LG OLED C7 (OLED55C7)
Looking for the cheapest route to 2017 LG OLED TV ownership? The 55in version of the C7 is it. Calling LG’s 2017 OLED range a success is a bit of an understatement. It’s an odd range, though: every model has exactly the same panel and picture-processing tech.
The main differences are the styling and speakers. You can spend £8000 on an LG OLED if you like, but its picture will be no better than the £2500 OLED55C7V (C7 for short) we have on test here.
The C7 is even more similar to the B7 than it is to the rest of the range. The two are separated only by the pedestal stand and some other slight aesthetic details.
There's a difference in availability, too: you’ll find the B7 from practically any retailer that sells TVs, but the C7 is exclusive to Currys. Given the B7 (also now available for £2500) has already received a five-star verdict, it seems obvious the C7 will too.
First and most immediately obvious, there is the physical design of the LG C7 OLED. This model looks somewhat similar to its 2016 C6 cousin but with some important changes. The most obvious and best of these changes is the C7’s flat panel design. LG has finally gotten rid of pointless curved display designs in 2017 for all of its OLED TVs and thus, unlike its 2016 C6 predecessor, the C7 is a fully flat television model of delightful elegance. The usual extremely thin OLED display panel with virtually no bezeling along the upper and side edges shows off particularly nicely in this TV as a result and while being viewed in a heavily darkened room, the C7 manages to almost resemble a floating window into another world.
Another change from 2016 in this otherwise superbly light and elegant 4K OLED TV is the brushed metallic stand it comes with. The new stand angles straight up to the underside of the C7 without a glass support like that of the 2016 models and it feels very sturdy while also having a footprint that’s smaller than was the case last year, for easier placement on smaller surfaces or tables. The C7 also of course comes with VESA 300X200 mounting and includes a cable management design for neater management of connectivity cables in the back end. The LG C7 is also a very light 4K TV. Again, OLED technology is responsible for this quality since it eliminates the need for complicated and heavy back-light arrays and other associated hardware. Thus, even the larger models of this television are incredibly thin and light to handle.
Only LG’s 2017 TVs support Dolby Vision out of the box (Sony’s A1 will be getting it as an update later in the year), so your first port of call should be Netflix’s growing selection of Dolby Vision content.
Marco Polo may not be the finest programme available for streaming. But it is one of the finest-looking, and its combination of dark rooms, open flames and intricate clothing makes it a stern test for any TV. It’s a test that the C7, just like its sibling B7, passes with flying colours.
Blacks are inky and pure, but they don’t drown the detail – you see everything you’re supposed to. Of course, OLED’s trademark ability to combine those fabulous blacks with brilliant whites on a pixel-by-pixel basis is present and correct, and the result is superb contrast.
True, most LCD TVs with a separate backlight will go brighter (much brighter in the case of a premium model such as a Samsung QLED), despite the 25 per cent increase in brightness for LG’s 2017 OLEDs. But contrast is about more than peak brightness, and for us OLED is the clear winner here. The only rival for the LG C7 in this regard is the Sony KD-55A1, which somehow manages to combine LG’s blacks with even punchier whites and colours.
The Sony has the edge when it comes to detail and sharpness, too, but the LG C7 is no slouch - scenery being crisply, solidly defined, and skin blemishes and clothing fabrics realistically rendered.
It may not enhance these elements quite as well as either the Sony KD-55A1or the Samsung QE55Q7F, but the C7’s picture is effortlessly natural and you never question whether what you’re watching is what was intended.
Non-Dolby Vision HDR content from Amazon Prime Video or a 4K disc is handled with almost as much aplomb, and even taking a step down into 1080p territory doesn't prevent the C7’s fundamental strengths coming through. Contrast remains the stand-out element, but for detail, definition and colour the LG continues to strike a near-perfect balance between being thrilling to watch and entirely realistic.
Motion is superb throughout, too – it may lack the sort of Goldilocks processing settings the Sony KD-55A1 has, but the panel is fast enough for natural, smooth motion even with TruMotion switched off entirely. Watch standard-def content and you’ll find the LG's performance little short of miraculous. Considering the TV is making up the majority of what you’re seeing, the level of detail, sharpness and clarity to the image is astounding. Only another LG OLED can match the C7 in this regard.
For gaming, the LG is also hard to beat, thanks to input lag of just 21.4ms and just the sort of detail, definition and contrast to make the most of the latest and greatest console games. HDR titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn look especially stunning on this set.
Most modern TVs like to think they know best when it comes to picture settings, and the LG takes this to the next level by providing a unique combination of settings for each content type. The good news is that most of these are pretty good, but you can still improve on things.
Out of the box you’ll find that the Eco mode is selected - you should switch to Standard immediately and use it for most of your day-to-day viewing. You’ll also want to switch the Energy Saving feature off, as it can have a rather damaging effect on the picture. The Contrast setting also needs to be dropped a few points to reveal more detail in whites, and reducing the coolness of the Colour Temperature from C20 to C5 gives skin tones a more realistic, organic glow.
Switching Dynamic Colour from Low to Medium adds a satisfying extra degree of punch, and we personally prefer the Real Cinema and TruMotion features switched off entirely – some people like the sharpening effect of this motion processing and are prepared to put up with the occasional artefacts it adds as a result.
When you play HDR or Dolby Vision content, the TV will switch to Cinema Home mode. This is generally great when watching in a fairly bright room, but switch to Cinema if you’ve got the lights off. You’ll also want to change the White Balance to Medium with both of these modes for best results.
These apps include (4K/HDR-capable) versions of Amazon and Netflix, Youtube, NowTV, plus all of the catch up services for the main terrestrial UK broadcasters courtesy of the Freeview Play service, which lets you search for shows you might have missed via an electronic program guide that scrolls back through time as well as forwards.
The latest version of webOS built into the OLED55C7 only really delivers a couple of relatively minor enhancements over previous versions: support for ‘360’ VR clips navigated by waving LG’s magic remote control around; and the option to use the number buttons on the remote control to directly access favourite apps. But there’s no need to fix something that isn’t broken.
Smart TV TL;DR: Slick, logical, unfussy, uncluttered and easy to follow, webOS remains the most user-friendly smart TV system in town.
The LG OLED55C7V can also get brighter than its predecessors, owing to a tweak to the display’s ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiter) algorithm. Self-illuminating televisions such as CRT, plasma and OLED TVs can draw a lot of power, or even overheat, if all the on-screen pixels are allowed to ramp up light output unchecked. To optimise energy consumption and prevent component damage, ABL circuitry makes sure light output from an overall bright scene is purposely dimmed to a manageable level.
Blessed with reduced ABL, the LG OLED55C7V can render certain bright scenes – shots of well-lit newsrooms, snow sports and ice hockey rinks – with greater punch and dynamism.
Last year’s LG OLED TVs – especially in their most accurate, out-of-the-box picture modes – had a tendency to throw a green cast on shadows and mid-tones. This caused skin tones to appear somewhat sickly. Fortunately, this is no longer an issue on the OLED55C7V, with colours coming across rich yet realistic.
Motion remains a work-in-progress on all OLED TVs. Enabling LG’s TruMotion motion processing technology will reduce motion blurring slightly, but introduce interpolation artefacts and soap opera effect to 24fps films.
Furthermore, the OLED55C7V occasionally applies film-mode deinterlacing to interlaced 50Hz content, leading to tearing or combing artefacts in fast-action sports broadcast such as football. The only sure-fire cure is to send a progressive video signal from your source to the TV.
For HDR, peak brightness on our OLED55C7V review sample measured 690 nits on a 10% window after calibration. While this figure was slightly lower than that I extracted from the OLED55B7, I attribute it to panel-to-panel variance rather than a true difference between the B7 and C7 series.
On paper, a peak brightness of 690 nits amounts to only around half of what top LED LCDs can generate, but in some HDR scenes the LG OLED55C7V will actually look brighter in a side-by-side comparison. This is largely because of OLED’s unassailable per-pixel illumination control.
LG’s 2017 OLEDs favour retaining specular highlight details (such as reflections) over maintaining overall scene luminance. As a result, brighter sequences – especially in Ultra HD Blu-rays mastered to 4000 nits – can look too dark. Luckily, the TV features a technology called Active HDR. It’s a static-to-dynamic metadata conversion that can get brightness closer to reference standard in most scenes.
The LG OLED55C7V is a fantastic display for playing games. Input lag measures an ultra-responsive 21ms in Game and PC modes, and blacks remain deep, even in HDR games. Movement of dark objects over a lighter background is also free of smearing and trailing, unlike some LED LCD TVs with slower pixel response time.
Audio quality of the OLED55C7V is above average by flat-panel TV standards. Dialogue is clear, and there’s sufficient dynamic range to satisfy day-to-day viewing. However, for enjoyment of movies, a separate soundbar or home theatre system is still better. While the television can decode Dolby Atmos, it currently doesn’t work on Dolby TrueHD streams from 4K Blu-rays.
LG OLED C7 Price
At this price, though, you can take your pick from a wide range of high-end TVs. One thing that’s worth considering is that LCD-based TVs, such as those from Sony and Samsung, provide much higher peak brightness for HDR content – there’s no getting away from the fact that OLED technology still can’t beat LCD for the brightest, most eye-popping HDR highlights. What’s more, Sony’s delicious XE93 (read our full review here) provides stunning 4K HDR performance for nearer the £2,500 mark – a hefty £500 saving on the LG’s asking price.
In terms of OLED-based rivals, though, then there’s not much to choose from. LG’s setting the standard in 2017 for all-round picture performance, input lag, and HDR support – it’s fair to say that the C7 pretty much nails it across the board. If the perfect, inky blacks and astonishing colour clarity of OLED sound like your kind of thing, then this really is where it’s at.
The real question is whether you should go for an LG at all, because the Sony A1 is even better, adding an extra layer of punch and dynamism to the already stunning recipe.
Ultimately, with only a £500 gap between the official prices of the two models it’s the Sony that wins, but only just. Prices will inevitably fluctuate in the weeks and months to come, and if the gap gets bigger we could well see the C7 becoming the no.1 OLED for 2017. Right now, it will have to settle for a close-run second place.
The most affordable of LG's 2017 OLED TV which Offer's Stunning Pictures Quality
The main differences are the styling and speakers. You can spend £8000 on an LG OLED if you like, but its picture will be no better than the £2500 OLED55C7V (C7 for short) we have on test here.
The C7 is even more similar to the B7 than it is to the rest of the range. The two are separated only by the pedestal stand and some other slight aesthetic details.
It’s out with the new and in with the old for LG’s OLED TV ranges. Where the company’s 2016 model, the C6, had a curved screen and supported 3D, the all-new 55-inch OLED55C7V flattens off the curves and dumps the 3D capability of its predecessor. Like most TV manufacturers, LG will not be selling any televisions with curved screens or 3D this year.
LG OLED C7 Design
LG OLED C7 Display
Marco Polo may not be the finest programme available for streaming. But it is one of the finest-looking, and its combination of dark rooms, open flames and intricate clothing makes it a stern test for any TV. It’s a test that the C7, just like its sibling B7, passes with flying colours.
Blacks are inky and pure, but they don’t drown the detail – you see everything you’re supposed to. Of course, OLED’s trademark ability to combine those fabulous blacks with brilliant whites on a pixel-by-pixel basis is present and correct, and the result is superb contrast.
The Sony has the edge when it comes to detail and sharpness, too, but the LG C7 is no slouch - scenery being crisply, solidly defined, and skin blemishes and clothing fabrics realistically rendered.
It may not enhance these elements quite as well as either the Sony KD-55A1or the Samsung QE55Q7F, but the C7’s picture is effortlessly natural and you never question whether what you’re watching is what was intended.
Motion is superb throughout, too – it may lack the sort of Goldilocks processing settings the Sony KD-55A1 has, but the panel is fast enough for natural, smooth motion even with TruMotion switched off entirely. Watch standard-def content and you’ll find the LG's performance little short of miraculous. Considering the TV is making up the majority of what you’re seeing, the level of detail, sharpness and clarity to the image is astounding. Only another LG OLED can match the C7 in this regard.
For gaming, the LG is also hard to beat, thanks to input lag of just 21.4ms and just the sort of detail, definition and contrast to make the most of the latest and greatest console games. HDR titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn look especially stunning on this set.
LG OLED C7 Picture Setting
Out of the box you’ll find that the Eco mode is selected - you should switch to Standard immediately and use it for most of your day-to-day viewing. You’ll also want to switch the Energy Saving feature off, as it can have a rather damaging effect on the picture. The Contrast setting also needs to be dropped a few points to reveal more detail in whites, and reducing the coolness of the Colour Temperature from C20 to C5 gives skin tones a more realistic, organic glow.
Switching Dynamic Colour from Low to Medium adds a satisfying extra degree of punch, and we personally prefer the Real Cinema and TruMotion features switched off entirely – some people like the sharpening effect of this motion processing and are prepared to put up with the occasional artefacts it adds as a result.
When you play HDR or Dolby Vision content, the TV will switch to Cinema Home mode. This is generally great when watching in a fairly bright room, but switch to Cinema if you’ve got the lights off. You’ll also want to change the White Balance to Medium with both of these modes for best results.
LG OLED C7 Smart TV webOS 3.0
LG’s webOS smart TV interface was the first one that really felt like it had been developed from the ground up for TV rather than smartphone or PC users: It’s graphically rich, incredibly straightforward and logical in its layout, easily customizable, slick to navigate and sensibly focussed on the sort of TV-centric apps most users actually want a TV to deliver.
These apps include (4K/HDR-capable) versions of Amazon and Netflix, Youtube, NowTV, plus all of the catch up services for the main terrestrial UK broadcasters courtesy of the Freeview Play service, which lets you search for shows you might have missed via an electronic program guide that scrolls back through time as well as forwards.
Smart TV TL;DR: Slick, logical, unfussy, uncluttered and easy to follow, webOS remains the most user-friendly smart TV system in town.
LG OLED C7 Performance
Having freshly reviewed the 55-inch LG OLED55B7, writing about the OLED55C7V’s picture feels like déjà vu. The company has put the same in-house chipset into all its 2017 OLEDs, ranging from the B7 and C7 series to the step-up E7, G7 and even the flagship Signature W7 series. So it will come as no surprise that the images delivered by all these sets are very similar.
Comparing the OLED55C7V beside the OLED55B7 in my test room, I was able to reproduce the same processing quirks on both displays. But first, let’s start with the good.
Just like the B7, the C7 provides greater insight into low-light scenes than any other LG OLED TV that’s been released before. This improvement stems from three factors. Firstly the TV’s Brightness control is more refined, letting owners set video black level correctly without crushing shadow detail. Second, where previous LG OLEDs transitioned from blacks to very dark grey too slowly, obscuring shadow detail, it’s more accurate on the OLED55C7V.
But perhaps the biggest contributor is better above-black processing, which results in less noise in dark scenes. Without pixellation and fizziness breaking up the image, low-light detail comes through with superior definition and clarity. At the risk of sounding cliché, viewers can now see shadow within the shadows.
Comparing the OLED55C7V beside the OLED55B7 in my test room, I was able to reproduce the same processing quirks on both displays. But first, let’s start with the good.
Just like the B7, the C7 provides greater insight into low-light scenes than any other LG OLED TV that’s been released before. This improvement stems from three factors. Firstly the TV’s Brightness control is more refined, letting owners set video black level correctly without crushing shadow detail. Second, where previous LG OLEDs transitioned from blacks to very dark grey too slowly, obscuring shadow detail, it’s more accurate on the OLED55C7V.
But perhaps the biggest contributor is better above-black processing, which results in less noise in dark scenes. Without pixellation and fizziness breaking up the image, low-light detail comes through with superior definition and clarity. At the risk of sounding cliché, viewers can now see shadow within the shadows.
Blessed with reduced ABL, the LG OLED55C7V can render certain bright scenes – shots of well-lit newsrooms, snow sports and ice hockey rinks – with greater punch and dynamism.
Last year’s LG OLED TVs – especially in their most accurate, out-of-the-box picture modes – had a tendency to throw a green cast on shadows and mid-tones. This caused skin tones to appear somewhat sickly. Fortunately, this is no longer an issue on the OLED55C7V, with colours coming across rich yet realistic.
Motion remains a work-in-progress on all OLED TVs. Enabling LG’s TruMotion motion processing technology will reduce motion blurring slightly, but introduce interpolation artefacts and soap opera effect to 24fps films.
For HDR, peak brightness on our OLED55C7V review sample measured 690 nits on a 10% window after calibration. While this figure was slightly lower than that I extracted from the OLED55B7, I attribute it to panel-to-panel variance rather than a true difference between the B7 and C7 series.
On paper, a peak brightness of 690 nits amounts to only around half of what top LED LCDs can generate, but in some HDR scenes the LG OLED55C7V will actually look brighter in a side-by-side comparison. This is largely because of OLED’s unassailable per-pixel illumination control.
LG’s 2017 OLEDs favour retaining specular highlight details (such as reflections) over maintaining overall scene luminance. As a result, brighter sequences – especially in Ultra HD Blu-rays mastered to 4000 nits – can look too dark. Luckily, the TV features a technology called Active HDR. It’s a static-to-dynamic metadata conversion that can get brightness closer to reference standard in most scenes.
The LG OLED55C7V is a fantastic display for playing games. Input lag measures an ultra-responsive 21ms in Game and PC modes, and blacks remain deep, even in HDR games. Movement of dark objects over a lighter background is also free of smearing and trailing, unlike some LED LCD TVs with slower pixel response time.
Audio quality of the OLED55C7V is above average by flat-panel TV standards. Dialogue is clear, and there’s sufficient dynamic range to satisfy day-to-day viewing. However, for enjoyment of movies, a separate soundbar or home theatre system is still better. While the television can decode Dolby Atmos, it currently doesn’t work on Dolby TrueHD streams from 4K Blu-rays.
LG OLED C7 Sound
You could be forgiven for thinking that, because LG differentiates its OLEDs almost entirely on audio quality, the C7 must sound awful - but that’s definitely not the case.
This is a spacious sound with pretty decent dynamics, which means explosions and other big special effects stand out from the rest of the delivery with extra volume and punch. Voices are also clear and there’s reasonable detail by flatscreen sound standards.
The issue is that everything sounds as if it’s coming from behind the TV - which is largely because it is. That’s not a huge issue, but it does mean the audio is a bit indirect and doesn’t stretch into the room particularly well. And don’t get over-excited about the Dolby Atmosbadge. It doesn’t really add anything.
In short, if you care about sound you’d be wise to add a soundbar or other sound system. But we’d also recommend doing that if you bought an LG G7, E7 or a Sony A1 because, even though they sound better than the C7 we’ve got here, they still can’t compete with a proper audio setup, and beautiful OLED should always be accompanied by awesome sound.
This is a spacious sound with pretty decent dynamics, which means explosions and other big special effects stand out from the rest of the delivery with extra volume and punch. Voices are also clear and there’s reasonable detail by flatscreen sound standards.
The issue is that everything sounds as if it’s coming from behind the TV - which is largely because it is. That’s not a huge issue, but it does mean the audio is a bit indirect and doesn’t stretch into the room particularly well. And don’t get over-excited about the Dolby Atmosbadge. It doesn’t really add anything.
In short, if you care about sound you’d be wise to add a soundbar or other sound system. But we’d also recommend doing that if you bought an LG G7, E7 or a Sony A1 because, even though they sound better than the C7 we’ve got here, they still can’t compete with a proper audio setup, and beautiful OLED should always be accompanied by awesome sound.
In terms of OLED-based rivals, though, then there’s not much to choose from. LG’s setting the standard in 2017 for all-round picture performance, input lag, and HDR support – it’s fair to say that the C7 pretty much nails it across the board. If the perfect, inky blacks and astonishing colour clarity of OLED sound like your kind of thing, then this really is where it’s at.
Verdict
The OLED55C7V (and therefore, presumably, the B7) is the pick of LG’s 2017 OLED range. It’s the most affordable model and has the weakest sound, but we’d recommend an audio upgrade regardless of which model you buy, and since the picture is essentially the same, you might as well get the cheapest one. You even get a prettier, more minimalist chassis to boot.
The real question is whether you should go for an LG at all, because the Sony A1 is even better, adding an extra layer of punch and dynamism to the already stunning recipe.
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