LG C3 OLED TV First Impressions

We decided to upgrade our family room's TV after the 55" Vizio P55 set we've been using for the last five years started to develop some display glitches. Vizio got out of the Canadian market a couple of years ago and they aren't providing the firmware updates that could have fixed the issues we were experiencing. I also wanted a bigger screen.

After looking at several sets, we decided on a 65" LG C3 OLED TV. I wanted an OLED set for the improved picture quality and the 65" set was about as big as we could go in our room. While pricier than LED sets, the C3 is almost a budget set these days as the price has come down by about $1500 from where this level of set was a few years ago.

Physically, the C3 is an improvement over the Vizio in several ways. The bezels are almost nonexistent, it's lighter, and the sound from the built-in speakers is better, even without LG's AI processing, which I haven't yet enabled. (We run the TV through a home theatre receiver with 5.1 speakers, so rarely use the TV speakers alone). The set does have a glossy screen, so reflections are more of an issue than they were with the Vizio; this is something we will have to keep in mind if we renovate the room, but it's not a problem right now.

Setup was straightforward and everything worked as expected (once we corrected a mismatched HDMI cable that we'd somehow mixed up). The picture quality is excellent, as we expected. Right now we're just using the default Standard or Cimema modes. The set has a gazillion options for changing the settings, but I don't intend to change the defaults; for now they seem adequate. I should note that there is one change that is important to make; turning off the power saving mode makes a noticeable improvement in the brightness level. 

There are some things I don't like that aren't related to the set itself.

• The Magic Remote (LG's name, not mine!) is not backlit, which is a major disappointment in a fairly expensive set. The onscreen cursor is more annoying than useful and can't be disabled.
• LG's ThinQ Android app is awful. It can be used in place of the remote, but half the time it refuses to connect to the TV. Setting the TV to allow power on and off using the app causes the app to refuse to connect to the TV. And it just functions as a remote; unlike the Vizio app, the menu options don't show up in the app itself, so you have to keep looking back and forth between the phone and the screen to make changes. Ridiculous in 2023. Do better, LG. 
• LG's website registration failed every time I tried to use it (including when I tried to register my new monitor a couple of weeks ago). I ended up having to call support to register the TV and monitor.

So overall it's a very nice television at a reasonable price (especially if you can get it on sale as we did) but the experience of using it is degraded by the remote and app.