What you should know if your smart TV makes you feel dumb
If it seems as though televisions have gotten very complicated very fast, it’s not just you. Sometimes smart technology can make us feel, well, dumb. You must contend with a number of abbreviations — LCD, OLED, HDR, HDMI and more — and widely varying price points.
What does it all mean, and why can’t we just go buy a TV? To break it down, we talked to technology experts, a deals guru and an interior design expert — because you shouldn’t need a degree in TV to binge-watch “Stranger Things.”
LCD vs. OLED
There are basically only two options for TVs: LCD (liquid crystal display) and OLED (organic light-emitting diode).
LCDs (sometimes called “QLED” or “LED LCD”), which illuminate pixels using a central lamp, are generally the most cost-effective. Their picture is improving as manufacturers step up the quality with advances such as quantum dots, which add color and brightness. OLEDs, which use organic material allowing each pixel to light up individually, will always have the better picture — and a higher price to match.
Screen size
“Generally, you can comfortably sit as close as around 100 percent the diagonal measurement of your 4K TV,” says Will Greenwald, PCMag’s home entertainment editor and senior electronics analyst for TVs. “If you’re sitting five feet away, a 55-inch TV is good.
Eight feet, maybe 65-inch.”
Screen resolution
Most TVs sold today that are larger than 40 inches have 4K resolution, which means four times the old standard of 1,080 pixels, or 3,840 by 2,160 pixels, Greenwald says. That’s four times the detail of just a few years ago.
That doesn’t mean all the content you want to watch will be available in 4K, but a 4K TV will “significantly improve” picture quality, says Jason Sigritz of Columbus, Ohio, an in-home adviser for Best Buy. “With a 4K TV, whatever you’re watching — Blu-ray, DVD, streaming content or cable/satellite broadcast — will be much sharper, clearer and better than a standard HD TV due to upscaling technology.”
TVs with 8K resolution are just starting to enter the market, with a resolution four times the number of pixels of 4K (yes, the math is confusing). “They’re strictly for early adopters,” he warns, “and there is no 8K content available for consumers to watch on them yet.” They will be a viable option around 2022.
HDR
HDR, or high dynamic range, means the TV can show a wider range of color than older models, “to provide a picture that’s more lifelike,” says Sigritz, who recommends looking for an HDR TV for the best viewing experience. “It’s like we had that eight-pack of crayons and we went up to the 24-pack of crayons.”
Netflix, Amazon
Prime and other streaming services are making sure that when they offer 4K content, it’s also in HDR. This is usually called HDR10, which is what movie studios and TV companies have agreed on for the HDR standard.
Refresh rate
The ideal refresh rate — or rate at which the picture refreshes — depends on the type of content you want to watch, Sigritz says. At the standard rate, the picture is refreshed 60 times per second, or 60 Hertz (Hz). “We want a TV that has 120 Hz as our minimum,” he says. “So that when a football goes flying across the screen, or there’s a car chase in a movie, it’s not blurry and fuzzy.” Some manufacturers are even offering 240 Hz, which is the clearest with motion.
HDMI connections
We used to have four or five spaghetti-like cords that would hook up each device, Sigritz says. Now, with HDMI cords, each device has only one cord, “but we want to make sure that we have enough for all of our devices,” he says. Think about how many devices you want to attach to your TV and then count the HDMI ports. Hookup options include: sound bar, streaming box, game system, Blu-ray device, cable box.
Prices
Best Buy breaks TVs into three categories: standard, premium and elite, with a standard being a 4K HDR and elite being one of the OLED offerings. “Basically, you can get a great deal for under $1,000, and if you’re willing to really splurge on style and performance, you can expect to spend around $3,000,” PCMag’s Greenwald says. David Dritsas, an electronics retail expert for Chicago-based Brad’s Deals, says there are many good 4K TVs in the $500 range.
When to buy
The best time of year to buy a new TV is the holiday season, from Black Friday through December, Dritsas says. Do your research on the TV you want and the price before looking for sales so you’ll know a good deal when you see it. Another good time is late February and March, he says, because “TV manufacturers start to release new products and discount older models.” The best way to know whether a TV is a good deal? “Look at the picture in person,” he says.
Best Buy’s Sigritz agrees, because not all 4K HDRs are the same. “A 4K TV is kind of like having a V6 engine in your car, but all that means is you have a V6 engine,” he says. “There’s tons of different types, and some are better than others.”