What you need to know about LG's Gallery Mode on new 4K TVs

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Gallery Mode is a setting that shows artwork and pictures, all stored directly on LGs servers. It means you don’t need to be left with a giant black hole in your space; you can gaze instead at gallery quality artwork and photography instead.

I love the concept of Gallery Mode, but in my opinion LG doesn’t get it right. Here’s why:

You can’t choose one picture to keep up at all times; you must rotate through them, and you can't even seem to narrow down the choices to a handful of options or styles; it's the whole library, or nothing. Also, because each picture goes to black before it transitions, there’s no pretending this is a painting; it’s an obvious TV and the fading to black actually draws the eye more so than any other effect would making it pretty distracting.


Unlike something like a Samsung Frame TV you also can't customize any of the frames, or the works; what LG gives you is all you get. It seems to me LG insists the picture change up periodically to avoid any image burn-in on the screen while displaying the works of art. Which makes me wonder if this TV is all that delicate… if burn in is that much of a concern, I’d wonder about the longevity of this set overall.

I wondered next if there’s a way to upload my own photos or artwork if I wanted to, so I could at least find art to my taste. Turns out from my research there’s no option to do that.

That's a big disappointment since this is a feature other TVs have added. Overall, if I were to add this LG TV to my living room, a big reason I'd want it is for Gallery Mode's ability to make it disappear, but since it’s limited in its customization, I think this alone would make it a dealbreaker for me personally.
 
So that;’s what you need to know; if you’re okay with the factory basics of art mode, and plan to use it more as a screensaver than as an art pioece, you’ll be fine. If you’re really hoping for a showpiece and for your TV to blend in, you migh be disappointed. I do hope LG is able to make some upgrades to this feature in future tvs or even firmware updates