TECHWEEK
What should I look for before buying a new TV? How to avoid the common mistakes that buyers often make when choosing a TV? Many have long known that before buying a TV, you should first look into its technical specifications. However, the trouble is that marketers are also well aware of this.
Top 6 mistakes people make when buying a new TV
Should i go for 8K or 4K?
Is it important to buy an 8K TV between 2022 and 2024? Some consumers believe that it is necessary to buy such a TV so that its capabilities are enough for the next 20 to 30 years. Therefore, according to them, the TV should have a resolution of at least 8K. At the same time, it should be noted that televisions with this resolution appeared in mass production more than two years ago.
Despite this, their sales volume has not increased during this time. The main reason for this failure is the lack of 8K content. Almost all videos that are on Youtube with this resolution have a strong bitrate compression. Because of this, it will be very difficult for the user to tell the difference between 4K and 8K. Movies with 8K resolution have not yet entered mass production.
It follows that no Blu-ray player with this resolution has been released to date. As a result, buying an 8K TV will only be justified for those who have a professional camera or camcorder with a resolution of at least 6K. In other words, it makes sense to buy 8K TV only in order to shoot video yourself.
Keep in mind that smartphones that have the ability to shoot video at 8K resolution do not have cinematic quality. Are there any downsides to watching lower resolution 8K content on a TV? At one time, marketers claimed that these TVs had very high-quality upscaling, which 4K content can allegedly make very similar to 8K.
Before answering this question, let’s look at one example. Australian brand C-Seed N1 has launched a 103-inch foldable 4K Micro LED TV priced at $190,000. If the company is not afraid to release a TV for this price, then why hasn’t it released an 8K TV?
The company itself explains this by the fact that at a resolution of 8K pixels will be 4 times more. Therefore, there should be much more LEDs for illuminating these pixels. In other words, as the pixel density increases, the light transmission decreases. This reduction degrades the image quality.
As a result, the user will not get such a high peak brightness. In addition, the local dimming algorithm also needs to work harder to create deep blacks. In general, at the time of 2022, buying an 8K TV will bring more minuses than pluses.
TV Sizes Guideline
Size matters
What TV size is recommended for the best viewing experience? The answer is unequivocal: The more the better. Only those TVs with a screen diagonal of more than 100 inches can fall under the exception. Many have often noticed that when watching even low-quality video on a smartphone, it looks quite better than on a TV.
However, in such a video, many details are not visible. Also, many people know that the difference in image quality between 4K and Full HD begins to appear only on screens starting from a diagonal of 55 inches. Therefore, for quality viewing, you should not choose a TV less than 55 inches. In this case, of course, one cannot ignore such a factor as the size of the room.
In other words, the TV should be chosen as large as possible in relation to your room. We have a table with distances to the TV , depending on the diagonal of the TV. But there is a more simplified formula for calculating. That is, if the diagonal of 65 inches is multiplied by 1.5, then the recommended viewing distance will be 2.5 meters.
However, many experts argue that a TV with such a diagonal and from two meters looks just as good. It should also be added that when choosing a size, one should not completely forget about the quality of the TV itself. That is, if your choice fell on OLED with a diagonal of 55 inches, then you should not change it to the LCD model of the 6 series, but with a diagonal of 65 inches.
If the choice is between the Samsung QE55QN95B and Samsung QE65QN90B models , then the image perception will be better with the QN90B due to the 65 diagonal. And this is despite the fact that the QN95B has more local dimming zones. In general, the large size of the TV is much more immersive in what is happening on the screen.
LCD or OLED
Many users are reluctant to buy OLED TVs just because these TVs are more at risk of permanent burn-in or full screen burn-in. It really is. However, this risk has been greatly reduced in recent years. In the past, we often received comments in which users complained that, for example, the LG C7 got burned.
Currently, we do not hear reproaches that supposedly the LG C1 or C2 has a burnt screen. Even though OLED TVs are still more likely to burn out, the risk of burns has been noticeably reduced. Burn-in is no longer a problem when you take into account the screen cleaning cycles that these OLED TVs go through in standby mode.
If you do not watch content with a static image for a long time and do not pause the image for an hour, then the risk of burn-in in 2022 OLED TVs is minimized. In return, the user receives image quality that is generally better than LCD image quality for a variety of reasons.
In addition, recently, LG began to give a year warranty for screen burn-in of the C series and a 5-year warranty for the G series. If these arguments are not enough, then it is worth noting that TVs with a QD-OLED panel appeared in 2022 . These are Samsung S95B and Sony A95K . According to the manufacturer, they are not subject to screen burn-in.
However, it has not been long enough to verify this claim. In addition, the size of these TVs is still limited to a diagonal of 65 inches, and OLED TVs have “grown up” to a giant 86 inches.
Update frequency
In this case, we are not talking about the frequency that G-Sync or FreeSync technologies can support , but about product terms that some manufacturers have patented. Such examples might be technologies called Motionflow XR360 or TruMotion 240. Be that as it may, it should be remembered that today the vast majority of TV panels have only two types of native refresh rates.
These are 50/60 Hz and 100/120 Hz. If finances allow, then it is better, of course, to opt for a panel with a refresh rate of 100 Hz. At a low refresh rate of 60 hertz, motion interpolation will be lacking to improve motion clarity. The same drawback will manifest itself when a movie is displayed at a frequency of 24 frames per second. This will be especially noticeable when viewing images on a large screen.
Availability of HDMI 2.1
We get a lot of comments with indignation that a quality TV has only 2 HDMI 2.1 ports. Is it worth giving up a good TV just for this reason? How necessary is the presence of HDMI 2.1 in this or that TV? In connection with such statements, many manufacturers have recently begun to equip their expensive models with HDMI 2.1 connectors.
However, you should know that such a connector in the coming years will only be useful for gamers, and even then not for everyone. If we compare HDMI 2.1 and HDMI 2.0b, then the only difference in favor of the first will be the ability to read 4K @ 120Hz content. There is very little such content in computer games.
You can play 4K@120Hz on either Xbox Series X or PS5 or PC with the right hardware. Only perfectionist gamers can have all three sources at the same time. For those who don’t play games, HDMI 2.0b ports will be more than enough. They are equipped with all the necessary features such as eARC, VRR, ALLM.
About two years ago, we compared the XH90 and XH95 from Sony. TVs XH95 unlike XH90 have a higher level of peak brightness, better motion processing, as well as more local dimming zones. Is it worth abandoning such a TV just because it does not have HDMI 2.1?
Conventional VS HDR
Availability of HDR
In 2022, almost every 4K TV is equipped with HDR standards. Cheaper TVs have a minimum of HDR10. Therefore, there has long been an erroneous opinion that if you buy an HDR TV, then when watching HDR content, you can achieve better image quality. In this case, also do not forget about the marketing ploy from the manufacturer.
A very large number of cheap TVs have a peak brightness that usually does not exceed 300 nits. To see the proper effect with HDR10, the TV should have a peak brightness of around 600 nits. If we consider dynamic modes such as Dolby Vision or HDR10 + , then in this case, peak brightness should start from 800 nits.
The second important factor is the presence of a backlight with full-matrix local dimming ( FALD ). An even better option are OLED TVs. They do not have a backlight, but they have the ability to control each pixel. As a result, a dazzlingly bright beam will look on a black background, excluding blooming and other artifacts inherent in LED backlighting.
In other words, when buying TVs, you should look not for the presence of HDR, but for the value of peak brightness and the presence of local dimming.
Loading ...