LG OLED65M5 Review

Price

While LG’s very first M-series screens commanded a pretty steep premium over the brand’s G-series models, the OLED65M5’s £2599 price at the time of review is only around £300 more than the OLED65G5.

So if the M5’s performance turns out to genuinely be on a par with that of the G5, unaffected by the screen’s slimmer design and wireless AV transmission system, its extra cost likely won’t put off the sort of person with a designer home most likely to benefit from the OLED65M5’s wall hanging-friendly and cable-free designs.

The OLED65G5 is certainly the OLED65M5’s main competition, along with Samsung’s S95F. This Samsung model doesn’t use the same design or OLED panel the LG’s M5 and G5s do, but it does sport a slender design as well as a striking matt screen, and is £200-£300 less than the OLED65M5.

Design

• Flush wall mount fitting
• Wireless screen ships with external Zero Connect box
• Wireless transmissions can work over 10m

As we’ll see in later sections of this review, the LG OLED65M5 actually have much more than just their designs to commend them. That said, it’s their cable-free design that separates them on paper from LG’s G5 series, so they really need to look the part.

Happily it does. For starters, while not as brain-bendingly thin as those Wallpaper TVs I mentioned earlier, or the new Wallpaper W6, the OLED65M5’s 2.4cm depth really is trim by current TV standards. Especially as it’s a uniform 2.4cm, giving the set a futuristic monolithic feel.

The nifty flush wall mount attachment system ensures you get the full benefit of the slim bodywork, and then there’s the rather important fact that the only cable going into the OLED65M5’s screen is the power cord.

This is because the OLED65M5 ships with LG’s Zero Connect boxes. This is considerably less glamorous than the screen; essentially it’s just a chunky hunk of black plastic with a few connections built into it.

Given that this AV transmissions box can cast its pictures and sound wirelessly as far as 10m, and can even work from inside a cabinet provided the walls of that cabinet aren’t too thick, the Zero Connect box’s unattractiveness doesn’t need to be a problem. It’s the cable free screen design that counts.

For me the most disappointing thing about the OLED65M5’s design is the fact that it only ships with a standard version of LG’s Magic Remote control. A premium, design-led screen like this feels as if it should be partnered with something a bit more high-end; maybe a magic remote with a nice metallic finish or something. That said, the remote control’s striking curves and angles are as comfortable to hold as usual, even if it feels a bit plasticky and lightweight.

Connectivity

• Three HDMI ports
• Two USB ports
• Zero Connect box delivers up to 4K/144Hz signals to the screen

The OLED65M5’s connectivity is more complicated than usual thanks to its Zero Connect box. Looking at the capabilities of that first, it can send 4K resolution images at up to 144Hz refresh rates, and also supports variable refresh rates including in the Nvidia G-Sync and AMD Freesync formats.

Dolby Atmos sound can be streamed to the screen too, and there’s further wireless support in the shape of LG’s WOW Orchestra feature, where the TV’s speakers can be partnered with those in an LG soundbar to deliver a more fulsome surround sound experience.

The Zero Connect box carries three HDMI and two USB ports. It’s a bit disappointing to find just three HDMI inputs when LG’s ‘regular’ TVs manage four, but I guess three will probably be enough for most households in today’s streaming-obsessed times.

There’s a digital optical audio output too, while the physical and wireless casting features are joined, of course, by both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.3 support, including compatibility with both Apple Airplay and Google Cast streaming.

User Experience

• WebOS 25 smart system
• AI voice recognition and content searching features
• Dolby Vision support

The OLED65M5 is, of course, built around the latest version of LG’s long-running and generally much-loved WebOS operating system.

As usual this presents you with attractive, graphics-rich on-screen menus, plenty of customisation options when it comes to deciding which apps and sources you want to prioritize, an unusual amount of intelligence when it comes to recognising the sort of content you like to watch and making appropriate content recommendations accordingly, and support for multiple user profiles.

This latter feature means different members of your household can set up their own home pages, with their own customised layouts and own personalised content recommendations.

The OLED65M5 supports one of the most advanced voice recognition systems in the TV world too, while a dedicated AI button on the remote calls up an AI Concierge feature designed to provide prompts and easy gateways through the TV’s actually increasingly complicated AI features.

AI is at the fore again with the OLED65M5’s AI Chatbot feature, which is designed to respond to queries about features and potential TV performance issues in much the same way that LG’s  Customer Service line would, while AI Picture and Sound Wizards provide a way for the TV to hone its AV presentation to suit your individual tastes by having you choose your preferred options across a series of multiple choice comparisons.

If you prefer to see things more as the director intended them to be seen, the OLED65M5 features a Filmmaker Mode preset, support for Dolby Vision HDR (with its extra scene-by-scene picture information), and truly extensive professional calibration tools for anyone able to use them or, more likely, prepared to pay an expert calibrator to use them.

WebOS 2025 supports the vast majority of the world’s most popular streaming services, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, YouTube and the main UK catch up services – mostly offered with the maximum picture and sound quality each app can support.

While the remote control might not enjoy the sort of premium finish I’d have liked it to, it does just about earn its ‘Magic Remote’ nickname by adding two extra control possibilities alongside the usual simple button control and voice recognition mic options.

First, you can control the position of a pointer on the TV’s screen just by pointing the remote in the right direction, like a magic wand, and second you can quickly scroll up and down the screen’s usually vertical menus using a spinning wheel knob at the remote’s heart.

Personally I find the point and click option a bit finnicky when it comes to getting the cursor in exactly the right place, but I can still see it appealing to some older or technophobic users.

There are a few other niggles with the OLED65M5’s user experience, though. One is that I found the smart menus a bit sluggish at times. Second, the menu structure and presentation can feel a bit over-complicated in places.

Finally, the OLED65M5 doesn’t support the HDR10+ HDR format. So it can’t always take in the best version of every single source it’s presented with. Dolby Vision, which the OLED65M5 does support, is more widespread than its HDR10+ rival, but there’s no avoiding the fact that some brands, most notably Panasonic, TCL, Philips and Hisense, sell TVs that support all four key HDR formats.

Features

• Wireless connectivity
• Primary Tandem RGB OLED screen
• AI Sound

I’ve covered many of the OLED65M5’s ‘killer apps’ already: the slim design, flush wall mount, use of the same premium, ultra-bright Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel used in LG’s outstanding G5 series and ability to deliver pictures and sound wirelessly and losslessly to the screen from an included Zero Connect transmission box. There are still a few other tricks up the OLED65M5’s sleeves worth mentioning, though.

Starting with its Alpha 11 Gen 2 processor. This delivers 2.2x faster operation than its predecessor, 3.6x more graphics power and 6.7x greater AI neural processing, and extends its tendrils into all aspects of the TV’s functionality, from its smart features to its picture and sound quality.

The processor, for instance, is at least partially responsible for the high peak brightness LGs latest flagship OLED screens can deliver. it’s also claimed to deliver better upscaling of sub-4K sources, especially heavily compressed digital sources, while also delivering the brand’s AI Sound feature whereby any incoming sound, even basic stereo, can be up-mixed to a virtual 11.1.2 surround sound effect from the 60W, 4.2-channel roster of actual integrated speakers.

A Clear Voice Pro feature with AI Object Remastering can isolate different elements of the soundtrack so that you can adjust the relative weight of vocals in a mix, and new options have been added to the extensive picture set up options for more customisation of how the TV applies tone mapping to HDR feeds.

One last little feature not touched on elsewhere in this review is the LG Home Hub: A dedicated screen that shows you all the secondary devices connected to your TV or on your wireless network, so that you can monitor what’s going on around your home and even to a limited extent control those external devices from your TV.

Gaming

• Dedicated Game Hub page
• Support for 4K/144Hz resolutions and frame rates
• Wireless transmission system adds hardly any extra lag

LG OLEDs have gradually earned a reputation for being arguably the most feature-rich and impressive performing TVs around for serious gamers. This reputation is held up well overall by the OLED65M5, despite the gaming challenges presented by its wireless screen design feature.

Particularly impressive is how little extra lag the wireless transmission system adds to proceedings. I measured just 14.2ms of delay in the OLED65M5’s rendering of images using its Game preset – an increase of a measly 2.2ms on the input lag time measured using a cabled connection on the G5s.

Samsung’s cable-free QN990F 8K TVs, by comparison, take 26.1ms longer to render images using their wireless connectivity than Samsung’s step-down wired 8K TVs do.

There is one compromise gamers need to accept, though: the OLED65M5 can ‘only’ hit frame rates of 144Hz at 4K resolutions, rather than the 165Hz possible with the wired G5 series. This is a small enough difference to only affect a small number of gamers in truth, though – and there are plenty of other gaming strengths the OLED65M5 does retain to keep gamers keen.

There’s support right across the supported refresh rate range, for instance, for variable refresh rates, and this VRR support is available in all three of the core HDMI, NVidia G-Sync and AMD Freesync Premium formats.

You can call up a dedicated Game Menu when the TV is receiving a gaming source that provides extensive information on the incoming signal plus a handy suite of gaming aids – including a superimposed crosshair and the ability to increase the brightness of dark gaming areas without impacting the rest of the gaming signal.

LG now also provides a Game Hub section of its webOS menus that brings together all of your connected gaming sources and a nice selection of streamed gaming services.

Best of all, the OLED65M5 delivers a gorgeous gaming experience that combines great fluidity and responsiveness with pretty much perfect black levels, vibrant colours, and excellent detailing that are all, so far as I could tell, unaffected by the wireless transmission system (beyond the fractional increase in input lag I’ve already mentioned).

Picture Quality

• Spectacular contrast
• Rich, dynamic colours
• Pictures unaffected by cable-free screen technology

I’d expected/hoped that this part of the OLED65M5 review would be pretty short and sweet, as I essentially just got to say that it’s basically a carbon copy of the supreme picture quality already experienced from LG’s OLED65G5. As it happened, though, things didn’t go quite so smoothly.

I was actually able to test a OLED65M5 placed right alongside an OLED65G5 so that it would be easier to tell at a glance whether the OLED65M5’s wireless transmission system was introducing any issues such as compression noise, lost details or stuttering. In the end, though, while this head-to-head comparison proved the wireless transmission system appears to be essentially flawless, there were still differences.

The OLED65M5’s pictures looked slightly but definitely sharper than those of the G5, even with all picture settings set exactly the same and after factory resetting both screens. The M5’s pictures exhibited a very faint brownish undertone to some very dark, desaturated shots, while the G5 tended to look a touch green at these same moments.

The G5’s colours generally looked slightly more vibrant and enjoyed slightly more fulsome skin tones, but the M5 delivered more consistently clean, banding-free colour blends, especially in its Filmmaker Mode preset.

Perhaps most surprising of all, with all settings the same the M5 delivered the darkest scenes on our HDR test sequence list with deeper, more neutral black colours than the G5, while the G5 tended to produce slightly more shadow detail in the darkest corners. Yet with mid-dark scenes, the G5 suddenly produced deeper black colours while the M5 enjoyed a slight advantage with shadow details.

I was able to get both the M5 and G5 pictures looking more similar after spending considerable tinkering with their picture settings, suggesting that to some extent the differences I’ve described are down to factory shipping condition variations rather than fundamental panel differences. This makes logical sense, too, given that there doesn’t appear to be any technical reason for the differences I saw once I was confident that the Zero Connect transmissions weren’t interfering. But a few small picture differences definitely remained between the two sets I tested.

The good news, and the only thing that really matters, is that while not as identical to the OLED65G5’s pictures as expected, the OLED65M5’s pictures still look fantastic. Contrast is still both as extreme and as subtle on a local level as only OLED self-illuminating technology can be. Colours are beautifully rich and vibrant, and don’t fade at all in the most heavily saturated areas as might expected to if using LG’s old, original RGBW OLED technology. Take a bow, Primary RGB Tandem screens.

Sharpness really is outstanding, especially given the wireless model’s slight advantage in this area, and motion is as impressive here as it is on LG’s other recent OLED TVs – even with 24p footage – if you use the set’s Cinematic Movement motion setting.

The M5 joins the G5 in supporting pretty much infinite viewing angles without any loss of colour saturation or contrast, and without suffering major colour shift/tint changes.

Noise in dark areas is practically non-existent, and clipping of details in the brightest areas of HDR images is extremely minimal. Plus the tools exist with LG’s premium TVs now to pretty much deal with clipping entirely if you find it bothering you with the TV’s picture presets. The intensity of the image’s brightness is a sight to behold, too.

Measurements using Portrait Displays’ Calman Ultimate test software, C6 HDR5000 colorimeter and G1 signal generator reveal brightness peaks of marginally under 2,500 nits with 1% to 10% test windows – very substantial numbers that you really feel like you’re getting from the screen. Especially as the brightest pixel can sit right alongside the darkest on the OLED65M5’s OLED screen.

The brightness drops to around 430 nits with a full-screen, 100% test window, reminding us of OLED’s relative (to LED screens) brightness inconsistency depending on how much of the screen is showing light. Actually, though, the M5’s full screen brightness is pretty good by OLED standards, and with real world content it’s surprising how rarely you truly feel inconsistencies caused by the large difference between the OLED65M5’s small peak and full screen brightness outputs.

Now that we’re taking a more objective approach to the OLED65M5’s pictures, I should also say that in its Filmmaker Mode it achieves a remarkable degree of accuracy to industry standards, managing to deliver DeltaE 2000 average errors of just 1.57, 1.96, 1.61 and 2.09 with ColorMatch HDR, ColorChecker, P3 Sweep and BT.2020 Sweep tests. These are all well under the 3.0 level considered the point above which you might possibly see deviations from the established standards.

It should be said that Calman Ultimate tests show this accuracy goes out of the window quite spectacular in the TV’s most eye-catching (without going nuts like the Vivid mode does) Standard picture setting, but LG’s imaging intelligence is so good that even in this more vibrant mode pictures still look surprisingly balanced, natural and nuanced.

The only real issues I had with the OLED65M5’s pictures were that Dolby Vision images could sometimes look a little dark, and that every now and then a scene would reveal mild but noticeable colour banding over subtle blends with HDR sources. This can be reduced to almost nothing if you stick with the OLED65M5’s Filmmaker Mode preset, but it can be slightly distracting at times in the more aggressive picture presets.

Upscaling

• Excellent upscaling of HD images

As promised, LG’s new Alpha 11 Gen 2 processor upscales sub-4K content to the screen’s native 4K resolution outstandingly well. The necessary millions of extra pixels are added without the results exaggerating any source noise such as compression artefacts or grittiness.

Harsh object edges don’t tend to appear with the sort of line thickening or glowing halo issues that lesser upscaling systems can cause either, and colours retain their natural tone and balance.

Upscaled HD images, especially if those HD images are good quality, almost look as crisp and sharp as native 4K images, in fact, while motion with upscaled images looks natural and lag-free even with 24p sources.

Sound Quality

• AI Sound Pro with Dolby Atmos

The OLED65M5’s sound is very similar indeed to that of the OLED65G5s – which isn’t a wholly brilliant thing. If you stick with the default Dolby Atmos playback setting, for instance, the resulting sound is strangely subdued, sounding muted and as if it’s struggling to escape from the TV’s svelte bodywork.

This doesn’t exactly help the OLED65M5 create a sense of the sort of space that Dolby Atmos soundtracks are designed to produce, and the sound even tends to collapse in on itself when a soundtrack hits a loud and/or dense moment.

Cue LG’s AI Sound Pro mode. The difference this makes to the scale, projection, dynamics and raw volume of the M5’s sound staging is pretty remarkable, making it hard to understand why the ‘standard’ Dolby Atmos mode falls so flat.

While the OLED65M5’s AI Sound Pro mode expands the TVs’ mid-range quite nicely, though, including thickening out its lower frequencies, deep bass sounds can still crack and hum under pressure from the bass end of an action movie soundtrack. Some high pitched sounds can become a touch harsh, too, and occasionally the AI Sound Pro’s workings can come on a little strong, leaving the sound feeling a bit forced.

Should you buy it?