Switching to a 42-inch LG C2 OLED TV as a Monitor!

00:00 Smaller is Better
01:06 Using a TV as a Monitor
02:01 LG C2 - What's New?
03:37 Price
04:28 AD - Incogni
05:33 Gaming
06:09 Brightness
07:13 Problems
09:09 Display Settings
10:25 Impressions

#LGC2 #TV #Monitor #OLED

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[Thetechchap]

Hey Chaps! Would you be tempted to use a TV as a Monitor??

[SpawnPoiint]

This is awesome! Just unboxed mine yesterday, looking forward to seeing how it performs as a monitor.

[mr_jarble]

As one of the first adopters of the 42in size I have been really looking forward to this screen. I have had the 43uf7600 for years and when I first got it gpu's only supported 30hz at 4k so it has been a long road. I would not trade the 42in size for anything else it just works so well for my workflow.

[jsonlee]

I was a bit disappointed that you didn’t show more of your experience using it as a computer monitor to do work on. You showed a lot of gaming and video footage, but if you’re going to swap out a dedicated computer monitor for this, it’d be nice to see how its usability is for more text based activity. A common complaint is that the large screen size causes neck strain since you might be having to tilt your head up a lot to view content at the top of the screen. And what about how it represents text on the screen? It’s a 4K panel but sometimes text on a tv isn’t as sharp as text on a true monitor. By the way, looking at the document full screen was just too funny. 2/3 of the screen was wasted space. Lol. I look forward to your update.

[nintariplays]

Switched to the 48" C1 several months back and LOVE IT! Think of it more like Quad 24" monitors, AND be sure to add ultrawide resolutions to your video card and you get the best of all worlds!!

[maips]

I just bought the same thing to replace my 48CX. Man, this 42C2 is amazing. PERFECT desk size, just perfect!

[stampede]

I agree the 42" would probably be the sweet spot for a large screen without being ridiculous on a regular desk. I have the 48" C1 and it's great as a secondary monitor sitting a bit further away with a recliner.

[GeekStreet]

Looks really good, picture quality looks stunning. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on any eye strain issues in the coming weeks.

[silverwatchdog]

A sort of workaround I found to the auto dimming is to max out the OLED light and use windows to manage brightness. You need windows 11 though to configure SDR and HDR brightness seperately. This will trick the screen that's its on max brightness and be less agressive with the abl. Of course you can also acess the service menu and actually disable it. It's just more work.

Edit: With colour manager's LG remote in you can access the service menu with no service remote. The setting you need to disable is TPC. Really made using it with static HUDs a lot easier and less annoying.

[sullyyk]

I use the lg cx with my pc and it is absolutely stunning. I wasn’t expecting it to be so impressive. Like you say, the only down side is the size. I don’t know how or why but it seems to run better than my 4k 144hz monitor. And that hdr is perfect. If you have a high end pc, this is a perfect high end display (assuming this model is the same/better than the cx)

[AuthenTech]

Looks pretty cool! Would love to see how video editing on that would look. Bummer about that auto dimming issue. For my new Mac Studio, I went with the GIGABYTE M32U, a nice 32" 16x9 ratio, that extra height is really nice for FCP timeline editing, plus 144hz on Mac is fantastic. It also has a nice KMV switch for toggling over to my gaming PC. I too had issues finding sufficient info on cable needed for 4k/120 on macOS, but I went with a USB-C to DP 1.4 cable and it worked out great!

[nickjacobsss]

I still want an even smaller verions 32-37”, but this is definitely a step “up” from the 48 that I tried last year!

[chriswho]

You need to enable amd freesync premium for vrr across lower refresh rates (increased range where max refresh >=2.5x min allows frame doubling when low fps) and you can get 4k120 with a Mac by using a thunderbolt adapter to DisplayPort 1.4+ instead of naive hdmi


To get around abl dimming you can use the service menu to disable the limiter at risk of your warranty.

[TechMikkel]

My own experience with 42": It'll take a week to get used to it and after that you'll learn to navigate and focus on the bigger screen and have a lot more benefits than the first newbie impression.

[Fredo_Viola]

That dimming issue most certainly affects movie playback, as the tv will always confuse a long take as a blank screen and dim. It doesn’t even need to be a bright shot. I was haunted by this issue for an entire year and tried all the bandaid solutions you listed. Finally I discovered there is a secret menu which you can access online or with a tech remote where the dimming function can be turned off. You then just have to make sure to manually make sure the screen is not sitting in a bright image for too long. Or just turn it back on while you are not doing work that will be interrupted by the dimming issue. It is an insane “feature” that certainly needs a better solution!

[JcRabbit]

I'm using a 48" LG CX as a PC monitor. After getting a service remote and disable the auto-dimming 'feature' on the service menu (which made it basically unusable for any kind of prolonged text work on the desktop), to me the biggest disadvantage of using this as a monitor is the lack of a standby feature.

Unlike a real computer monitor, the CX will NOT enter standby mode when the screen goes off - instead it will display a bouncing 'No Signal' logo on the screen until it finally turns itself off 20 minutes or so later.

Once it has turned itself off, wiggling the mouse does not bring it to life as it does with a real PC monitor on standby, you have to wiggle the mouse AND use the remote to wake it up. This is already annoying on a single monitor system, but it becomes almost a deal breaker on a multi-monitor system that is left running 24/7.

You see, when the CX turns itself off, unlike a monitor in standby mode it disappears from the list of currently plugged in monitors in Windows. This means ALL the windows on the CX desktop are automatically moved to your secondary monitor, piling it up with whatever is already in there.

Now, there are software workarounds (such as Monitor Keeper) which will remember window positions and reposition them when you turn the CX back on, but it's still a clumsy thing and does not work so well under Windows 11 (minimized windows are not moved back to the CX).

All this could be easily solved via firmware if only LG added a standby mode to any input identified as being connected to a PC instead of that 'No Signal' action followed by turning itself off 20 minutes later (which makes sense for TVs but not for computer monitors).

[MattTester]

I've been using 40" 4K TVs as my main monitor for about 4 years now, currently a Samsung 40MU6120. It's very tempting to upgrade to this for the 120Hz among other things. I've been very happy with the size, I found that having the backlight set to around half is enough and that wall mounting the TV so the weight of it is off the desk really helps deal with its bulk.

[markmcguinness]

The bigger desk is the key. I tried a 48 inch on a 60cm deep desk and it was really sore on my eyes and gave headaches. I changed to a 100cm desk and mounted the monitor to the desk so it was as far away as possible. No issues since!

[styn]

8:00 - You could get a service remote and turn off ABSL in the secret service menu. This solves your dimming issue 100%, the normal settings do not allow this. It's also not cooling/heat related like you stated, but it's supposed to prevent excessive burn-in. The algorithm detects the majority of the image is not moving for too long and thinks the image is paused. A certain percentage of the screen's pixels need to change colors. Otherwise it will dim all pixels to prevent increased pixel burn-in / retention. This feature increases longevity of the organic LEDs, but really sucks for monitor usage. That's of course because - at the end of the day - it has TV software.

Lastly a question: did you try out the native ultrawide aspect ratio which is a new feature on the C2? It introduces black bars top and bottom and makes it more like an ultra wide. I heard the resolution and quality of this setting is shit and also HDR doesn't work properly then.

[bugged]

The issue with all these screens, and I have used upto 55 inch as a monitor is that it's all limited to 4k. And that makes the pixels more apparent as the screen sizes get larger but the resolution remains the same. These sizes will become more usable as a monitor when 8k becomes the norm and then using 42 inches at 8k would be a pixel perfect joy.