The days when portable TV designs involved sticking a handle in the top of massive hunk of plastic wrapped around a cathode ray tube that weighed more than an armful of bowling balls have, thankfully, long been replaced by much lighter, thinner, tuck under your arm LCD sets. LG, though, is out to reinvent the portable TV concept once again with its innovative StanbyME and StanbyME Go TV duo.
I’ve covered these two new lifestyle TVs in passing before, but LG has now confirmed UK launch dates and pricing for both of its StanbyME models, as well as releasing more details on what buyers can expect from them.
The ‘original’ StanbyME TV, first revealed way back in December 2021, comprises a 27-inch screen with an attractive textured Pure Beige fabric rear attached to a long pole mount that is in turn attached to a weighted base plate fitted with hidden castors so that you can simply roll the screen around your home for use in any room you want to watch TV in.
As well as being so ultra portable that you don’t even have to carry it (unless you need to take it upstairs), the StanbyME design means you also don’t need to find a spare surface to put the screen on. You just park it wherever there’s a suitable bit of spare floor space.
You don’t even need to find a plug point for it, since the StanbyME screen carries a built-in battery capable of delivering up to three hours of use on a single charge.
The screen can be tilted, raised and even rotated through 90 degrees (for portrait or landscape playback) on the bracket that attaches it to the StanbyME’s pole, and also features a touch screen interface based on an adapted version of LG’s famed WebOS smart TV system. Alternatively, if you’re watching it from a distance – while training on a static bike or watching across a kitchen worktop, say – you can control it either via gestures, or a provided remote control.
The height of the screen can be adjusted between 1 and 1.4m, and the rig weighs 17.5kg for those occasions when you need to take it somewhere its wheels won’t go, The screen is only full HD in resolution rather than 4K, but it supports HDR (in the HDR10 and HLG flavours), runs the Alpha 7 Gen 4 AI processor previous found on LG’s regular mid-range LCD TVs, and backs its pictures up with a 2 x 10W built in sound system.
The StanbyME doesn’t carry a built-in tuner, so strictly speaking it’s a display rather than a TV. But LG’s thinking, sensibly enough, is that anyone wanting a screen that offers this much freedom of movement likely won’t want to be tethered to a physical aerial connection, preferring instead to rely on video streaming services or sharing content from smart phones (iOS and Android are both supported, and the StanbyME even ships with a phone support bracket that attaches to the top of the screen).
LG’s ThinQ AI and Apple’s Airplay2 are both supported by the StanbyME, and you can use it with Google’s Homekit system, too, if you have an external Homekit device.
While the StanbyME concept is at its purist when running completely wirelessly, the screen’s rear panel does house single HDMI and USB inputs for piping in physical sources. Though PS5, Xbox Series X and PC gamers with premium graphics cards should note that the StanbyME only supports 1080p/60Hz gaming. There’s no 120Hz or VRR capability.
The StanbyME will launch in the UK on November 29, with a price tag of £1,199.
The StanbyME Go, meanwhile, joins the StanbyME in being built around a battery-powered 27-inch full HD screen – though beyond that it really is a completely different proposition.
For starters, instead of sitting atop a pole mount, the StanbyME Go (AKA the 27LX5) actually lives inside a heavy duty briefcase. This case has successfully completed 11 tests associated with the US military’s rigorous MIL-STD-810G standard, indicating its ability to handle a wide variety of environmental factors including low pressure, high temperatures, low temperatures, dust and salt spray, as well as being protected against accidental drops, vibrations and shocks.
When the case is opened the screen inside can be raised up vertically and have its height adjusted by up to 18 cm. Its innovative mounting bracket can tilt the screen to your preferred angle, too, and allows you to rotate the screen through 90 degrees, to support portrait viewing as well as landscape.
You can even leave the screen flat in the case if you wish, for use as a touch-screen gaming ‘table’. A number of optimised game titles are already available for this scenario.
The inside of the StanbyME Go’s carry case lid carries a built-in 20W, 4.0-channel speaker system with Dolby Atmos decoding supported, and this time the Dolby support also extends to the Dolby Vision high dynamic range format alongside the basic HDR10 and HLG formats supported by the original StanbyME.
A touch-screen friendly adaptation of webOS is provided as the StanbyME Go’s operating system, but a remote control is also included in the box. Helpfully LG has built a compartment into the StanbyME Go case into which the remote control and power cable can be placed without risk of damaging the screen when you’re carrying it around.
At 12.7kg the StanbyME Go isn’t the lightest portable TV proposition in town, but at the same time we’ve taken suitcases full of much less useful stuff on holiday that have weighed twice as much.
The StanbyME Go’s screen is again claimed to support three hours of constant use on a full battery charge, and like the original StanbyME carries single HDMI and USB ports on its rear for those occasions when the built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth video streaming support aren’t enough.
The screen is powered by LG’s Alpha 7 AI processor, but this time it’s the fifth generation of that processor rather than the 4th gen used with the original StanbyME.
The StanbyME Go is set to go on sale in the UK on the same day as the original StanbyME, November 29, and will also set you back £1,199.
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