On paper, this TV packs plenty of value, but the performance isn’t quite there. Slim design, lots of apps and decent features are highlights, but they’re counterbalanced by an underwhelming picture and sluggish interface.

Introduction

Samsung’s QLED and QD-OLED TVs grab the limelight, but it’s the Korean brand’s most affordable TVs that shift in big numbers into the homes of customers around the world.

Now, we have the UE65BU8000, the step-down model from the BU8500 – both of which are new sets in Samsung’s affordable Crystal UHD range.

The key here is a combination of performance and value. So, has Samsung achieved the perfect balance with the BU8000?

Design

• Edge-lit screen
• Slender proportions
• Quick to assemble
• Reflective screen

Samsung’s obsession with slimness carries over to its Crystal UHD series, as the UE65BU8000 has a depth of 25.7mm. In comparison, LG’s supposedly slim 65-inch C2 OLED is 45.1mm at its thickest point.

The Samsung TV’s skinniness is aided by an Edge Lit screen, where an array of dimming LEDs that brighten and darken the screen are positioned around its edges. The BU8000 would seem a prime candidate for wall-mounting, but it mucks things up a bit with the placement of its connections.

Most are side-facing – which helps with routing cables – but an HDMI port and digital optical out are rear-facing, so if you want to connect a third source, you may need one of those right-angled HDMI connectors.

That aside, the BU8000 is another TV from Samsung that resolutely refuses to draw attention to itself with its thin bezel frame. The feet didn’t take me much time to attach, sliding and locking into place on the rear of the screen. But there’s no cable management, and the feet are situated towards the edges, so you’ll want to make sure you have a stand big enough to hold this 65-inch model.

Performance at wide angles does fade quickly when off axis. At best, you’ll want to be at a slight angle before the colours start to fade. This TV is also not bright enough to withstand reflections, so you won’t want to cast much direct light on the screen.

Tizen Smart Hub Interface

• Slow interface
• Cloud gaming options
• Free TV Plus streaming service

I’ve grumbled about the sluggishness of Samsung’s refreshed interface for its 2022 TVs, but up until now, the issue has been an unresponsive smart remote. The UE65BU8000, on the other hand, is just slow all over.

Regardless of the remote used (and this TV comes with both the smart and standard zappers), the interface’s leadenness makes navigation akin to walking in quicksand. Wherever the problem lies, the Tizen interface could certainly benefit from more optimisation.

The new interface takes up the whole screen and is centred around curating content to watch, whether it’s the big banner advertisement at the top or the several rows of content to scroll through. Among these are rows of entertainment apps and recently used sources for jumping back into what you were previously watching.

The smart hub is divided into sections accessible on the left-hand side. The main hub is an entertainment one, while the Gaming Hub, Universal Guide (basically, search function) and Settings are the other three sections (the BU8000 doesn’t support the Ambient mode that shows images when the TV is in its “sleep” mode).

There are apps galore, with all the big names covered along with Samsung’s own apps (its Health app is front and centre). Despite no Freeview Play, Samsung offers the free streaming-based TV Plus service as an alternative, and all the UK catch-up apps are present.

In terms of gaming, this TV has cloud gaming options in Utomik, Nvidia GeForce Now, Luna (in the US) and Xbox Game Pass (an exclusive), with Antstream Arcade and Blacknut arriving in 2023.

Features

• No VRR support
• Fast gaming performance
• Built-in voice assistance

Only three HDMI connections are provided, of which HDMI 2 is designated as the eARC port for sending soundtracks, such as Dolby Atmos, to a compatible soundbar. None of these is listed as bearing HDMI 2.1 support, which I’ll come back to shortly.

Other connection options include two USB ports, a CI slot, Ethernet, digital optical out and RF inputs for terrestrial and satellite connections. Wirelessly, there’s Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi.

Going back to HDMI 2.1, there’s the auto low latency mode that automatically puts the TV into its most receptive state for gaming. That I measured at 9.5ms, which is a rapid performance for any TV. HGiG for a consistent HDR performance across games is also included.

However, those looking for an affordable big screen for gaming should know that variable refresh rates (VRRs) aren’t supported (the BU8000 goes as far as 50Hz), which means you can’t get any lower than the 9.5ms latency I recorded. Nor does it support frame rates up to 120Hz, which is a feature that’s still rare below the £1,000 mark. Those who want a high-quality gaming experience won’t find it here, but casual gamers will get a fine-enough performance.

Enjoy talking to your TV? Bixby, Alexa (built-in) and Google Assistant are available to talk back and control other connected devices within the home.

Picture Quality

• Drab colours
• Stable-enough motion processing
• Lacks brightness
• Soft in terms of detail

Compare the UE65BU8000 with, say, Samsung’s QN90B Neo QLED and there’s an obvious and predictable gulf in quality. But the former is pitched to a more affordable market, and judged on its own merits, it offers a decent viewing experience. But its HDR performance left me wanting for a more expressive picture.

The Crystal processor 4K claims to offer “true to life colour”, but in my time with the set, its colours lacked punch and vigour. I measured brightness at a lowly 277 nits in Standard mode on a 5% HDR window (337 nits on a 10% window), with the Dynamic mode offering the best performance at 334 nits. That’s still short of the 500-600 nits needed to give HDR content some impetus.

As a result, contrast is not the BU8000’s strongest suit, even with its VA panel, with black levels that lack depth and err towards grey tones. Meanwhile, the lack of overall brightness hampers the intensity of highlights and white tones. Switching to the TV’s Dynamic mode beefs up the contrast, but then the issue shifts to colour accuracy, chiefly in darker scenes where blacks take on a cooler, bluish tint.

That doesn’t make HDR content on this TV unwatchable, but I was aware of its limitations. The opening scene of Star Wars: Andor takes place at night, and I can just about make out shapes and objects in the gloom as Andor makes his way into a nightclub on Morlana One. The Shadow Detail setting offers a better glimpse into the darkness, but even a slight adjustment can affect the potency of the TV’s black levels. Adjusting the Contrast Enhancer can make a difference with slightly deeper blacks – but that’s a heavy emphasis on “slightly”.

With brighter content set in daylight, the edge-lit screen fares better, but there is still a subdued manner in how it reproduces colours. As Geralt and Jaskier venture in the countryside in The Witcher, the greens of bushes and trees are rather underwhelming. Complexions are fine, but they lack punch and take on a paler tone (which is saying something for Geralt’s already pale skin), with his hair (of all things) looking a less-than-lustrous, dull shade of white. The BU8000 delivers a plain-looking image that doesn’t give a convincing impression of HDR.

HDR10+ assistance helps, but we’re talking subtle amounts here. In Bad Times at the El Royale and The Suicide Squad, colours have a little more depth and range, although the spectacular-looking The Rings of Power appears flat in places – there’s simply not enough contrast, depth or richness in the BU8000’s colours to convey a truly three-dimensional image.

This TV’s sense of detail is not forensic, whether it’s peeking into bright or dark tones, and there’s a fuzziness in general: the leather texture and styling of Geralt’s suit in The Witcher seem hazy in their definition. There’s an overall softness that indicates the BU8000 doesn’t offer the sharpest-looking image.

Its motion handling abilities are rather decent when watching West Side Story in 4K HDR. The Custom setting is good with no noticeable artefacts and judder, while the stronger Auto setting gives the dance scene at the school a glossier, more artificial look (usually around the mouths of people as they talk), with a hint of stutter and judder if you look closely.

It keeps up with the pace and intricate movement of the dancers as they cross each other’s paths surprisingly well, but the penalty imposed is that sharpness and definition are further eroded. The same strengths and weaknesses pop up when watching 1917 (although artefacts are more noticeable with that film). Both movies look best without the Motion Plus setting on.

Focusing on the Crystal processor’s upscaling skills, an episode of Breaking Bad (Fly) on DVD has noise and soft edges, but it can pick out detail on characters’ faces fine enough, and it’s a colourful rendition too – the red of the superlab’s floor and the purple-green pattern of Walter’s chequered jacket stand out.

Troy on Blu-ray features an ample amount of detail found on characters’ faces and period armour, as well as a decent level of clarity for a 65-inch screen. The azure blues of the sky translate well and contrast with the sun-dappled yellow of the beach as the Greeks storm it. It’s a credible upscaling performance, with no distracting artefacts, and the BU8000’s sense of colour is best realised with SDR content. But, again, the image does appear a touch soft.

The Game mode is bright enough to give a little zing to the tints and reflections of cars in Gran Turismo 7, and the image is colourful enough, but a little more vibrancy would not go amiss.

I should also mention that the BU8000 came with a slight panel defect with a green strip running vertically down the screen that would appear every now again, mainly when streaming content.

Sound Quality

• No built-in Atmos
• OTS Lite system for placing sounds on screen
• Good with dialogue

Audio modes are a choice of Standard, Adaptive Sound and Amplify. Adaptive Sound is decent, but I found Amplify improved the loudness of the TV, although its impression of dynamism is on the weaker side.

For a screen of this size, it doesn’t sound big, giving a sense of being hemmed in. That said, dialogue clarity is good and intelligible, and it has a decent grasp of detail: the creaks and groans of an abandoned village in The Rings of Power are nicely realised. The OTS Lite sound system does a decent job of placing the sounds on screen.

It can sound a little murky in describing low frequencies. The beats in rock music from Thor: Love and Thunder is flat, and in The Rings, the Elves encounter with a cave troll doesn’t have much impact or heft in Standard mode (Amplify is a bit better). Push the speakers hard, and they scrimp on detail as sounds meld into one formless soundstage. There’s no built-in Dolby Atmos support with this model.

Those who have a Samsung soundbar with Q-Symphony can benefit from the BU8000’s Q-Symphony Lite feature that uses the TV and soundbar’s speakers in tandem to create a bigger sound. I tried it with the HW-S800B bar, and it did help place dialogue with more precision and a crisper tone, while the accompanying subwoofer took the load off the TV. You’ll certainly want to consider a soundbar,…

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro has a great set of cameras, good speakers and a bold design. But it’s a 4G phone that costs as much as the top iPhones and Samsungs, and it has access to very few of the apps and games that can make full use of its hardware.

Introduction

The Mate 50 Pro is Huawei’s flagship Android phone for late 2022 and beyond. It costs a fortune and, like classic models in this series, aims to show off the best in phone tech. 

In some areas it does. The Mate 50 Pro has an excellent set of cameras that, for me, after months of reviewing lower-end and midrange models, serves as a reminder of how fun it is to walk around with a good telephoto camera in your pocket. 

I can’t picture recommending this phone to many people, though – particularly not at its current high price. It’s the same old story: the Mate 50 Pro doesn’t have 5G, Google apps or Google Play access.

Huawei’s solution of a poor first-party app store and a search engine that scours a bunch of semi-reputable sources for app install files just doesn’t cut it at this level. 

Design and Screen

• Curved glass front and rear panels
• Excellent IP68 water resistance
• Powerful lower speaker

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro is an eye-catching phone. It continues the style of the Mate 30 Pro, placing the rear cameras in a giant circle – a disc that sticks out from the phone’s back. 

It’s bold – the kind of design that might have seemed a speculative concept render a few years ago. The quality of the build is mostly great, as long as you are willing to put a little faith in its unusual parts. 

The Mate 50 Pro is a sandwich of two curved glass panels, with aluminium in-between. A metal ring sits around the camera disc, with fine detailing along its top. Surprisingly enough, the top surface of the disc appears to be some form of plastic, but the camera lens protection is, of course, glass. 

Huawei does not use the industry-standard Gorilla Glass in the Mate 50 Pro, though. The orange vegan leather version of this phone has Kunlun nanocrystal display glass – a new formulation made by Huawei that it claims has superior drop resistance. But my silver version? It has unnamed glass by who-knows, which is not a great look for a phone this pricey. 

But the Mate 50 Pro does have excellent IP68 water and dust resistance. It’s also one of the few flagship phones with expandable memory – yay! But you can only use one of Huawei’s nano-SIM-sized NM cards – boo! 

There’s no headphone jack either, and the speakers’ output is uneven. One driver sits at the bottom of the phone, the other by the earpiece on the front. This upper driver has a thinner sound, so lower-frequency content from that channel is actually played through the bottom speaker. 

The resulting sound is still quite impressive, with a richer and smoother tonality than that of the Xiaomi 12T, which I used before the Mate 50 Pro. But the latter’s right-side bias is quite clear when you watch a music video with the phone on its side. 

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro has a 6.74-inch screen with a resolution of 2616 x 1212 pixels. This is only a little higher than the 1080p norm of much cheaper models. It’s well below the 3088 x 1440 of the Galaxy S22 Ultra and slightly below the 2796 x 1290 pixels of the iPhone 14 Pro Max. 

I don’t think most people should care that much, however. I couldn’t see any fuzziness to text even when eyeballing the screen surface in close-up. 

Indoors, the Mate 50 Pro will head up to 535 nits of brightness – a bit punchier than most – and in direct sunlight, it maxes out at 825 nits. That’s decent, although no higher than I’ve seen in some midrange phones recently. 

The standouts of the Mate 50 Pro screen are its colour and curve. As with previous top models in this range, the display panel curves around at the sides to match the curvature of the front glass. 

I also think this phone’s default colour mode is great. Huawei says it cycles between colour standards to suit the app used – and it really works. Your photos’ colour isn’t amped up in the gallery, and home screen icon colours look vibrant. Alternatively, the Vivid mode uses extra-saturated colour the whole time, which I wouldn’t recommend.

Other aspects of the display are exactly what you’d expect from a high-end phone. It has a max refresh rate of 120Hz for smooth scrolling, and it supports HDR video. 

Performance

• Throttles dramatically under pressure
• Very powerful SoC
• No access to Google apps or services

Huawei is well-known in geeky circles for its HiSilicon processors – as seen in the P50 Pro phones. However, both the Mate 50 Pro and Mate 50 use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 instead. 

This is a super-powerful processor with fantastic peak graphics performance. In 3DMark’s Wild Life test, for example, it scores 10,529 points – similar to the score of an iPhone 14 Pro Max. That’s big because iPhone chipsets have sailed ahead in this area for years now. 

The Mate 50 Pro can’t hold onto that power for too long, though. In a stress test, the phone’s power dropped dramatically after 10mins and became erratic as it tried to balance heat and performance. At one point, it had just 36% of its peak power. Ouch. 

Qualcomm’s + version of the 8 Gen 1 seen here was partly designed to deal with the original version’s heat problems, by using a more efficient architecture. But performance stability is still bad, and this version of the chipset is 4G-only. There’s no 5G mobile internet.

The performance dip could be Huawei approaching things conservatively, however, because the Mate 50 Pro really didn’t get all that hot while I played some Fortnite. 

That game runs beautifully on this phone. Sure, there are occasional frame rate drops when you turn around, but it runs just as well as any Android I’ve seen. And all the graphics options are unlocked here, including the 90fps mode. 

However, I don’t think the Mate 50 Pro is a great gaming phone, because the library available to it is poor. As has been the case since 2019, Huawei phones don’t have Google apps. That means no Play Store, no Gmail or Google Maps. 

In their place, you get Huawei’s AppGallery, Petal Maps and so on – the Huawei stand-ins. At times, they are a little gross compared with their Google counterparts. Petal Maps keeps shoving a £2 Bolt discount in my face, putting it right in the location search bar. 

AppGallery shows a promo advert whenever I open up the app. I can stomach this kind of ad-flinging on an Amazon tablet, where there’s a sense the tablet’s cost is partly subsidised by the amount you’ll be spending on Amazon-owned content in the future. But this doesn’t fly after paying nearly £1200 for the Mate 50 Pro. 

The more significant issue is that AppGallery is unlikely to have all the apps you want, and there’s no good solution to this problem. Huawei offers Petal, a search tool that shows you places other than AppGallery where you can find downloadable apps. 

While handy, user protections are limited here, and Huawei quietly shrugs off responsibility with a disclaimer link that accompanies search results. What you can get from the linked third-party app stores and websites is very limited anyway – you won’t typically find premium apps and games there.

A lot of folks will buy a Mate 50 Pro with the plan to install Google services on there. But I’m not writing this review for those folks. 

The Android experience without Google apps remains kind of depressing. And even when you do find a way to get the apps you need, other issues often emerge. For example, WhatsApp is available from the official website, but you can’t recover your backup messages and images because they’re stored on Google servers. Precious memories, binned.

Camera

• A very fun camera to use
• Three rear shooters
• Strong zoom skills

Let’s get back to the good stuff. The Huawei Mate 50 Pro has a great camera – one that is bags of fun to use at all times. 

While it looks like there are four cameras on the back, there are actually three. You get a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 13-megapixel ultrawide and a 64-megapixel 3.5x periscope zoom.  

The big new feature for this year is variable aperture. Aperture refers to the size of the hole that lets in light, and almost all phones have a fixed hole. The Mate 50 Pro’s main lens can open up in four stages. You can watch the little blades move as you change the aperture setting. 

It’s neat tech, but I personally don’t find it as impactful as some other aspects of this camera. When your subject is very close, there’s a noticeable change in background blur, but it’s nothing like changing the aperture on my FujiFilm APS-C camera, where portraits of people 2m away can be given a super-silky, super-pronounced bokeh effect. Here, the crop factor – the small sensor — limits the effect of a wider or narrower aperture a lot. 

However, I still think taking photos with the Mate 50 Pro is a blast. It’s one of the most best phone cameras I’ve used all year, and this is 95% down to the zoom. It lets you take far better pics of animals from a distance, and the camera itself is of high enough quality to have its own mild background blur effect when your subject is only a few feet away. 

Huawei pushes the hardware to its extreme limit by offering a 10x zoom preset, even though the camera itself is only a 3.5x zoom. The counterargument is, of course, that it uses a super-high-res 64-megapixel sensor. But this sensor is designed for 4-in-1 pixel binning and 16-megapixel photos. 

Images at 10x are rather soft – not quite a match for those of a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G and its 10x camera, and about 60% of my super-zoomed images had some blur (mostly in the subject). But I still had a great time using this mode. 

General image quality is great from the primary camera. Night photos can look incredible, whether you use the Night mode or not – it tends to amp up colour a bit and increase the sharpness of the image but largely through processing. 

Above-average night results are possible with the ultrawide camera and when using the 3.5x zoom preset, too, although looking at them up close, it appears the Mate 50 Pro switches to the main camera in low light – or it may use a combination of the two cameras’ output to generate images. 

Colour is generally good, with a tendency for some tones to look a little hotter/more saturated in certain scenes, often at 1x zoom. 

Video can be captured at up to 4K resolution, 60fps, and image quality is good at both 4K and 1080p. I noticed some in-frame blur on footfalls – even during the day – which suggests the handling of shooting parameters is not quite as foolproof as, for example, an iPhone 14’s. 

The Mate 50 Pro’s front camera is strong too: a…

La Zwilling Enfinigy 2 Short Slots es una tostadora decente, pero tiene un dorado desigual. Me impresionó su calidad de construcción y su apariencia sobria, y realmente te ayuda a evitar quemar tu tostada. Desafortunadamente, simplemente no tuesta lo suficientemente bien a este precio.

Introducción

Enfinigy 2 Short Slots de Zwilling es una tostadora de ranura paralela convencional, disponible en negro o plateado, con un diseño moderno y sencillo.

Es inteligente a la vista y se siente bellamente hecho, pero no está exento de inconvenientes.

Diseño y Características

• Diseño minimalista y elegante
• Características útiles
• sensación de calidad

La Enfinigy 2 Short Slots quizás no sea una tostadora hermosa, pero ciertamente es sencilla e inteligente. En realidad, esta versión negra que revisé tiene un acabado extremadamente oscuro y muy mate, y combina con el Zwilling Enfinigy Electric Kettle Pro negro.

No hay ningún patrón en los lados de la tostadora ni roturas obvias en los paneles, solo unos pocos controles y una palanca para tostar. Este último se mueve con una sensación amortiguada y costosa, y tiene una calidad similar a la bandeja para migas con su pestillo de liberación.

Como sugiere su nombre, la tostadora de 2 ranuras cortas no es la única tostadora de la serie Enfinigy. Hay una versión de cuatro ranuras, además de otra tostadora de dos ranuras con ranuras más largas. Todos cuentan con configuraciones de descongelación y recalentamiento junto con un control de baguette/bagel. El control de dorado se realiza a través de un dial de siete niveles que se mueve con una sensación de precisión y es fácil de leer, excepto cuando se mira de frente.

Curiosamente, Zwilling dice que esta tostadora está configurada para que nunca queme tostadas. Incluso en su configuración más alta, su tostada no irá más allá de un color marrón oscuro. Al igual que otras tostadoras que he probado, la Enfinigy 2 Short Slots acorta automáticamente el tiempo de tostado después de que finaliza el primer ciclo, para ajustar el calor residual en el electrodoméstico.

Esta tostadora tiene una canasta muy humedecida, lo que significa que la tostada sale lentamente cuando está lista. Sin embargo, no hay timbre, por lo que es relativamente fácil pasarlo por alto si no estás prestando atención. Al igual que con la mayoría de las tostadoras, no hay un modo de ranura única, por lo que todavía está calentando ambas ranuras incluso si solo está tostando una rebanada.

Si bien Enfinigy Electric Kettle Pro se mantiene fresco gracias a su diseño de doble pared, aquí no existe tal protección. No es seguro tocar los lados negros mate de esta tostadora durante o inmediatamente después de su uso. Muchas tostadoras de metal se calientan de esta manera, pero algunas no, y por este precio, esperaría una protección ligeramente mejor.

Actuación

• brindis decente
• Realmente es difícil quemar cualquier cosa.

Dado el buen diseño de Enfinigy 2 Short Slots y obviamente la alta calidad de construcción, esperaba mejores resultados. Cada lado del pan se doró de manera bastante uniforme, pero a lo largo de mis pruebas descubrí que los lados exteriores se doraron significativamente más que el interior. Esto podría no ser un problema con los bagels, en los que, de todos modos, generalmente desea que el lado cortado se tueste más que el otro lado, pero no era perfecto para tostadas regulares.

Es una pena porque esta tostadora tiene ranuras bastante grandes. Con 120 mm, no son demasiado profundos, pero tienen aproximadamente 145 mm de largo, lo suficientemente grandes como para acomodar panes más altos, siempre que los coloque sobre su lado largo. El Enfinigy 2 Short Slots también tuesta bien hasta los bordes de las rebanadas.

Cuando se trata de su rango de tostado, esta es una de las mejores tostadoras que he usado. Fiel a las afirmaciones de Zwilling, puede subirlo por completo y obtendrá una tostada bien dorada, pero no quemada. Es difícil imaginar que quieras algo más oscuro, lo que significa que puedes usar el rango completo de la tostadora para obtener exactamente el tono que deseas.

En uso, esta tostadora consume poco más de 1kW de potencia. Al tostar pan blanco, consumió 0,04 kWh, mientras que usó un poco menos al tostar un bagel. Cocine un bagel y una ronda de tostadas todos los días, y pagará alrededor de £ 10 por el uso de un año, suponiendo que tenga el límite de precio de 34 peniques por kWh que se aplica hasta octubre de 2024.

El uso de la tostadora Enfinigy 2 Short Slots junto con la tostadora Dualit 4 Slot Domus realmente subrayó cuán calientes se ponen los paneles laterales de la primera. Es seguro mover la tostadora Dualit inmediatamente después de usarla, pero debe tener mucho cuidado con la Zwilling.

Últimas ofertas

Sustentabilidad

TrustedReviews mantiene el hecho de que el calentamiento global no es un mito como un valor central y se esforzará continuamente para ayudar a proteger nuestro planeta del daño en sus prácticas comerciales.

Como parte de esta misión, cada vez que revisamos un producto enviamos a la empresa una serie de preguntas para ayudarnos a medir y hacer transparente el impacto que tiene el dispositivo en el medio ambiente.

Actualmente no hemos recibido respuestas a las preguntas sobre este producto, pero actualizaremos esta página en cuanto las recibamos. Puede ver un desglose detallado de las preguntas que hacemos y por qué en nuestra página de información de sostenibilidad.

LG has taken all that made its full-sized OLEDs great and stuffed it into the OLED42C2 with impressive results. Whether you watch TV, enjoy films or play games at close quarters, this TV does it all with ease.

Introduction

There’s no bigger advocate for OLED TVs than LG – a brand that’s always on a soapbox with its megaphone, explaining to everyone why OLED is great.

And any criticism stings the company into proving the naysayers wrong. First, the TVs were too expensive, then they were just too big, and after that, they weren’t bright enough. I’ll leave you to guess what LG’s response to those judgements has been.

This brings us to the OLED42C2, the smallest OLED TV available. Earmarked for gamers – but a good size for anyone who wants a small OLED TV – it translates everything good about LG’s biggest OLEDs and fits it into a dainty screen that’s 42 inches wide.

Design

• Blade feet for stands
• Chunky rear
• Wide viewing angles

LG’s C-series OLEDs feature a range of stands from wider plinths to smaller ones, but the OLED42C2 is the only one with feet. All you have to do is slot and screw the feet into place on both ends of the screen, and this TV should be up and running within minutes.

The feet don’t have a premium look, but their build is stiff and solid. I would say the overall aesthetic here is one that’s dressed down rather than smart chic. The bezel/metal casing is elegant in how it frames the screen, ensuring that what’s on it takes centre stage.

This TV is stocky around the back, with a depth of 41.1mm, and while you could set it on a wall with a VESA mount, it feels more at home on a flat surface. Regardless of where it’s placed, the connections are side-facing, which is helpful for plugging in sources.

The OLED42C2’s viewing angles are wide, although that’s, arguably, less vital for a screen of this size. There’s no anti-reflection technology, but I didn’t find reflections too distracting up-close or from further away.

WebOS Interface

• New cloud gaming shelf
• Big app library
• Integration with the Internet of Things

This is the fourth OLED from LG I’ve tested in 2022, and there’s not much new to report on the webOS front. It’s an interface that’s simply laid out and easy enough to navigate, with less of an insistence on creating an LG account than before. What’s new is the shelf of cloud gaming apps, with Blacknut and Utomik Cloud joining GeForce Now.

If you are coming from an older LG TV, you may be disappointed to learn the app pop-up bar has been replaced by a full-screen interface. If you developed the habit of dipping in and out of apps, having to return to the full-screen interface before opening another app can slow things down.

A quicker method is to use the hotkeys on the remote, with Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Rakuten TV provided (as well as Google Assistant and Alexa buttons). The sensitivity of the Magic Remote seems better judged than in the previous years’ versions (the pointer doesn’t flail across the screen with the slightest nudge), and it feels as if LG has got the ergonomics and button spacing of the remote just right.

The app library is massive, containing everything you could conceivably want or need, with the big hitters provided alongside UK catch-up and on-demand apps (and Freeview Play). US buyers get the likes of HBO Max, Hulu, Sling TV and Xfinity Stream. Scroll down the main hub and there’s content curated from the likes of iPlayer, All 4, My5, Rakuten TV and a couple of others. The LG Channels section has about 200 free-to-watch channels over an internet stream. You’d be hard-pressed to not find something to watch or do.

The Home Dashboard is an area where you can control sources connected to the TV, and if you have any IoT (Internet of Things) devices dotted around the home, they can be controlled from this hub too.

Features

• High-end gaming features
• All four HDMI inputs support 2.1 standard
• Fast latency

In terms of connections, all four of the OLED42C2’s HDMI inputs adhere to the HDMI 2.1 standard, with support for auto low latency mode (ALLM), variable refresh rate (VRR) and 4K/120Hz across all inputs.

HDMI 2 is the eARC port for passing through lossless audio, such as Dolby Atmos, to a compatible soundbar. There are three USB ports, a CI (Common Interface) Plus 1.4 slot, two RF (radio frequency) connectors for hooking up to an aerial or satellite transmitter, a LAN port, an IR blaster, and digital optical audio out.

Wireless connections include Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi, enabling AirPlay 2, Chromecast and the Bluetooth Surround Ready technology, which allows for the addition of wireless speakers to the TV. There’s no support for the WiSA audio standard with this model.

All the VRR options are included in HDMI VRR, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync. I measured latency of 12.9ms, which is in line with other 2022 LG OLEDs, and if you factor in VRR, the latency can be brought down to almost zero. If you’re an Xbox Series owner, Dolby Vision Gaming optimises the HDR and high frame rate performance for supported games. HGiG is there to maintain a consistent HDR performance with supported titles.

The OLED42C2 also has the Game Optimiser pop-up menu, where you can view and tweak gaming-related settings. It can be accessed by pressing the play/pause button on the remote when the TV is in Game mode.

Picture Quality

• Natural colour performance
• Effective upscaling at this size
• Lovely-looking Dolby Vision performance

The OLED42C2 plays host to LG’s OLED Evo technology, but it doesn’t come with the Brightness Booster to eke out extra nits. That’s down to the screen size here, but even without it, it’s far brighter than your average 42-inch TV.

I measured brightness at 704 nits in Standard mode on a 5% HDR window. On a 10% window, it doles out brightness with some more lustre, but it’s not as intense with highlights compared with the 48-inch OLED807 from Philips. As a result, the LG OLED42C2’s sense of contrast is not as wide despite the Philips TV not being brighter.

But the OLED42C2 arguably yields a more natural-looking image. Colours are depicted with a wide range of hues, so its colour handling is nuanced rather than attention-grabbing. Complexions are naturally portrayed and varied as they ought to be.

LG serves up a frequently lovely-looking HDR image here. When watching Spider-Man: No Way Home in 4K Dolby Vision, nothing stands out as egregious or overplayed. Highlights are rendered brightly when Spider-Man comes across one of the multiversal interlopers in Electro’s lightning attacks, OLED’s pixel-level control means blooming is not an issue, and in scenes set at night-time, the image is, quite literally, striking in its illumination.

The LG unearths plenty of detail, from the fine textures of Spider-Man’s various suits to the sandy molecules that make up the Sandman and the scaly skin of the Lizard. It’s an image that boasts excellent levels of clarity and sharpness beyond the skills of most 42-/43-inch models I’ve reviewed.

Black levels have depth and solidity, although there’s perhaps not as much detail to be found in the darkest areas of an image, even with Dolby Vision IQ in play. White tones aren’t as intensely portrayed as they are on the Philips OLED807, which plays into the feeling that the LG OLED42C2’s contrast isn’t as aggressive. Nonetheless, the OLED42C2 serves up a three-dimensional image with HDR content, and watching His Dark Materials in HLG HDR on iPlayer, the night scenes in Bolvangar look utterly gorgeous.

Upscaling on this model is better than expected, and I think it’s because the screen size/pixels-per-inch is relatively kind on lower-quality sources.

Spinning up a scene from Game of Thrones, the image is soft in terms of detail but still watchable, with solid edge definition around objects and characters (there are fewer jagged edges on the shields of the Unsullied). A DVD of There Will Be Blood filters through decent levels of detail, from the dust on Plainview’s hands as he builds his first oil rig to the stubble of his beard when he addresses a crowd. There’s visible noise and murkiness in some of the darker scenes, but, quite frankly, that’s not unsurprising.

Stepping up to a Blu-ray of The Revenant, the OLED42C2 yields excellent levels of detail from its wintry settings, weathered clothing and dirt on the faces of trappers. For a Blu-ray of Pacific Rim, the high level of clarity and sharpness meshes with the neon-infused colours to make for an inviting image.

LG’s TruMotion setting has found an agreeable level of performance with its 2022 models. When watching a stream of Tomorrowland on Disney+ (the one take where Casey “discovers” Tomorrowland), there’s an element of noise with the Natural setting, but the Cinematic Movement setting is pitched just right, retaining the 24fps stutter but reducing the effect of motion blur in the panning shots. I found it a steady, stable and unintrusive performance (on the right setting).

Sound Quality

• Punchy rather than weighty bass
• Dolby Atmos support
• Clean, clear and detailed sound

The OLED42C2’s design doesn’t comfortably accommodate a soundbar, as the feet don’t elevate the screen too far off a surface. Not even the Polk MagniFi Mini AX could sit in front of this TV without obscuring the screen.

That said, it wouldn’t be a crime to settle for the OLED42C2’s 2.2 channel, 20W audio system. With Pacific Rim, there’s a nice sense of scale to the soundtrack: the fights between Jaegers and the Kaiju feature good clarity and definition in making sense of the film’s dense sound field. Voices aren’t lost among the action, and this TV does a good job of translating some of the power and excitement in the Kaiju clashes with decent dynamism.

There are several sound modes to play around with, but in general, AI Sound Pro should be reserved for Atmos tracks because, while the audio never sounds bigger than the TV itself, there’s some nice specific placement of sounds around the screen.

Used with non-Atmos tracks like The Revenant, the AI mode can sound sibilant and thin, struggling to focus on what’s relevant in each scene (it tends to raise foreground and background effects at once), making for a soundstage that’s incoherent at times. In instances such as this, the Standard and Cinema modes are a better fit.

Pumping up the volume to 50, I didn’t hear any distortion (granted that may change depending on what you’re watching). While there’s not much bass, the OLED42C2 substitutes weight for punchiness that’s effective in a film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where the kicks and punches have a crisp, clean quality. In general, this is a decent effort for casual viewing, and if you can fit a soundbar, there’s no doubt it can improve upon the TV’s speakers.

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