When the LG G5 OLED TV was introduced at CES 2025, you’d have struggled to take away the Cheshire Cat grin from my face. The G5’s introduction of a new panel type, which promised vastly improved image high quality, had me past giddy with pleasure. And our LG G5 review helps this, taking on from the place the earlier two generations of LG’s flagship OLED TV – the G3 and G4 – left off. I’ve used them each and believed them to be among the many best TVs I’ve personally laid eyes on.
Alongside its new TV, LG additionally revealed a totally redesigned Magic Distant – the primary overhaul in the most effective a part of a decade. Between the 2, I assumed LG was on the right track to ship the last word home-viewing expertise.
After residing with the G5 for a few weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that the display is actually out of this world. The distant, although? It doesn’t reside as much as my expectations.
My US-based colleague Al Griffin, who additionally wrote our TV evaluate, just lately opined of his love for the new Magic Remote design, however I’m of the alternative opinion. It’s not due to the bodily redesign (though I do have ideas on that), however due to the choice to take away sure buttons I discovered genuinely helpful, then changing them with ones which are ceaselessly going to go untouched… at the least in my family.
Controversial design is useless, lengthy reside controversial design
I do know the earlier distant management has been subjected to its fair proportion of controversy, particularly resulting from its means to behave as a pointer wand to shortly transfer across the display to click on on apps and channels.
I’ve not often used this characteristic as a result of I’ve discovered it to be counterintuitive. It’s meant to make navigation and choices fast and simple however, in my expertise, the alternative is true. As a substitute, I override the distant’s pure want to behave as a pointer and use the directional buttons to maneuver across the webOS interface.
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I’m not precisely shocked that the pointer wand has been retained with the brand new Magic Distant, and I’m nonetheless utilizing the directional buttons to override it. What’s modified barely with the brand new design, although, is the central choose button – which retains its scroll wheel performance – feels much less reassuring to me every time I select. I simply don’t get the identical suggestions as I did with the earlier distant.
The general bodily design has modified, too. Gone is the elongated, rounded wand, now changed with a extra rectangular affair. I agree the brand new look is extra trendy and, to an extent, extra premium-looking, however I discover it to be much less ergonomic than earlier than. There’s now not a devoted cutout for fingers to naturally relaxation. It’s a minor downside, positive, however I really feel it makes a distinction in use, particularly if I select to make use of the pointer possibility to maneuver across the display.
Button down
New form apart, the most important change to the up to date LG Magic Distant is a refreshed button format. Not solely do a few the buttons discover themselves in new positions, however some helpful ones from the earlier distant have been changed with some that I’ve to date discovered to be solely superfluous.
LG, like so many different corporations lately, has gone huge on AI with its 2025 TVs. Chief among the many new options is having the ability to summon LG’s AI Chatbot that can assist you with any question you may need. These can embody you telling it that you just discover the image too darkish, which leads to the Chatbot mentioning some image brightness choices so that you can select from.
I can perceive that this could possibly be a helpful characteristic for some customers, however I’ve to date discovered LG’s preset image modes – Filmmaker Mode mostly – to be excellent and with out want for additional adjustment.
Or at the least, that’s the intention of voicing a immediate similar to this. It labored throughout an LG demonstration I used to be witness to earlier than the G5’s official launch and it labored once I first took supply of it at residence. However once I was taking pictures for this text, I prompted the chatbot with the identical line and every time it diverted me to the TV’s built-in media participant. I’ve nonetheless but to find out why.
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I additionally tried asking “What’s new on Netflix?” and, whereas it did open the Netflix app, it looked for ‘new’ which simply returned outcomes with new within the title, quite than just lately added content material.
Because it has built-in AI, I wished to see if LG’s Chatbot might reply to prompts that weren’t TV-related. I requested the straightforward query “what’s 2 + 2?” and it did in actual fact pull up an online browser web page with the proper reply. However once I requested “which nation has essentially the most time zones together with its abroad territories?” it returned outcomes from the LG Gallery+ wallpaper library, together with a hyperlink to ask Microsoft Copilot.
General, then, my experiences with LG’s AI Chatbot have been lower than passable, making it a redundant characteristic in my family and, by extension, the button too.
LG additionally clearly needs house owners to make use of its shiny new TV as a hub for related sensible gadgets across the residence. As such, there’s now a devoted button to open the corporate’s ThinQ display.
I’ve a good few sensible lights in my residence, however I management all of them through the Apple Dwelling app on my iPhone. It’s a quick and seamless course of, one which I can’t ever see myself altering. Whereas I had forgotten the LG G5 could possibly be used as a house hub, the method of controlling my lights through the TV requires extra steps than it does to make use of my telephone.
There you go, one other button that’s not often going to get any use. And I do imply ‘not often’ as a result of the one time I’ve accessed the Dwelling Hub through the distant is to vary inputs as a result of LG has determined to take away the enter choose management.
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Uh-huh, one other helpful button gone. Simply how a lot of a hindrance this can be to house owners will rely upon what number of (if any) exterior gadgets are related and the way they’re related.
I at present have a Sony UBP-X700 Blu-ray participant and an Nvidia Protect Professional plugged into my TV and each have HDMI CEC enabled, which means when both is switched on, the enter will mechanically change.
Nevertheless, I’ve been in conditions the place I’ve wished to check image or sound high quality between the Blu-ray participant and the Nvidia, for instance, and that is when an input-select button could be helpful. Now I’ve to press the Dwelling Hub button, then transfer the cursor to the enter I need to choose. I actually do miss the quick-access enter menu that appeared alongside the underside of the display on earlier LG OLED TVs.
What’s additionally lacking is a devoted mute button. Whether or not it’s loud adverts or I need to shortly reduce the quantity to listen to my associate ask me a query, having a mute button on the earlier distant was invaluable.
After I first went to mute the quantity of my G5 utilizing the brand new distant, I assumed it labored in the same strategy to Samsung distant controls, in the truth that urgent the quantity button inwards would do it. How flawed I used to be. Now, if you wish to mute, it’s good to maintain the quantity button down for a number of seconds. Once more, a minor change, however one which I don’t fairly perceive the necessity for. Simply give me again the mute button!
A missed charging alternative
There’s one characteristic inherited from the outdated distant that has me a bit of puzzled. LG has continued to make use of AAA batteries for the brand new Magic Distant quite than giving it a chargeable battery design.
I might let slide the choice to make use of batteries in earlier distant controls, but it surely’s 2025! Shouldn’t we now have moved on by now? Samsung, for instance, permits for photo voltaic recharging and, just like the Apple TV 4K distant, has a USB-C port for charging. That is extra useful to the setting and it’s additionally rather more handy for customers.
Not the star of the present
After all, you could effectively suppose my ideas are geeky past all measure. In reality, they’re little issues that, general, don’t essentially detract from the primary occasion, which is the LG G5 itself. As I’ve beforehand talked about, I’ve been utilizing it for some time and, when you ask me, I feel it’s phenomenal.
I simply want the prolonged person expertise was simply as phenomenal as the pictures on display.
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