Sony in this regard. There is also the contrast-based sharpening to images from the processor which adapts the picture without adding in false sharpening or edges, content still looks natural, it stands out as more three-dimensional and it remains life-like.

One area that does need attention from LG straight away is with colour gradation, floating black levels and posterisation. I noticed the G5 has some issues with coming out of black too early, it also raises blacks in some HDR content, (HDR10 and Dolby Vision) and there can also be floating blacks and/or posterisation. As an example, the dark tunnel that the ship flies through arriving at Neverland in Pan is too bright and washed out.

Additionally, the prison visit scene in Kung Fu Panda in Dolby Vision on Netflix (and HDR10 on 4K UHD disc) has floating blacks, which are not evident on the S95F or G4 when in comparison. I also noted posterisation coming out of black in the opening scene of the Spears and Munsil demo footage reel, as well as the very first scene coming out of black in A Quiet Place: Day One. Staying with that film, following the explosion in the next chapter while the protagonist is on the bus, the film cuts to black and is supposed to come out of black and into a scene focussed on feet as light comes back slowly as the dust starts to settle and she gets off the bus. On the G5 the scene comes out of black too quickly and then there is posterisation/gradational banding around the light source as it starts to get brighter.

These are the most severe instances of this, as posterisation and gradational issues can be seen in other HDR content (the lights on the subs in The Abyss 4K UHD show slight issues), it is not always an issue that is instantly seen, especially when viewing in some ambient light.

A quick check of YCbCr Quantisation tests on the Spears and Munsil disc, as well as the 2D Quantisation Cb and Cr tests, show that the G5 has issues with gradations and is too bright with low luminance signals and scenes. I have fed back my findings in detail to LG. Our sample was on Firmware 33.10.19 and I had also seen some of these issues during a demo of the Philips Primary RGB Tandem equipped panels earlier in the year, and on a G5 during an early hands-on session, so I don’t believe these are issues related to just this sample. I also double-checked all of my sources, and the source chain and fully factory reset the G5 on a couple of occasions to make sure that what I am reporting is accurate.

Unlike features that are built-in and can’t be fixed, LG engineers should be able to find a solution to these image quality issues quickly and correct them in firmware. I mention the issues here to be complete in our review process and they do pop up from time to time when viewing particular scenes in dark surroundings, but in the vast majority of my time spent with the G5, the image quality and improvements made to HDR impact and colour volume are stunning, so I’m hoping for a quick fix here.

... the G5 has some issues with coming out of black too early

However, you shouldn’t base a purchase on any potential fixes if these issues bother you as they may not happen. As such, I have deducted one mark from the overall score which I will revisit in future reviews and testing of other screen sizes; as well as long-term testing of the 55-inch model. If there is an improvement I may revisit the scoring in those future reviews.

I did the majority of my testing with the LG 65G5 in Filmmaker Mode for SDR, HDR10 and Dolby Vision. I also tested some of the other available picture presets but found the majority of them to be too blue due to boosted brightness and colours that were overly vivid and intense. FMM is the most accurate setting when using the TV directly out of the box. You also need to go into the energy menus and switch off all energy-saving settings. Given changes made to the LG TVs in the last two years, there is no need to enter the service menu, the panel will not dim over time while watching lower constant APL content.

Thanks to the new panel and the processing from the α11 AI Gen 2 Processor The G5 is a stunning performer with SDR content. Upscaling is excellent with no signs of edge enhancement or ringing to straight edges and motion is faultless. Blacks are deep with excellent shadow details while the full-screen brightness and contrast are a visible step up on the G4 from last year. Colours are bold, vivid and natural with excellent life-like skin tones and add a real cinematic sheen to proceedings. I can’t fault the performance upgrades over last year with whites standing out as a vast improvement over the G4 which looks far more cyan than the G5. Indeed, having them side by side is almost like having a QD-OLED next to the G4, given how much better the G5 whites look.

With HDR10 and Dolby Vision content, the LG G5 turns in a master class of picture accuracy, peak highlight specular details and colour, to give one of the very best HDR performances you will see this year. It is not perfect and we covered the issues above, but that doesn’t take away from 99% of the images this TV throws out. A common misconception is that peak brightness means a TV will show that peak constantly or as a full-screen image and blind the viewer, or give them a sun tan. That is a misunderstanding of what HDR is and why peak brightness is important.

Most of the images in HDR that you watch have an average scene brightness between 100-200 nits and that hasn’t changed over many years. What HDR gives the content creator and as a result, you the viewer, is far more gradation in brightness and dynamic range, allowing for more detail to be retrieved from the image, especially in the dark to mid-tones. This is where our eyes work best and where we can pick out detail and depth to the image.

... a master class of picture accuracy, peak highlight specular details and colour

So in terms of average scene brightness, that hasn’t changed much with HDR grading, it just adds far more granular steps of light, especially in the areas where it matters for image depth and detail. The peak brightness element adds realistic highlights within an image, so chrome surfaces feel life-like and bright in small areas like reflections. When a TV has enough peak brightness headroom, you can then start to see the details in these specular highlights, so instead of a yellow blob representing the sun in the flying ship sequence of Pan, on a TV like the G5 you can see the small circular disc of the sun with detail in the surrounding clouds, and therefore depth and detail to the image as well as the brightness to make it feel real. It doesn’t burn your retinas, it adds exceptional detail that makes the image feel incredibly realistic. And that is the one thing that we are now seeing from TVs like the G5 and the recently tested Samsung S95F.

Specular highlights in movies graded to 4000 nits and above are particularly noticeable, adding a new level of dynamic realism and authenticity to the image. Details are visible in these sets, unlike those with lower peak brightness where they may be clipped or appear as a bright blob. Tone mapping on such sets does have to throw away a lot of detail to make sure the set can display the content to its capabilities. The G5 and other sets with the peak brightness in reserve and mapped correctly, don’t need to throw that detail away or clip it.

... the two technologies are now very close to each other in colour performance with actual HDR-graded content

Colour performance is also a step up on the G4 with white now looking much better and far closer to QD-OLED with bright colours having a greater degree of gradational detail and natural hues. In the majority of content we view, there is not much call for high brightness of individual colours so there wasn’t a washout with previous WRGB OLEDs and the majority of HDR content viewed. But with G5 there is a much better feeling of colour purity and richness that now gets closer to that of the competing QD-OLED panels. There is still a gap when you look at the objective measurement data, but in normal use with HDR content from 4K UHD discs and other high-quality sources, the two technologies are now very close to each other in colour performance with actual HDR-graded content.

The LG G5 gets very close to living up to the massive amount of hype generated around it since CES 2025 and if the company can fix those small issues we mentioned, this could very well be close to obtaining the best TV of the year for 2025. It is an excellent all-round performer and we’ll be watching closely to see what fixes LG introduces and how that affects future reviews of other screen sizes in the Gallery range.