What’s the best TV to buy?

I've had an LG OLED (65" C9) for roughly 2 years, and its the best TV I've owned, hands down. It is amazing for movies and TV, because of its inky blacks. (unliked LED/LCD, the OLED pixels are actually turned off individually) which are just as good as a Plasma I owned 10 years ago. It also supports 4K/120Hz for gaming, and looks amazing with my XBox Series X.

The primary complaint I've seen for this TV is that its not bright enough compared to LED models, but I've not found it too dim, even in a room that gets lots of morning sun.

Another OLED concern is burn-in. After 2 years of 90% Netflix/YT and 10% gaming (mostly Forza Motorsports 7), I have not seen any signs of burn in. Apparently the built-in image shifter/orbiter works well.

EDIT: In terms of smart TV misfeatures-- the voice search requires a scary opt in that I've never done. Aside from that, I'm able to disable most tracking, and I've not seen any targeted ads.

The biggest issue I have with the TV is that the LG the "magic remote" is incredibly annoying as it pops a cursor onto the screen randomly when moved.

For years I've heard people recommend https://www.rtings.com for reviews. More recently, people pointed to this page showing which TVs don't serve ads: https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv

If you want a dumb TV, you can look for commercial models (used for billboards), but it might be lacking basic features like more than one HDMI input or speakers.

In Canada, LG's Business site has tvs branded as "Commercial Lite" that are all dumb, and work great. I have a 55" 4k and I enjoy its simple features and minimal remote-control. The only downsides IMO are that it only has two HDMI inputs and it doesn't do HDR. But for $1000 CAD four years ago, I'm still happy with it! I bought mine from CanadaComputers in-store. I don't know if it's as easy to get one nowadays, and I don't know if/how they sell them in the US.

https://www.lg.com/ca_en/business/commercial-lite

Having owned a couple of Samsung TVs and done quite a bit of research, I'd say LG is the brand that I'd go for when I buy my next TV. My Samsung TV's infrared remote signal receiver broke after ~1.5 years. I had to call several times to arrange a repair person to come to my house. Guess what, the contractor they hired to send the repair person has poor organization skills--they double-booked me for appointments and yet failed to send anyone to my house. After calling Samsung customer support and chatting with their reps many times, they finally said they'll refund me the money, which I naively agreed to (they had me sign an online PDF or something). Guess what, when I bought that TV, it was ~$350 (including tax) and they issued ~$328 for me even though my Costco receipt clearly shows that it was ~$328 total (they only issued refund of the base TV price--not including the tax and such). The rep was smart in not telling me that I could have told them that I want another TV as replacement, but I was naive and after calling and speaking with them for so many times, I just wanted this ordeal to be over. The whole ordeal took ~2 months and after that, I swear myself to never buy Samsung product again.

I look into other TV brands and either they have very suspicious privacy practices (Roku and TCL) or they are made with items sourced in just one country (e.g., TCL and Hisense, which are both based in China).

That leaves me with either Sony (too pricey) or LG and LG seems like the most non-smart TV with sources all over the world (Vietnam and sometimes Mexico), as opposed to mostly from one country.

Whatever you buy, just simply never give it the wifi password and never attach it to an ethernet cable that will give it a DHCP lease. Once it's phoned home and filled itself with ads, your experience is ruined.

I have a mid 2017 Samsung 4k 70" that works great as a dumb screen. It's attached to a home theater PC through a receiver, PS4 pro and an Xbox.

People say, but the PS4 and Xbox have ads in their home screens? Yes, sometimes they do, but I trust Microsoft or Sony a thousand times more to keep their operating systems patched and up to date.

Bravia TVs are calibrated properly out of the box (to around the same level of quality as Apple displays, which is generally unheard of in TVs), never have to be connected to the Internet, and do 4K/60 content just fine. I’ve had a selection of them over time and have no fuss with them. They are smart TVs, which could be unforgivable, but I find it’s irrelevant.

They don’t necessarily all do HDMI 2.1 / LRRM / 120Hz gaming, but nothing really does well at that yet other than monitors. They support firmware updates by USB stick which I am currently not applying, as the latest update for my older model has a different set of compromises that I choose not to accept. My friend uses one of my prior older models as a gaming monitor.

There might be cheaper TVs but the calibration and ability to set aside the smarts has been excellent for me.

I recommend projectors, if you have a room that would work well with it. Every one I’ve seen has been refreshingly completely dumb.

LG is hands down the best.

OLED if you'll be using it in a dark room like a bedroom.

Nanocell/Qled/Microled if you'll be using it in daylight or with static content.

Disable the Wifi and use some other device like an Apple TV.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24666968

https://pointerclicker.com/best-dumb-tv/

Bought a TCL Roku tv from Walmart last year, opened it up and physically disconnected the wifi card now I just use the HDMI input works great for my needs.

Depends

Best picture hands down, money’s not a concern - Sony A90J

Best picture but not worth $1000 more - LG C1

Best for gaming - LG C1

Don’t want to bother with Burn in or want the brightest screen, but not the best black levels - Samsung QN95A

Notable mention: Panasonic JZ2000

All the OLEDs use the same panels from LG anyway, but Sony’s picture processing is on another level

With all of them I’d just not bother with the integrated smarts and just hook up an Apple TV that supports Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and has a ton of apps, updated regularly.

I can tell you what not to buy - a smart TV. Buy a good screen and buy one of those small computers. Install normal deskop OS on it. Why? Less vendor lock-in, less tracking, more freedom, easier to repair.

Get yourself Kodi. Things like Netflix in 4K resolution can be watched in the browser, 1080 resolution - anywhere. Games - Steam or some other place. Some ISPs now offer the ability to watch TV channels online in a browser as well.

I'm the market for a replacement for a 5yr sony bravia 3D replacement which I love. Your question is answered like any other question about which electronics; your budget. As I'm gleaning the market, few things I'm keeping in mind:

1. dumb as possible, no OEM OS like webos/roku etc. use ext. smart box

2. HDMI w CEC to be controllable w/ ext receiver

3. LCD/OLED have burn-in like your phone. just fyi. Particularly OLED.

4. want local dimming

5. want HDR's as many as it supports

6. you want class A screens likes of which manuf are; sharp, sony etc.. but now includes lowend like Vizio

7. look at reviews for screen edge bleeding.. I hate that.

IMHO every brand at every model level has diff screen/tech so one can't definitively say one brand is better. Your budget should dictate what you end up buying. I think what one sees is subjective. Only reviews showing things like contrast levels, bleeding and color reproduction are you only objective parameters to steer you.

[EDIT] forgot to mention that if you like so many others use ext. box to stream. Remember that all your TV settings for color, Hz etc can be over written by your ext box. So the quality of your ext. streamer will also dictate the quality of your videos.

Not sure what's available in your part of the world, but in the antipodes we have a brand Veon sold by our Walmart equivilent.

Picture is more than acceptable, absolutely no smarts at all and the sound is shite - all this equates to an unbelievably cheap TV compared to the standard name brand TVs like Samsung, Sony etc. All it does is put a picture on the screen - there's barely even an onscreen display and all that does is let you change inputs.

I can't imagine using the built in sound system on any TV, so once your sound system is plugged in, the TV is imo as good if not better than something that costs 4 times as much, and if it ever craps out .... you're looking at forking out hundreds of dollars to replace instead of thousands.

https://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/p/veon-50-inch-4k-ultra-hd-tv... (bear in mind NZD so that's about $USD400, and there's a big premium we pay on getting anything shipped to an island on the other side of the world)

I was shopping for TV a few months ago, and spent weeks researching. My conclusion is that most online the reviews are useless, all the quality comparison is something I would never notice myself. I went with TCL 50" Class 4 Series 4K UHD Smart Roku TV, Model: 50S435, and I love it. Cheap, roku works great, quality is great, I don't use cable, I am streaming from Netflix only.

I’ll hijack this thread and ask, is there any tv that has the ability to change the brightness with a single button press on the remote, or adapts automatically to ambient brightness? On my tv, I have to navigate into 3 menus that take 15 seconds to load. It takes forever. I’d love it if I could repurpose the channel rocker that’s never ever used into a brightness rocker.

LG OLED without question. Best picture quality, remote and smart features work well.

I find the smart features on this TV to be the best I’ve seen, compared to Samsung or Sony.

They aren’t intrusive and the app selection is pretty great. Also has native support for network storage with good codec support.

You can disable WiFi and not connect the Ethernet if you want it to be fully disconnected.

Last spring I bought a "dumb TV" (very inexpensive) from Walmart that just has two inputs: HDMI and an antenna input. I plug in an Apple TV box via HDMI. I love this setup because of its simplicity and lack or Smart TV annoyances. My wife misses our expensive Samsung Smart TV that I gave away to a hiking buddy.

Depending on how clear of a display you want, a projector may be a good option.

We have a small shelf in our bedroom with an Apple TV, a HomePod mini, and a $90 projector from Best Buy. It projects to the large wall across the room from our bed and is perfect for night time or late evening viewing. I’m sure you could put together a similar system using either SD cards or streaming from your Plex or whatever media server you use.

A couple years ago I went for a setup with a regular (gaming) computer screen, speakers, a TV tuner (DVB-T in, HDMI out), and a computer at once, but it works without a computer as well. Noname TV tuners tend to be pretty "dumb", it seems: neither requiring Internet access, nor showing ads.

Though not sure if you even need a TV tuner; sounds like just a computer screen and speakers may suffice.

Buy used and it won’t be expensive. Check your local craigslist for available options, and verify the model number matches with a dumb model.

I was given a 10+ year old TV for free. It’s heavy, and it’s 720p video is good enough. If I were to buy new, I would buy another 4K monitor.

Broadcast TV is dead, and I wouldn’t pay to subject myself to cable. Most TV broadcasts that I am interested in are available through streaming.

I have been looking for one of those small colour CRT TVs with a built-in VHS player and composite input.

A projector. Or a commercial display: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1557462-REG/sharp_4t_...

NEC commercial panels are very nice and totally dumb. They’re, I think, a little more expensive than a consumer panel.

The Best Buy Insignia brand has some dumb models. (They all used to be, but now they have some "smart" models.) The Sceptre brand is similar. After that, you're into commercial displays, which are expensive but of good quality.

If you don't need a tuner or remote or built-in speakers, a monitor may also suit you.

People overworry about smart features. Just don't tell it your wifi password and now you have a dumb TV.

LG OLED C1 Series 65” - Easily the best TV I've ever owned. Don't usually mix brands or get models other than Sony/Samsung. Samsung has been disappointing last few years and Sonys upper models in the size I wanted for OLED are stupidly expensive.

It's crazy how thin OLEDs are.

Sceptre from Wal-Mart's web site.

Spend a bit more and you can get a monitor to which you attach your PC with media.

Just don't connect it to network or wifi. I would hope sets don't lock you out from viewing content through HDMI while offline (but check reviews to be sure, I would not doubt there have been heated discussions about it in some TV product manager meetings).

LG. Always LG.

WebOS isn't Android, which is a huge plus. Also LG makes the actual panels for most TVs anyway, so other brands can't compete in that either.

Learned a lesson when i spent >$1k on a Samsung which failed after three years. Now I buy the cheapest dumb TV from Best Buy which gets reasonably good reviews. I don't spend much in case the next dies an early death.

I have an LG C9 and while it has a lot of "smart" features, they stay out of the way.

The thing is, there are TVs you can buy which have fewer "smart" features but they are business-oriented for things like conference rooms and display walls and, are far more expensive. Even if you didn't care about spending extra money, the panels in these displays are not optimized for TV/Movies, they are optimized for presentations/display.

The biggest question really is what are you planning on watching? If you're watching a lot of dramatic content where you actually care about picture quality, I really don't think you can do better than an OLED, and an LG CX OLED in particular. If you've never experienced a huge OLED in a dark room, it's an amazing thing to behold on a great movie which takes advantage of huge shifts in brightness/darkness of scenes.

I recently re-watched the matrix and having that OLED does amazing things to the feel of the picture. When Neo/Morpheus get dropped from the Nebuchadnezzar into the white room in the matrix for the first time it goes from this rich deeply color saturated picture to this incredibly bright stark white in an instant and it's a change you can feel as much as you can see.

If you're curious technically WHY OLED is just so incredible, and some more rational points of view on it, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=226kWMOVGGc) was the video which convinced me to get an OLED.

RTINGS has some great data on the CX OLED (the newer version of the C9 OLED which I have)

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/cx-oled

The best way of describing things I think is that the upgrade from !OLED to OLED (and especially LG CX OLED) is akin to upgrading from using TV speakers to using a proper HT sound setup. Movies which are well mastered in 5.1 (or more) with great dynamic range and have great HDR and dynamic range in the video as well.

On a more detailed technical note: I have my LG TV connected to my LAN because I want to be able to use Roomie to turn it on/off and set the input (it only uses 1 input which goes to my receiver), but, I have my firewall set to block all of it's access to the internet and it seems to be 100% fine with that. It can't exfiltrate data on what i'm watching, or download ads, or complain about software updates (and it doesn't complain about not being able to do those things), so the LG TV is perfectly fine as a dumb TV.

Burn-in was a huge concern for me. This was not a cheap TV and if it only lasted a year or two I was going to be very angry.

If I'm playing a particular video game (which I do do occasionally) and I look closely I can sometimes see menu elements ghost on the screen very slightly, but, they seem to completely disappear with normal use (I don't use the pixel refresher) and if you're not looking for them, you don't see them.

I've had good results with the Sceptre line of dumb TVs. I plug a wireless connection dongle into one of the HDMI ports and I can project anything to it from my laptop.

LG C1 and A90J

Just ask /r/4KTVs

Note - I have the LG C1...its incredible.

also consider a projector - even 1080p looks pretty great and 4k is getting more affordable. They are dumb and take whatever HDMI input you feed them and don't take up space when not in use (if you wall or ceiling mount one opposite a wall you don't even need a screen).