Who is it best for: While this year's G5 is the ultimate gaming TV, not everyone wants or needs to pay over $3,000 to play their favorite games. The 2024 C4 offers 100% of the gaming features and about 80% of the picture quality at half the price -- that's what we call mathematics! If you're looking for a TV that's fun to game on and looks just as good with movies, then the C4 is a great buy.
Performance: The C4, like the C3 before it, is an excellent gaming TV, and LG hasn't done much to change it. The Game Optimizer menu gathers all the gaming settings in one place and verifies refresh rate, VRR status and more at a glance. We also appreciate the ability to edit the gaming dashboard to swap in more status indicators (resolution, Dolby Atmos and so on).
The Dark Room mode is designed to reduce eye fatigue, but it also dulls the image, so we'd avoid using it unless you need to. Among the various gaming image modes, we liked Standard best for most games, with its balance of shadow detail and contrast. FPS is best if you want more visibility into shadows, or you can just crank up the Black Stabilizer control (at the expense of a washed-out image). Buried within Game Optimizer is another setting, labeled "Reduce input delay (input lag)," with two options: Standard and Boost. The former, which is the default for any game, serves up an excellent input lag result similar to past LG OLED models, just 13.5ms for both 1080p and 4K HDR sources. Engaging Boost cuts lag even further, to just under 10ms for both. The catch is that Boost is available only for 60Hz sources, so you can't use it with 120Hz games or VRR. And no, we don't think many humans would notice the extra 3ms of lag.
Overview: We also reviewed this year's C5, which performed well, too. (You can read that review here.) For now, we recommend buying the C4 as long as it's in stock, as not much has changed between the C4 and C5, yet the C4 offers substantial cost savings.