Murphy’s Law is often considered the only guarantee we have in life, and my recent experience observing the OLED TV market is proof of that.
More specifically, just a few months after I wrote a comment asking why there were still no “cheap” OLED TVs, a ton of great deals suddenly started popping up, suggesting one might be coming in the near future.
This started during Prime Day in July, when LG radically slashed the price of its new OLED sets – contrary to all the data we’ve collected from past events and my gut feeling as a journalist who has covered more deals than I care to count.
The offers were so good that they Which hi-fi system? The whole team, myself included, was amazed that you could get a 65-inch LG C4 for £1,500 in the LG Store.
Is that really cheap? No, £1500 is still a lot of money. But that’s a huge saving when you consider that the TV had launched just a few weeks earlier with a heftier price tag of £2700. Then the company pulled the same trick with its LG G4 and Samsung responded by slashing the price of its S90D to its lowest price ever.
To put this in context, in the nearly two decades I’ve covered OLED TVs and sales events, I’ve never seen a set receive such deep discounts so soon after launch.
You usually have to wait a year, or at least until Black Friday in November, for there to be any significant deals on new OLEDs. Even then, the best discounts are usually on expiring older models from the previous year as stores try to clear their stock.
Maybe an LG executive entered the wrong number when entering the asking price, maybe OLED justice activists hacked the system and deliberately set the price so low – whatever the reality, I thought this was a bizarre event, like a lightning strike, that would not be repeated anytime soon.
But then this week retailer Very pulled the same trick and launched LG’s even cheaper B4 OLED. In particular, the price of the 55-inch LG B4, which we unfortunately haven’t tested yet, dropped to £749, a massive 56 percent drop from RRP.
While none of the OLED devices meet our definition of “cheap,” which we reserve for devices under £500/$500, the price cuts are so drastic that we think something is in the air and one could be on the horizon before the end of the year.
Most industry analysis suggests that TV sales and shipments in 2023 were lower than expected. The latest data from market research firm Trendforce shows that 2023 will be the worst year in quite some time for TV makers, with shipments at record lows. It also predicts that sales will not increase by more than 0.2 percent this year, so companies will likely have to clear their inventories of old sets.
If that’s true, I imagine these atypical price cuts will continue, especially on Black Friday, and that there will be particularly hefty discounts on any remaining 2023 models still in stock.
For this reason, I will be keeping a close eye on smaller versions of major sets, including the five-star LG B3 and the still-excellent Philips OLED808.
At the time of publication, many of these are already at the £800/$800 mark. Given the heavy discounts on Black Friday, with some up to 40-50 percent off, it’s not out of the question that at least one will drop to the sacred £500/$500 mark. At least, we hope so…
MORE:
The best OLED TVs proven
These are the best LG TVs we have checked
We evaluate the best 65 inch tvs
