LG OLED C9 and CX are set at same price - which one to choose?

[Mortis Angelus]

I've been looking to buy an OLED TV now for quite a time. My goal was to wait for the C9 to drop price significantly. But it is too popular.

 

So now both the C9 and CX are priced at the same price here where I live. Which one to choose?

 

I've been nerding out on reviews from HDTV Test, Rtings, Quantum TV and Digital Trends, but I still cannot make a decision.

 

C9 has that full bandwidth 48 gbps HDMI 2.1, DTS encoding, higher peak brightness and not as aggressive ABL

 

CX has 120 hz BFI, better color accuracy, no yellow tint, theoretically better 4K upscaling, film maker mode

 

It's especially the BFI and color accuracy of the CX that I'm a bit curious about; is it worth it to lose higher peak brightness of the C9?

 

 

 

[Stahlmann]

I'd personally go for the C9, but then again i already have one

 

They are 99% the same, but like you said the C9 has better peak brightness, which is the main thing that differs between them.

 

The 48Gbit vs 40Gbit bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports don't really matter, as both are 10bit panels and 40Gbit is enough to do 4K 120Hz 10bit 4:4:4 HDR.

 

120Hz BFI is not really useful imo, as OLED already has an extremely clear motion picture as it is. BFI only introduces distracting flicker on top of that. If you need BFI for a competitive advantage, you should be thinking about a high-refresh monitor either way.

 

If you invest this much money into a high-end TV, you should probably think about getting it professionally calibrated to get the most out of their color performance. I have the tools to do it myself but you mileage may vary. After that the color accuracity and gamut coverage is the same.

 

Film maker mode is pretty useless then, because to get the best possible picture you should disable most options anyway. (And that's pretty much all it does)

 

The upscaling is already so good on the C9, i can barely tell the difference between 1440p and 4K content. And 1080p is only slightly softer than native 4K. The upscaling is already superb.

 

All in all they are very similar and the biggest (altough still very small) difference between the two is probably the peak brightness. Normally i'd say go for whichever is the cheaper for the size you want. But as they're the same price for you, i'd say the C9 would be the better pick imo.

[porina]

Is gaming a major factor? I own a B9 and last time I checked there hasn't been a firmware released to fix the early reported problems using it with a 30 series GPU. CX has had that firmware release.

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Is gaming a major factor? I own a B9 and last time I checked there hasn't been a firmware released to fix the early reported problems using it with a 30 series GPU. CX has had that firmware release.

These fixes are already out in the latest public firmware on C9 and CX series. My C9 works flawlessly with my 3080 now.

[tikker]

To my knowledge the C9 has BFI, it's just called "OLED Motion" in the TruMotion settings. Don't know how the two models compare. It flickers way to much for me though and I never use it. Seems like you've got your list of pros and cons sorted, so which do you care more about?

4 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

C9 has that full bandwidth 48 gbps HDMI 2.1, DTS encoding, higher peak brightness and not as aggressive ABL

DTS decoding is only relevant if you don't have an AVR or other device that can decode it and consume DTS content. I rarely actually notice ABL kicking in on my C9 and it never bothered me.

5 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

CX has 120 hz BFI, better color accuracy, no yellow tint, theoretically better 4K upscaling, film maker mode

No appreciable yellow tint on my C9 unit, and if there is it's definitely not noticable to me during content consumption. Colour accuracy: do you care for/require it? Can't really speak for it. My C9 looks fine to me. You can look into professional calibration if you really care. Same for film maker mode. Also don't know about upscaling, I use my Nvidia Shield for that.

[Stahlmann]

4 minutes ago, tikker said:

To my knowledge the C9 has BFI, it's just called "OLED Motion" in the TruMotion settings

C9 only doesn 60Hz BFI, CX does 120Hz BFI. That's what OP was asking about.

 

4 minutes ago, tikker said:

No appreciable yellow tint on my C9 unit, and if there is it's definitely not noticable to me during content consumption. Colour accuracy: do you care for/require it? Can't really speak for it. My C9 looks fine to me. You can look into professional calibration if you really care. Same for film maker mode. Also don't know about upscaling, I use my Nvidia Shield for that.

Reviewers say to get the best color performance without calibration you need to set picture mode to "ISF Dark Mode" and color temperature to "Warm 2". This results in a ~5800K whitepoint, which is quite a bit warmer than the standard 6500K. I can confirm that being true with my own C9. The yellow-ish tint is only visible when displaying white. All the other colors look pretty natural. But after a professional calibration that won't matter as it will be calibrated to 6500K either way.

[tikker]

Just now, Stahlmann said:

C9 only doesn 60Hz BFI, CX does 120Hz BFI. That's what OP was asking about.

Ah ok, yeah that's what I referred to as not knowing how the models differed. Good to know.

1 minute ago, Stahlmann said:

Reviewers say to get the best color performance without calibration you need to set color temperature to "Warm 2". This results in a ~5800K whitepoint, which is quite a bit warmer than the standard 6500K.

Ah, I was thinking about the tinting in terms of uniformity. I must admit that I did join the "warm 1 looks better" camp. I didn't calibrated it professionally, and just took Rtings suggestions for settings, but warm 2 is too warm for me. It fits desert scenes, but snowy stuff just look off to me.

[porina]

7 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

These fixes are already out in the latest public firmware on C9 and CX series. My C9 works flawlessly with my 3080 now.

Could I ask which model and firmware version number you're on? I just looked again at the UK and US versions of the B9 and C9 and can't see any specific reference to 30 series fix in the firmware release notes, where I had seen it mentioned on CX in the past. Maybe they rolled it into "general bug fixes" and not separated it out. Still not owning a 30 series card I've not been able to try myself.

 

It being fixed in C9 would take away a potential reason not to consider getting it.

[Mortis Angelus]

16 minutes ago, porina said:

Is gaming a major factor? I own a B9 and last time I checked there hasn't been a firmware released to fix the early reported problems using it with a 30 series GPU. CX has had that firmware release.

Gaming is secondary function as I have my high refresh monitors for that. Main use is for movie watching; home cinema experience. But I will be connecting PC as well for casual gaming. Might be getting a PS5 down the line.

 

 

[Mortis Angelus]

46 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

 

 

120Hz BFI is not really useful imo, as OLED already has an extremely clear motion picture as it is. BFI only introduces distracting flicker on top of that. If you need BFI for a competitive advantage, you should be thinking about a high-refresh monitor either way.

 

If you invest this much money into a high-end TV, you should probably think about getting it professionally calibrated to get the most out of their color performance. I have the tools to do it myself but you mileage may vary. After that the color accuracity and gamut coverage is the same.

 

Film maker mode is pretty useless then, because to get the best possible picture you should disable most options anyway. (And that's pretty much all it does)

 

The upscaling is already so good on the C9, i can barely tell the difference between 1440p and 4K content. And 1080p is only slightly softer than native 4K. The upscaling is already superb.

 

All in all they are very similar and the biggest (altough still very small) difference between the two is probably the peak brightness. Normally i'd say go for whichever is the cheaper for the size you want. But as they're the same price for you, i'd say the C9 would be the better pick imo.

So BFI is really no use then? Movies I will watch in original fps anyways (usually 24 fps) and most other content will be 60 fps on youtube etc. 

 

Gaming will be 1440p 120 hz, as I dont have a HDMI 2.1 GPU yet. And there I guess gaming mode wont allow BFI anyway to keep response times as low as possible? Or am I wrong here?

 

Good to hear about the upscaling; I have some vague memory that the AI upscaling of the CX is quite the hit and miss.

 

I currently dont have any DTS speaker system, but I like to have the option if I want to upgrade down the line though...

 

Professional calibration is definitely something I'll look into, but that would be later on. 

[Stahlmann]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Could I ask which model and firmware version number you're on? I just looked again at the UK and US versions of the B9 and C9 and can't see any specific reference to 30 series fix in the firmware release notes, where I had seen it mentioned on CX in the past. Maybe they rolled it into "general bug fixes" and not separated it out. Still not owning a 30 series card I've not been able to try myself.

 

It being fixed in C9 would take away a potential reason not to consider getting it.

My exact model is the OLED55C97LA. As for the firmware, i'll have to look up the number when i'm home later. It's the latest public firmware in germany. I can say for sure that it starts with 5.XXXXX.

 

With the pre-3080 firmware on the TV my 3080 would not output a signal to the C9 at all. Just a black screen. After the firmware update on my TV it now works flawlessly at 4K 120Hz 12bit 4:4:4 HDR. No issues with G-Sync etc. It's all fixed now.

 

1 hour ago, Mortis Angelus said:

So BFI is really no use then? Movies I will watch in original fps anyways (usually 24 fps) and most other content will be 60 fps on youtube etc. 

 

Gaming will be 1440p 120 hz, as I dont have a HDMI 2.1 GPU yet. And there I guess gaming mode wont allow BFI anyway to keep response times as low as possible? Or am I wrong here?

Gaming mode WILL allow for BFI. But like i said, the flickering will be at 60Hz, so very noticeable on the C9. Idk about the 120Hz flickering on the CX and how noticeable it is, but as OLEDs have sub 1ms pixel response times anyway, you do not need any BFI to further reduce motion blur. I personally found the flickering to be much too distracting for a very little boost in motion clarity in real world use.

 

1 hour ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Good to hear about the upscaling; I have some vague memory that the AI upscaling of the CX is quite the hit and miss.

I don't recall anyone saying it's worse than the C9. Most people say it's on par or at least not noticeably better.

 

1 hour ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Professional calibration is definitely something I'll look into, but that would be later on. 

You should definetly first play around with the TV's settings and see if you're happy with the result. After all professional calibration is not for free. But you can also do it like me and invest the money you'd pay for a calibration and buy the tools for it and learn it yourself. It's especially easy for the C9 and CX, as they support the "AutoCal" feature. You'd need a colorimeter like a i1DisplayPro for ~180€ and the "Calman Home for LG" software for ~100€. It's definetly cheaper than hiring someone to do it for you and you can do it later on again if you have to reset the TV for some reason. For me it was definetly worth it because after the calibration there is noticeably more detail in dark scenes. Another plus is that you can use the colorimeter to calibrate your future displays too. Also your PC monitors.

[Mortis Angelus]

36 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

 

You should definetly first play around with the TV's settings and see if you're happy with the result. After all professional calibration is not for free. But you can also do it like me and invest the money you'd pay for a calibration and buy the tools for it and learn it yourself. It's especially easy for the C9 and CX, as they support the "AutoCal" feature. You'd need a colorimeter like a i1DisplayPro for ~180€ and the "Calman Home for LG" software for ~100€. It's definetly cheaper than hiring someone to do it for you and you can do it later on again if you have to reset the TV for some reason. For me it was definetly worth it because after the calibration there is noticeably more detail in dark scenes. Another plus is that you can use the colorimeter to calibrate your future displays too. Also your PC monitors.

Thanks for the insight. As a former photographer and content creator I do own Xrite ColorMunki already and have my PC monitors calibrated. I didn't know they used that kind of hardware for TVs too. Thought they hade some other fancier stuff. Will colormunki work with Calman Pro to, do you think?

 

EDIT: Just checked: Of course the Colormunki DOES NOT work with Calman Home...

 

Is AutoCal now available for CX as well? I thought that was unavailable for CX according to Quantum TV? Or has that been added in firmware update then?

[Stahlmann]

13 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Thanks for the insight. As a former photographer and content creator I do own Xrite ColorMunki already and have my PC monitors calibrated. I didn't know they used that kind of hardware for TVs too. Thought they hade some other fancier stuff. Will colormunki work with Calman Pro to, do you think?

Yes, it's supported. You can also have a look at Calman Home for LG - Consumer Software (portrait.com)

 

 

13 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Is AutoCal now available for CX as well? I thought that was unavailable for CX according to Quantum TV? Or has that been added in firmware update then?

Also yes. According to RTINGS.com it's supported: LG CX OLED Review (OLED48CXPUB, OLED55CXPUA, OLED65CXPUA, OLED77CXPUA) - RTINGS.com

 

All in all the calibration process takes me around 20 minutes for 1 picture mode. It's very easy to do and portrait displays also has tutorial videos on youtube specifically for the LG C9. Basically i calibrated the following modes:

 

For SDR content:

"Game" mode for gaming

"ISF Expert Dark" for content consumption

 

For HDR content:

"Game" mode for gaming

"Cinema" for content consuption

 

For Dolby Vision content:

"Cinema" for content consumption

(Currently no game supports Dolby Vision afaik, so didn't calibrate "Dolby Vision Game mode")

 

Basically around 1.5 hours of work to calibrate all important picture modes.

[Stahlmann]

16 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

EDIT: Just checked: Of course the Colormunki DOES NOT work with Calman Home...

Isn't it the one on the bottom of the list in my last post?

[Exidor]

Honestly I do not think you will see much of a difference.

I got the CX as it was the only model available in 48inches I am one of those weirdos who uses it on a desk......

 

Not having DTS is really annoying as it cant even bit stream forward it over EARC and as there are no sanely priced HDMI 2.1 receiver options out there and they do not really fit on a table and there are no HDMI 2.1 soundbars this is an issue that annoys me.

 

As for picture quality it seams they are about the same. I even thing that the new C1 might be pretty much the same panel..... They seem to have reserved the new brighter panel for their G line and up......

 

Cant say how much of a brightness difference there is between a C9 and CX what I can say is that for gaming HDR is mostly garbage so the peak brightness rarely comes into play.

[Mortis Angelus]

8 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Isn't it the one on the bottom of the list in my last post?

Apparently. Just said when I googled that it wouldnt work. If it would work I could actually do it myself

 

[Stahlmann]

19 hours ago, Exidor said:

Cant say how much of a brightness difference there is between a C9 and CX what I can say is that for gaming HDR is mostly garbage so the peak brightness rarely comes into play.

You just have to find the right games. Assasins Creed Odyssey and Valhalla, as well as Final Fantasy 15 look awesome in HDR.

[Exidor]

17 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

You just have to find the right games. Assasins Creed Odyssey and Valhalla, as well as Final Fantasy 15 look awesome in HDR.

Have not tried the others.

But Valhalla did not impress me. Too many near black issues. Ultimately I preferred it in SDR....

But I am sure as game engines get updated and new engines introduced HDR will get better. Most games sadly are right now just upscaled to HDR not truly rendered in HDR.

 

Also Windows HDR implementation still sucks

 

 

But both are great screens over all

[Mortis Angelus]

Just wanted to say, I just ordered the C9. Thanks everyone for your input and thoughts!

 

@Stahlmann, if I may, can we stay in contact in DM regarding that calibration further down the line? 

[Stahlmann]

4 hours ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Just wanted to say, I just ordered the C9. Thanks everyone for your input and thoughts!

 

@Stahlmann, if I may, can we stay in contact in DM regarding that calibration further down the line? 

Sure, if you get it and wanna try just DM me. I'll be glad to help!