The LG C5 OLED TV for under £1,000 this Black Friday? DEAL

• The 48in LG C5 OLED received a four-star rating and our Recommended award at £1,499.
• It’s currently available for just £923, the lowest price it’s ever been.
• The C5 is a particularly great choice for gamers thanks to its four HDMI 2.1 ports, extremely low input lag and support for 4K/144Hz.

I find myself feeling like Noel Edmunds around Black Friday, as the main question floating around in my head is “Deal or No Deal?”

But my answer to that perpetual late-November question was very straightforward when I came across this Black Friday TV deal on the LG C5 OLED. If you’ve got a budget of £1,000 and are looking for a set capable of delivering perfect blacks, punchy colours and a sensational current-gen gaming experience, this is the television to buy right now.

TV doyen John Archer cast his expert eye over the 48in model for us back in May, and gave it a Recommended award at its then price of £1,499. That price has dropped slightly over recent months, with the 180-day average price recorded as £1,234 by tracking tool Keepa.

It’s now plummeted to an all-time low of £923 on Amazon. Falling under that magic £1,000 mark immediately makes it a lot more appealing, but even at its launch price, this is a TV with lots going for it.

What’s so good about the LG C5 OLED?

It’s a strikingly handsome television, even by slender OLED standards, and is extremely well-connected, with four fully specified HDMI 2.1 ports capable of handling every current-gen gaming option going. Such provision has always made LG’s C Series a popular choice with gamers, and the latest generation doesn’t disappoint on this front.

In fact, it’s an exemplary gaming display, with support for 4K/144Hz, Auto Low-Latency Mode (ALLM) and Variable Refresh Rate (both Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync are present and correct). On top of all that, you’ve got LG’s Game Optimizer mode available to personalise your gaming experience and lighting-fast input lag of 12.8ms in Game mode, which can be reduced to just 9.2ms by engaging Boost mode.

That puts this TV right up there with the best gaming TVs on the market, but it’s an equally adept performer for enjoying movies and shows. Its panel benefits from the perfect blacks and infinite contrast inherent to OLED’s self-emissive technology, and LG’s picture processing helps ensure there’s no noise in shades just above black.

There’s ample detail, even in the darkest of scenes, and the C5 handles colour beautifully, too. We measured Delta E colour errors of below three (the visible threshold) in Filmmaker Mode for both SDR and HDR content; very few TVs can boast these kinds of numbers at this kind of price. Greyscale accuracy is almost as good, creeping above three but below five, and the resulting images are gorgeously refined.

Is 48in the right size LG C5 to buy this Black Friday?

It would be remiss of me not to mention that the 48in model I’ve highlighted here doesn’t benefit from LG’s Brightness Booster technology. This means that it (and the smaller 42in option) can’t hit the same peak luminance as the larger entries in the range. Where the 55in and 65in options managed over 1,300cd/m² in Filmmaker Mode, the 48in C5 could only output 770cd/m². That’s still plenty to deliver great performance in most conditions, but you will get the best viewing experience in darker rooms or with the curtains drawn.

Still, as long as you’re willing to work with that limitation of the 48in LG C5, you’re getting a stonking TV for a best-ever Black Friday price.

If you fancy a larger LG C5, Amazon is also offering Black Friday discounts on the 77in and 83in models. The former can be picked up for £1,979, compared with a 180-day average price of £2,980, while the latter will set you back £3,149, which is almost half the price it cost at launch (£5,999) and almost £2,000 cheaper than its average over the past 180 days. 

There are thousands of deals flying around this Black Friday, and we’re doing our utmost to keep track of as many of them as possible. For our pick of the offers we’ve found across a wide range of categories, head on over to our Black Friday deals hub, and check out our Black Friday Amazon deals page for discounts on Kindles, Fire TV Sticks and more.

Written By

Andy White

Andy was appointed Tech Editor in 2024 following four years spent putting a huge range of products through their paces. Formerly a sports journalist at Greenways Publishing, he cut his tech teeth testing laptops before taking over as the site’s TV and audio expert. He’s cast his eye over more headphones and televisions than you can shake a stick at but has also reviewed football boots, handheld game consoles and just about everything in between. As well as testing, writing and editing, Andy covers product launches and key industry events in the UK and overseas.

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