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LG starts a new trend: 2021 OLED lineup to feature a downgraded series with 60Hz panel, no VRR and HDMI 2.0 (A1 series)


In 2021, LG will launch a range of more affordable A1 OLED TVs in 48 to 77 inches. A1 has a 50/60Hz 4K OLED panel and HDMI 2.0. LG will also launch new B1 OLED TVs.

LG A1 OLED TVs​

In addition to the new LG C1, G1 and Z1 OLED TVs that were officially announced at CES 2021, FlatpanelsHD can now share official information on LG's A1 and B1 ranges.

LG A1 will be available in 48, 55, 65 and 77 inches. It is a range of affordable 4K OLED TVs that will help take the advanced self-emissive display technology mainstream. You are still getting deep blacks and high contrast, accurate colors, HDR picture quality (with support for up to Dolby Vision IQ), and fast response time.

However, there are some downgrades. A1 will have a 50/60Hz panel, as opposed to the 100/120Hz panel in other OLED TVs, and HDMI 2.0 – which makes sense given its 50/60Hz limitation. It will not support VRR either but will still offer eARC and ALLM, both of which can be supported on HDMI 2.0 chipsets. It has the non-Pro version of 'OLED Motion'.

Also read: LG unveils 2021 OLED TVs – C1, G1, Z1 with HDMI 2.1, VRR, Alpha 9-4

There are still no pictures of A1 and B1 available for the public to see, and there are still no official pricing details. However, FlatpanelsHD has heard that A1 will be coming in at a significantly lower price – whatever that means.



Hopefully this has a much lower price given the lowered specs. Even for entry level TVs OLED should make it for a great IQ.
 

Jaxcellent

Member
Maybe the 77 model will be under $ 2k? If so, could be a good tv for me, I'm not planning on using 120hz. VRR could be useful... But i'd rather have a bigger screen.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I see. It is said by some reviewers that VRR breaks gamma/dark shades or can cause flicker on oleds due to how much energy each pixel receives depending on framerate or something.
I would be so down for 4k oled. I can play at 30 or 60fps. Don't have any 144hz fetish even though I've had 240hz monitor for few months... noticed that while it's nice, I still prefer nice graphics and 30/60fps does not bother me at all.
What bothers me is lag and framepacing so I always lock my games to 58fps to stay in freesync range on my 4k monitor lg 27uk650... so would be a bit of an issue not having vrr on pc.

They will also be making 42" oled and 32" oled monitor... both expensive.

btw - are TVs sold in europe 50hz or 60? All new tv's advertise on media markt specs as 50/100hz... so that does not mean it will not run 60hz right ?!
 
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Alebrije

Member
Its good this new option from LG makes sence on a world with slow economy where a lot of consumers will look for cheaper options. More than ever price will be the key factor these years for a lot of products.

Oled is not an option for a lot of consumers this will move more to LGs tvs
 
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kyliethicc

Member

In 2021, LG will launch a range of more affordable A1 OLED TVs in 48 to 77 inches. A1 has a 50/60Hz 4K OLED panel and HDMI 2.0. LG will also launch new B1 OLED TVs.

LG A1 OLED TVs​

In addition to the new LG C1, G1 and Z1 OLED TVs that were officially announced at CES 2021, FlatpanelsHD can now share official information on LG's A1 and B1 ranges.

LG A1 will be available in 48, 55, 65 and 77 inches. It is a range of affordable 4K OLED TVs that will help take the advanced self-emissive display technology mainstream. You are still getting deep blacks and high contrast, accurate colors, HDR picture quality (with support for up to Dolby Vision IQ), and fast response time.

However, there are some downgrades. A1 will have a 50/60Hz panel, as opposed to the 100/120Hz panel in other OLED TVs, and HDMI 2.0 – which makes sense given its 50/60Hz limitation. It will not support VRR either but will still offer eARC and ALLM, both of which can be supported on HDMI 2.0 chipsets. It has the non-Pro version of 'OLED Motion'.

Also read: LG unveils 2021 OLED TVs – C1, G1, Z1 with HDMI 2.1, VRR, Alpha 9-4

There are still no pictures of A1 and B1 available for the public to see, and there are still no official pricing details. However, FlatpanelsHD has heard that A1 will be coming in at a significantly lower price – whatever that means.



Hopefully this has a much lower price given the lowered specs. Even for entry level TVs OLED should make it for a great IQ.
Makes sense. The C1 55" will be $1500+ and they need to get to sub-$1000 for most buyers.

If the 55 inch A1 is like $800, that'd be the perfect way to get more buyers to go OLED. Of course hardcore gamers who care about 4K120 and VRR will want the C1.
 

Rikkori

Member
Even the B models in previous years had what I felt were big enough downsides compared to the C models for not much of a price difference (they also had quality differences at different sizes which were never made explicit). Guess they're going even further and following in Samsung's & Sony's footsteps who've been doing the same thing for a few years too now. The worse part is that the quality gap is way bigger for oleds so I shudder to think what these will be like.

It's a very sad situation, but there's always the glimmer of hope of miniled this year. We'll see I guess.
 
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Fbh

Member
If the price is considerably lower I could see these doing decently.


I can see it being a hit with the people who go to Walmart and buy a $400 4K TV and then boast about having a 4K TV on social media :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Now they can tell everyone they have an OLED.

Well to be fair even with the downgrades it should still be a nice TV.
If you are just watching movies/Tv Shows and doing some basic console gaming you don't really need 120hz and VRR
 

TBiddy

Member
I don't give a shit about 120hz. If I could get my hands on a nice shiny OLED for a lower price, while having to 'settle' for 60hz, that's fine with me.
 
Great idea if it actually lowers the price meaningfully. 99% of buyers couldn't give a rats ass about that stuff.
This. It all depends on the price though. It has to be meaningfully cheaper for it to make sense to lose all of those features. The thing I would miss most is VRR out of all of those. 120hz is nice but not a game changer for me personally as long as I can get 60fps.
 

skneogaf

Member
If I only played on consoles then I'd be interested as both the xbox series x and the ps5 have to reduce resolution and settings far too much on the majority of games for 120hz to be necessity.
 

Kuranghi

Member
This will just exemplify OLEDs problems I bet, like the B did over the C+ series. Worse near black handling, worse processing, worse motion.

"Here you can have the latest technology, but its a kinda crap version of it!"

The weakness of OLED is near black handling and its really dependant on the quality of the image processing so the more you cut costs on that the worse the inherent weakness of the tech will get.

I'll be recommending people to just put up the extra for the higher model even more now, its a great insertion into the world of OLED for those that don't want to pay over a thousand, but theres also a reason its that much, because if you want to cut down the total price of the set you can't reduce the panel cost much if any (except general reduction from new gen plants/more plants) so you have to start gimping it to the point that a super high end LCD might be a better choice overall.

Well it would be if they still made those... here's hoping that miniLED will rejuvenate LCD a bit in that regard.

I'm just a grumpy image quality freak though, I bet 90% of people that buy one of these A or B series OLEDs will not be affected by these "deficiencies".
 
This will just exemplify OLEDs problems I bet, like the B did over the C+ series. Worse near black handling, worse processing, worse motion.

"Here you can have the latest technology, but its a kinda crap version of it!"

The weakness of OLED is near black handling and its really dependant on the quality of the image processing so the more you cut costs on that the worse the inherent weakness of the tech will get.

I'll be recommending people to just put up the extra for the higher model even more now, its a great insertion into the world of OLED for those that don't want to pay over a thousand, but theres also a reason its that much, because if you want to cut down the total price of the set you can't reduce the panel cost much if any (except general reduction from new gen plants/more plants) so you have to start gimping it to the point that a super high end LCD might be a better choice overall.

Well it would be if they still made those... here's hoping that miniLED will rejuvenate LCD a bit in that regard.

I'm just a grumpy image quality freak though, I bet 90% of people that buy one of these A or B series OLEDs will not be affected by these "deficiencies".
Haha yeah, the vast majority of people don’t even know what most of this stuff even is. They only want HDMI 2.1, VRR, ALLM etc because they are told they do and not because they actually know what it is and want it.

Same thing with OLED honestly. They know it looks better and they want it but they couldn’t tell you why.
 
This means cheaper panel, which is good. My only worry is the HDMI 2.0, which only support YUV 4:2:2 and not 4:4:4 RGB, causing some banding.
Well you needn't worry then, because 4:2:2 doesn't cause color banding. It's not touching the bit depth, it's just sending the chroma at a lower horizontal resolution than the luma, which lowers bandwidth requirements while the image remains mostly comparable. If you want to see how this kind of compression affects the image negatively you really need to look at fine text, especially colored text, it's not really noticable in games or video content.
 

PerfectDark

Banned
Vizio oled 55" was $900 for awhile. Amazing TV for movies. As for gaming on my series X I was disappointed. Playing games on my 43" yucky Samsung qled felt just as good. Maybe the freesync and 120hz would be better but very few games support that and ps5 and series x are still very weak consoles. I have a 3070rtx 5600x pc I built myself as well. I'll give a 43-48" oled a chance for my gaming tv as soon as they don't cost $1500.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
bah the bigger news besides mini led is that their 2021 OLED are going to be brighter! That is one of the major disadvantages of current oled panels.
 

x@3f*oo_e!

Member
I've got to wonder if the panels in the cheaper version are 100% capable of 120Hz and are intentionally nerfed because they want to :
  • Sell more TVs (go cheaper)
  • Still get the money for expensive TVs (better product)
..The 60Hz version would probably use a lower power SoC for the UI too, but otherwise I'd expect the costs to be the same
 

kiphalfton

Member
I hate this. Whenever a lower range product is released, it effectively puts a hard lower limit on how much the higher end models can be discounted. This is obvious with cell phones and especially graphics cards. And then what ends up happening is they slowly raise the price of the lower end stuff, and the price of the higher range stuff gets affected accordingly.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I think while that's unpopular for hardcore gamers, many would go for those cheap OLED's, especially when the Chinese OLED's hit worldwide market with full HDMI 2.1 and the whole package. Some would go for the brand for peace of mind even if they sacrifice HDMI 2.1.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Besides myself I know no one who uses 2.1 features. Even not gamers. They don't know what VRR etc even is. Majority probably doesn't give a shit. LG can enter a very low price range with their oleds.
 
Besides myself I know no one who uses 2.1 features. Even not gamers. They don't know what VRR etc even is. Majority probably doesn't give a shit. LG can enter a very low price range with their oleds.
speak for yourself. i love my LG oled but i don't have a console. still i play games on it. 120hz is fantastic even if it's a slight downgrade from 165hz on my PC monitor it's still better than a pathetic 60hz. VRR helps cause obviously not gonna be able to consistently hit 120hz in all games but as long as it stays at least 80-90 it's fine.

ALLM + DSC are nice features to have too. for watching movies Dynamic HDR metadata + eARC are must haves. so i guess i can say i get good use out of HDMI 2.1 features.

that said, it does make sense for LG to offer lower spec models. i'm sure they'll sell plenty of these TVs but if you're serious about gaming then VRR/120Hz is a must even if you do have a console. the LGs have a VRR window of 40-120hz so even if games only go to 60fps you're still getting good use of VRR cause you'll still have games dropping frames or sitting between 40-60fps.
 

HAL-01

Member
As long as the image quality and response time is still great at 4K/60 with HDR I’d be in. Don’t care about 120hz or vrr
 

Chukhopops

Member
It makes sense for them to have an entry point model, plus some consoles don’t support VRR and barely support 120Hz either so it’s a good fit for those.
 

Reindeer

Member
Sensible. 4K120 TVs make no sense for next gen consoles anyway as there aren't really gonna be games supporting that resolution at that framerate. Heck, there probably won't be too many truly next gen games doing 4K60, at least not AAA ones. None of these features are needed by 99% of people buying this TVs and end up making them overpriced which leads to less units bing sold for LG.
 
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Current A1 prices
Bildschirmfoto-2021-05-14-um-13-40-41.png


Current CX prices
Bildschirmfoto-2021-05-14-um-13-43-05.png
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius

In 2021, LG will launch a range of more affordable A1 OLED TVs in 48 to 77 inches. A1 has a 50/60Hz 4K OLED panel and HDMI 2.0. LG will also launch new B1 OLED TVs.

LG A1 OLED TVs​

In addition to the new LG C1, G1 and Z1 OLED TVs that were officially announced at CES 2021, FlatpanelsHD can now share official information on LG's A1 and B1 ranges.

LG A1 will be available in 48, 55, 65 and 77 inches. It is a range of affordable 4K OLED TVs that will help take the advanced self-emissive display technology mainstream. You are still getting deep blacks and high contrast, accurate colors, HDR picture quality (with support for up to Dolby Vision IQ), and fast response time.

However, there are some downgrades. A1 will have a 50/60Hz panel, as opposed to the 100/120Hz panel in other OLED TVs, and HDMI 2.0 – which makes sense given its 50/60Hz limitation. It will not support VRR either but will still offer eARC and ALLM, both of which can be supported on HDMI 2.0 chipsets. It has the non-Pro version of 'OLED Motion'.

Also read: LG unveils 2021 OLED TVs – C1, G1, Z1 with HDMI 2.1, VRR, Alpha 9-4

There are still no pictures of A1 and B1 available for the public to see, and there are still no official pricing details. However, FlatpanelsHD has heard that A1 will be coming in at a significantly lower price – whatever that means.



Hopefully this has a much lower price given the lowered specs. Even for entry level TVs OLED should make it for a great IQ.
Riky Riky are you ok ;)?
 

MaKTaiL

Member
I love this idea. I could never afford a high-end OLED TV,. I couldn't care less about 120hz or VRR so I'm interested.
 

ethomaz

Banned
It is matter of time to OLED reach the budget price point.

Well it is a goal for every tech... same happened with LCD, LCDLED, PLASMA, etc.
 
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I normally just buy the last year's higher end model as it's on the way out and getting sold cheap rather than a current year budget model.
 
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