Gadgetory

okay so LG recently sent me a sample of their c9 their OLED for kc9 TV this is the successor to their very popular c8 model from 2018 this is the new 2019 model and there's already been a lot of content floating around the internet about this TV and how it performs for home here purposes watching movies and you know Netflix streaming and all that sort of thing but today I'm gonna specifically focus on gaming content and what it's like to game on this behemoth of a TV for years there's been a growing interest in gaming in the living room where from a couch whether it be on a console or PC today I'm gonna mainly focus on PC gaming because that's kind of what we're mostly about here on the channel but I'll also touch on some console details as well the LG OLED c9 is a 4k native 120 Hertz refresh rate display it can do both of those specs simultaneously over its single HDMI 2.14 it's got a couple other HDMI 2.0 ports as well but the 2.1 is a new addition on the c9 that was not available on the c 8 well this is super exciting at first glance unfortunately you can't actually utilize that on a PC because the current generation of r-tx graphics cards from Nvidia and even the RX Vega GPUs from AMD do not support 4k 120 Hertz over HDMI 2.1 they only support it over there DisplayPort 1.4 connection which is a port that the TV completely lacks display ports just not very common on TVs I wish that would change very soon what this means is even a high-end gaming PC can only game on this TV at a maximum of 4k 60 Hertz or 1440p 120 Hertz and that's over the HDMI 2.0 B connection that both of those video card families have unfortunately AMD's upcoming rx 5700 series GPUs are also not going to be getting an HDMI 2.1 treatment from the looks of it they're gonna be using a very similar display controller as the RX Vega series so that kind of sucks doubling down on the bad news the LG c9 also lacks any kind of free sync support although it does have HDMI vrr variable refresh rate that is an HDMI form spec that is similar to free sync but it's not free sync and it doesn't currently work with any pcs in fact as of now at the time of filming the only device that can really let this technology with this display is the Xbox one and yes the Xbox one only has an hdmi 2.0 port but early last year there was a software update that allowed that port to take advantage of certain limited hdmi 2.1 features such as hdmi vrr and free sink of course while it's not listed on the manufacturers page i've seen several articles pointing out that the refresh rate range is 40 to 120 Hertz with hdmi brr which isn't great at least on the low end but it's better than nothing what's kind of frustrating is that the Xbox one doesn't really have the horsepower to drive most games at 120 FPS at 4k so it seems like kind of a wasted technology on this platform however there's the whole streaming and media consumption thing where if you can find 4k 120 FPS content for video playback for example then the platform is going to support it and that's kind of cool that being said we should see HDMI 2.1 in full effect on the next generation of consoles which will be more equips to actually push those boundaries the other feature that hdmi 2.1 brings to the table is a llm or auto low latency mode which automatically kicks your TV into its low input lag state a lot of TVs call this game mode but it'll automatically kick it into that mode anytime it detects a supporting device is being fired up so it just kind of saves you a couple extra steps of having to go into your TV settings and selecting game mode anytime you want to jump into a game now this would not be a content piece on OLED technology without talking about black levels because right now OLED displays are the undisputed champ when it comes to producing the richest purest truest blacks on the market of course we've got micro LED technology which is supposed to offer a lot of the benefits but none of the the risks of screen burnin that OLED has however it's still a very new technology that's very expensive and so it's gonna be a while until the pricing on that comes down to be a more mainstream tech that is truly competitive with OS but only pixels are awesome because they each produce and emit their own light source instead of relying on a backlight with local dimming zones like an LED LCD display does you can independently turn on and off pixels that are side-by-side right next to each other so you effectively have perfect contrast without any kind of halo effect that's found on other panel tech if you've never witnessed it in person it's absolutely jaw-dropping the first time you see it regardless of the medium whether it be TV streaming blu-ray gaming when I was playing Resident Evil 2 during this test I was blown away how much more clearly I could see enemies lurking in the shadows or darker areas of the environment because of how phenomenally good the contrast was another perfect example is at the cinematography from The Game of Thrones Battle of Winterfell episode looks phenomenal you can actually watch it you can see everything that's going on in peer detail it looks so good and it's much more enjoyable to watch unfortunately it doesn't do anything to help the writing this is easily the biggest selling point of oled displays like the c9 and it's exactly why people put up with the risks of burnin because the image quality looks so much better than anything they've ever seen previously throwing a game up on one of these screens looks infinitely better not just compared to an LED LCD TV equivalent but even the most top-of-the-line high-end $1200 curved IPS or VA gaming monitors out there pale in comparison to how a game looks on one of these TVs and speaking of there's another big trick up the c9 sleeve that current high-end gaming monitors just don't have and that is true HDR support I mean we've got support for HDR 10 hlg advanced the HDR dolby vision all crabbed into this beautiful unit to deliver true HD our experiences and images not like the HDR 400 specs that you see on gaming monitors that quite frankly looks like garbage most of the time now there's a bit of a caveat here in the sense that HDR comes at a cost of additional bandwidth bandwidth that we have a limited amount of over our HDMI 2.0 B connection which is about 18 gigabits per second after fiddling around with the settings in a video control panel I was able to get HDR working in Windows 10 at 4k 60 Hertz 12 bit with 4 to 0 chroma subsampling now bear in mind you can crank any of these settings up and down to your heart's content as long as you're staying within the bandwidth limitations so for a faster gaming experience I was able to get HT are working at 1080p 120 Hertz with RGB subsampling at 12 bit color depth a point of confusion for me here is that the LG c 9 is a native 10 bit panel yet there was no tended option in Nvidia control panel I only have the options for 8 or 12 bit I'm not exactly sure how we get to 12 bit with a 10 bit perhaps there's some dithering going on here that I don't know about at any rate I'm not gonna complain about more color depth so I just took it for what it was and moved on and I mean just the end result in action is mind-blowing I mean look at these before and after screenshots of Shadow the Tomb Raider which is an officially HDR supported game absolutely stunning the images kind of speak for themselves there was a breathtaking improvement here that that extended the reach of the highlights and the shadows and the colors just across the whole spectrum it really gave life to the environment and it just makes the image pop it's pure ecstasy for your eyes it should be outlawed the results in battlefield 5 which also supports the HDR were equally awesome however there was a capturing issue or any time I tried to capture the gameplay with OBS or xsplit or even do a print screen the outputted file did not look anything like what I was seeing on screen and my wife confirmed bitch he's like nope there's something wrong so the best I could do is point a camera at it and show you guys that way but I know that's kind of useless so sorry about that but rest assured the dynamic range was vastly improved and what I noticed in battlefield 5 specifically is that objects that are supposed to be bright are bright looking you look directly into the Sun or the street lamps that's you know reflecting light off of the snow it's actually bright you kind of have to squint a little bit so you're really getting a broader sense not just of colors but of like peak luminance and everything coming together just looks so much nicer and and much more immersive now if you're a serious gamer you're probably not just interested in how the panel looks but how fast it is as well unfortunately the pixels on this OLED display are incredibly fast our teams found that a 100 percent color to color transition took 2.4 milliseconds that's really really good even for a gaming monitor not just by TV standards what this super fast pixel motion response translates to is effectively zero perceptible motion blur it doesn't matter if I was dancing around like a monkey in Doom or doing 360 noscopes or trying to in a game like csgo everything was completely sharp no motion blur whatsoever it's awesome input lag which is something a lot of TVs suffer from Granite's been getting better with low input lag states like game mode and such the input lag here is equally impressive again these numbers are from our tanks comm we have 13 milliseconds at 4k 60 Hertz and just 6 to 7 milliseconds whether you're yep 1080p or 1440p at a hundred and twenty Hertz the gaming experience at 4k 60 Hertz is plenty fast for my needs it's gonna be more than adequate for the majority of gamers the super responsive however if you're privy to even more speed lowering the resolution say the 1440p so you can up the refresh rate to 120 Hertz makes this thing in absolute animal it is so fast at 120 Hertz this thing rivals the most high-end sought-after gaming monitors tailored for speed that are on the market here in 2019 it's it's ridiculous how fast this display is plus you're getting those inky black contrast levels and that true HDR support altogether this is the best gaming display that you can put inside your living room but to be fair let's address the the number one reason why most people might say not to game on an OLED display screen burnin which is basically permanent image retention it's the infamous Achilles heel of OLED panels and this can be caused from having the same static image on screen for really long periods of time and eventually that static image will leave a ghosting residue of sorts that will permanently be baked into the screen some examples of this might be like a TV network logo that's wedged into the corner of the screen it's just sitting there or on the gaming side I always imagine like a HUD like an in-game HUD whether it be a mini-map or whatever else are Tings found that just four to five thousand hours of a static image being shown on screen was enough to cause burnin but you have to bear in mind that these are extreme use case scenarios for our team's testing they actually had the same static image on screen for 20 hours a day for days on end until it racked up about 4 to 5 thousand hours however many days that that translates to so unless you fall under that extreme use case scenario most users are gonna be completely fine and safe from screen burnin especially because there's a lot more technology built into these TVs now manufacturers like LG and Sony have integrated new technologies to help alleviate and prevent burnin from happening but I think the biggest defense against the screen burnin in my opinion is mindful usage if you're mindful and conscientious of how you're using your TV making sure not to let any logos or static images on screen for too long that's really the best preventative you can take to avoiding burnin altogether one example on the gaming side is that if you play a title with a static HUD you might be able to go into the game settings and adjust the brightness or the opacity of said HUD or remove it entirely if you don't absolutely need it and this would obviously help eliminate any possibility of screen burnin occurring from that particular object when it comes down to it burnin is not a myth it's a very real serious issue but it's also an issue that only affects a very small percentage of users and if you think you might be susceptible to burnin because of your viewing habits then OLED Tech is probably not for you and you should look for something else that being said if you're willing to use your TV with a degree of caution and be more mindful with how you use it I firmly believe that the performance benefits you get in exchange are very well worth it again the two major shortcomings of this TV as a gaming display include the lack of any variable or fresh trade technology that's supported on PC which is understandably a deal-breaker for some people and the fact that there's currently no way to game at 4k 120 Hertz on a PC if that's the spec you're trying to hit however if you can live with those compromises I would 110 percent recommend this display for gaming there's probably other OLED TVs on the market that will come close to even match the OLED C 9 but for the most part this is it this is the ceiling if you're trying to game from your couch but that's it guys let me know what you think about this thing in the comments if you have any experiences with OLED Zoar burnin yourself feel free to let us know down below and toss a like on this video if you enjoyed it helps a lot get subscribed to the channel for more tech stuff coming at you really soon and I will see you guys in the next video