LG wants you to “make yourself at home” in 2021. Kicking off the year, LG began its conference announcing its new smart home appliance lineup including a new washer and dryer, refrigerator, vacuum, steam closet, oven, and even personal air purifiers.
OLED Evo
LG discussed what we were all waiting for with televisions. Starting with its new OLED lineup, the company announced the OLED Evo. This new OLED Evo TV will focus on brighter, more precise lighting. 55″, 75″, and 83″ are the sizes you will find in the new OLED Evo lineup.
This new intelligent brightness is thanks to the a9 Gen 4 AI processor. Similar to how Sony’s new XR chip will improve image quality, LG will use its new a9 Gen4 chip to monitor each frame’s color and brightness and boost brightness where needed and widen the color gamut. With CES being online this year, we don’t have any hands-on experience with its improvement, but there are more improvements to address.
The new LG TVs will incorporate audio up-mixing to a 5.1.2 channel quality. This is really intriguing since tons of content is rendered for 2.1. Those that paid the extra money for a higher-performing 5.1.2 sound system should experience higher fidelity audio. This is also improved with new audio leveling.
Improved Audio
In most cases, audio leveling mutes louder noises but tends to also quiet the dialog in action scenes. Here’s hoping for a dramatic improvement as most TVs fail in this department.
LG previously announced last week the new webOS home screen and a newly improved Magic remote. It is a widely anticipated update that will add new features to its platform including Alexa and Google Assistant. There is also NFC to allow features like casting to your TV to phone, or vise versa. The new UI is likely the more anticipated part of this update, as the current version is a bit dated and limited.
LG’s CX OLED has been that hot buy of the last holiday season for gamers. The conference then moved to LG’s gaming focus where it was boasting its NVIDIA G-sync compatibility and VRR support. LG has included a new game optimizer for its Game Mode. With direct access to turn these features on and off, I will no longer have to search through the display information for what is on, and allowing this type of control is a huge win for gamers.
NanoCell with MiniLED
NanoCell is also seeing improvements. With MiniLED technology, the QNED TVs will provide 30K LEDs with 2500 dimming zones. That is a vast improvement over many competitors (typically 200-800 local dimming zones). This should prove to have an incredible image that balances color and brightness. These will be in larger sizes starting at 65″.
At the tail end of the conference, LG discussed its new business tech and software for consumers. The new disinfectant bots with UV for businesses appear to work as a Roomba vacuum. Instead of cleaning the carpets of dirt and grime, it uses UV rays to clean all the surfaces in the room. This will bring peace of mind to many businesses, given the pandemic. This UV clean tower will likely be the first of many in a new tech demand.
LG Gram Laptop
The LG Gram laptop was also announced. Sporting a better screen for media consumption, the Gram will have a realistic DCI-P3 with 99% color. The display resolution will support 2560×1600 with a slim bezel on a 16:10 aspect ratio. It appears to be a Surface Laptop 3 clone. Similar hinge and shape.
This however included a fingerprint sensor for secure verification. The ports weren’t showcased, but it appears to have an HDMI, 2 USB Type-C, 2 USB Type-A, Card reader or charging port, and a 3.5mm headphone port. Power by the 11th Gen Intel chips, this will be a serious competitor for the Surface Laptop 3. Especially with an 80W hr battery.
A new 31.5″ 4K OLED monitor with local dimming and better support for different ports was also shown. What we do know is that it has a 1M:1 contrast ratio and 99% DCI-P3 and 99% Adobe RGB color, which should prove to be beautiful.
Wrapping Up with Teasers
LG ThinQ app is reinvented. It’s now an open platform and convenient for consumers and developers. Use it to connect all your LG devices and third party services.
Something that was teased throughout but never addressed was the LG Rollable. It appears to be LG’s answer to a phone with an extended display. It’s not confirmed what technology it is using, but I am sure that will all be announced soon. It may be the most expensive extended display smartphone to date, and rumors put it at roughly $2300. Wow.
Final Reaction
It was a solid showing that stays on track without bouncing back and forth, but I was hoping for a bit more specs since we cannot be there in person for the high-level descriptions. It’s definitely going to be a strong year for LG with a strong point being the new TV tech, LG Gram, and OLED monitor. We’re glad to see LG taking the gaming features more seriously now, especially with this new console generation.
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