LG took the occasion of this year’s Digital CES to focus its tech innovations in the contexts of safety, convenience and an improved entertainment experience. Its ThinQ platform has evolved “into a lifestyle platform. We’re bringing a whole range of services to help you get even more out of our products,” offered Jin-hong Kim, Senior VP of global marketing.
“How we live our lives has changed,” said VP and Head of U.S. Brand Marketing Peggy Ang. “We aspire to multi-occasional spaces to live multi-dimensional lives. Living rooms have become classrooms and creative spaces. We have prioritized what health and wellness mean.” These changes she added, helped to inform LG’s 2021 products lineup.
On the entertainment side of business, LG’s Tim Alessi noted the sharp rise in TV usage over the last year, and how LG has responded with new panel technologies, AI capabilities and a redesigned WebOS experience.
A highlight of products introduced to viewers of the virtual event was the LG OLED evo TV (shown above), offering high brightness and using the Alpha 9 Gen 4 AI processor. It sports better-sounding audio via a 5.1.2-channel audio upmix feature to improve the TV’s sound using only the TV’s speakers. A new content discovery method, a refreshed Magic Remote and NFC Magic Tap for screen sharing and mirroring are other features.
And prior to the show, the company released information about a new iteration of its webOS smart TV platform. The webOS 6.0 platform will grace LG’s 2021 OLED, QNED Mini LED, NanoCell and UHD smart TVs. Paired with the new Magic Remote, the latest version of the company’s platform will offer viewers a more enjoyable and intuitive content discovery experience. The upgraded LG ThinQ AI in webOS 6.0 supports new voice commands for both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, making TV management and searching across streaming services, internet and broadcast channels easier.
LG also showed off its prowess in robotics, including a CLOi UV-C robot that is tasked for jobs such as disinfecting hotel rooms and offering contactless room service to guests.
Among the company’s appliance offerings this year are the LG WashTower, a washer/dryer combination that is stacked to take up half the floor space of a side-by-side configuration. It also features fabric detection that takes into account texture and laundry load size to calculate cleaning time and method. Its ‘smart learner’ function remembers wash cycles and temperature settings, and an allergen cycle removes 95 percent of allergens.
Nancy is a contributing editor for Dealerscope.
