Sound and Vision: What can we read into LG’s UK pricing for its OLED TVs?

OPINION: Tis the season, the new TV reviewing season that Is – as the newest models begin to arrive for review.

If you’ve been keeping an eye out in recent weeks, you would have seen Samsung’s latest models scrutinised, and we’ll be hoping to get close and personal with LG’s 2024 TV range soon.

Ahead of that, LG has been dropping the prices for its OLED TVs in various territories, and this week it revealed what UK customers can look to pay. And it’s good news.

Across the board, it would seem that UK prices are a little less expensive than the 2023 models. They’re less expensive than their US counterparts, though the exchange rate still means we’re paying quite a bit more than our US friends. What insight, if any, could this offer us?

It’s good news

Prices for LG OLEDs have been creeping up year on year. For example, the 65-inch G3 was about £200 more expensive than the G2 at £3499, but now that size has gone slightly down to £3399. Still expensive but marginally less so, and if it had followed the trend of before the G4 would be £3699.

These are all guesses on LG’s part but perhaps the drop in price across all models would indicate that the manufacturing process for OLEDs had become less prohibitive. OLED TV technology has been around for more than ten years, LG Display is the biggest producer of OLED TV panels and they’re available in a wide range of sizes, offering customers an array of options to choose from for their home. LG has always had the ambition of wanting an OLED in every home, perhaps with the prices coming down that’s more achievable.

It could also be that these prices have been subsidised in a way by Samsung Electronics adopting the technology for its S90D range. Reports from out of Korea implied that LG had conveyed to Samsung that its WOLED panels should not be treated as lesser compared to Samsung’s competing QD-OLED technology, which has caused some confusion about what screen you’d get in the panel lottery.

Samsung has clawed plenty of market share in the OLED market when it launched the S95B, but it’s more likely that it hasn’t taken much market share away from LG itself but simply reduced the totals of other rival screens from the likes of Sony, Panasonic and Philips, leaving LG more room to lower its prices as it’s now in competition with just one brand, not others.

Down to demand?

Or maybe it’s a sign of the OLED TV market saturating. After all, the price for the 65-inch G4 has only gone up by $100 in the US from the OLED65G3, which is not a big jump at all considering that the new model packs the third-gen MLA META Brightness Booster technology, improved upscaling and motion processing, along with a tweaked audio system. I don’t know what the sales of last year’s LG OLEDs were, but perhaps the demand for OLEDs in 2023 wasn’t as great as it was in previous years.

I’d say that this pricing for its 2024 OLED models is quite an aggressive move, particularly for the bigger sizes which have more drastic reductions to the tune of nearly £500. The main takeaway is that LG wants to hammer home its advantage to make sure there’s an OLED in every home, and its 2024 pricing suggests it is confident in achieving that goal.