Way back in January, LG announced plans to make its biggest and best OLED TV – all 97 inches of it. And now it's real, and even smarter than we expected. The new TV is called the LG OLED.EX, it's bigger than the biggest and best TVs from its rivals, and if you have to ask the price you can't afford it.
The EX bit is LG's next generation OLED technology, which LG says boosts brightness by 30%, delivers even more accurate visuals and enables LG to make TVs with even smaller bezels - down to 4mm from 6mm in 65-inch TVs.
OLEDs contain elements of hydrogen, but in EX displays LG has switched to deuterium. That's an isotope of hydrogen and it degrades much more slowly over time, prolonging the life and quality of panels. LG has also developed a new algorithm for more precise control of each individual OLED.
There's something pretty interesting going on behind the display too.
The LG OLED.EX TV sounds as good as it looks
This new LG OLED.EX has what LG calls Film CSO, which is short for Cinematic Sound OLED. There's a 5.1-channel sound system inside the TV with positional audio that vibrates specific bits of the panel to make the audio appear to be coming from whoever's speaking or shooting. We've seen similar systems in the best Sony TVs and while it's not likely to be more convincing than a set with one of the best soundbars or best AV receivers, anything that makes flat screens sound better is a worthwhile improvement.
We are of course in very premium 8K territory here; this TV is even bigger than the absolutely massive LG Z1, our pick of LG's best 8K TVs; if you want the 88-inch version of its successor, the LG Z2, you can expect to pay £24,999.98 (although you can get 5% off if you sign up to LG's mailing list). So it's a safe bet you won't find LG's 97-inch OLED among our best TV deals any time soon. But for those of us with more modest budgets it's an interesting glimpse at the OLED tech that might be available in smaller panels when it's time to upgrade our existing TVs.
