August and September are always an incredibly busy time for the What Hi-Fi? team. As well as contending with the seasonal summer launches that happen every year, we also start gearing up for our Awards.
That means we have to start comparatively testing all the products we think deserve a shot at the title to make sure we are confident that the eventual winner is indeed worthy of the hallowed trophy we plan to bestow upon it.
This has meant that I have spent more days, hours, minutes and seconds than I care to count testing this year’s latest 48-inch OLED TVs. This is a category that has been dominated by LG and its C-series of sets for the past few years.
And, on the whole, I have loved the experience. 2025 is shaping up to be one of the most competitive years to date for small OLEDs – a fact demonstrated by the close race I just experienced when reviewing the 48-inch LG C5 and 48-inch Samsung S90F.
You can get a detailed breakdown of how the two sets performed in our reviews, but the Cliff Notes is that they are impressive, but very different, TVs.
The LG offers cooler tones and is generally more controlled and subtle with its picture making it a solid, albeit very safe option. The Samsung, meanwhile, offers higher peaks in very bright scenes and is warmer, giving it more of a “wow” factor, but also a tendency to overbake some scenes.
This makes picking between them quite hard as the answer to which is best will largely be determined by personal preference.
But, after sitting in our test rooms with the two side by side for longer than any human should have to, watching and rewatching our current suite of test scenes, I have one important piece of advice. Regardless of which set you decide to get, I urge you to budget for a soundbar as well.
Each company makes bold claims about its TV’s new AI chipsets’ advanced processing and how they can “optimise” the speakers’ settings to the environment they are in; but neither set sounds great.
In its standard settings, the C5’s 2.2-channel 40W speaker system sounds flat, failing to offer enough directionality to do justice to action-heavy scenes. Everything sounds compressed and as if it is coming from the centre of the TV.
Switching lanes, the S90F’s 60-watt, 2.1.2 system offers some directionality, but is woefully underpowered. Those of us in the room could still comfortably converse, even with its volume at 100.
The AI-powered modes also fail to improve things. Both the C5’s AI audio mode and S90F’s Amplify settings attempt to separate the frequency range further, but they make the audio sound thin and at times sibilant.
And that is hardly what you want during dialogue-heavy scenes or those with a lot of upper-frequency effects – such as the night time battle scene from Civil War we increasingly use when testing TVs.
So, despite the two TVs’ undeniable progress with picture quality, I’m sad to have to report that, if you want a decent home cinema experience, you will still want to invest in a soundbar to complement your new OLED.
I would recommend the Sonos Beam (Gen 2), which is price appropriate and an excellent option – hence its long standing place in our best soundbar and best Dolby Atmos soundbar guides.
If that’s too rich for your blood, a decent entry level option, such as the Sony HT-SF150, will still sound miles better than the in-built system.
MORE:
These are the best 40-inch TVs we have reviewed
Our picks of the best OLED TVs
We rate the best TVs money can buy