LG OLED TV recall: should you be worried?

An LG OLED TV recall is in full swing in South Korea, with 60,000 OLED televisions released between February 2016 and September 2019 affected due to potential issues with overheating power boards, including many of its most popular models.

LG has confirmed to T3 that 18 different models are affected, with the first report from Yonhap News  (via TechRadar) suggesting that these range from the B7 and C7 models that really took the technology mainstream in 2017, up to the LG C9 and LG B9 released last year (which are still still just about available now here and there, and remain excellent TV buys even with this in mind).

• LG C9 review
• LG B9 review

LG is offering free repairs to replace the affected boards, and has already fixed 22,000 of the likely 60,000 affected TVs, according to the company. "The overheating issue occurred only in very few models out of the total that used the component, but we will provide free component swaps for all of them for customer safety," LG told ZDNet.

There's no mention of LG's new 2020 models, including the CX and GX, being affected by the issue at all. LG is also reported to be doubling its production of OLED displays from now, so clearly it's not expecting any other major issues – and hopefully that will help keep OLED TVs to keep coming down in price. The CX is already notably cheaper than previous models were just after launch.

• LG CX review
• LG GX review

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Should I worry about my LG OLED TV?

Unless you live in South Korea, not officially. T3 has been contacted by some readers in other countries, including the USA and UAE, who believe they've had overheating issues with some of the same TV models as the Korea recall. We asked LG about these potential other cases, and LG gave us the following statement:

"The problem has been assessed to be generated by a defective TV component utilised in the 18 TV models sold in Korea, which makes Korea the only country identified to implement this replacement programme. We are thoroughly investigating the situation in all overseas markets and will update you when this investigation is finalised."

So while it's possible that we'll discover the problem has been more widespread, there's no reason to assume that's the case currently – issues that seem similar can have totally different causes that aren't large-scale across the models. If you are experiencing problems, contact LG in your region.

So for now, there's no need to worry about picking up the LG CX, which features prominently on our list of the best OLED TVs, and the best TVs overall – it's not part of the recall. The CX is even our pick of the best gaming TVs, which is no small thing in the year of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.