How do TVs improve with price?

JDXAV

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Looking in the sales, for a given screen size I see prices anywhere from £300 to £1300... from the same manufacturer. And that's all 4k, excluding the real budget items but also the super fancy designer models.

It's a total maze trying to figure out how much to spend or what spending a bit more might get.
I have been fairly impressed with our first 4k HDR TV which is definitely at the lower end pricewise. Our second TV is getting old so I'm trying to decide whether to get something similar, or go one level up and swap them round.
Is there a sweet spot these days for the casual enthusiast, where the extra £100 gets most bang for buck out of budget quality before we got diminishing returns? Are the low end models from LG, Samsung, etc actually decent enough?

(Already have soundbars/surround sound we're happy with, and not too fussed about smart TV)
 
Btw is this sticky not maintained, it looks like it still dates 2015 but I might be wrong?

 
The main difference is low end TVs, despite the specs saying so and all the bumf in the advertising, are not HDR capable TVs.
They're HDR compatible, and that's a big difference.

In order for a TV to show HDR (or Dolby Vision, HLG,etc) well it either needs to be an OLED, or, if it's an LCD, it must have FALD (Full Array Local Dimming) and a backlight bright enough to drive it of 1000Nits.

Without FALD, when HDR kicks in the backlight goes to max and your blacks become murky greys or the backlight shuts down and you get blackness but no detail to the extent you can't make out properly what you're supposed to see.
With FALD, areas of the TV, zones, are lit brighter or dimmer than others to give contrast and detail.

Most budget TVs have a backlight with a peak output of 250-500Nits. That's not bright enough to show HDR well and again, presents issues with detail and clarity.
You need 1000Nits ideally and that only comes with TVs at the upper mid-range and above.

If you're not going to watch HDR then you can go a lot cheaper but avoiding HDR is getting more difficult not and probably next to impossible in a few years.

Minimum for HDR

Samsung Q80T
Sony XH9005
Hisense U7Q

These are minimum and barely recommended for HDR viewing.

Ideally

Samsung Q90T
Sony XH9505
Hisense U8Q
Any recent OLED from a main manufacturer.

A whole thread on TV recommendations -

New My best value TVs, 2020-2021 Edition
 
@Sloppy Bob many thanks, I saw that thread after posting and looks like a lot to consider but that key point on "it's all about HDR" is echoed there.
I hadn't considered that I can't simply turn off HDR rather than have bad HDR, which is I think what you're saying - that's why the other thread suggests people might even be better off with an older TV presumably?
 
The only thing you can do really is avoid HDR sources and that's not that easy if you're using Prime, Netflix etc.

HDR on a non-compatible HDR TV looks awful with colours all washed out, and everything with a green/yellow tinge to it.

Examples (these are not 100% accurate, they're more designed to give a comparison) -

Argo UHD with proper HDR.

Argo HDR.jpg


Argo on a Non-HDR capable 4K TV.

Argo no HDR.jpg


You might think you could live with it, but it really does start to look weird after a while.

This is a representation of HDR with and without Local dimming.


No Local Dimming.................................................................................Local Dimming..

1609683361393.png

1609683381624.png
 
It's a double edge sword, makes it very hard to recommend cheaper TVs because most people want to use the integrated smart TV and using the integrated smart TV you often can't turn off HDR.

You have a choice between HD and SDR, or UHD and HDR, with nothing inbetween.

It can be worked around using an external smart device because you can then turn HDR off on the HDMI port but still enjoy UHD with SDR.
 
It's a double edge sword, makes it very hard to recommend cheaper TVs because most people want to use the integrated smart TV and using the integrated smart TV you often can't turn off HDR.

You have a choice between HD and SDR, or UHD and HDR, with nothing inbetween.

It can be worked around using an external smart device because you can then turn HDR off on the HDMI port but still enjoy UHD with SDR.
I hadn't thought of that last option @Dodgexander is that a TV feature or a feature of the connected source e.g. Roku? Is it easy to find which devices allow you to do that?

@Sloppy Bob you lead me into my next question which is that I mainly will watch streaming services. Clearly a world away from the quality of having the disc, is there still the benefit buying a better TV or is that like spending 2k on a stereo to listen to my old mixtape cassettes?!
 
4K streaming can be excellent. It's about the picture quality of 1080p with the added benefit of HDR when it's good, but it's entirely dependant upon the streaming service utilising the bitrate and not overly compressing it and you having sufficient bandwidth at home and, if using wifi, having a decent connection.
 
4K streaming can be excellent. It's about the picture quality of 1080p with the added benefit of HDR when it's good, but it's entirely dependant upon the streaming service utilising the bitrate and not overly compressing it and you having sufficient bandwidth at home and, if using wifi, having a decent connection.
Ok so a decent TV will still show the benefits if we're back to "it's all about HDR"... Seems to vary a lot which content has it, still.
 
You can downgrade TVs HDMI ports from version 2.0 to 1.4 by toggling a setting on TVs, toggling that setting will also disable HDR.

So it doesn't depend on the source device, but some may even have the option themselves to turn HDR on or off.
 
You can downgrade TVs HDMI ports from version 2.0 to 1.4 by toggling a setting on TVs, toggling that setting will also disable HDR.

So it doesn't depend on the source device, but some may even have the option themselves to turn HDR on or off.
Cheers for that @Dodgexander. I'll take a look through your guides...
 

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