Family TV that'll be abused - 65" under £1800

[Green Tentacle]

I'm playing up options for a new TV since my trusty 55" KS9000 has now given up the goat.

Looking at 65" with a budget of under £1800 and the first suggestion always seems to be the LG C1. I have the usual reservations about OLED though - with my usage scenario being:

• Only TV in the house so it'll be on for 3 to 7 hours a day during the week, sometimes a lot more at the weekend
• Not an overly bright room - a lot of daytime viewing but any light is easily controlled
• We watch a lot of Netflix etc. and usually enable subtitles so we can keep the volume lower
• Lots of evening gaming on PS5
• Kids like to watch a lot of youtube and I'm hesitant to stop them doing this
• Also a worry - we tend to use our TV to list to spotify - the static logos make me nervous

I appreciate that LG have come a long way when it comes to burn in but I seem to be at the more extreme end of usage, where the risk is probably higher than most.

On the LCD side of the fence I'm considering something like the Q95T which is £1200 at Costco. My concerns with the QLEDs are mainly around DSE and blooming but the attraction of lower price, no burn in and brighter HDR are hard to ignore.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[jdevil]

LG C1 is at £1,560 at Costco & Richersounds, not a bad price. I have the LG C1 and it's one of the best all rounders (I've had the QN94A & Panny GZ980). Great for gaming, films and a slick OS.

We're on youtube for most of the day due to my little one, I'm not too worried about screen burn as the videos are not really static nor do they have static logos. After 2 minutes of inactive a black screensaver turns on to prevent image burn.

 

[Dodgexander]

You can afford to get an OLED+Burn in insurance from John Lewis.
If you go LCD TV this year's Samsung QN91A and up are better than last year's Q90T and up. They are still very good TVs but as you mention, come with obvious drawbacks with LCD tech. DSE in particular can be bad on Samsung's but it does depend on unit to unit. For value though, there's nothing you can buy now that will match that Q95T at £1200 if you wanted to save some money.

Sony have the X95J and X90J, the latter is hard to to recommend due to being so dim for HDR, but they tend to have less DSE, but more vignetting.

The risk with burn is not tied to any of your usage at all apart from maybe having subtitles on all the time. You can lessen it by controlling the size and colour of subtitles in your Netflix settings. If you pair the TV with a good soundbar with volume levelling or a nigh mode you should be able to keep the volume low, yet still hear dialogue.

 

[Green Tentacle]

You can afford to get an OLED+Burn in insurance from John Lewis.
If you go LCD TV this year's Samsung QN91A and up are better than last year's Q90T and up. They are still very good TVs but as you mention, come with obvious drawbacks with LCD tech. DSE in particular can be bad on Samsung's but it does depend on unit to unit. For value though, there's nothing you can buy now that will match that Q95T at £1200 if you wanted to save some money.

Sony have the X95J and X90J, the latter is hard to to recommend due to being so dim for HDR, but they tend to have less DSE, but more vignetting.

The risk with burn is not tied to any of your usage at all apart from maybe having subtitles on all the time. You can lessen it by controlling the size and colour of subtitles in your Netflix settings. If you pair the TV with a good soundbar with volume levelling or a nigh mode you should be able to keep the volume low, yet still hear dialogue.

This is really helpful thank you.

As far as Q90T and QN9xx are concerned, would you say it's worth paying for the newer model? I can see the QN94a is going for around the £1700 mark but not sure it's £500 better than the Q90T. I know it has quite a lot more dimming zones due to micro LED.

 

[Dodgexander]

It's hard to make like for like comparisons but the Q90T/Q95T (same picture quality, Q95T with the one-connect box) is more similar to the QN85A with dimming zones compared to the QN91A and up (Same picture quality, QN95A with one connect box).

Problem with making like for like comparisons is that Samsung re-hashed their lineup this year so the QN85A despite having the same dimming performance as the Q90T/Q95T uses an IPS panel making it a much worse overall TV.

Is it worth paying £500 more? Probably not, but if you were to wait to buy and track pricing on 2021 models like the QN94A you could check to see if it enters clearance sales this year. That usually happens around spring-summer time as new models are reaching shops.

 

[iwb100]

Having owned an OLED with no burn in and heavier usage than your describe for 5 years…just get the C1 and stop worrying.

You can turn the screen off for Spotify use if you are just listening too.