LG has announced prices for its latest line of OLED TVs in its native South Korea – and there’s a pleasant surprise for those looking for a new TV. The brand new OLED televisions come with a price reduction of 20 percent compared to the previous year.
According to Korea JoongAng Daily, a brand new OLED TV mockup from the latest lineup like the LG G1 Gallery Series and the C1 OLED can be bought for up to a fifth (20 percent) less than the introductory price of their 2020 counterparts, known as the LG GX or CX OLED.
Given that both sets have image performance and faster chipsets than their predecessors, this means a pretty aggressive cut in cost. Of course, as OLED panels become more prevalent, we would expect the technology to be cheaper to produce and companies to compete more aggressively for price – as most of the initial R&D effort has been amortized.
However, this does not appear to be the case here. After all, the LG G1 Gallery series uses a brand new OLED Evo panel technology, which, according to the South Korean company, increases the brightness of the panel in the LG GX compared to last year. Park Eun-jee writes in Korea JoongAng Daily that LG’s new pricing strategy is instead “a move aimed at increasing consumer appeal”.
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While OLED has long been the technology of choice for movie buffs and avid gamers looking for the most vivid colors and cavernous blacks possible on the screen, it is not the first choice of most consumers. And at roughly double the price of a similarly sized LED-backlit TV, pricing has a lot to do with that.
If LG is looking to roll out its OLED TVs in more households, it seems like a great way to bring the price down. In its latest product line, the LG A1 entry-level OLED seems to be designed for just that. While LG hasn’t fully confirmed UK pricing yet, the affordable A1 model could make history as OLED TVs with introductory prices under £ 1,000 or less.
Of course, we’ve seen other brands of OLEDs below that number on Black Friday sales … but never the starting price at launch.
For comparison, the LG CX OLED sold for a 48-inch size for £ 1,499 and rose to a staggering £ 3,499 for a 77-inch model when it was launched last year. What’s special about the 20 percent drop in prices compared to 2020 models is that we expect retailers to introduce more discounts in the coming months when Prime Day, Black Friday and Boxing Day are sold.
So if you’ve been thinking about upgrading to OLED for a long time, this could be your year.
