LG C2 OLED TV price and "anticipated" release date have been published by the retailer, and the news is mixed.

The LG C2 is one of the most anticipated TVs of the year, and finally, some pricing and a likely debut date for the 48-inch model have surfaced on UK retailer John Lewis... The news is both better and worse than we had anticipated.

• Visit John Lewis' LG C2 page.

John Lewis currently has a pre-order page for the 48-inch LG C2 with a price of £1,399, which is higher than the £1,299 that last year's LG C1 started for. This was discovered by Vincent Teoh and reported to his Twitter account.

That's the less-than-pleasant news. The excellent news is that John Lewis expects delivery in 5 weeks, which is considerably sooner than we anticipated! That would place it in early March - we were expecting a spring launch, but more likely April or May.

Of course, the keyword in John Lewis' "Expected delivery within 5 weeks" statement is "expected" - it doesn't sound certain just yet, but we're guessing John Lewis knows what's coming and when.

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Given how much the finest OLED TVs have been dropping in price recently, we're not overjoyed to see a year-on-year price increase with the LG C2, but given the current level of inflation, it's hardly surprising and is probably typical of the market as a whole.

The LG C2 also boasts a better screen than the LG C1: it has the brighter OLED Evo panel that powered the LG G2 last year, but it's considerably less expensive than the G2, so you're still getting better picture quality for less money. Given that people's spending power isn't rising at the same rate as inflation, we just hoped that this improvement would come at the same launch price as the previous model.

This also implies that the new LG C2 42-inch model is unlikely to arrive at a low price — it would have been fantastic to see it among the best TVs under £1000 at launch, but we anticipate it will cost more like £1,299 instead.

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We're basing that estimate on the fact that this is the first-ever 42-inch OLED 4K TV, and the first LG 48-inch OLED 4K TV, which arrived a few years back, cost almost the same as the 55-inch model due to the difficulty of manufacturing it.

If the prices listed below are all too costly for you, keep a watch out for the LG C1 in the coming weeks — it recently achieved its lowest price ever, presumably as LG attempts to clear stock ahead of the C2's release. That means extra savings while supplies last!