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Apr 17, 2024 · Learn how to choose the best TV for your budget and needs with this comprehensive guide. Find out about screen size, resolution, refresh rate, HDR, OLED, soundbar and more.
- Overview
- 1. Pick a screen size
- 2. Wall-mounting
- 3. Panel technologies
- 4. Resolution and HDR
- 5. Connections and ports
- 6. Speakers and sound
- 7. Smart TV platform
- 8. Brightness
- 9. Viewing angles
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
How-to
By Henry St Leger
published 30 March 2021
From screen size to speakers, don't buy a TV without reading this first because we have all the tips you need to make the choice that's right for you
(Image credit: Panasonic)
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The range of screen sizes available today is immense, taking in everything from 14-inches to more than 100-inches. So how do you figure out the right size for you when it comes time to buy a TV?
There are a few more common sizes to, uh, size up first. 55-inch is the flagship TV size these days, meaning most new TVs come in a 55-inch model. The best 65-inch TVs are pretty in demand too, with a select few in 75-inch sizes and above, though you'll really need a lot of space for them. Smaller sizes like 32-inch and 40-inch are easier to fit in more cramped spaces, and won't dominate your home as much.
We recommend taking a tape measure to your living room wall (or wherever you plan to put it) to ensure the dimensions of this TV are going to fit where you want it. (The number of inches is the diagonal length of the TV screen, from the bottom corner to the upper corner on the other side.)
The distance you'll be sitting from the TV is important, too. We recommend making sure your screen size is about double the distance between the set and your seat. For a 40-inch TV, you'll want to be sat around 6-7 feet (80 inches) away, for instance. For a 65-inch TV, that goes up to 10-11 feet; for a 55-inch TV, that's 9 feet.
Many people think they’d like to wall-mount their new flat TVs. However, research suggests that when it comes down to it, precious few of us actually do.
If you’re positive this will work for you, though, there are a few things to consider. Firstly, remember that the TV will be right up flat to the wall – and therefore a bit further away from any seats – so you might want to go up a screen size.
Secondly, think about TVs designed to be used with ultra-low-profile mounts, so that they stick out as little as possible from the wall.
Or, given that many TVs don’t ship with wall mounts included, if you want to be able to choose from a wide selection of mounting options at a range of price points, look for a TV with wall mount screw positions compatible with the ‘VESA’ industry standard.
There are two types of TV technology you need to understand: LCD and OLED. And there are a couple of important variations on the LCD side.
LCD/LED TVs
A key point to consider if you decide to buy an LCD TV is how the LCD panel is lit, since this can have a big impact on the contrast the screen is capable of.
Some use lights mounted on the edge of the screen firing across it (aka edge-lit panels), while some use lights mounted directly behind the screen. Generally speaking, TVs with lights behind the screen deliver better contrast than edge-lit models. But these models don’t generally feature such slim designs, tend to cost more, and often use more power.
One final option to consider with LCD TVs is local dimming. This sophisticated feature allows a TV to output different amounts of light from different sections of its edge or direct lighting arrays, and can dramatically improve contrast.
LCD/LED TVs use panels of liquid crystal pixels illuminated by external light sources. The liquid crystals rotate round to let through the amount of light needed to illuminate pictures correctly, with external filters creating color.
There are two resolutions to choose from right now: Ultra HD (also known as 4K), and HD. Ultra HD TVs carry 3840 x 2160 pixels, while HD TVs carry 1920 x 1080 pixels. This means Ultra HD TVs have four times as many pixels as HD ones, and so can deliver pictures with much more resolution.
With native 4K sources starting to become more common now (Netflix, Amazon, Ultra HD Blu-ray and Sky Q in the UK) and the prices of 4K TVs plummeting, we’d generally recommend that you buy a 4K TV even if you don’t currently have any access to 4K content, especially if you’re looking at a TV of 50 inches or more.
While we’d recommend 4K for a main living room TV now, though, HD TVs can be good bargains for second screens.
But what of HDR? High dynamic range (HDR) TVs are able to produce pictures that contain much more brightness and contrast than normal TVs, so long as they are fed HDR content that contains this extra luminance data.
All current HDR TVs also support wider color spectrums (often described as wide color gamut, or WCG – essentially meaning that) than most non-HDR TVs - which is handy, as pretty much all HDR content also carries wide color spectrum picture data.
There are currently three types of HDR. HDR10 is the industry standard, and all TVs support this. Dolby Vision adds an extra layer of information that tells a TV how to render pictures on a scene by scene basis. Only some brands – most notably LG, Vizio, TCL and (via an upcoming firmware update to some models) Sony – support this.
These days the main connections you need to look for are HDMIs, USB ports and multimedia support.
With HDMIs you’re talking about the number (try and get at least three) but also the specification. With 4K TVs, try and get a TV with v2.0 HDMI 2.0s rather than v1.4 HDMIs – as most will naturally – to guarantee the widest compatibility with current and upcoming source equipment. To future-proof for 8K content or make sure you can get 4K gaming at high frame rates (120Hz) you'll want at least one HDMI 2.1 TV port too.
USBs ports are useful for both playing back multimedia (especially photos and videos) stored on USB drives, and, with some TVs, recording from the TV’s tuners to an attached USB hard drive. Look for at least two, and ideally three USB ports.
Most TVs now have built-in Wi-fi and Ethernet ports so that you can connect them to the internet. Not all TVs, though, also let you use these network connections to access multimedia stored on other devices on your network. So if this is a feature you want, make sure the TV you buy supports it. Note, too, that some TVs additionally support Bluetooth communication with external devices.
The sound quality of flat TVs can vary immensely. So if you’re not intending to use some sort of external sound system, this is something you should pay attention to.
Most brands quote a number of watts of power for their TV speaker systems, but this is seldom helpful in deciding how a TV is likely to sound.
Look instead, for instance, at how many speakers a TV has, and the configuration of those speakers. For instance, a ‘2.1’ configuration would indicate stereo main speakers with the ‘.1’ bit pointing to a dedicated bass speaker. Or a 3.1 configuration would point to a dedicated centre or dialogue channel alongside stereo and bass speakers.
Subwoofer speakers for bass are always welcome given how much TV speakers generally struggle with the lower end of the sound spectrum.
Another audio issue is that the lack of room available to speakers in thin TVs means they usually have to fire their sound downwards, which can lead to an indirect, muffled, weedy sound. TVs that manage to provide forward-firing speakers tend to sound much cleaner and more powerful.
Some TVs of late have even gone so far as to ship with soundbars that either hang off their bottom edge or sit separately below the main screen frame.
Almost every TV these days can be added to your broadband network to enable the use of online features or, in some cases, access media files stored on other storage devices – mobile phones, tablets, NAS drives etc. This sounds great on paper, but in reality, the quality and usefulness of such ‘smart’ features can vary greatly.
Generally speaking, if you have a number of personal smart devices in your home, TVs that can access content on other devices in your home – including via Bluetooth as well as Wi-fi – are worth looking out for.
Where online features are concerned, don’t be seduced by app quantity. The vast majority of TV apps are borderline pointless, and just clutter up the smart interface.
App quality is much more important. In fact, for many households, the only online features that really matter are online streaming/catchup services. Especially Amazon Prime, Netflix, and catch-up services for your region’s broadcasters, such as BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Finally, the simplicity of a smart TV interface plays a key role in how much you might use it. Currently, LG’s webOS and Panasonic’s Home Screen 2.0 systems handle their content most effectively.
For a full breakdown of how the various manufacturer's smart TV interfaces stack up check out our best smart TV platform guide.
If your TV is going into a fairly bright room, sets that stand out in brightness terms on a shop floor can give you some idea of how their pictures will hold up when you get them home.
A lack of brightness is a particularly common problem with relatively small TVs. It’s also recently become a big deal for the big-screen marketplace, though, with the arrival of high dynamic range technology.
Without sufficient brightness a TV won’t produce well the bright white and color highlights that are so important to a successful HDR picture. They’ll look washed out, flat and short of detail – as if they’ve been bleached of color tone detail.
TVs that aren’t really bright enough for HDR will also create HDR pictures that look unnaturally dark and/or which leave dark parts of the picture looking too dominant and ‘hollow’. A good test of a TV’s HDR brightness is to put a shot on the screen that shows a dark object with lots of detail foregrounded against a bright backdrop. With TVs that are struggling for brightness, the dark object may lose all of its subtle shading and detailing, so that it just looks like a silhouette.
How well a TV can be watched from an angle can be a big deal in a lot of living rooms. To check this on a TV you’re interested in, pause an image on the screen that contains a bright, ideally colorful object against a dark backdrop, and start walking round it from straight opposite to down its sides while looking for the following:
•Significant greyness over parts of the picture that look black when viewed straight-on
•Colors losing vibrancy
•The increased appearance of backlight clouds, stripes or halos.
Learn how to choose the best TV for your needs from screen size, wall-mounting, panel technologies, resolutions, HDR, sound and more. This guide covers everything you need to know before you buy a TV in 2022.
Oct 18, 2023 · · October 18, 2023. TV Buying Guide: What You Need to Know in 2024. Modern TVs have so many complicated features that it can be difficult to choose the right one. Should you get an LED, QLED, or OLED TV? Is 4K really worth it? What’s the difference between HDR10 and HDR10+?
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Sep 12, 2021 · Buying a new TV? Here's a glossary of all the terms you'll hear, and which ones matter.
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