The LG G5 OLED TV is getting a lot of attention — and for good reason. It is undoubtedly a strong contender to become the best TV of 2025. However, it’s not the TV I will be recommending most to enthusiasts, and it’s definitely not the LG TV I will be recommending to most people. The G5 is amazing, but LG has three other TVs worthy of your attention — one of them you likely won’t see coming.
Here are the four banger TVs from LG that folks need to know about.
The bold C-series banger
First, let’s talk about the LG C5 OLED. What if I had said back in March 2022 that you would be able to get the picture quality of the G2 for the price of a C2 in just three years (2025)? That’s essentially what has happened: The LG C5 is making that possible.
It looks like the LG C5 will be able to hit peak white brightness measurements in the 1,000 nit territory — just like the G2 did in 2022. LG’s processing has also improved notably since then. It’s good enough to have landed LG’s G4 OLED in the top spot in several categories as well as the overall title in the UK/European TV shootout that Vincent Teoh conducted last year.
The C5 has LG’s OLED EVO technology, brightness booster, 144Hz refresh rate, great gaming dashboard, and four HDMI 2.1 ports. It’s going to be brighter than any previous C-series OLED. Plus, it can upscale like a beast.
If you’re looking for a premium OLED TV, the C5 is where you want to start. You only need to entertain a step-up if you want the gallery series design and sound, and really want to pay up for next-level brightness, color volume, and color accuracy. The C5 looks so advanced and competitive — it’s going to be a go-to recommendation from me this year unless something comes along that I’m not expecting (and I’ve seen almost all the OLEDs coming this year).
If you’re a TV nerd, want an OLED, and don’t want to pay an arm and a leg, the C5 looks like an obvious choice. (We’ll see how the Samsung S90F does, but right now I like how the C5 looks). LG just announced MSRP pricing, so the street prices will be lower, and even lower later this year. You can get a 42-inch C5 for under $1,300 right off the bat.
The OLED game-changing banger
However, let’s not sleep on the LG B5 OLED. The B5 will have some competition this year from the new Philips Roku OLED TV, and Sansui, which is coming in hot with some inexpensive OLED TVs, too — and there may be another one on the horizon. The newcomers may be attractive, but we know we can count on the LG B5.
What we can not count on right now: Where all the sizes of the LG B5 will be sold. LG has promised that an 83-inch LG B5 OLED will be available at just about everywhere TVs are sold, but the 48-, 55-, 65-, and 77-inch LG B5 OLEDs will only be available at certain retail partners (which have not, at this time, been settled on).
With all the trickle-down technology LG has implemented, the LG B5 is looking like a C-series OLED from a few years ago. If you don’t need intense brightness and just want the undeniably gorgeous and rich picture of an OLED, you will be able to pick one up for the same price as a 6 or 7 series from certain other brands. And it will have superior color and black levels, better off-angle viewing in most cases, and a 120Hz panel with an immediate pixel response time.
I think the LG B5 will bring OLED into more homes than ever before. The only way I could be more excited about the 2025 LG OLEDs? If they had a NextGen tuner. (It’s not something I would have said last year, but the Super Bowl broadcast now has me feeling different about NextGen TV.)
The surprise, sleeper-hit banger
Here’s the TV you didn’t see coming: LG’s flagship QNED TV. I’ve tried to get excited about the QNED TV’s in the past, and I had particularly high hopes last year. This year LG’s QNED92 looks like it’s ready to go toe-to-toe with the best QLED TVs from rival brands.
It is armed with mini-LED backlighting; has a blend of quantum dots and LG’s own proprietary nano-cell technology; is loaded with premium features — just like LG’s top OLEDs; and is an intensely bright, colorful TV with excellent backlight control, black levels, and contrast (from what I saw). It also has LG’s Alpha 8 Gen 2 processor, which has the upscaling chops LG has been getting praised for lately. The Alpha number is lower only because it’s not an OLED and needs to do different things than the Alpha 9.
Mark my words: If the QNED92 gets the attention from reviewers that it deserves, it will end up being the sleeper hit of the year. You read it here first.
The beautifully bright banger
That leads us nicely to one of the most exciting TVs of the year: the LG G5 OLED. The new panel developed by LG Display is something really special. Some folks call it a “four-stack” OLED panel, some call it by its proper name from LG (“RGB Primary Tandem OLED”), and some call it “Tandem OLED.” Whatever you want to call it, it significantly improves on the WRGB OLED panel type that LG has been making and using for the past 11 years.
Micro Lens Arrays (MLA) did a great job of making LG existing WRGB OLED technology brighter by getting more light to the eyes. However, that MLA technology didn’t make the panel itself brighter, or do anything to enhance color brightness and color purity and saturation at higher brightness levels. This new tandem OLED panel does all of that.
The improvements are immediately apparent when you see this panel in action on the LG G5. It’s so much better that LG had to come up with a new name for its brightness-boosting tech: Brightness Booster Ultimate.
LG needed something to clap back at QD-OLED, and while MLA got it close, the new G5 really closes the gap. Considering that the G5 came out as the top TV in several shootouts (official and unofficial), thanks in no small part to its processing, we have every reason to believe that the G5 could end up being the best TV of 2025. Even if it doesn’t win that award from everyone — and trust me, I’ve seen other flagship 2025 TVs at this point — the margins are going to be razor-thin this year.
The G5 looks so good that even without officially reviewing it, I’m comfortable saying that you can feel safe pre-ordering one. There is no way this TV will be anything other than a banger unless something really, messed up happens — and I just don’t see that happening given LG’s manufacturing history.
I wish it had a NextGen TV tuner, as that’s the only thing it is actually missing. The new Magic Motion remote is a welcome change, but I wish the motion part could be turned off (maybe we can convince LG to do that).
There’s also a bunch of new AI stuff going on behind the scenes that will help provide picture quality options. Maybe the most notable thing is the TV’s ability to boost the low end of HDR content for more enjoyable viewing of darker content during the daytime. So far, it looks like a great compromise between sticking to creator intent and making the content actually viewable.
Pricing is in line with what I was expecting this year: premium TV, premium pricing (as with the C5, you can expect street prices to lower as soon as it hits store shelves). Expect Samsung to look similar, and whenever Sony does its thing, it will be about the same or more.
There we have it: four banger TVs from LG this year. Not too shabby, right?
