LG confirms that the LG C5 and B5 OLED TVs are coming, but there’s good news and bad news

By James On Jan 6, 2025

I visited LG’s TV demo room at CES 2025 and my eyes fell on the new flagship TVs, the LG G5 and M5 (our thoughts on those will come later). But while I was there, I also saw the mid-range LG C5 OLED TV and spoke to LG about it. Handy, because LG had not officially announced it until then.

LG was able to confirm a lot of details about the set, and the team also talked about the more affordable LG B5 model coming, although that couldn’t be seen.

Here’s the headline: The LG C5 promises to be slightly brighter, but don’t expect any major changes compared to the LG C4 currently available; and the LG B5 will take a big step back in terms of availability compared to last year’s LG B4.

LG C5: specifications and details

(Image credit: Future)

There are actually two big changes coming to the LG C5. Firstly, LG says it should be slightly brighter than the LG C4, but declined to confirm numbers (even as a percentage), so I suspect it will only be a small boost, likely driven by improvements in the processor’s power management . .

There’s absolutely no major panel change here – there’s no upgrade to MLA OLED, for example, even though the LG G5 has moved from MLA to another new brightness technology. The screen will also still be a 144Hz 4K display, and won’t go up to 165Hz like the LG G5.

The LG C5 will also get webOS 25, which comes with smart personal profiles and AI chatbot features, just like the LG G5 and M5 will have. This includes voice recognition, so if different people in your house have different profiles, when you ask it to do something, the TV will recognize you as you and switch to your profile as it carries out the command.

The Personal Profile not only includes different home screen layouts (giving more prominence to the apps and services you like most), but can now also switch picture modes. LG gave the example that if each profile has gone through the AI Picture wizard to adjust the picture to your preferences, it will use that setting when it switches to your profile. I think this sounds kind of annoying (I prefer consistency), but it’s a novel idea.

Just like last year, the LG C5 will be available in sizes from 42 inches to 83 inches.

Now the LG B5

While the LG B5 wasn’t at the show, LG did confirm that it’s coming, that it will use an Alpha 7 processor, and that it will have about the same brightness as the LG B4, although the CES team again declined to give every figure (except the LG G5 will be three times brighter than it).

However, LG has confirmed one element: it will be available in “limited sizes”. Although the LG B5 will be available in 48 inches for the first time in 2024, there will only be two LG B5 sizes in 2025. LG couldn’t confirm exactly which sizes, but my understanding is that it will probably be 65 inches and then 55 or 77 inches, but I’ll update with confirmation on this when I get it.

This is obviously a big disappointment – LG already discontinued its A-series cheaper OLED TVs, and now it looks like the B-series is also discontinuing. Maybe the price difference between the B series and C series is just not big enough and more people are opting for the C, but I hope that the B will continue to keep OLED more affordable in the future, even if only in these few sizes.