LG C3 OLED EVO 2023 TV – Model C3PSA – save a few pennies (G3 comparison AV review)

The LG C3 OLED Evo is the middle child. Its big brother G3 OLED Evo is superb, and its little brother, the B3 OLED, is damned good too. This is Goldilocks – just right.

In fact, we have had both the G3 and C3 side-by-side for review, and apart from the G3 being a little brighter and perhaps slightly more colour saturation, the C3 remains the pick of the litter if value is your guide. The practical image differences side-by-side are barely noticeable as they use the same video engine, LG webOS 23 and AI.

Why is the LG C3 OLED Evo a Goldilocks choice?

I suggest you first read the LG G3 OLED EVO 2023 Model G3PSA – the best OLED yet to get a feel for LG webOS 23 and other features of BOTH TVs. Here are the main differences.

65” version	C3	G3
Peak brightness	Over 800 nits in a 2 and 10% window	Over 1400nits in 2 and 10% window
Typical brightness	Over 200 nits in 100% window	300 nits in 100% window
MLA Lens	No	Yes
DCI-P3	99%	100%
Delta E	2.5	1.2
Viewing Angle	170°	170°+
Reflection	Good	Better
Sound	40W 2.2 channel (down-firing)	60W 4.2 channel (down-and-side-firing)
Warranty	1-year ACL	Same, plus an extra four years panel (parts only).
Weight	16.6kg without stand 18.5kg with stand	22.8kg without stand 27.6kg with stand
Price	42” RRP $2,595 seen for $2,195 48” RRP $2,895 seen for $2,395 55” RRP $3,295 seen for $2695 65” RRP $4,295 seen for $3495 77” RRP $6795 seen for $5495 83” RRP $8995 seen for $7495	G3 ‘seen for’ price. N/A $3,395 $4,295 $6,695 $8,795

The key difference is that the G3 can reach up to 1500nits and defeat the typical Aussie lounge room with uncontrolled ambient light. It has MLA (microlens array) technology to remove front-on reflection at typical viewing heights.

The LG C3 OLED Evo is perfect, where you can control the light better. It has the same advanced Evo panel without MLA and the 5° tilt, making it slightly less bright and more reflective. The only quantifiable difference is marginally better Dolby Vision content. HRD10+/HDR10/HDR and SDR have equal performance.

Australian Review – LG G3 OLED EVO 2023 65” Tested Model OLED65G3PSA 2023

Website	Product Page
RRP	See table above
From	LG Online, Harvey Norman, Domayne, JB Hi-Fi, Good Guys, Bing Lee, Appliances Online and many quality CE retailers
Warranty	1-year ACL
Made in	Indonesia
LG	LG (formerly Lucky-Goldstar from 1983 to 1995) is a South Korean multinational conglomerate. It makes electronics, chemicals, and telecommunications products.
More	CyberShack LG News and reviews

We use Fail (below expectations), Pass (meets expectations) and Exceed (surpasses expectations or is the class leader) against many of the items below. We occasionally give a Pass(able) rating that is not as good as it should be and a Pass ‘+’ rating to show it is good but does not quite make it to Exceed. You can click on most images for an enlargement.

First Impression – Pass+

Where the G3 is heavy (the 5° angle stand accounts for most of that), the C3 is lighter. It is 1441 x 880 x 230mm 18.5kg with a stand. It does not come with the wall mount (G3) but uses a standard 300 x 200 VESA mount with M6 thread.

The other difference is the 40W, 2.2 sound, which is suitable for general TV but can’t give any 3D height or surround sound (G3 60W, 4.2, is also not really designed for spatial sound).

It is the same in every respect – remote, presets, panel speeds, ports, operating system, etc. Please refer to the G3 review to cover:

• Magic Remote
• Setup
• LG webOS
• Ports
• Always ready
• Game Optimiser
• LG Hearing impaired options
• Video Modes

So how does the LG C3 OLED EVO look? Exceed

We said about the G3, “It is hard not to be enthusiastic about the superlative picture – Free-to-Air SDR, HDR10, HLG, or Dolby Vision IQ. Interestingly it does not support Samsung’s HDR10+, instead downmixing it to HDR10. Fair is fair – Samsung does not support Dolby Vision downmixing it to the vastly inferior HDR10.”

We would have been similarly exuberant if we had not seen the G3 and C3 side-by-side. The image below is taken in bright sunlight from standing height about 3m away. G3 is on the right, and both have the same settings.

You can see the reflections (top right of each) that are not evident on the G3 at seated height but a little more noticeable on the C3. The MLA lens makes quite a difference.

If you look at the word OTTO, there is a slight colour difference. Similarly, the G3 search panel has slightly whiter lettering.

But hey, at $800 less, I am not complaining.

Contrast – Exceed

The same as the G3 – infinite. It exceeds every test with pure blacks and whites.

Blooming – Nil – Exceed

If you have ever watched an LED/LCD TV – even QLED and Mini-LED, you will see some ghosting around white text on a black background. It concerns the number of dimming zones ranging from none to a few hundred.

OLED has 8,294,400 individually dimmable (or on/off) pixels, so there is no blooming. Similarly, there is no dirty screen effect, edge lighting, hotspots, or halos and 99.99% colour, black and white uniformity.

HDR (and Dolby Vision – DV) Brightness – Pass+

Where the G3 can reach 1500 nits for DV in a 2 and 10% window, this reaches 1000 nits in 2% and 800 nits in a 10% window. This is only relevant if the movie has large contiguous areas of white or black – very rare except in snow scenes or pitch black.

SDR (Free to Air) Brightness – Exceed

It reaches nearly 500nits in a 2% and unusually in a 10% window. Typically, it sits around 250 nits for a 100% window. This is 2.5 times the minimum for SDR. This TV is perfect as 90% of viewing is free-to-air and streaming.

Colour – Exceed

It is a 10-bit, 1.07 billion colour panel and reaches nearly 100% DCI-P3 and 65% of the wider Rec 2020 colour space. Delta E (colour accuracy) is about 2.52 (<4 is excellent). It supports manual calibration as well.

Colour Gradient – Pass+

It is the same panel as the G3 without MLA and behaves similarly apart from brightness and reflectivity.

Primary colours scale beautifully from 0-100% gradient. Secondary colours can ‘bunch’ slightly in tests, but you will never notice watching TV content.

Viewing Angle – Exceed

The G3 has a nearly 170°+ right-angle viewing angle due to the MLA lens. The C3 is not far below that at 170°.

Reflection rejection – Pass+

While the G3 MLA panel rejects most reflection at viewer seating height, the C3 has some reflection from front and side light. The best use for this is in areas where you can control ambient light.

Upscaling – Exceed

Like the G3. LG’s a9 AI Processor 4K Gen6 years of machine learning and AI development have paid off. We upscaled old Thunderbirds 480 content to 4K with the barest hint of softness, mainly in the background.

720 and 1080p free-to-air content were excellent, obviating the need to pay extra to Netflix for UHD content.

PWM – No – Exceed

There is no perceptible flicker at any brightness level.

Motion Smoothing

It is a native 100/120Hz (Australia uses 50Hz power hence 100Hz), and it uses Black Frame Insertion for motion smoothing 200 (this is not Hz).

Motion smoothing is excellent on 4K@24/30fps movies. You turn it off at higher refresh rates.

The image below shows some apparent judder but has a smooth ‘flame’ above the sword, whereas lesser TVs will have black gaps between the frames.

LG TV Speakers – Pass

It has 40W output 2.2 channel configuration. It has Front-firing Left/Right and 2 x 10W sub-woofers. The G3 has 60W 4.2 via Front Left/Right, Side Left/Right and 2 x 10W sub-woofers. Its extra speakers use psychoacoustics (where there are walls to bounce off) to create some surround sound.

It has the same sound signature as the G3. The raw sound signature is neutral (flat – good) with mid-bass from 50Hz building to 100Hz (high-bass). From there, a relatively flat frequency response to 8kHz, a dip to avoid harshness, then flat to 20kHz. Its mid-high treble is slightly choppy and distorted at higher volumes. This means the sense of sound direction and a feeling of ‘air’ (a reality as though the music were really there) is lacking.  Back off to 75dB from its 82dB maximum volume, and this comes under control.

It has seven sound modes – AI Sound Pro, Standard, Cinema, Clear Voice Pro, Cricket (Sports), Music, and Game Optimiser but most will select AI Sound Pro.

Virtual Dolby Atmos – Not really

The TV decodes PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS and Dolby Atmos (DA) and downmixes to its 2.2 speakers. The soundstage with non-spatial sound is as wide and high as the TV. DTS and DA do not add 3D height and slightly widen the soundstage just past the screen. It is all you can do with Left/Right front-firing speakers.

All sound can pass through the HDMI eARC cable to a soundbar for processing. This is a candidate (as are most 2022/23 LG OLED) for the LG 2023 Soundbar range – WoW intelligent sound (SC9S, SE65, S95QR, S90QY, S80QR, S80QY and S76Q). We review the SC9 separately. This combines the TV speakers and LG soundbar to create a wider soundstage and 3D spatial sound with DTS:X and DA content.

Power Use – Pass+

There was no Energy Star rating on the device. It is like the G3, which produces that extra brightness via MLA technology that does not use more power. We measured 90Wh (SDR) and 215Wh (DV).

CyberShack’s view – The LG C3 OLED Evo is just right

I have been an OLED convert since early 2017 when I bought a 65” LG E7 4K OLED. I also own a 2020 Sony 65” A9 OLED.

Why am I telling you this? Because E7 and A9 produced incredible images and were the best of breed at the time. TVs of this quality and class should last at least ten years, and advances in image quality are insufficient to make you trade up every few years.

The E7 has about 680 /730nits peak (DV) brightness in a 2/10% window. SDR brightness is 360 in a 2/10% window. The A9 has about 690/590nits peak DV brightness in a 2/10% window. SDR brightness is 350/345 in a 2/10% window.

The C3 has 1000nits in 2% and 800nits in a 10% window, and the G3 has nearly 1500nits in a 2/10% window.

While brightness is important, DV movies are seldom all sky, cloud, snow, or pitch black and a 6.5-year-old LG E7 is bright enough for highly enjoyable Dolby Vision image quality. Simply put, LG WOLED is ahead of Mini-LED and streets ahead of other lower LED/LCD images.

Competitors

The Samsung S95C QD OLED TV – big is beautiful has a bright QD-OLED screen (above C3 but below G3), but its lack of support for Dolby Vision is a deal breaker for many. It is also not really a true OLED (as we expect) but uses Blue OLED lighting backplane and Quantum Dot technology. Read The difference between OLED and QD OLED TV explained. Still, it is an excellent TV for those that don’t care about Dolby Vision.

The real competitor is LG’s B3 OLED which uses the 2022 α7 AI Processor 4K Gen6 (less AI), 600 nits peak brightness, 2.0 sound, and 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, but otherwise has all the features of the C3. Its 65” B3PSA is as low as $2850 – a $645 saving on the C3. Caveat – best in rooms with reasonable light control.

Mini-LEDs with Quantum Dot colour are also competitors. The better LG, Sony, Hisense, and TCL models are cheaper and can be even brighter for Aussie open-space lounges. We have reviews coming soon on most of these. The big difference between OLED and Mini-LED is 8m+ self-emissive pixels versus up to 1000 dimming zones. OLED is still image quality king.

Ratings – LG C3 OLED EVO

• Features: 90. Apart from the MLA technology, it is as good as the G3
• Value: 95. Price is what you pay, and value is what you get. It is lower cost than the G3 for little compromise.
• Performance: 90 – it meets or exceeds all performance tests for a premium TV. The sound is good – you need a soundbar to appreciate Dolby Atmos and surround sound.
• Ease of Use: 90 – Setup is easy, and the menu system has considerable help prompts.
• Design: 90 – it is well made, should give tears of superior image and trouble-free use

Pro

Cons