Size matters if you want most bang for your buck
It’s time to trade up from your old 32-inch television... with 43 inches the minimum you should be aiming at
Black Friday is here in six days. And with Christmas around the corner and the latest TVs offering cracking value, now is a great time to trade in that tired old 32-inch for a bigger, higher-quality goggle box. But how do we sift the duds from the great deals?
Medium-sized high-end tellies can be available for surprisingly reasonable Black Friday prices right now. But how real are these ‘deals’?
Some retailers may just want to shift products that are less-thanstellar performers or earmarked for obsolescence.
But before you buy, are you up-tospeed with TV terminology?
Do you know your OLED from your elbow? Or what the difference is between HD-ready, High Definition and ultra HD – and believe me, there is a world of difference.
We explain it all below – and pinpoint the top quality Black Friday tellies rated Best Buys by consumer watchdog Which?
The telly experts tell us to ‘go large’ if you want better quality and bang for your buck. And Which? backs this up with a Best Buy list that includes no TV smaller than 49 inches. So it does seem that the time has come to trade up from a 32-inch television to at least a 43-inch if not bigger.
If you want to go really large, Samsung’s 65-inch Q90R is the one for you, scoring 79% from the consumer watchdog. But it will cost you – it’s available from Harvey Norman or Currys for €2,499. But the top TV on the Best Buy list is a 55-incher – the LG OLED C9 PLA with a score of 82%.
The watchdog uses the actual words ‘jaw-dropping, awesome, and spellbinding’ to describe the picture. But all those superlatives don’t come cheap. The cheapest deals, according to Pricespy.ie, are Currys and Harvey Norman’s at €1,529.
We’ve skipped most of the top ranked Best Buy TVs because they mostly cost between €1k and €3k. Suffice it to say, the top 40 Best Buys are dominated by LG followed a long way back by Samsung on nine, Panasonic, 5, and Sony, 4.
So what is available at a reasonable price? The highest ranked LCD TV at a quarter of the cost of OLEDs is a 55-inch LG with the catchy name UM7510PLA. This is a 4K set that is on the upper end of that more basic spectrum. ‘By bringing highend quality to its cheaper TVs LG has done something few brands manage and the 7510 deserves to be a huge success,’ says Which? And the best price? €550 from DID.
A cheaper and slightly smaller option is a TV with a 50-inch screen and a solid 72% score. It seems refreshingly good value in this elite company. The consumer watchdog said of LG’s UM7500PLA: ‘This midrange model shows LG is capable of getting stellar performance from more basic hardware.’ Littlewoods have the best price, at €491.
The LG UM7500PLA missed out on a Best Buy rating. But only just. And it cries out for a mention because those ratings are utterly dominated by massive and pricey tellies. The 43-inch merits a rave review and misses out on a Best Buy rating by just 1%. It scored 70%. Joyce’s in Wexford has the best Black Friday deal at €379.