'Mighty Fine Sound For A Flatscreen Television'

FOR Brilliant blacks; natural picture; sounds good

AGAINST Sound isn't worth £4000; rival has more punch

Having great sound to match an excellent picture is important. That’s why we usually recommend that your TV purchase should be accompanied by a new sound system. But what if you could buy a new TV that has the sound system built in? How much extra would that be worth? LG is hoping your answer is “about £4000”, because that’s how much extra the OLED65G7V costs over the OLED65B7V which, in terms of picture quality, is essentially the same.

Taking a stand

Despite the G7 delivering one of the best audio experiences available from built-in TV speakers, our guess is that your answer might be considerably lower. And though it’s possible that a sound system for your TV could reach £4000, the one built into this LG certainly isn’t worth that.

The sound from most TVs is pretty poor because they contain tiny speakers that are forced into the chassis wherever they fit, rather than where they’ll be most effective.

LG avoids both issues with its G7 by making the audio system a fundamental part of the design. Here, the stand is the sound system. It’s deep and wide, allowing for bigger speaker drivers and more of them (this is a 4.2 system). They mostly fire forwards, allowing for greater directness in the audio performance, at least in theory.

In practice, the G7’s sound is projected reasonably well, but a lot of the audio still feels as though it’s confined to the immediate area around the screen itself. There are lots of good things to say about the audio though. Detail, punch and dynamics are impressive by flatscreen standards, and there’s a spaciousness to the soundfield that no other flatscreen TV we’ve tested can match, particularly when you feed it a Dolby Atmos signal.