I went with the LG CX model based on what I read on rtings.com
That’s a previous-generation model. I think all of the LG TVs are good.
There are / were technical caveats. I believe all of them are solved by M3 macs that have HDMI 2.1 ports. (M3 or M3 Pro or something? The ones advertised as 8K capable.) Out of the box, those will do 4K 120Hz HDR with variable refresh rate and full 444 color. This is what you want.
It is possible to get that going on older machines, except for VRR which is more of a nice-to-have anyway.
I have a 2018 Macbook Pro 15”. Disclaimer!: My setup was a “complexity pet”, a tinkering project; There are simpler ways to connect a 120Hz 4K HDR HDMI 2.1 display to a non-HDMI-2-1 mac. And! My tinkering project wasn’t only about getting the display working correctly. It was more about messing with eGPUs and virtualization and stuff. Definitely a long way round.
On my Intel mac, I use an AMD Radeon 6800 XT eGPU with Club3D or CableMatters DisplayPort-to-HDMI 2.1 adapters. Plus some EDID hacking which is easy to do.
EDID is how the display identifies itself to the OS. The EDID payload can be overridden on the OS side. Mostly it’s about copying the display’s EDID and deleting the entry that says the display can accept 4:2:0 color. Only then does macOS switch to 4:4:4 color. I also created a custom “modeline” with tighter timing to get 120Hz going fully.
—Please be assured that this was way more complex than it needed to be. It was for fun!
There are much easier ways to do this. Lots of forum posts on it. On the MacRumors forums iirc? User joevt is The Man.
And even then, what I wrote above is actually easy to do once you know it’s possible.
Mostly though you really want an M3 Mac that just has HDMI 2.1 and is ready to go.
There are/were also OLED gaming monitors available, such as from Alienware. Those have DisplayPort inputs and are ready to go with almost any older Mac. Might be able to find one for a price equivalent to a TV, idk.
