LG C9 OLED Review

Most televisions are judged by the year they launch. The C9 earned its reputation in 2020 and 2021, when the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X arrived and a great many people found that the set they had bought eighteen months earlier was one of the very few that could take what the new consoles were sending. Four HDMI 2.1 inputs at the full 48Gbps, 4K at 120Hz, variable refresh and automatic low latency mode, all of it present in March 2019 while the rest of the industry was still shipping HDMI 2.0 and describing 2.1 as a roadmap.

The picture stands up on its own terms as well. The second generation Alpha 9 is the best upscaler LG had put in a set below its flagship, near black handling was cleaned up over the C8, and the panel does what OLED does: black that is genuinely black, no haloing, wide angles, and enough motion clarity that football and film both sit right without fiddling.

The weaknesses belong to the era. Peak brightness is modest by any standard set after 2021, so HDR highlights are restrained rather than startling, and the 2019 webOS interface is slow now and will get no further updates. It launched at $3,499 for the 65 inch and seven years later it is still a television worth owning. Very few sets can be described that way.