LG OLED G5 vs LG OLED G6 (G64LW, G66LS)

LG G5 with the new Tandem OLED panel brings the biggest change specifically in terms of the brightness of the television. And it’s quite impressive. This is truly an astronomically bright OLED. In every tested scene – whether it’s point lights or full-screen whites from the movie The Meg – the brightness on the G5 exceeded 2000 nits. Just a year ago, such values on an OLED were simply unimaginable. And here we are – the G5 comes close, and at times even surpasses the best Mini-LEDs on the market. A new feature of the Tandem OLED panel is the expanded color gamut coverage – and here the LG G5 performs almost perfectly. DCI-P3 achieves a full 100%, while BT.2020 maintains around 83%. These are some of the highest values currently available on the market – it’s hard to find any other television that comes close to such results, unless we are talking about the best displays with QD-OLED panels. The G5 has nearly reference-quality HDR – both in terms of brightness and color saturation. This is an OLED that can truly shine – and not just figuratively.

The LG G6 is currently one of the brightest OLEDs on the market. Its peak brightness reaches nearly 2500 nits, and best of all – this has a direct impact on real film scenes. The television flawlessly pulls out details in the bright parts of the image. And this is regardless of whether we are talking about very small points like stars in the sky or slightly larger elements on the screen. Naturally, with full-screen, uniformly white scenes, the brightness of the G6 decreases due to the panel's protection system (ABL). However, in real, varied film shots, this value still hovers around 2000 nits, which can be considered an outstanding result. The coverage of the color palette also deserves praise. The new 2nd generation Tandem OLED panel brought only a cosmetic change, but still an improvement. The DCI-P3 color gamut coverage reaches nearly 99.5%, while the ultra-wide BT.2020 is around 84%. These are very good results, although one must remember one thing: at extremely high brightness levels, the volume of colors will be lower than in QD-OLED panels from Samsung Display due to the use of a white sub-pixel (WOLED). However, in everyday content and most films, detecting this difference will be very difficult.

Our test unit LG G5 struggled with some issues in the factory Filmmaker mode. And while the image might have seemed fine to most people, we knew that this TV was capable of much more. This mode had a clear excess blue tint in the white balance, resulting in a strong cooling of the image – particularly in HDR modes, where there was also a lack of red. The picture seemed cold, and its sharpness was artificially boosted and unnatural. Another significant issue was the brightness characteristic. In SDR content, the situation wasn't the worst, aside from a slight dimming of the entire image. However, it performed much worse in HDR materials – due to improper brightness management, the smallest details could completely disappear from the image, and larger, bright elements appeared overexposed and lacking gradation. Luckily, the G5 supports calibration using 3D LUT (a tool for professionals to calibrate colors), so we decided to take advantage of its professional background and see what it was really capable of. Because while it wasn't terrible even before calibration, the potential of this TV definitely deserved more.

We tested the LG G6 in the best factory mode for color fidelity, which is FILMMAKER MODE. For our test unit, this mode was fairly well-tuned right out of the box. In SDR content, the only thing we could nitpick was the white balance, which leaned towards warmer tones. As a result, the image could sometimes appear slightly yellowed; however, overall, it wasn't a bothersome issue. The G6 performed a bit worse with HDR content. There, we noticed too much blue component in the white balance. This caused the image to take on cooler shades, resulting in quite noticeable errors. As can be seen in our ColorChecker chart, colors were indeed shifting towards these cooler registers. Nevertheless, for factory settings, the television displayed a completely decent level. However, we know that OLED screens – especially those from LG – respond wonderfully to professional calibration, which is why we immediately proceeded with it.

After completing the calibration process using professional tools, we can confidently state that the LG G5 offers nearly reference-quality image. Most of the errors related to white balance and the ColorChecker test are below the value of 2, which is a phenomenal result, practically imperceptible to the human eye. And while one could still criticize that in HDR films the television tends to slightly dim the smallest elements of the image, in practice, this does not negatively affect the overall impression. Hats off to LG, because once again they provide the user with enormous possibilities for adjusting their display – and this, combined with very good parameters of the panel itself, results in an image that is truly hard to surpass.

After conducting a professional calibration, we gained complete control over the panel, and we were able to adjust all parameters to nearly zero. We managed to perfectly tune the white balance, which made the factory-cool and warm tints disappear from the screen. The effects are clearly evident in the ColorChecker test – the average color reproduction errors dropped below the critical value of 1-2. And what does that mean? PERFECT colors, with no distortion whatsoever! However, from a reviewer's obligation, we must comment on how the LG G6 autonomously manipulates brightness, for which the EOTF curve is responsible. When we look at the standard synthetic graph, it may seem that the line is quite straight. The situation changes, however, when we turn on the measurement filter, which shows how the television interprets brightness in real, moving film scenes (EOTF in MOVIES). At that point, it becomes clear that some of the smallest fragments on the screen are slightly over-brightened by the algorithm. Of course, for the average viewer, such a deviation will be practically unnoticeable, but in the test of such an expensive screen, it is worth noting – especially since we are talking about a model that has huge aspirations to be the best television of the year.

Upscaling and digital image processing in the LG G5 perform very well. The television handles lower quality content exceptionally, especially when the "Smooth Gradation" feature is set to a low level. In this mode, it effectively removes unwanted artifacts and issues with visible tonal transitions. It may also slightly smooth out some desired details, such as the subtle texture of clothing or skin, but importantly – it does not remove film grain, so it’s hard to say there’s a serious compromise here. It’s one of those options that’s definitely worth enabling.

The G5 also does well with upscaling, which is improving the quality of older materials. The test image with the model looked really solid – slight edging was visible, but that’s an effect that can’t be completely avoided. Additionally, there were no issues with overscan, which – contrary to appearances – is not obvious, even in 2025.

No matter what one may say about the G6's problems with near-black signal, it must be fairly acknowledged that it handles highly compressed material and lower resolution content brilliantly. All unwanted, ugly tonal transitions are effectively reduced here by the “Smooth Gradation” feature. On the “Low” setting, the algorithm operates flawlessly – effectively masking the artifacts resulting from strong compression, without destroying the sharpness and details in the frame. Higher levels of this feature indeed smooth the image even more, but they start to blur the real texture elements of objects, which is why we recommend keeping this slider at a low level. As for the upscaling to 4K, the processor does an excellent job – edge sharpness and detail reconstruction are at the highest level, and in this respect, the G6 does not lag behind the world's best.

The motion fluidity on the LG G5 is simply phenomenal. The TV is equipped with a 165 Hz refresh rate panel, and this combined with the instantaneous response time of the OLED matrix delivers incredible results. The picture doesn’t stutter or smear like on classic LCD TVs. Like most LG models, the G5 features a motion smoother, which can be useful when watching movies – of course, we're talking about the TruMotion mode. With the “De-Blur” and “De-Judder” sliders, we can adjust the smoothness of older material according to our preferences, whether we want to preserve the characteristic film stutter or move towards a more fluid, television-like effect.

The LG G6 is an OLED television, so in the category of motion fluidity, it traditionally deserves the highest ratings. The television supports a very high refresh rate of up to 165 Hz in 4K resolution, but most importantly – you will not see any signs of blurring on the screen. The response time of the panel is incredibly fast, ensuring that dynamic images remain perfectly sharp.

Features for gamers? Perfect. That should be enough for you to know what level we are dealing with here. G5 is a television designed with gamers in mind, so we find literally everything one can expect from a gaming screen. There is Game Bar, support for high resolutions with high refresh rates – that is, 4K at 120 Hz, and even more, because the panel has a refresh rate of 165 Hz (which PC gamers will benefit from). The television supports variable refresh rates (VRR), automatic low latency mode (ALLM), and correctly supports HDR in games thanks to HGiG. All of this adds up to one of the best sets of gaming features available on the market. Well done, LG.

LG G6 is a true monster for gamers and one of the best-equipped TVs in this regard on the market. The manufacturer did not seek compromises and equipped this model with as many as four full HDMI 2.1 ports with a maximum bandwidth of 48 Gbps. This means that no matter which port you plug your PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or powerful PC into, you will extract the absolute maximum from them.

The TV supports a full suite of gaming technologies: from VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), through AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, to Nvidia G-Sync Compatible. Let's add to this the remarkably low, almost imperceptible input lag and a brilliantly functioning gamer panel (Game Optimizer), which allows you to continuously monitor the signal parameters. Gaming on this screen, with the perfect black of OLED and powerful refresh rates, is pure pleasure.