Televisions spent decades getting larger, thinner and increasingly difficult to move without a second person, a furniture dolly and a brief argument about who scratched the wall.
LG took a different approach with StanbyME: put the display on wheels, add a battery and let it follow you between rooms without requiring an electrician or a marriage counselor.
The original idea was clever, but the 27-inch StanbyME 2 still felt more like an oversized tablet than a television. LGโs newย StanbyME 2 Maxย moves the concept considerably closer to being a legitimate secondary TV with a 32-inch 4K touchscreen, improved wireless connectivity and the same $1,299.99 launch price as its smaller predecessor.
That is still a lot of money for 32 inches of LCD real estate, but conventional televisions cannot follow you into the kitchen, rotate into portrait mode for a workout or detach from their stands when you need the screen on a desk.
Bigger Screen, Sharper Picture
The most important upgrade is the display itself. StanbyME 2 Max increases the screen size from 27 to 32 inches while jumping from QHD resolution to full 4K UHD at 3840 x 2160 pixels. It remains an edge-lit LCD panel with a native 60Hz refresh rate, so nobody should confuse it with one of LGโs premium OLED TVs. Mobility, not reference-level black performance, is the reason this exists.
LG has equipped the new model with its Alpha 8 AI Processor Gen3, including AI Picture Pro, AI Super Upscaling and Dynamic Tone Mapping Pro. Dolby Vision HDR is supported, while Dolby Atmos and LGโs AI Sound Pro processing can create a virtual 11.1.2-channel presentation through the built-in side-firing 2.0-channel speaker system.
A 32-inch television is never going to replace a proper home theater system, but that is not really the assignment. StanbyME 2 Max is intended for recipes, exercise videos, casual streaming, gaming, video calls and those moments when somebody else has taken control of the…