LG G4 review

Media is an area LG has been bossing for a while now, and that's continued with the G4, thanks to great screen and onboard compatibility with loads of files, including lossless formats and the best the audio world can offer.

The music options through the app are excellent, with pretty every element of the app being something you can mess around with to get the best out of the audio experience.

We are a mostly approaching the point where there's nothing really to add to the story - sure, it's great that the phone can handle the high resolution audio, but that's not much use when you consider there aren't loads of file types that support it out there. Yes, it's good to have the 'Hi-Fi' sound option on there, but right now there's not a lot of use for it.

The LG Music player is actually surprisingly basic for something from the South Korean brand that usually revels in giving you as many options as possible.

In fact, only the ability to split sound between headphones and Bluetooth when both are connected is something to make me perk up, where Samsung has a whole audio suite that can tailor music to getting the best out of any headphones, no matter the quality.

I do like the 'music video' option in the settings, as it will automatically search YouTube for the video for you to watch - it would be way cooler if this played in the window though.

Video

When it comes to movies, LG has got the bases covered once again. You'd assume that this was one of the best phones for watching videos on - after all, it's got a cinema quality screen (according to LG) and the QHD display that delivers the joint-most pixels on the market.

On top of that, the curved glass is supposed to help with reflection to make it a more pleasant experience, so overall the signs were good.

And the experience matched, for the most part. When thinking about watching videos on the LG G4 my mind instantly points out the brightness levels - I has to push them right up to the maximum to get the best picture, as glare was often something of an issue (even when commuting on a train).

When the brightness is cranked up, the picture is good – really good – but like last year, I'm still not convinced we need QHD screens. No, scrap that: we don't need them yet. There's no great content out there which really takes the full potential of these screens and makes them into a compelling reason to buy the phone, so why place the battery sucking display on there at all?

You can make a case for the menus and internet browsing looking a little sharper – and they do, for the most part - but it doesn't add enough to the mix to make the LG G4 really need a super high resolution display.

The colours are deep and rich, although the red balance is really high, screaming out of the screen compared to the more muted blues and greens.

It's a tricky one to review the LG G4 for movies – while the display is clear, large and super sharp (all things I'm looking for in a phone for watching videos) it seems a bit unnecessary. That said, if battery life doesn't bother you, the G4 offers excellent performance.

Gaming

For gaming I was expecting the LG G4 to be excellent – even two fewer cores shouldn't hurt here, although I was intrigued to find out whether the higher res screen might drop the framerate.

As expected, it was great. The screen is expansive and responsive, the frame rate was rapid enough to crank out most of the top-end games on the market right now and 32GB of internal space should be enough to install loads of top-end options.

It's still not got the ability to run multiple games in the background – they'll still shut down as you flip between them – and there's still way too much lag when trying to push it up onto a big screen. However, these aren't really massive issues that affect your general day to day gaming.

The only real issue for the LG G4 as a gaming device is the speed with which it munches the battery.

I wasn't expecting that with the 808 hexa-core processor, so it's a disappointment to see it run down so quickly.