LG C6 OLED TV Review

The design is almost exactly the same as the LG B6, but with a curved screen. It looks great, and stands out in any room. The clear plastic stand and the thinness of the screen are nice touches to the otherwise minimal look. Unlike the higher model E6, the speakers are built into the body of the TV.

The stand looks the same as the B6, and is made of transparent plastic. It has a small footprint but feels stable.

Footprint of the 55" TV stand: 11.3" x 27.0"

The rear of the TV looks almost the same as the B6. It has a brushed metallic finish, and provides a wide VESA mount for good support.

The borders are very thin and look good. They feature a metallic edge, and a small black border around the screen.

The appears slightly thicker due to the curve. It is still a very thin TV, and looks good from an angle.

Since OLEDs are self-emissive, the heat is produced throughout the screen with a few hot spots where electronic components are located.

The OLED panel has a perfect native contrast ratio. Adjacent pixels can be turned off completely, leading to perfect blacks.

The video is for reference only, since there is no need for a local dimming feature on OLED TVs.

The LG C6 OLED TV have an average SDR peak brightness and is on par with the LG E6. The ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiter) also affect the brightness of highlights bigger than 25%, making anything beyond that point darker than the smaller highlight.

Like with the LG E6P, the C6P is much better than 2015 OLED TVs, but unfortunately ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiter) is still present on the C6 and it limits the maximum brightness allowed on a full white screen. This is why, when you look at the results, the bigger the white surface gets, the dimmer it is. This may be distracting as the brightness changes depending on the scene.

Like the other LG OLED TVs, the screen brightness of a static image tends to diminish after some time. This might just be a screen protection or an energy saving feature. Once again, it is only when a static image is left on screen for a long time and should not have any impact on normal video content.

The gray uniformity of the C6 is very good, and better than any LCD TV. Dirty screen effect is not really an issue but still it is not perfect. On our test picture, you can notice some large vertical bands that are warmer than the rest of the screen.

After playing static material, temporary image retention is still an issue on this TV.

When viewed at an angle, the picture remains clear and the contrast very high. The colors become slightly less accurate, but as with other OLED displays this is a great result for those with wide seating.

With a completely dark image, the pixels are turned off and emit no light whatsoever. This results in a perfect black uniformity without any blooming.

The LG C6 OLED TV is able to display a 10 bit gradient very efficiently without any major banding or color shade issues. Some little imperfections can be seen here and there in the darker shades of color, but this is not really a problem and should not be visible when watching normal content.

Prior to calibration the picture is quite accurate. The white balance is a little bit off at high IREs but this isn't really an issue. For most people a calibration isn't necessary.

The white balance calibration is performed with the inbuilt 2 and 20 point system. It works well to finely adjust the white balance.

The colors space calibration is a bit less responsive than the white balance one, but it is still possible to bring down the Color dE a bit more.

You can see our recommended settings here.

Upscaling of low quality content such as DVDs is good. Some artifacts can be seen along the edges of straight lines.

720p content such as blurays look clear. Details are preserved well.

Upscaling of 1080p content is good. Small details can be seen clearly.

High quality content at the native resolution of 4k looks good. Image is crisp and clear. Note that a blue tint is slightly noticeable, but this is exaggerated by the camera.

The LG C6P has a wide color gamut, which can cover almost all of the P3 color space. This is about the same as the LG B6 and E6. Setting the color gamut to 'Wide' provides the most colors, 'Normal' is suitable for SDR content and 'Extended' is somewhere in between.

Just like the other 2016 OLED TVs, the C6 has a large color volume. It is able to cover almost all of the P3 color volume and produce saturated colors even at low luminance.

The LG C6 present image retention, like all the other OLED TVs. The image retention is a bit less intense than on LG LED TVs like the UH8500, but it lasts much longer. The brighter the static image is, more noticeable is going to be the retention. You can clearly see on the left side, where the white background was, it is now much darker than on the rest of the picture. The image retention can be pretty annoying for people that play a lot of video games or may use this TV as a PC monitor, since the static image will get retain for a bit more time than any LED TV. But once again, note that we did not notice any permanent burn-in on this OLED TV.

Reflections are dealt with very well. Like the other LG OLEDs of this year, the C6 has a special screen finish which works very well to cut down on the intensity of reflections. Due to the curve, direct reflections appear stretched.

The C6P supports passive 3D and it is very good. There are not any major problems or any crosstalk visible when viewed from the front or the side. Note that the passive 3D results in half the number of lines of horizontal resolution.

The response time is excellent, and results in negligible motion blur. This can be seen by the lack of trail following the logo. Some people prefer a flickering backlight, but this is not possible on the C6.

The C6 uses the 'Sample and Hold' method to display an image. There are no options to enable flickering and so moving images may not appear as clear as other TVs which can flicker.

Movies played from a Blu-ray player or built-in streaming apps appear smooth. Some judder may be noticed when watching movies over a cable box or home theater PC. Most people don't notice judder so this is not an issue.

The C6P is able to interpolate 30 fps or 60 fps content up to the native refresh rate of 120 Hz. To do this and enable the soap opera effect, set 'Trumotion' to 'User'. For a 30fps source increase 'De-Judder' and for a 60fps source increase 'De-Blur'. Note that this may introduce visible artifacts.

Input lag is better than average, and should be fine for most people. When the TV detects a HDR signal it switches to a HDR picture mode, which has fairly high input lag. For the best result with SDR content, change the picture mode to 'Game'. The input lag performance is the same as the E6, and slightly different to the B6. A video of the input lag differences can be seen here.

Update 11/08/2016: Some owners have started a petition to LG to address these issues. This can be found here.

Update 12/02/2016: With the newest firmware update (04.30.19) there has been the addition of a HDR gaming mode. In this mode the HDR input lag is lower, and should be fine for HDR gaming. Note that although the TV accepts a 4k @ 60Hz @ 4:4:4 + HDR signal, it can't accurately display the chroma subsampling in any HDR mode, even with the 'PC' icon selected. The HDR chroma subsampling looks the same as the B6, visible here .

Update 01/24/2017: The input lag has been updated for the newest firmware (04.30.95). The results are almost identical.

Although this TV has a 120Hz panel, like other LG TVs it can't accept a 120Hz signal. To activate chroma subsampling, change the input icon to 'PC'. This allows for clear text on all backgrounds. For higher bandwidth signals such as 4k @ 60Hz @ 4:4:4, activate 'HDMI ULTRA HD Deep Color' on the HDMI port you are using in the 'General' settings.

Good performance. Frequency response is good at lower volumes. At higher volumes though, pumping and compression will be present. Additionally, low-end cutoff and maximum loudness are decent, for a TV.

Poor harmonic distortion performance. The overall amount of harmonic distortion at 75dB and 85dB are decent. However, at maximum volume, there is significant rise in distortion, especially above 1KHz. Aliasing was also audible with our test signal under maximum load.

Provides access to the 'LG Content Store' for a wide variety of apps. The most popular apps are included with the TV, such as Netflix and Amazon Video.

As with the other 2016 LG TVs, the C6P has the newest version of the WebOS smart platform. It is extremely stable and smooth, and works very well. The smart remote with included pointer allows for very fast navigation, and all of the menus and features are very easy to use. The interface is intuitive which is great. The TV comes with popular apps such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video and provides access to the LG Content Store for a wide range of other apps. It is possible to play photos or videos from a USB drive plugged into the side of the TV.

The controls are located under the front of the TV. They provide very basic functionality but are easy to access, even if wall mounted. Note that we took the stand off the TV to take this photo.

Includes the same smart remote as other high-end LG TVs such as the B6 and UH8500. Works well to browse WebOS with the pointer.

• Manual
• Cable management strap
• Batteries
• Remote
• Composite adapter
• Component adapter
• 2 x 3D glasses