Which 55" 4K TV for less than £700

DodgeT

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So, things escalate quickly... I was originally purchasing a 32" tv for the spare room, this has turned into buying a 55" 4K tv for the living room...

Upgrading from a 7year old 46" samsung LCD, which still performs very well IMO.

Will be for a lot of terrestrial tv, via Virgin cable.
Have 100mb fibre
Watch a lot of netflix
Blu ray will be hooked up
Want to be able to share content from phone / laptop directly to TV

The 3 i'm currently pondering over are;

Buy Philips 55PUS6262 55 Inch 4K UHD HDR Ambilight Smart TV at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Televisions, Televisions and accessories, Technology.

Buy LG 55UJ635V 55 Inch Smart 4K Ultra HD TV with HDR at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Televisions, Televisions and accessories, Technology.

Buy Sony KD55XE7002BU 55 Inch Smart 4K UHD TV with HDR at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Televisions, Televisions and accessories, Technology.

Specs seem very similar, except that the LG isn't Ultra HD certified.

Must admit i'm liking the look of the Philips with the Ambilight.

Is there anything that stands out good or bad, to help me make the decision?

Or anything else I should take a look at?

TIA.
 
Specs seem very similar, except that the LG isn't Ultra HD certified.

That is a marketing program rather than a standards body so that's not a big issue.

The XE70 is a VA panel while the other two are IPS which will likely be the biggest noticable difference besides ambilight.

The LG's strongest aspect is probably it's WebOS system, but with your setup you'll presumably only be using the SmartTV system to swap inputs
 
The XE70 is a VA panel while the other two are IPS which will likely be the biggest noticable difference besides ambilight.

The LG's strongest aspect is probably it's WebOS system, but with your setup you'll presumably only be using the SmartTV system to swap inputs

Being ignorant, are you saying the IPS panels are better?
Yes, wont be doing much fancy streaming wise etc, if that's what your referring to.
Thanks
 
Being ignorant, are you saying the IPS panels are better?

It's a different set of trade-offs. IPS panels have less contrast to begin with, but distort less when viewed from an angle.

VA is considered the best around here because AV fans tend to set up their rooms to have the TV viewed head on, but IPS is used on more mid-range TVs generally.

Yes, wont be doing much fancy streaming wise etc, if that's what your referring to.

More that the Philips and Sony Smart TV systems on their sub-Android models tend to be more basic and lacking apps like ITV Hub and All4. If you mostly watch them through another box that's not a big deal though.
 
Unless you need wide viewing angles, Hisense N68000, Panasonic 58EX700 or Sony XE70.

Don't worry so much about the Sony XE70 not having android TV, its actually probably a boon for you. It has Youtube and Netflx.

Want to be able to share content from phone / laptop directly to TV

This is very vague, what are you intending to share to the TV?
 
@DodgeT I'm pretty sure every smart tv does that now. My Panasonic plasma does and thats from 2013.

Some will rely on you to use their own app and some combinations will work better than others.

For example if you have a Samsung phone it will work better with a Samsung TV.

If you have an android phone it may work better with a TV running android.

As for sharing via the PC, it depends what route you take. If share media via dlna any TV will be able to pick it up in their dlna client. If you want to cast things from your computer it may not be as easy as windows support isn't as great for it as android/apple.
 
Thanks all for your input, but I've pretty much done a complete uturn and am going back to buying a small screen for the spare room, reason being;

I went to a few places on sat, currys, richer sounds and John Lewis.
JL were the most helpful and spent a lot of time putting different sources through so we could see what the picture quality was like. I was even upping my budget to £1800 for a rather lovely LG oled 55".

What became apparent (to me anyway) was that;

4K feed, absolutely stunning as you'd expect, so lifelike, amazing
Sky / freeview / freesat HD, very good
Sky etc SD, quite poor
Blu ray i.e. 1080p feed, very disappointing

As I own quite a few Blu rays (and watching them is my treat in between the missus crap..) the quality of the BR picture needed to be equally as great as it is on my current screen, simple fact is it was poor.
So, I walked away.

Granted with a 4K feed they are fantastic, but I can't justify £600 or £1800 for something which doesn't give me an improvement over what I have now IMO

Take this with a pinch of salt though as next week I could well go out a just buy the oled for the hell of it, you know how it goes...
 
@DodgeT great you demo'd all that stuff, I would recommend everyone too. Its surprising how well older TVs can stand out compared to the new tech available now and yet a lot of people look to upgrade every 1-2 years sometimes!

I'm bookmarking your post so I can send it to others when they doubt that things have moved on so little.
 

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