With more people spending time at home over the last 18 months, interest in gaming has increased. Across the globe, the average time spent gaming has increased by 39 percent during the pandemic, and Twitch viewership also grew by more than 50 percent from the first quarter of 2020 to the second.
But gaming has become more than a fun way to pass the time during lockdown. For many people socially distancing at home, gaming has become a valuable lifeline that has kept them both entertained and connected with friends and family. In fact, 39 percent and 50 percent of UK gamers reported that playing video games made them feel less isolated and happier, respectively.
As more of us either discover or delve deeper into the exciting world of gaming, there’s a lot to learn about the latest generation of innovative gaming tech entering the market and how it can help elevate experiences. Gaming TVs are an example of this tech, and where gaming monitors used to be the standard, LG’s OLED TVs have set a new benchmark for immersive displays.
The age of OLED
In the past, TVs didn’t provide the best gaming experiences because many of them suffered from slow response times, so the on-screen pixels took a while to change based on in-game actions. For fast-paced gaming, a few milliseconds can mean the difference between winning and losing, which is why gamers used to opt for gaming monitors for a more responsive experience.
When LG’s OLED TVs hit the market, all of that changed. OLED TVs outperform most gaming monitors because they don’t need to waste time processing any backlighting. Instead, OLED tech uses self-lit pixels that deliver near-instantaneous response times as low as one millisecond. With OLED, input lag is a thing of the past and this next-gen, award-winning tech has been touted for giving gamers a new competitive edge.
Another significant benefit of OLED’s self-lit pixels is that they turn on and off individually, resulting in the deepest blacks and infinite contrast. With conventional LED displays, a dark area on the screen can never be perfectly black because of backlighting, whereas with OLED the pixels in darker areas are completely turned off. This brings an astonishing depth and vibrancy to games that non-OLED monitors struggle to compete with.
Made for next-gen gaming
Even if you’re gaming on the latest PC, Xbox Series X/S, or PS5, your gaming system can only deliver a visual experience that’s as good as the display you’re using. To fully leverage the true capabilities of cutting-edge PCs and consoles, you need a cutting-edge display to match.
With support for 4K video at an impressive 120Hz refresh rate, OLED offers both sharper picture quality and smoother on-screen motion, allowing gamers to enjoy every vivid detail of the latest games without any motion blur. An HDMI 2.1 port is essential for this – LG’s OLED C1 has four.
Ever spent a few hours gaming and had the strained eyes to prove it? As the world’s first Eyesafe certified TV displays, LG OLED TVs produce low levels of blue light while maintaining optimal colour performance. Being able to choose different blue light modes is a big benefit for gamers as it allows them to enjoy extended gaming sessions without eye strain.
Other features that are particularly great for gamers is OLED’s Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), as well as its NVIDIA G-SYNC and AMD FreeSync compatibility. These adaptive syncing technologies reduce screen tearing, stuttering, and input lag by dynamically synchronising your monitor’s refresh rate to match every frame generated by your graphics card in real time.
This results in a smoother and more realistic gaming experience – especially with the fast-moving visuals in first-person shooter or racing games. LG was the first to support NVIDIA G-SYNC for big screen gaming, and it’s one of the many reasons why gamers love OLED displays.
Better hardware, smarter software
While OLED hardware is nothing short of revolutionary, there’s also a lot more going on inside LG’s OLED TVs. The latest Game Optimiser uses LG’s 9 Gen4 AI processor to detect specific game genres, such as first-person shooters, RPGs, and real-time strategy games, and optimises both the picture and audio for better gameplay. The interface also gives gamers finer control over gaming-related display settings, so you can customise to your heart’s desire.
Another unique software feature of LG’s OLED TVs is that they come standard with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Dolby Vision intelligently optimises picture quality based on the game genre and the ambient light conditions of your living room using built-in light sensors. This means the perfect detail, brightness, and contrast to match whatever game you’re playing.
The Xbox Series X and S are the first consoles to enable gaming in both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and LG recently released a firmware upgrade for their OLED C1 and G1 series TVs that made them the first manufacturer to support Dolby Vision HDR at 4K and 120Hz.
Don’t forget the sound
Dolby Atmos delivers the most immersive, multi-dimensional surround sound by adding something conventional surround sound doesn’t have: a height channel.
This allows sounds to be placed more accurately in a three-dimensional space, enabling up to 128 individual sounds to be placed precisely in different parts of your virtual surroundings. For first-person shooter afficionados, this offers a significant competitive advantage as it allows you to hear exactly where every footstep or distant gunshot is coming from.
LG’s OLED TVs come standard with Bluetooth as well as a headphone port, so you can add your own headset with ease. Alternatively, add an LG Sound Bar to your gaming setup – they also support Dolby Atmos and produce sound powerful enough to blur the lines between gaming and reality.
LG OLED TV: The new benchmark for gaming
LG’s OLED TVs have not only set a new standard for gaming TVs, they’ve also changed what kind of gaming experiences are possible. With so many innovative features, it’s no wonder that displays like the LG OLED C1 48” have become flagship gaming TVs.
And at the rate that display technologies, gaming PCs and consoles, and video games themselves are evolving, we can all look forward to unparalleled gaming experiences in 2021 and the future.