LG OLED65M4

Nothing is more certain to upset the aesthete in any household than the tech geek they live with insisting on trailing cables here, there and everywhere. ‘Pristine decor’ seldom goes hand-in-hand with ‘premium audio and/or video equipment’, after all, and the compromises that usually result tend to be to the satisfaction of no one.

LG has a plan to alleviate at least a little of this tension. Its ‘M4’ range of OLED TVs operate, with the exception of mains power, wirelessly. Which means an M4 needs only to be plugged into the mains in order to do its thing - all of its wired and wireless sources are joined to its ‘Zero Connect’ box, which can be positioned out of the way because it streams wirelessly to the screen.

And although we’re already close to ‘too good to be true’ territory, there’s more. Because not only can the Zero Connect box send video and audio information wirelessly, it can do so at top-of-the-shop standard. Which means 4K Dolby Vision HDR images from a streaming service or a Blu-ray, along with Dolby Atmos spatial audio from those same sources. Even 4K @ 144Hz with ALLM, VRR, HGiG, FreeSync and G-Sync, as well as all the other cutting-edge PC and console gaming features, can be delivered wirelessly. And this all happens using the 60GHz wireless band, which is nothing like as busy or oversubscribed as the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands most other wi-fi devices use. 

The Zero Connect box itself features three 2.1-standard HDMI sockets, one of which is eARC-enabled, along with a couple of USB-A slots, an Ethernet input, a trio of TV aerial binding posts, a CI card slot and a digital optical output. It’s also geared up for wireless action, of course, thanks to Bluetooth 5.1 and wi-fi 6. Just turn the large dial on the top of the box to point the wireless transmission towards the screen, and slide the little switch to adjust the transmission angle. It’s as simple as that.   

Picture quality

Ultimately, the LG M4 is an LG G4 with wireless smarts. Which means that the LG M4 is a spectacularly good television despite the significant price uplift.

A lot of what makes the M4 so watchable is its second-generation ‘micro-lens array’ (MLA) panel and the ‘Alpha 11 Super Upscaling 4K’ processing engine that controls it. MLA, as the name strongly suggests, deploys an array of tiny lenses ahead of the light-emitting pixels of the OLED panel - literally billions of them on a screen of this size. They give a significant boost to the brightness of the screen - solving, at a stroke, the one major shortcoming of OLED TV technology. That’s the theory, at least. And then the Alpha 11 processor takes care of business, deploying racily-named features such as ‘AI Director Processing’, ‘Object Enhancing by Visual Perception’, ‘Clear Voice Pro’ and ‘Peak Highlighter’ to bear, all in a drive for optimal picture and sound performance. As is de rigueur just now, Alpha 11 uses A1 to maximise the depth and three-dimensionality of pictures, improve dynamic highlights and create an image that’s as close to the originator of the content’s intentions as possible. And yes, that is in addition to ‘Filmmaker Mode (which suddenly seems a bit passé).

And it all seems to work exceedingly well where picture performance is concerned. Those deep, inky OLED black tones are available, of course, and the M4 invests them with a lavish amount of detail - where some TVs crush dark scenes into uniformity, the LG teases out information and variation at every turn. Its insight into the darkest scenes in a movie is remarkable - and when it’s allied to unexpectedly potent brightness, it follows that contrast is wide and dynamic. The M4 finds just as much detail and variance in white tones as it does in black, and it’s able to allow both extremes to coexist in the same scene without problem.

In between, the overall colour palette is wide-ranging and natural. The M4 is a vibrant, energetic watch - but it never feels overblown or overdriven, and the balance it’s capable of giving to skin-tones in particular is particularly convincing. It defines edges confidently, keeps a fanatical grip of on-screen motion even in circumstances as testing as televised sport, and creates persuasive depth of field in those circumstances that demand it. Even when the going gets hectic and/or complex, the M4 is a composed and unflappable watch, and never allows much by way of picture-noise to creep in.

And broadly speaking, the above is all true when it comes to upscaling sub-4K content. There are limits, of course - the LG is not a miracle-worker, and if you insist on watching some daytime TV reruns of 80s soap operas then you’ll find images become soft and indistinct, while motion control goes, to put it bluntly, to pieces. But when it comes to filling its panel from some Full HD 1080p content, the M4 does sterling work - there’s a drop-off in detail levels, naturally, but nothing catastrophic. Movement is controlled well, edges remain smoothly defined, and noise and artefacts are at a bare minimum.

LG has long been among the best choices for gamers, and the M4 does nothing to sour the company’s reputation. Dynamic contrasts exploit the lighting effects in games well, and the sheer rigour of the motion control and edge definition makes for a straightforwardly enjoyable gaming experience. There’s nothing by way of judder or image tearing, and the screen is very rapid indeed in its responses - lag is never an issue.

In fact, the M4 is such an accomplished watch that it’s easy to forget that all this is happening wirelessly. Which is about as big a compliment as I can pay.

Sound quality

It’s fair to say that ‘sound quality’ is a different story. The M4 is packing a 4.2-channel speaker array, driven by a total of 60 watts of power, and has the likes of ‘AI Voice Remastering’ and ‘AI Sound Pro’ to help it make the best of incoming audio signals - but the results are underwhelming. Dialogue is distinct, it’s true, and there’s not the crowding that lesser TVs indulge in when soundtracks get complicated either - but this is a wheezy and insubstantial presentation, no two ways about it. 

The obvious solution is a soundbar. You won’t have to spend a fortune to improve on the unassisted sound of the M4 - but it’s worth bearing in mind that the LG is compatible with the company’s ‘WOW Orchestra’ feature. This means the TV can join in with the efforts of an appropriate soundbar rather than being overridden by them - and it’s also worth bearing in mind that LG’s ‘WOW Orchestra’ soundbars are among the best around.

Living with

Obviously, it’s the wireless nature of the M4 that’s the big draw, and it makes living with this TV about as painless as it can be. The screen simply needs mains power, and then as long as you can plug your physical sources into the Zero Connect box there’s nothing much else to it. Finally, here’s a TV that’s as clean and tidy in practice as they always appear in the promotional literature.

And controlling the M4 is just as straightforward. The company’s ‘WebOS’ smart TV interface is here in ‘WebOS24’ guise, and despite a little reorganisation to allow more space for adverts it remains one of the cleaner, more logical and more usable interfaces around. Getting what you want is never arduous, no matter if you’re using the ‘Magic’ remote control (which will be familiar to anyone who’s operated an LG OLED TV during the last decade or so) or the built-in Amazon Alexa voice assistant.

Conclusion

The price premium aside, there seems to be no discernible downside to LG M4 ownership. Yes, you can achieve very, very similar picture quality from a G4 and save yourself a bundle - but then you’ll have to keep all your sources near to the TV and hard-wire every one of them. If you’re after minimal disruption to your interior decor without compromising on image quality, you simply can’t go wrong here.  

Sample content

Don’t Worry Darling Amazon Prime Video

Bright lighting, strong contrast and a vibrant colour palette are given full expression by the M4 - and the relatively weedy nature of its sound means Harry Styles’ extraordinary accents don’t come as far forward as they otherwise might

Little Miss Sunshine Blu-ray
The M4 is an accomplished up-scaler - and this ‘dysfunctional family road trip’ movie remains smooth and low-noise even in the most testing scenes. The sunny California environment benefits from the increase in brightness, too  

Luther: The Fallen Sun Netflix
The Dolby Vision HDR assistance to the picture goes a lot further in these specific circumstances than the Dolby Atmos soundtrack. The picture here is dynamic and high-contrast, with remarkable insight into skin-tones, textures and so on, while the sound is flimsy and lightweight

The benefits of decreased clutter without decreased performance are obvious - and there’s a lot to be said for buying an LG M4 simply to marvel at what an achievement of technology it is.