LG A1 cheap OLED TV has an official price, and it's disappointing

LG has revealed the official US prices for much of its 2021 OLED TV range, including the hotly anticipated LG A1, which is set to be the company's cheapest OLED set ever. Sadly, the price isn't quite as cheap as we were hoping, though there's good news elsewhere in LG's range.

The prices for the LG A1, LG C1 and LG G1 have all been confirmed to FlatpanelsHD by LG US. The LG A1 starts from $1,300 for the 48-inch version, with the 55-inch version at $1,600, 65-inch at $2,200, and 77-inch at $3,200.

The LG C1 will cost $1,500 for the 48-inch, $1,800 for 55 inches, $2,500 for 65 inches, $3,800 for 77 inches, and $6,000 for 83 inches.

The LG G1 costs $2,200 for 55 inches, $3,000 for 65 inches and $4,500 for 77 inches… and is worth every penny, as our five-star LG G1 review tells you. It's the best OLED TV available right now, and is a big step up over its predecessor, despite the price coming down a little across the range.

The price of the larger-sized LG C1 and LG G1 screens have come down a lot when compared to the 2020 LG CX and LG GX's respective launch prices (though obviously the cost of the older sets has reduced over time anyway).

But we're concerned about how close the price of the LG A1 is to the LG C1 – especially when you consider that there's still the price of the LG B1 to consider, but hasn't been revealed yet! Given that the A1 55-inch costs $1,600 and the C1 55-inch costs $1,800, we can guess that B1 55-inch will probably come in at $1,700, since it sits between them in terms of features.

Three different models all within $200 of each other? That's just a confusing soup of numbers, rather than a nice clear menu. And will anyone really buy the A1 if you can pay just a sliver more to get the B1's improved image processing and HDMI 2.1 future-proofed connections?

We were hoping that the A1 would represent a big step towards making OLED more affordable, giving the sets in our lists of the best TVs under £1000 and best TVs under $1000 something to really worry about.

And perhaps they still will, since the official prices don't tend to last more than a month or two after release. But so far, it looks like the affordable LG OLED revolution we were hoping for may not arrive in 2021.