IT

What to Look For When Buying a New TV

Author: Michael Crider / Source: reviewgeek.com

So you’re ready to buy a new TV, and you want it to be a good one. If this is your first time buying a TV where the consideration goes beyond price, you might want to brush up on some terms.

Below are ten factors that should affect your buying decisions, arranged roughly from most to least important.

Новости СМИ2

Naturally, not everything will be the same for every buyer: you might be willing to spend a little more for an OLED TV with fantastic contrast versus a larger LED-LCD TV at the same price. But if you factor in all of the following for your buying decision, you’ll be happy with the result.

Panel Size and Type

Obviously, the most immediate factor you’ll notice for any TV is its size, expressed in inches. That’s a diagonal measurement, from one corner to its opposite. These tend to come in a few general sizes, from 32 inches on the small end through 40/42, 46, 55, 65, 75, and sometimes even higher, with little variation in between.

Samsung LED backlight illustration. — Samsung

But size isn’t everything. If you see a 55-inch TV that costs twice as much as the 65-inch TV next to it, it’s probably using a superior image panel. Most televisions use an LCD (liquid crystal display panel) with an LED backlight. That backlight affects the image quality: better LED lights, spaced closer together and with more fine illumination control, can more subtly illuminate the LCD panel for a superior picture. You’ll pay extra for smaller, more thinly-spaced LED lighting. Different brands have different names for their LED approaches: Samsung’s best TVs use “QLED” arrangements, while Vizio calls its top line P-Series “Quantum,” even though they’re using very similar tech.

Rarer and more expensive televisions use OLED, Organic Light-Emitting Diode screens. This design, which you might be familiar with in your phone, incorporates a color-changing RGB cell and a backlight into each and every pixel. The result means that when a pixel is displaying black, it’s entirely off, creating a nearly perfect black contrast effect. OLEDs are also (usually) more vibrant and saturated with colors. At the moment, only LG and Sony sell OLED TVs, and they’re among the most expensive in both company’s catalogs.

4K Resolution

In 2019, it’s hard to find even a small television that doesn’t feature 4K resolution. That’s “4K” as in “four times 1080p,” the previous standard for high definition video, with a total resolution of 3840 by 2160.

It’s still hard to find some 4K content, but the availability is growing, thanks to services like Vudu, physical media like 4K Blu-ray movies, and upgraded game consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro. At this point, if you’re looking at a new TV it’s almost certainly 4K unless you go smaller than 40 inches or so. You won’t save any money hunting for a cheaper low-resolution panel, so you might as well go for the upgrade, even if you don’t have any movies or games that work with it yet.

The next step up is 8K, eight times 1080p resolution. Those TVs won’t be on the market until late 2019 at the earliest, and any decent selection of movies, TV shows, or games will take even longer. Don’t wait around if you’re looking to buy any time soon.

Contrast Ratio

A television’s contrast ratio is the difference between the panel’s darkest darks and lightest lights. It’s expressed as a ratio: 1000:1 or higher is typical. A higher contrast ratio means a more vibrant, rich picture, especially in dark scenes.

Unfortunately, contrast ratios are hard to define and lack standardization, so the specification is pretty useless as a means of comparison. “Dynamic” contrast ratios, adjusting the backlight on different portions of the screen panel to match that particular section of the image on the fly, make things even more complicated. A 100,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio is a hard thing to measure with your eyes, since different parts of the backlight will be illuminated to different degrees every second.

If at all possible, check out TVs with an identical video clip to see which ones offer the deepest blacks and brightest whites or other vibrant colors. Retail TV “walls” are ideal for this—a trip to an electronics store is useful, even if you’re only planning on buying a TV online later. (Sorry, Best Buy salespeople.)

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range.” It started off as a photography technique that uses multiple photos of the same subject, taken at different exposures, to bring out the most vibrant colors in a combined image. It’s still used that way with photos (HDR imaging is built into new smartphones now, for example) but the technology has progressed to where we can now do this with video, on the fly.