The V40 has the largest display LG's put on a V-series phone. It's got a 6.4-inch diagonal and a 1,440x3,120px resolution in a taller-than-most 19.5:9 aspect ratio, while pixel density works out to 537ppi.
The display has rounded corners, like LG did first on the G6 beating everyone to it. There's a notch up top cutting into the pixels too and if you're the glass-half-full type of person you could adopt LG's interpretation by calling the horns the phone's Second screen and appreciate the extra screen estate. When it comes to notches though, being the bitter reviewers that we are, our glass might just be half empty.
The V40 pumped out 323nits in manual brightness mode, but the number shot up to almost precisely twice that in auto mode - so, one of the dimmer OLEDs when you're in control, but as bright as the other big-name rivals if you rely on the ambient light sensor. The G7 can shine even brighter, but it's packing an LCD and conventional wisdom says LCDs are brighter than OLEDs.
As we've come to expect from non-Samsung OLEDs, the one on the V40 does produce some very minor illumination in blacks, ruining what should theoretically be infinite contrast. In other words, the pixels showing black are never really completely turned off and emit some light. While it's safe to say you won't be noticing it, it does raise a couple of questions along the lines of 'if Samsung can do it, why can't LG?' and also 'are those slightly lit up black pixels consuming any meaningful amounts of energy?'.
Display test | 100% brightness | ||
Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
0.002 | 414 | 207000 | |
0.032 | 616 | 19250 | |
0.002 | 323 | 161500 | |
0.008 | 638 | 79750 | |
0.225 | 460 | 2044 | |
0.499 | 920 | 1844 | |
0 | 653 | ∞ | |
0.425 | 700 | 1647 | |
0 | 376 | ∞ | |
0 | 631 | ∞ | |
0 | 367 | ∞ | |
0 | 658 | ∞ | |
0 | 426 | ∞ | |
0.2 | 366 | 1830 | |
0.214 | 389 | 1818 | |
0 | 442 | ∞ | |
0 | 620 | ∞ | |
0.002 | 508 | 254000 | |
0.003 | 657 | 219000 | |
0 | 458 | ∞ | |
0.002 | 624 | 312000 |
Once we got past those musings, we took the V40 out in the sun (or rather, inside the lab, under our test lighting). It achieves very good contrast levels, though it's still that little bit behind the industry leaders. It is a step up from the V30 though, so that is nice.
The V40 has lot of customization options when it comes to color reproduction - so many, in fact, that they are too many. There's an Automatic mode, and then there are presets named Game, Sports, Cinema, Photo, and Web, and then there's an Expert setting where you can fool around with hue, saturation and sharpness. Meanwhile, in both the Automatic and Expert modes, you can additionally adjust the color temperature and then separately the amount of red, green and blue with sliders.
We couldn't get a particularly accurate rendition of any color space no matter which preset we picked, though things aren't that bad. The Web preset got us an average DeltaE of 3.7 against an sRGB target, where Automatic couldn't go below 4.8. We expected Photo to be tuned for AdobeRGB, but we measured a 5.6 average DeltaE, whereas we got 4.4 in the same mode against a DCI-P3 target. Which we figured would be best rendered in the Cinema mode, only we got an average DeltaE of 5.0 there.
Perhaps, if you have your hands on a colorimeter and you're so inclined, you could play around with the sliders and get better results. In our book, however, the display presets should be factory tuned for color accuracy and the sliders are only there for you to mess with the settings if you wish - not the other way around.
The V40 ThinQ is equipped with a 3,300mAh battery, which is on the small side for the class and screen size. The Galaxy S9+ has a 3,500mAh cell, while the Mate 20 Pro packs in a whopping 4,200mAh. Then again, the V30 had the same 3,300mAh and the G7's battery is only rated at 3,000mAh, so it's just that LG doesn't like big batteries, and that's that.
Well it doesn't like excessively long battery life either, as it turns out. The V40 managed an unimpressive 8 hours on our Wi-Fi browsing test and a decent 10+ hours of looping videos, but the S9+'s respective numbers were 11:15h and 16:45, while the Mate 20 Pro clocked in at 13:57 and 15:22, so... The V40 did also last us a little short of 22 hours on a 3G call, where the other two could still do a few extra hours.
In the end, the V40 ThinQ posted an overall Endurance rating of 64 hours - far from stellar.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSer App. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the LG V40 ThinQ for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Going the other way around, the V40 takes 1:53h for a full charge from flat with the bundled charger, while a 30-minute stint will leave you with 40%. Pretty standard QuickCharge numbers then. It is also compatible with the Power Delivery standard where you can expect practically the same speed. Fast wireless charging is also supported, including the 15W extended protocol, but we didn't have a compatible pad to test it with.
The V40 ThinQ has a weird loudspeaker setup. There's a primary loudspeaker on the bottom, but the earpiece also gives off some sound although it's not strictly another channel. In any case its contribution is minor, at best.
The bottom one on the other hand uses the empty space inside the phone as a chamber to achieve a deeper and supposedly louder sound. The first we can confirm, the second was sort of proven by our sound meter, which placed the V40 in the 'Very Good' bracket - similar to the V30, but quieter than the G7.
Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
70.2 | 74.7 | 70.0 | Good | |
68.3 | 73.8 | 75.8 | Good | |
66.5 | 72.0 | 79.8 | Good | |
68.2 | 74.1 | 77.4 | Very Good | |
68.4 | 74.0 | 80.1 | Very Good | |
68.1 | 72.3 | 82.2 | Very Good | |
66.9 | 72.3 | 84.5 | Very Good | |
67.2 | 72.5 | 84.5 | Very Good | |
70.3 | 73.4 | 83.8 | Very Good | |
70.5 | 74.0 | 84.7 | Excellent | |
71.0 | 75.4 | 82.9 | Excellent | |
77.5 | 71.7 | 81.1 | Excellent | |
76.9 | 74.8 | 79.3 | Excellent | |
78.3 | 76.4 | 82.3 | Excellent | |
76.0 | 73.6 | 88.5 | Excellent | |
77.0 | 73.8 | 91.1 | Excellent |
The LG V40 ThinQ really impressed us with its audio output. We've only seen a handful of phones through all those years that can deliver volume levels so high and the accuracy is top notch too. The scores were perfect with an active external amplifier and there was hardly any degradation caused by the headphones.
Enabling the Quad DAC option makes the output even louder, while retaining the flawless output. Great job, LG, the V40 ThinQ is certainly among the best musicians of the year..
Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
+0.01, -0.05 | -93.3 | 92.7 | 0.0019 | 0.0072 | -94.1 | |
+0.04, -0.04 | -93.1 | 92.4 | 0.0066 | 0.073 | -68.4 | |
+0.03, -0.03 | -92.3 | 91.4 | 0.0061 | 0.056 | -69.8 | |
+0.02, -0.16 | -92.1 | 92.0 | 0.0017 | 0.013 | -85.6 | |
+0.07, -0.07 | -92.1 | 92.4 | 0.0021 | 0.106 | -66.5 | +0.03, -0.05 | -93.4 | 93.3 | 0.0010 | 0.0070 | -93.8 |
+0.17, -0.15 | -93.2 | 93.1 | 0.0056 | 0.245 | -61.1 | |
+0.01, -0.02 | -91.2 | 93.2 | 0.0024 | 0.0080 | -88.7 | |
+0.38, -0.21 | -93.1 | 92.5 | 0.0049 | 0.233 | -61.7 | |
+0.01, -0.03 | -93.7 | 93.7 | 0.0017 | 0.0074 | -94.1 | |
+0.03, -0.02 | -93.6 | 93.5 | 0.0033 | 0.046 | -93.2 | |
+0.02, -0.15 | -94.3 | 94.3 | 0.0021 | 0.0069 | -94.3 | |
+0.18, -0.13 | -93.7 | 93.6 | 0.0024 | 0.104 | -52.7 |
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
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