LG’s 2025 OLED TVs are its best yet — but they risk going overboard with AI

At least when it comes to making TVs, LG apparently can do no wrong. Year after year, the company’s OLED sets are at the top of the list of recommendations of most critics. They have overcome the Achilles heel of older models – brightness – thanks to smart innovations such as the Micro Lens Array, which made the G3 and last year’s G4 bright enough to make HDR shine in any viewing environment.

So it should come as no surprise that LG’s 2025 OLED TV lineup is raising the bar again. At the top of the line is the M5, which is the latest series to use the company’s Zero Connect Box for a wireless link between the TV screen and your game consoles, streaming boxes, and other external devices. The M5 will come in 65, 77, 83 and 97 inch sizes. The Zero Connect Box is an impressive trick that, by all accounts, works quite well. This year the wireless connection is apparently even more reliable. But no one really needs what you do. So I tend to see the G series as LG’s most practical flagship for consumers.

Fortunately for us TV nerds, the G5 is (somehow) getting even brighter. LG says its latest Brightness Booster Ultimate technology “improves the light control architecture and light enhancement algorithms to achieve three times higher brightness than conventional OLED models.” (For context, that comparison is made with OLEDs that not includes the Micro Lens Array technology found in the M5 and G5.) LG is also pushing the refresh rate on its premium G5 up to 165Hz, which it says is an industry first, offering a new level of smooth gameplay for the pc. crowd You can get the G5 in sizes ranging from 55 inches to 83 inches. There are also 48-inch and 97-inch models, but those will not provide the same maximum brightness.

Both higher-end models feature LG’s latest Alpha 11 Gen 2 processor, which improves image processing and upscaling to make lower bitrate content look as beautiful as possible on these 4K screens. LG says many of those processing tricks are also trickling down to the more mainstream C5. With so many people watching Internet TV services and other streaming content these days, that magic sauce can make a noticeable difference. Sony is known to be the best in the game in this, but LG has made great strides in recent years.

This year’s Magic Remote no longer has a dedicated input button. In what could be a controversial decision, LG makes the Home Hub button pull double duty: you can press it to reach the webOS Home Hub dashboard or hold down the button to bring up your list of inputs. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s still another thing to remember for a fundamental TV interaction.

And then comes the avalanche of AI features. The usual AI Picture Pro and AI Sound Pro optimization modes are present. The C5 series gets the same 11.1.2-channel virtualized surround sound that debuted in the G4 last year. LG is also expanding on the The press assistant introduced two years agowhere viewers choose from a series of images to land on their ideal image settings, with a similar process for audio.

But this year, the AI ​​focus is much, much bigger than that. LG has a new “LG AI” brand – this is where the mic button is now activated. Oh, I’m sorry. Did I call it the Magic Remote before? The remote has been rebranded as the AI ​​Remote. And there’s a damn LLM chatbot built into these TVs. Hell, even Microsoft’s Copilot is thrown away.

The risk LG is taking here is getting in the way and pushing this stuff to customers too aggressively. The company’s OLEDs are some of the best TVs on the market. They offer brilliant visuals with every feature that home theater enthusiasts want. In 2025, that includes an enhanced Filmmaker Mode that takes your room’s ambient lighting into account and adjusts picture settings accordingly – while making sure to “maintain the filmmaker’s original intent.”

For its part, LG claims that the latest webOS homescreen is faster and easier to use. And the company has promised to keep software updates coming over the next five years, as our smartphones gain new features over time.

However, at this stage, I find myself putting with webOS and spend most of my usage time in a different interface – be it Apple TV, Google TV, or something else. Hopefully LG’s mega push into AI won’t be too heavy-handed, but we’ll have to see how it all comes together once the 2025 TV lineup starts shipping this spring. If customers find that their usual flows are interrupted by AI tricks, there may be some complaints.

We’ll have a much better idea of ​​how LG AI fits into these superb TVs—and whether it ultimately undercuts them—when the OLED M5, G5, C5, and B5 hit stores in a few months. Then, we also know how much they cost.