LG Alexa 65" C1 Series 4K Smart OLED TV (2021) (Refurbished)

This replaced a Samsung 60" from 2017. That was an early model 4K and towards the lower end of the various Samsung lines. The picture from this compared to that is stunning - the blacks are the thing that really jump out. On a 4K Dolby Vision source it is revelatory. What I can't comment on because we don't use: - SmartTV features. We didn't use them with Samsung either - we use Google TV with Chromecast so that the UI is the same across TV brands and we aren't captive to a particular TV's UI. I also have low trust in the TV manufacturers to keep their Smart features updated. It is a lot cheaper to just replace the $50 Google device every couple years. - HDMI/ARC. Sadly, our Denon AVR is too old for that. - Internal speakers - never turned them on. - Dolby beyond DD 5.1, i.e. Atmos, etc. I do think that the documentation is mediocre and skinny at best - very basic stuff that you almost really don't need to know. Here are a few things it doesn't discuss: - Surround sound from the optical/TOSLINK digital output: you can get DD 5.1 from this only if set to "passthrough/bitstream" Just about every other setting will result in PCM/2 channel because their thinking is that this is for a sound bar rather than an AVR, where you are more likely to use HDMI/ARC. We use the optical out because our AVR is too old to support ARC and doesn't support 4K either. So I struggled to get DD from the optical at first. I also had to set Google TV to "auto" rather than explicitly setting it to DD or DTS. I called up LG on this issue and they told me that only PCM was available on optical. That is not true. By contrast, the Samsung put everything to the AVR as DD 5.1, regardless of whether the upstream signal was that at all. - The USB ports are switched, but with an off-delay. So if you want to power a gadget or LEDs know that the power will eventually shut off, just not when the TV is turned off. - Relative to our Samsung, the screen is fairly reflective - this TV is not great near windows during the day. It is not as bright as our 5 year old Samsung either. But at night, ooo laa laa. - This is an HDMI only TV - 1 rear-facing (HDMI 4) and 3 left facing - HDMI 1/2/3. No component or old RCA SD or S-Video. To set up our aging Denon you need RCA SD for the OSD when you aren't using HDMI. I bought a gadget here on Amazon to translate RCA video to HDMI for the rare times I need to get to the Denon's on screen menus. I do get griped by this - deciding to remove capabilities so that you need to upgrade and replace other components of your system that otherwise work fine. - The OLED features aren't explained well. Like "Comfort Mode" for example. Does that help with OLED burn-in? Not sure. Some other OLED features are better described but I can't give a high score to the UI layout - too many options greyed out based on a setting elsewhere. I think the UI designers were challenged about balancing a feature's closeness to the top level menu versus closeness to more advanced settings. - Calibration of any kind. Nada. Haven't touched that yet. - The VESA mounting holes are very low on this TV. Not a big deal but be prepared to redo your wall mount if your prior TV was centered on the mounting holes. That's all for now - just had it a week. This may sound nitpicky, but at the end of the day we are very happy with this TV.