The LG C2 is one of the most anticipated TVs of the year, and finally some price info and a possible launch time has appeared on UK retailer John Lewis for the 48-inch model… and the news is both better and worse than we expected.
• See the LG C2 page at John Lewis
Spotted by Vincent Teoh and posted to his Twitter account, John Lewis now has a pre-order page for the 48-inch LG C2 with a price of £1,399 – which is higher than the £1,299 that last year's LG C1 launched at.
That's the less welcome news. The good news is that John Lewis is estimating delivery within 5 weeks, which is much faster than we expected to see this TV appear! That would put it in early March – we thought a spring launch was most likely, but possibly more like April or May.
Of course, the crucial word in John Lewis' "Expected delivery within 5 weeks" line is "expected" – it doesn't sound certain yet, but we assume John Lewis has a pretty good idea of what's coming and when.
LG C2 price rise: unwanted, but probably fair
Given how the price of the best OLED TVs has been dropping recently, we're obviously not over the moon to see a year-on-year price rise with the LG C2, but given the level of inflation currently, it's not really a surprise, and is probably representative of the market generally right now.
And the LG C2 includes a more advanced screen than the LG C1 – it has the brighter OLED Evo panel that powered the LG G1 last year, but it's much cheaper than the G2 was, so you're still getting improved picture quality for less than it used to cost. We just held out hope that this upgrade would come at the same launch price as the previous model, given that people's spending power isn't rising as quickly as inflation.
This also means that the new 42-inch LG C2 model is unlikely to launch at a very cheap price – it would've been exciting to see it in the list of the best TVs under £1000 at launch, but we suspect this means it'll be more like £1,299 itself.
We're basing that estimate on the fact that this is the first ever 42-inch OLED 4K TV, and when the first LG 48-inch OLED 4K TV launched a couple of years ago, it basically cost the same as the 55-inch model, due to how hard it was to produce.
If the prices here are all higher than you'd like to pay, then keep your eye on the LG C1 over the next few weeks – it's recently hit its lowest ever prices, presumably as LG looks to clear stock out for when the C2 replaces it. That'll mean more bargains while stocks last!
