I’ve owned a lot of material possessions in my life. And I’ve never loved one even close to as much as my 77-inch LG G3 OLED. What. A. TV. It’s so ludicrously good, I can just about get over the fact I bought it three months too early and missed out on some seriously epic Black Friday deals last fall. But I have good news for you.
Right now, the LG “77 G3 OLED 4K TV is $3,499 at Best Buy. That’s an impressive $800 price drop from the $4,299 it usually retails for. If you’re looking for a smaller model, the LG “65 G3 OLED 4K TV is reduced to $2,229 at Best Buy — $700 from the regular $2,999 retail price. Still a bit too big? The LG “55 G3 OLED 4K TV is on sale for $1,899 at Best Buy, which is a juicy saving of $200, as it normally goes for $1,499.
Throughout the years I’ve owned an unreasonable number of LG OLED televisions. What’s “unreasonable”, you ask? Probably close to ten in the last decade. Yes, my beleaguered bank balance does hate me. My constantly bewitched eyes could care less, though, because the LG G3 OLED is comfortably the best TV I’ve ever owned.
What makes the LG G3 so special and such a radical improvement over its close sibling (the still excellent) LG C3 OLED? An extremely clever combination of hardware and software. The G3 is the first OLED television LG has ever produced that contains a Micro Lens Array (MLA) panel. It then combines this extraordinary screen tech with an algorithm known as META. The combined results produce an OLED TV that is comfortably brighter than any other LG OLED.
I was lucky enough to own the LG C2 OLED, which we considered to be the best TV available here at Tom’s Guide for most of its first year on sale. But if you pitted the non-MLA model up against the G3 in a boxing match, the older model would be looking up at little birdies in round one. If that sounds hyperbolic, it’s really not. The numbers tell the story. Without Micro Lens Array — a process that involves placing billions of convex lenses on top of an existing OLED screen — the LG C2 can only achieve peak HDR brightness of around 800 nits, while the G3 is capable of reaching 1,361 nits. Having owned both TVs, I can tell you that the difference is stark and immediately apparent.
With its incredible brightness levels and infinite blacks, the LG G3 OLED is an incredibly good TV to watch the best Netflix movies on. It’s also a phenomenal screen for gaming. With four HDMI 2.1 ports capable of displaying a 4K/120Hz signal, Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and support for both Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium, TVs simply don’t come any more loaded with gaming-friendly features than this. And if you switch the G3 to Game Mode, it outputs just 5.5ms of input lag at 4K/120Hz. That’s super low (and subsequently super buttery) for a TV.
As such, it’s pretty much the perfect TV to pair with either a PS5 or Xbox Series X. Games like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Tekken 8 and even The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on the underpowered Nintendo Switch look startlingly vibrant on the G3. I’m particularly impressed by how good Link’s latest adventure looks on my TV, because a lot of the time sub-1080p Switch games can look rough on a set of this size. Trust me, I’ve owned two other 77-inch LG OLEDs before the G3 and both made Super Mario Odyssey borderline unplayable to my obsessive eyes. That’s not the case with the G3. The upscaling is so good on this “Gallery Series” panel, it handles 1080p signals confidently, making them crisp but not too sharp.
If space is at a premium and you can’t fit the 77-inch LG G3 OLED into your home, I’d heartily recommend the deals above for either of the 65- or 55-inch inch models. Functionally, they’re identical to the 77” edition, though you should know you’ll need to buy a separate stand from LG if you’re not planning to wall mount your screen. Still, that’s a minor blemish on what’s otherwise a masterpiece of an OLED TV.
