Pros & Cons
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- Vivid, accurate colors
- Excellent contrast and detail
- Sleek design
- WebOS with Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and hands-free Alexa
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- Not the brightest OLED
- No ATSC 3.0
LG Evo C5 77-Inch OLED TV (OLED77C5PUA) Specs
| AMD FreeSync | FreeSync |
| HDMI Ports | 4 |
| HDR | Dolby Vision |
| HDR | HDR10 |
| Input Lag (1080p120) | 4.5 |
| Input Lag (4K60) | 12.9 |
| Nvidia G-Sync | G-Sync Compatible |
| Panel Type | OLED |
| Refresh Rate | 120 |
| Resolution | 3,840 by 2,160 |
| Screen Brightness | 944 |
| Screen Size | 77 |
| Streaming Services | Yes |
| Video Inputs | HDMI |
| Video Inputs | RF |
| Video Inputs | USB |
| VRR |
The LG Evo C5 is a more affordable alternative to the company's premium Evo G5, our top pick for high-end OLED TVs. It isn’t nearly as bright as the record-breaking G5, but it still puts out enough light to do justice to HDR content, and its contrast and color performance are excellent. More importantly, it costs significantly less than the Evo G5 ($3,399.99 for 65 inches) and other OLED models, such as the Samsung S95F ($3,299.99 for 65 inches) and the Sony Bravia 8 II ($3,499.99 for 65 inches). While the official retail price for the 65-inch model I tested is $2,699.99, it's regularly on sale for closer to $1,700 (and during promotional events like Prime Day, the price can drop even lower). Simply put, the LG Evo C5 is the best OLED TV for the price, earning it our Editors' Choice award.
Design: Slim and Bezel-Free
The LG C5 is incredibly sleek. It’s effectively bezel-free, with only a narrow metal band running along the edges of the OLED panel. The panel itself is just a quarter-inch thick, though a rectangular plastic box in the lower-middle section of the back TV increases the depth to a still fairly slim 1.7 inches. The box holds all of the C5’s electronics, with its various connections sitting on the left side, facing left. There are four HDMI ports (one eARC), three USB ports, an optical audio output, an Ethernet port, an RF antenna/cable connector, and 3.5mm ports for an IR blaster and integrating into an RS-232C control system.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)You can put the C5 on a surface narrower than the screen itself, thanks to a center-mounted rectangular metal base that affords it stability with a relatively narrow footprint. Screw holes on the plastic enclosure on the back of the TV also enable wall mounting with a standard VESA mount.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)The remote is the same basic-looking black candy bar that comes with the G5. It features a large circular navigation pad with a clickable wheel in the center that spins to let you scroll through menus or flip through channels. The wheel is slightly redundant thanks to the separate volume and channel rockers in the middle of the remote, but fortunately, its tension is tight enough to prevent accidentally turning it when you simply want to click. The remote also has a pinhole microphone near the top for voice control, as well as dedicated service buttons for Amazon Alexa, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, LG Channels, Netflix, and Sling. It features a motion sensor that allows you to control an on-screen mouse cursor by waving your hand, providing an alternative browsing method in addition to the standard navigation pad.
Features: webOS With Alexa, Plus AirPlay and Google Cast
(Credit: Will Greenwald)LG’s implementation of the webOS smart TV platform on the C5 is packed with features. It has apps for all major streaming services, including Amazon Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube, as well as both Apple AirPlay and Google Cast for streaming locally from your Android phone, iPad, iPhone, Mac, or PC. It also has hands-free Amazon Alexa voice control, though Amazon has not yet announced when the new, more conversational and powerful Alexa+ AI assistant will be available on webOS.
Picture: Vibrant Color With Perfect Blacks
In terms of specs, the Evo C5 is a 4K TV with a 120Hz native refresh rate and support for up to 144Hz variable refresh rate (VRR). It supports Dolby Vision, HDR10, and hybrid log gamma (HLG) high dynamic range (HDR) content. Like the Evo G5, it doesn’t have an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p and 4K over-the-air broadcasts.
The C5 doesn’t offer the light output of its more expensive sibling, the G5, but it still produces quite a bright image for an OLED TV. Using my standard testing equipment—a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software—I measured a peak brightness in Filmmaker mode of 209 nits with a full-screen HDR10 white field, and 944 nits with an 18% field. With the smaller 10% field I use to compare OLED TVs, the C5 put out 1,269 nits. That’s close to the Sony Bravia 8 II’s numbers (991 nits with an 18% field, 1,568 nits with a 10% field), but doesn’t come close to the G5’s blazing results (1,608 nits with an 18% field and 2,386 nits with a 10% field).
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(Credit: PCMag)Out of the box, the C5’s most accurate colors are available via the Cinema modes. The above charts show the TV’s color measurements with SDR, HDR10, and Dolby Vision signals in their respective Cinema modes, comparing the SDR signal against Rec.709 broadcast standards and the two HDR signals against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards. They’re largely excellent, with nearly perfect white balance and almost all colors coming close to their targets. The only exceptions are magenta, which tends to lean slightly warm with an HDR10 signal, and reds, which are slightly undersaturated. They’re relatively minor flaws; otherwise, the C5 shows excellent color.
Documentary footage from the BBC’s Planet Earth II appears lifelike on the C5, thanks to its vibrant and natural colors. The greens of plant life span a wide range from tawny yellow-green to emerald, and the blues and blue-greens of the sky and water are similarly rich and varied. Sunny scenes look bright while shaded areas and darker-colored animals in the same frame are properly dark.
Excellent contrast enabled by the OLED panel’s per-pixel light control is apparent when viewing the party scenes in The Great Gatsby. The white balloons, shirts, and lights stand out against the black suits, which appear properly dark while preserving their cuts and contours. Skin tones are varied and natural against the stark whites and blacks, and splashes of color, such as orange dresses, pop out brightly.
The Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc’s demonstration content largely looks excellent on the C5. Colorful objects against black backgrounds are bright and vivid, while the backgrounds themselves are perfectly dark, without any aura light bloom along the edges that LED TVs can exhibit. Daytime, dawn, and dusk landscape shots are colorful and detailed, again appearing very natural, much like those in Planet Earth II. Fine details in snowy scenes, like falling snow and individual wisps of clouds against mostly white backgrounds, can be easily discerned.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)The Spears & Munsil snow footage doesn’t appear nearly as bright as the rest, which is a common issue with OLED panels. Because all that snow requires almost the entire panel to glow white, the light output of the panel drops just like the luminance levels I measured on the TV between full-screen and smaller white fields. High-end LED TVs typically don’t have this problem because they can get as bright while lighting up their whole screens as OLEDs can with 18% or 10% fields, but the trade-off is light bloom encroaching on what should be deep blacks. That said, the C5 still doesn’t look dim in these snowy shots; it just doesn't appear nearly as bright as it does in more colorful shots with a wider variety of highlights and shadows.
Gaming: FreeSync and G-Sync Compatible
For gaming, the C5 has a 120Hz native panel that supports variable refresh rate (VRR) up to 144Hz. It features AMD FreeSync and is G-Sync Compatible.
I tested its latency with a Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Lag Tester, and measured an input lag of 4.5 milliseconds with a 1080p120 signal and 12.9ms with a 4K60 signal. In both cases, these are below one frame at their respective refresh rates, making the C5 good for gaming.