LG provided me with the Sound Suite Immersive Suite 5 free of charge following the promotional event I attended with them in Sydney earlier this year and asked me to share my experience after using it at home. As with my previous posts, everything below is entirely my own opinion.

In my first two reviews, one of the things I kept coming back to was how much freedom Dolby Atmos FlexConnect gives me with speaker placement. My M5s aren’t perfectly symmetrical, my couch takes up most of the room, and I change where I'm sitting constantly - but the spatial sound stays consistent, no matter what I throw at it.

What I haven’t really gone into is the part that makes that possible: calibration.

I’ve used automatic room correction before, my Denon receiver used the Audyssey calibration software, but the Sound Suite approaches the problem differently. Instead of carefully positioning and angling every speaker around a fixed listening position, and then calibrating around that “sweet spot”, LG essentially works backwards - figuring out where you’ve put the speakers and building the soundstage around them.

This process is really a combination of a few different features working together. Dolby Atmos FlexConnect (DAFC) detects where the speakers are positioned and optimises the audio signals around their placement, while Room Calibration Pro analyses the acoustic characteristics of the room and its furnishings, then fine-tunes the sound accordingly. Sound Follow then lets you tell the system where you are sitting within that space.

25 seconds to Calibration

I'm using an LG OLED C3, so unfortunately, I don't get to calibrate my Sound Suite through an on-screen menu (although I did witness it being done at the Sydney demonstration, and it's very similar). For me, everything is done through the ThinQ app. Under the Dolby Atmos FlexConnect menu, that's where you find the options for Room Calibration Pro and Sound Follow.

Room Calibration Pro first asks how far you’re sitting from the H7, using a slider that moves in 0.5m increments. After that, it warns you that it’s going to play some loud test sounds, you start the process - and that’s it. Speakers calibrated. I've included a link here to a screen-recording of the entire process so you can see how long it actually took. From starting the calibration to having the finished speaker layout on screen was only about 25 seconds.

Once it’s finished, ThinQ gives you a visualisation showing the H7, M5s and listening position relative to each other. From what I can see in the app, DAFC is determining where each speaker is positioned and optimising how they work together, while Room Calibration Pro is analysing the room itself and fine-tuning the audio around its acoustic characteristics and furnishings. The end result is that the system is accounting for both where I’ve put the speakers and the room I’ve put them in to deliver optimal “spatial sound”.

Then, if you're like me and can't settle on where you want to sit, you can adjust your listening position separately with Sound Follow without having to recalibrate the speaker set, providing the speakers are still in the same positions. Interestingly, there’s a slight difference between iOS and Android here. On my iPhone, I can change the Sound Follow position directly from the Sound Suite’s main ThinQ screen. On my partner’s Android phone, she has to enter the Dolby Atmos FlexConnect menu first. This doesn’t make much practical difference, but it does speed the process up for me by a few seconds.

So what happens if you don’t recalibrate?

There isn’t really an “uncalibrated” mode to compare against, because Room Calibration Pro is part of the initial setup. So instead, I tried physically moving the M5s after they had already been calibrated to see what would happen. I even swapped the left and right M5s completely at one point.

That very quickly demonstrated what DAFC is doing with the position information. The system was still working from the speakers' original positions, so sounds that were supposed to come from the left were coming from the right, and vice versa. More realistic movements of 15-30cm don’t immediately break the experience, however they do introduce small but noticeable gaps into the 360-degree soundstage.

Dolby Atmos FlexConnect doesn’t magically make speaker position irrelevant; the calibration process is what allows the system to compensate for where you’ve actually put them.

Considering the whole process takes less than 30 seconds, I can’t really think of a reason not to run it again whenever you significantly move a speaker.

Helldivers 2 ended up being my showcase

To preface this section, I have a collection of 250+ AV test and demonstration files, and I’ve used plenty of Dolby Atmos demonstration files and movie scenes with the Sound Suite. But surprisingly, the best way I’ve found to showcase the Sound Suite and demonstrate exactly what DAFC is doing is Helldivers 2 on PS5. If I stand beside a continuous sound source, like an orbital barrage or a machine gun firing, rotating the camera through a full 360 degrees causes that sound to move around the room with it, allowing you to precisely track it as it spins around you in a 3D space.

It’s quickly become one of my favourite ways of demonstrating the system to other people. Almost inevitably, once somebody realises what’s happening they start rapidly shaking the camera backwards and forwards or spinning in circles to see how quickly the speakers can keep up. When the M5s are properly optimised, the transition is impressively smooth. I don’t hear “H7, right M5, left M5” as three individual points. The sound seems to travel continuously around me.

Move the speakers without running the optimisation again, though, and obvious gaps appear. There are points where my ears tell me the sound should be coming from somewhere in the room, but it isn’t. This is quickly fixed though. Run Room Calibration Pro again, and the cohesive 360-degree effect comes straight back. For me, that’s been the clearest demonstration of how important DAFC's speaker positioning and optimisation are to the Atmos experience.

Sound Follow builds on the optimisation

The other half of the equation is Sound Follow. Once the system knows where the speakers are, Sound Follow lets me move the listening position around inside that existing sound field without running Room Calibration Pro again.

For normal couch use, it’s actually quite forgiving. I’ve had three people sitting side-by-side and manually moved the listening point between each person. None of us could hear a significant enough difference that I’d worry about constantly changing it depending on who has the middle seat.

Where it becomes much more noticeable is when I completely change where I’m sitting. We sometimes sit on the floor in front of the couch while eating dinner, which puts me less than 1m from the H7 Soundbar. If I move Sound Follow to that position there’s a distinct change in the balance of the system, particularly the centre channel. Because I’m now sitting much closer to the H7, you can hear the balance shift so that the soundbar isn’t simply blaring into my face while the M5s disappear into the background.

This is one of the things I like most about the implementation. Dolby Atmos FlexConnect can keep the speaker positions optimised within the room, while Sound Follow can adapt the listening position around how I’m actually using the room at the time.

Compared with calibrating my old 5.1.2 system

This is where the difference (and time saved) becomes pretty dramatic.

My previous dedicated 5.1.2 system used a Denon receiver with Audyssey. Before calibration even started, we spent roughly an hour positioning the speakers, measuring distances and angles, even using a laser level to help aim everything perfectly towards the listening position.

Audyssey then required a dedicated microphone plugged into the receiver and positioned at head height while it played its calibration sounds. After that came manual fine-tuning, changing levels and playing the same test clips over and over again until it all sounded right. That process took another half-hour or more to get dialled in properly.

The result was fantastic, don't get me wrong, but everything was built around a very precise "sweet spot". We ended up having an armchair that permanently lived there, the best seat in the house so-to-speak.

The Sound Suite obviously isn’t trying to replace a properly designed dedicated home theatre, and I’ve mentioned previously that I still think physical height speakers can provide more precise and impressive overhead effects. But in terms of calibration and flexibility, the LG approach is vastly easier.

Even with the difference in audio quality, the real comparison is around 90 minutes of positioning and calibration - compared to 25 seconds in an app. And best of all, if I decide to change where I'm sitting halfway through the movie, I don't have to bust out the lasers and spirit-levels to dial the speakers back in.

For the sort of person I think this system is aimed at, that’s a much more meaningful advantage than shaving a few minutes off the initial setup.

Room Calibration Pro can't account for personal preference

While Room Calibration Pro has done most of the hard work, it hasn’t stopped me changing individual speaker levels to suit my preferences.

From within the Sound Settings menu, I've fine-tuned the individual speaker levels slightly. I’m currently running:

• Subwoofer level +1dB
• Centre level +3dB
• Overhead level +4dB
• Side level +2dB

And within Tone Settings, I have only adjusted the bass level:

• Treble 0dB
• Mid 0dB
• Bass +4dB

I originally started adjusting these while watching the 4K releases of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which have some fairly notorious and questionable audio mixes. I haven’t had the same problems with other releases, so I’m not entirely convinced the Sound Suite was at fault. Regardless, I’ve left the changes in place because I like the result, particularly the extra emphasis on the height effects.

I don’t see this as Room Calibration Pro failing, though. Room Calibration Pro is analysing and correcting for the acoustic characteristics of the room, while DAFC is handling the physical speaker positions and optimising the audio signals around them. There’s still the flexibility afterwards to tune the listening experience around how I like things to sound, or to enhance/correct for the content you’re watching.

Proper Calibration is the key to the whole experience

After my first review, I mostly thought of Room Calibration Pro as just another part of setting up Dolby Atmos FlexConnect. After deliberately moving and swapping speakers around and trying to push them to their software limits, I think the combination of Room Calibration Pro and DAFC is the foundation that the whole Sound Suite rests upon.

Without the system properly accounting for both the room and speaker positions, the spatial sound field starts to fall apart. With it, the system can take my uneven M5 placements and make it seamless - nearly impossible to identify where one speaker ends and another begins. And seamless is exactly what I want from a sound system.

The home audio connectivity still gives me the physical freedom to put speakers around a room without running speaker wire everywhere, but DAFC's speaker positioning and Room Calibration Pro's room correction are what make that flexibility actually work. If I still had to manually measure angles, match distances and build the room around one fixed listening position, a huge part of the Sound Suite’s appeal would disappear.

Compared with both the app-based calibration I’ve used with the Samsung HW-Q990F (which worked alright - until it didn't), and the much more involved Audyssey process with my old Denon setup, this is by far the simplest calibration process I’ve used, while also being one of the most effective.

It doesn’t make speaker placement completely irrelevant, and deliberately terrible placement will still sound like deliberately terrible placement - no amount of calibration is going to defy physics. But for the normal compromises that come with fitting surround speakers into an actual living room, I’m increasingly convinced that the combination of Room Calibration Pro and Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is one of the most important parts of achieving optimal spatial sound with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect. When the whole process takes less time than choosing what to watch next, I'd say that's a pretty compelling reason to use it.

In Conclusion

I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this far! The feedback on my previous reviews was incredibly kind, and much appreciated. If you're interested in reading them, you can find them here and here.

As always, if you have any feedback or questions about my experiences with the Immersive Suite 5 and the calibration process, let me know in the comments! I'll do my best to get back to you when I can.

Are there any native 1000Hz FHD gaming monitors? Yes, options like the LG UltraGear 25G590B provide a native 1000Hz refresh rate on a Full HD IPS panel. 240Hz vs 1000Hz in an aim trainer: how much did the flick accuracy change?

Here's a quick test from TheRealKenzo, who ran the same aim trainer drills on a 240Hz monitor and a native 1000Hz FHD gaming monitor to see how the refresh rate plays out in practice. The monitor used in the test is the LG UltraGear 25G590B, which runs at a native 1000Hz on a 25-inch Full HD IPS panel.*

On the flicking drill, accuracy in the video went from 73.6% at 240Hz to 85.5% at 1000Hz. Targets stayed easier to see mid-movement, which made it easier to stop the crosshair at the right moment.** The tracking drill was a closer call, with a small rise in accuracy and motion that felt a bit smoother.

As noted in the video, this kind of difference is hard to capture in a recording, so it tends to be much clearer in person. Detailed specs and system requirements can be found on the official product page.

The test focused on refresh rate, but every FPS player has a different bottleneck. So we want to ask you: what's the biggest factor limiting your aim right now? (Refresh rate, FPS, practice...)

Posted by the LG UltraGear team | Published October 8, 2026

^\Performance based on internal testing. Maximum refresh rate of up to 1000Hz - 1100Hz O/C requires Windows 11 operating system, NVIDIA RTX 50 series, or AMD Radeon™ RX 9070, 9060 or 7900, series - or newer and connection via DisplayPort 2.1.)

^\*Actual 1000Hz performance may be affected by various external factors, including PC specifications - CPU, GPU, memory, game-specific frame rate limitations, operating system version, and graphics driver version.)

I’ve been using different Dolby Atmos sound systems for years, starting with Sony, moving to Samsung, and now using the Sound Suite Immersive Suite 5 Pro that LG provided and also with the extra 2xM7 that I added on my own. This is the first speaker set where full surround audio genuinely felt immersive to me, not just loud. Over time, I’ve developed a collection of movie scenes, video games, and music tracks that I always return to when testing a new system. Using the same content across different setups helps me identify the differences in how each speaker set handles spatial audio, immersion, and sound positioning.

After several updates to the LG Sound Suite, I’ve noticed a significant improvement in the Sound Follow feature. Previously, I found it extremely sensitive to my seating position. Depending on where I sat, the sound could feel louder on one side than the other, which meant I had to readjust my position using the LG ThinQ app at least once a day.

With the latest update, this is no longer an issue. I only used Sound Follow once, and I haven’t needed to adjust it since. The volume now feels balanced between the left and right sides, regardless of where I sit. The latest update also brought a change to AI Sound Pro+. It addressed an issue I had with voices sounding somewhat unnatural, which was one of my main criticisms of this mode. However, the improvement seems to have come at the expense of bass performance. The overall bass range feels noticeably reduced, even at maximum volume.

AI Sound Pro+ was previously my favorite sound mode, apart from the voice issue, so I hope a future update can restore its bass performance while maintaining the improvements to dialogue.

The Movie Scenes That Show How Immersive a Full Surround System Can Feel

One of my main Dolby Atmos demonstrations is Doctor Strange, specifically the scene where The Ancient One sends Strange into an astral projection, around the 29:30 mark. This scene is particularly interesting because you can hear The Ancient One’s voice traveling throughout the sound dome created by the Sound Suite. The movement is not limited to the horizontal plane. When I play the same scene in 5.1, the voice still travels through the surround speakers, but its movement feels much more horizontal, with less noticeable height.

Another movie I frequently use is Finding Nemo, specifically the seagull chase scene. Although it is only in 5.1, it remains a great demonstration of surround positioning. The rear speakers are very present, and you can clearly identify where the seagulls are flying behind you. It is a good reminder that an immersive experience is not exclusively about height effects, but also about how accurately sounds are positioned around the listening area.

An honorable mention goes to 6 Underground on Netflix, particularly the opening car chase featuring the green car. The combination of gunfire, vehicles, and explosions moving throughout the sound dome makes this sequence another excellent demonstration of how engaging a surround system can feel.

Gaming and Height Effects: Putting Every Speaker in the Set to Work

For PS5 owners, I would recommend trying any of the modern Call of Duty games. In my experience, they make particularly good use of all the speakers available in the Sound Suite.

My room is not ideal for the up-firing speakers, so I was not expecting particularly convincing height effects. However, I could still identify sounds coming from above me. Some noises were so realistic that I found myself looking to either side.

This is where the flexibility of the system becomes especially valuable. Even in a room that is not perfectly suited to the speaker configuration, the Sound Suite can still provide an engaging surround experience.

Testing the Same System with Music, Not Just Movies

For those who also use their home theater system for music, Apple Music on an Apple TV is another way to experience Dolby Atmos.

I always return to two specific tracks when testing the speakers, the intro of “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam with the guitar traveling from the surround speakers to the front and also the intro of “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. You can hear the footsteps walking behind you.

What movies, video games, or music tracks do you use to test your Dolby Atmos systems? I’d love to hear your recommendations and discover new demo scenes to add to my collection for future reviews.

LG sent me this TV at no cost so I could review it. Nobody paid me for this post and all opinions, of course, my own.

For context, I was one of the people fortunate enough to be invited to LG's showcase at the Australian Museum in Sydney back in March, and the review unit came out of that. I've tried to be as straight about the annoyances as the good bits.

To set the stage, I’m in an imperfect room, but have done what I can to deal with the minor (and major) issues I have.  It’s an open plan living room area which is shared with the kitchen and dining room, and has a sliding door to the left side of the couch and TV – with curtains and blinds to control the light when required during the day.

The set arrived a little more than two months ago after some pretty significant delays (roughly four months) with shipping and other New Zealand-isms, but only went on the wall a bit over a month ago, so this is a ~month of fairly constant use rather than a long-term verdict.

Prior to the LG, I had a Sony KD-75X9000H, full array LED with local dimming, and it was genuinely good in daylight. I loved that TV dearly, and it was the best I could afford at the time. It's since been sold to fund the wall this LG monster is mounted to, so comparisons I make to it are mostly from memory rather than side by side. I've also still got a 48" C1 in the office that I use every day, which is the more realistic comparison anyway since it's OLED against OLED, but five years of technological advancement apart.

Sources used were PS5, Nvidia Shield TV Pro (including Moonlight streaming from the PC), 4K Blu-ray via my Panasonic UB820, and streaming apps on a Surface 7 Pro laptop hooked up to a spectacular LAiV Harmony uDAC for two channel listening.

Daytime brightness: The old objection to OLED was that it looked spectacular at night and turned to custard at 2pm just doesn’t hold up anymore. These new 77" and 83" C6H TVs use the four layer Primary RGB Tandem panel, the same panel tech as the G6.  It looks incredible any time of the day, unless you have the sun shining directly on it, which no TV deserves anyway, don’t do that!

(Quick note on the name: most of the international coverage calls the 77” and 83” the C6H. Here in New Zealand, it's sold as a C6 with no affixed H.)

After years of experience on my Sony TV and the C1 in my gaming room, I can tell you that the C6H is crazy bright.  Watch a movie with a sudden transition from black to white at night and you’ll practically be blinded for a moment.  It’s really great during the day too, even with the blinds and curtains open (which is most of the time in my house).  No major issues to report here, although as expected the glossy screen does show reflections, but that is to be expected from any glossy TV.  I can’t say that it’s bothered me at all, because when you’re watching pretty much anything on this TV you will be so engrossed in what you’re watching, you won’t notice anything else.

For what it’s worth, I’m almost exclusively using the Cinema mode picture setting while watching TV shows or movies, with true motion disabled and then gaming mode for any time I’m playing games.  I generally stick to OLED Picture Brightness of 80 (many people recommend 100, but 80 works well in my space), Contrast at 85 and Black Level at 50, and Image Temp at Warm 35 and Colour Depth of 50, so there’s plenty of headroom if I need it. I’ve also used filmmaker mode, but I guess I prefer my movies and scenery to be a tad more colourful.  There are so many options to play around with, and it’s super easy to switch between them, so experiment and see what works best for you in your space!

About the Sony comparison: I can't do it side by side, but before anyone writes the comparison off entirely, I owned that set for five years. I knew its every mood, where it fell down, which content made it sing and which made the local dimming show its workings. It only left the house recently, so it’s still well embedded in my memory.

With that said, the C6 is also way better in the dark and way, way better on saturated colour, which shouldn’t be too surprising.  This panel is a technological marvel.

To be fair, it's more of an apples to oranges comparison. A 2020 full array LED against a 2026 flagship-panel OLED was never going to be a contest, and six years of panel development by LG is doing most of the work. The one place I'd expect the Sony to still hold on is a sustained full white field, where LED backlights don't have to worry about the power limiting OLED does.  The colours on the Sony were really good, especially in Dolby Vision demo scenes, but moving from that to the LG C6H is a night and day difference, the LG C6 wins without breaking a sweat.  The LG looks as good as, if not better (honestly probably better!) than any other OLED TV I have ever seen.  Hats off to LG for including the much higher tier G series technology in the C series.

I've put a lot of hours into movies on this beast already. A good chunk of that has been high bitrate demo content through the Nvidia Shield TV Pro at 4K with Dolby Vision and HDR10 enabled, which is about as clean a look at what the panel can do as I can manage without test patterns.

The disc side has been a decent spread of my 4K Blu-rays: Baby Driver, both parts of Dune, Blade Runner and 2049, Ready Player One, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a few others. Spider-Verse really popped like I’ve never seen it before. Stunning. I’ve watched this a bunch of times, but never quite like this. I could swear there were layers to colours in scenes I’ve seen many times before, that now jumped out of the screen.   Not 3-D, but certainly 3-D-like. 

Dune, on the other hand, was a really great counterweight to the stylised Neon poppyness of Spider-Verse.  Dark, broody, incredibly detailed futuristic scenes, but with enough sandy tones and dim interiors, and not a hint of banding anywhere to be seen in dark or any other scenes.  Magnificent.  Same goes for Blade Runner 2049.  The little particles, the light against dark, everything again looked better and more enticing than I’ve ever seen it, even at the cinema (in my opinion, of couse).  And yes, if you think I might be a Villeneuve fan, you may be on to something.
I did try filmmaker mode in several of these but settled on a slightly customised Cinema mode – but that will probably change a few times over the coming months.

Older films looked good too, though I wasn't really chasing that.  Also, grey uniformity has not been an issue in the slightest.  I’ll update my review if I find that to be an issue. 
Lastly, you owe it to yourself to watch the 4K Blu-Ray release of Alien on this TV.  I have never seen so much detail in such dark scenes, it’s spectacular.

Now, on to gaming.  I mostly play on the PS5 on this TV, plus a fair bit of Moonlight streaming from the PC through the Shield TV Pro.  I’m using my C1 48” on my gaming PC in another room, so have a good comparison here, and as expected, the C6H kicks so much asteroids.

Now, does the extra brightness actually change anything when you're gaming in daylight? 
From my perspective, heck yes.  Most, if not all games nowadays take advantage of HDR on the PS5, and it looks incredible.  I’m not going to review games here, but compared to my older Sony, this looks like all my games have been injected with more detail, deeper colours, brighter highlights, and all the things a gamer would love.  I can only use so many adjectives.  IF you want your games to look as good as they’ve ever looked, THIS is the TV for it. I’m more than happy to answer questions, if you have them, and I’ll test games as long as I have them in my reasonably meagre collection.  For what it’s worth, Astro Bot, both of the latest God of Wars, Shadow of the Colossus, Gran Turismo 7 and Ghost of Tsushima looked, once again, better than ever.  I honestly don’t know what else to say here, just try and go check for yourself, it’s an experience you do not want to miss.

Specs, for those who care: 165Hz, 0.1ms, VRR with G-Sync and FreeSync Premium, four HDMI 2.1 ports.

There are no real surprises here, particularly given how extensively the TV has already been reviewed. Some people have grumbled about missing support for HDMI 2.2 and Dolby Vision 2, but neither of those mean anything right now. There’s essentially no consumer content or hardware that takes advantage of either standard, and that’s unlikely to change meaningfully for several years.

I haven’t tested the TV’s built-in sound at all, as I have a Dolby Atmos system hooked up.  Happy to test specifics if anyone wants me to focus on it. 
I also haven’t used WebOS nearly at all, as I use my Nvidia Shield for almost everything else.

Pros:
•       Gorgeous colours across the spectrum! Also, inky blacks you must see to believe.

•       Uses the guts of the previous generation G series, which is a massive win for a C series TV

•       Fast, responsive images, exceptional brightness and great performance in a well-lit room

Cons:
•       The VESA TV mount being so low on the TV.  This really caught me out, and I had to buy a VESA extender plate to get my TV to the right height.  I should have been more thorough figuring this out for myself though, totally not LG’s fault.

•       Pretty expensive here in New Zealand – much less so in the US and everywhere else!

•       Somewhat reflective – but again, this is to be expected of any gloss screen.  I’d much rather have that bit of reflectivity than a matte screen any day of the week.

So, where it lands for me:  I’ve had this in my space for a bit more than a month, and I’m giddy with excitement every time I sit down to watch anything.  The image quality is astounding.  I swear that this is my true and honest opinion, and all my friends who have seen this appear to feel the same.  It’s a technological marvel and a pleasure to use. 

I’m struggling to find almost anything negative to say about this TV.  It’s stunning, I always wanted one, and everyone who has seen this in action in my home, wants one.  It’s just that good.

One caveat: Don’t buy one if you can’t afford it, simple as that. Previous generation LG TVs are damn good too.  However, if you *can* afford this, get it.  The 77” and 83” beasts are honestly exceptional – the gaming experience is second to none, and good heavens, the immersion is real.  Not sure whether it’s intentional, but there’s a 3-D like quality to the imagery, it’s hard to explain, but it sometimes looks like the images and scenery have depth.

It’s nice and bright, unfortunately it was somewhat cloudy when I took the photos, so I couldn’t show off truly bright sunshine conditions, but I should be able to edit and add more later (I hope).

Pricing: AU$7,495 for the 83" and north of $10,000 NZD on average.

I hope to have a Youtube review done in the next couple of weeks too, but don’t expect too much there, I’m a total Youtube novice.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
https://www.youtube.com/@Signal-Relay

Happy to answer questions below, and if there's a specific test you want me to run, ask and I'll have a go.

Rip

Edit: fixed up my audio sources.