LG’s newest flagship OLED TV, the LG G5 is available for pre-order, which means many of you our loyal cinephile readers are likely wondering if it's time to pull the trigger and upgrade your aging LED, or even Plasma set.
With our home cinema editor, Tom Parsons and senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, having both seen the LG G5 TV at press previews and come away impressed, we can certainly understand why you’re tempted to pull the trigger early.
Featuring a fourth generation OLED panel, which promises radical brightness and colour volume improvements on LG Display’s outgoing Micro Lens Array flagship OLED technology, the G5 is very compelling at a technical level.
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With the cheapest 48-inch LG G5 retailing for £2399 / £2499 / AU$TBC and the giant, most expensive 97-inch option for £24,999 / $24,999 / AU$TBC the G5’s launch price is also roughly in line with the outgoing models’ – which is good news considering the current fluctuations happening to most electronics goods' cost.
But before you grab your wallet and part with your hard earned cash we have two key bits of advice to share.
Sometimes patience really is a virtue
We always recommend waiting for us to fully review a TV before investing in it. The reason for that’s simple: after over half a century reviewing home cinema and audio hardware we know specification sheets never tell the full story.
We’ve had plenty of times where a company has promised the world with new hardware, only for it to offer modest gains when we run the new TV through our demanding comparative testing process.
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Conversely we’ve seen plenty of instances where a set, even an OLED, at first glance looks technically identical to its predecessor, but delivers noticeable performance improvements when we test it.
Most recently the latter was evidenced by the LG C5, which has far less hardware improvements compared to its predecessor, the LG C4, than the LG G5 does compared to the LG G4.
Despite this our reviewers saw clear improvements on peak brightness levels, colour accuracy and volume that made it a better step forward than its specifications suggested.
Which is why we would suggest waiting for our LG G5 review before parting with your cash. Until we’ve reviewed it we can’t sensibly confirm if it’s worth the money, even if its predecessor the LG G4 was one of 2024’s best OLED TVs.
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Value for money matters
Even if the LG G5 does wow us during our review we’d also strongly recommend keeping an eye on LG G4 prices.
Though the G5 has the same launch RRP as its predecessor, we’ve seen a gradual stream of stellar discounts targeting the G4 this year (check the widget at the bottom of the page for some of the current ones running).
Based on our experience covering the market these discounts are likely to get deeper and even more frequent now the new model is on sale.
The chart below shows the 65-inch LG G4's price history on Amazon over the past 12 months, and as you can see it has already dropped significantly and is currently cheaper than it was during Black Friday.
65-inch LG G4 Amazon price chart last 300 days March 2025
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)
Our advice always factors performance-per-pound / dollar, and having tested the G4 against modern rivals we can personally confirm the TV is still very good and excellent option for movie and sports fans as well as gamers.
Offering a punchy, bright picture, flawless gamer specifications and excellent app support we continue to stand by our original conclusion:
“LG’s second generation MLA OLED tech improves on all the areas that made the first generation great. Highlights include stellar HDR performance, wonderfully immersive and accurate colours that are consistent from the brightest to darkest parts of the picture, and stellar motion handling. This plus its excellent suite of gaming features make it a fantastic option for any home cinema enthusiast.”
The only word of caution we have is 100 per cent plan on re-investing any savings you can in a separate Dolby Atmos soundbar or speaker package if you don’t already have one.
The G4’s speakers are too thin sounding and lack the directionality needed to do the TV’s stellar picture quality justice, based on our testing.
So if you’re not obsessed with getting the latest model it’s well worth continuing to watch the G4 and grab it on deal.
Though here again, unless you 100 per cent need a new TV now we’d recommend waiting for our LG G5 review as until we test it we can’t make any concrete comments on how big a difference there is between the two.
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