I’ve stated this recently and I’ll reiterate the statement again: I think the LG G3 OLED is the best TV in the world. LG has made this particular type of high-end television tech essential for close to a decade at this point, and it’s gone above and beyond with its latest flagship model.
I’ve previously written about why the LG G3 is the real ‘king of 4K TVs’. Yet when I was penning that article, and as spectacular as LG’s latest OLED effort is, I was only just getting to know the set.
Currently, the LG G3 77-inch OLED TV is on sale for $3,376 at Amazon. Not only is this a juicy reduction from the set’s normal $4,200 price tag, it’s astronomically cheaper than the £4,300 (roughly $5,230) I paid for my G3 all of six or seven weeks ago.
Having now spent a significant amount of time with this TV (obliterating my credit card in the process), I have a much more well-rounded knowledge of what the G3 does better than any other OLED TV I’ve ever owned. And I’ve bought an embarrassing number of them throughout the years, let me tell you.
Micro Lens Array tech is obviously the flashiest selling point of this year’s flagship LG OLED. Through the use of billions of tiny convex lenses, it’s able to hit peak HDR brightness of over 1300 nits—a staggering upgrade over the roughly 800 nits the brilliant LG C2 OLED TV is capable of.
And make no mistake, said brightness-boosting tech is a game-changer. It’s not only the answer to Samsung’s quantum dot tech that makes the likes of the S95C OLED TV so vibrant, it fixes OLED’s long-standing historical issue of being put in the shade by the brightest LED TVs. In short, it’s a phenomenal feature, and one that makes the LG OLED G3’s contrast truly spectacular.
Upping the game
Something that’s less immediately obvious with the G3 yet that I’ve come to appreciate over these past weeks is this OLED’s peerless image upscaling. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it.
The image upscaling on the G3 is so good, it basically gives non-4K games (aka the Switch’s entire library) a new lease on visual life.
Up until recently, the LG C2 sat atop of our list of the best TVs you could own, and for good reason. I recently sold mine to fund my G3 purchase, but it’s still an incredible set and if you can find it on the cheap during a Black Friday 2023 deal you should absolutely snap it up.
That said, not only does the G3 beat the brakes off the C2 when it comes to brightness and combatting reflections thanks to much improved anti-reflective coating, it also boasts far superior image upscaling.
In short, this means it makes 1080p signals (or any picture source under a native 4K) look surprisingly close to Ultra HD levels of picture quality. The perfect example of this? Playing Nintendo Switch games on the LG G3 OLED.
On my "old" 77-inch LG C2, I found even the best Switch games to be almost unplayable on what is still a superb television. Mainly this was due to the sheer size of the screen and the fact Nintendo rarely ever uses anti-aliasing in its games — an image-smoothing feature that kills in-game jaggies.
Well, guess what? The image upscaling on the G3 is so good, it basically gives non-4K games (aka the Switch’s entire library) a new lease on visual life. The technique makes Nintendo’s titles look so substantially cleaner, they could almost pass for 4K. Almost.
Switch in the system
Over the best part of the last two years, I’ve exclusively played The Big N’s finest games on my Nintendo Switch OLED, in large part because that little 7-inch display is immaculate. Over the course of the last month, though, that’s all changed. Thanks to the LG G3’s impeccable upscaling, the likes of Metroid Dread and Super Mario Bros. Wonder (which we’ll have a review on shortly), look so good, they're almost as clean and defined as the best Xbox Series X or best PS5 games.
Granted, I’m using the Marseille mClassic 4K Upscaler to give the LG G3 a hand in the image-smoothing department, but I also used this awesome little device on my LG C2 and the results were nowhere near as pronounced.
Now, when I boot up the likes of Super Mario Odyssey or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on my 77-inch G3, the resulting picture quality isn’t a million miles off Insomniac’s recent (and spectacular) Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Such is the night and day improvement over the LG C2’s already decent method of image upscaling, I’ve not played my Switch OLED in Handheld mode since buying what I undoubtedly consider to be the best TV of all time.
Yes, my credit card is going to hate me for a loooooong time. Yet if you end up winning the lottery in the near future, after you buy yourself a solid gold mansion and a return trip to Mars, I’d heartily recommend picking up the LG G3 OLED between its 55- to 77-inch sizes — not the 83-inch model, though, as that bizarrely lacks the MLA tech of its smaller counterparts.
If you want to take your Switch titles to the next level as we all await what seems like an Ice Age for the long-rumored yet still unconfirmed Nintendo Switch 2, the LG G3 gives Nintendo’s current handheld hybrid truly game-changing improvements in picture quality.
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