If you missed it yesterday, LG announced an 88-inch 8K OLED TV and it’s mind-bogglingly beautiful. To say I’m stoked to see it in person would be an understatement. But, we’re not here to talk about the 8K OLED behemoth from LG, we’re here to talk about its upcoming 2018 lineup of 4K TVs.
LG has long been one of the standards for 4K HDR with its OLED technology. Coming back this year is its “Wallpaper” OLED TV which is both beautiful and insanely priced. Hopefully, we’ll start to see pricing come down on the super thin TVs like this, as I would love to add one to my personal home theater setup.
One of the biggest additions to the 2018 lineup of LG TVs is Google Assistant support. This isn’t just support of being able to “Cast” items to your LG TV, but full interaction with Google Assistant through LG’s webOS platform. This will allow you to do everything that Google Assistant can do on your phone, from hailing an Uber to plotting your route to work in the morning while checking traffic.
Powering LG’s 2018 TV lineup is the company’s new a9 processor. The a9 will be in LG’s higher-end TVs like the W8, E8, and C8 TVs. If you buy a “lower” model (we say “lower” as they’re all fantastic options), there will be a slightly scaled down version of the a9 in your television.
The faster processor here allows your new TV to process the picture much better and give you sharper images. It also allows the new Google Assistant features to process quickly. LG has also announced support for Amazon’s Alexa services, though we don’t know exactly to what extent the integration will be, we expect to see more at CES next week.
One area that LG is upping its game is with its full-array local dimming which gives much better color accuracy. HDR is also supported with Dolby Vision, HLG, HDR10, and Advanced HDR by Technicolor. There is no word on when or if LG will ever support HDR10+.
Another aspect that I’m super excited about is high frame rate support. This means that LG’s 2018 lineup of TVs will support content at a native 120 frames per second. Though it’s rare to find 120FPS 4K video support, that’s something I don’t expect to be too far away.
With HDMI 2.1 not being supported, sadly this means that the only option for 120FPS content will be from streaming. There won’t be any way to get 120FPS content from future consoles or media players into the TV until HDMI 2.1 is fully supported.
LG’s 2018 TV lineup has a wide range of features. You’ll see things like local dimming, 4K active HDR, 4K cinema HDR, high frame rate, Google Assistant, Dolby Atmos and more in this new selection of TVs.
I’m most excited to see the LG E8 TV, which is a 4K OLED panel that’s dubbed “Picture-on-Glass”. It has built-in Dolby Atmos 60-watt 4.2 channel audio, 4K cinema HDR and 4K high frame rate, and Google Assistant.
Pricing is not yet available on LG’s 2018 TV lineup, but we can expect more information to come from CES 2018 in just a few short days.
Be sure to stay tuned for more CES 2018 coverage from Electronicsforward, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.
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