Black Friday and Cyber Monday are officially done and dusted for the year. That may be bad news for anyone who didn't find a heavily discounted OLED TV to pull the trigger on.
But, in the cold light of day, after more hours trawling stores and TV price history spreadsheets than I care to count, I’ve been left with one big question – why did the LG C4 get such big price cuts?
Specifically, we say massive, multiple thousand pound savings on pretty much every size of the LG C4 over the Black Friday event. Even at the eleventh hour at 11.59pm yesterday the 42-inch LG C4 was available for £888 on Amazon, a £511 saving on its normal price. Above it the 65-inch LG C4 sold for £1495 at Richer Sounds, a healthy £1204 saving on its normal price.
Why am I calling the C4 out specifically when other sets including the Sony Bravia 8, Panasonic Z90A and Philips OLED809 also got discounts? There’s two reasons.
First, it’s because the C4 had by far the biggest discounts, among all of this year’s step down range. The deepest we saw the 65-inch Bravia 8 fall by was £304, with it retailing for £1799 at Sevenoaks for a brief period over the weekend.
Second, because this isn’t the first time this has happened. The LG C4 has constantly gotten atypically early and deep discounts throughout the year. This started during Prime Day in June, where myself and Home Cinema Editor, Tom Parsons, were outright flabbergasted how much the C4 prices dropped, despite it only launching mere months ago.
So, back to my original question: why is the LG C4 getting such atypically good discounts?
There are a multitude of possible answers. It could be that LG and retailers just want to boost TV sales. 2023 was a bad year, with most analyst houses reporting back to back drops in TV shipments, and even the most optimistic forecast for 2024, including Counterpoint’s latest analysis, suggest OLED is still struggling despite a general recovery holistically.
So it would make sense to use a big name product, like the LG C4 to try and reverse this during big sales events – this would also be true to Black Friday’s origin, with the event originally being designed to help retailers get out of the red and into “the black” (profit).
But, I have a more entertaining conspiracy theory. Specifically, LG wants to clear stock fast as something big is coming next year. Something so big, it expects buyers won’t be in the C4 once it comes out.
In my head, the Award-winning, brightness-boosting micro lens array (MLA) tech LG’s been loading onto its flagship G-series OLEDs since 2023 making its way down to the C-series would be an awesome development.
Based on my experience helping review key MLA OLEDs this year, including the LG G4, Panasonic Z95A and Philips OLED909, that would be amazing news for home cinema fans.
The second generation MLA sets we’ve tested, particularly the G4 and Z95A are both excellent examples how tech can improve picture quality. To catch you up, MLA is a rival to Samsung’s QD-OLED that’s built by LG Display. It uses small lenses to radically boost OLED TV’s peak and max operating brightness. It’s a key reason modern flagships can often go beyond 3000 nits, where even a few years ago they’d struggle to go beyond 700 nits.
This can help radically improve general contrast and HDR performance and is a key step in overcoming OLED’s traditional perceived weakness – its inability to match LED’s brightness levels.
So seeing it trickle down to the C4’s price bracket would be an undeniable boon for home cinema fans that want the best picture possible, but can’t afford to spend £2000-plus on a TV.
Here’s hoping my hunch is right…
MORE:
These are the best OLED TVs we’ve tested
We rate the best 65-inch TVs
Our picks of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars
