[Closed] Tellys these days...

The best thing about having a 4k TV is hdr (and Dolby vision of you go more expensive). It's really what makes the difference to me.

Having recently been through this decision making process I concluded that you should either go cheap and cheerful or all the way with an oled with all the bells and whistles. Everything in the middle offers very little extra functionality for more money. Until you get to the really good end of the market there's not enough difference.

Once I'd seen a good oled though....I realised that's where I wanted to go. 55gz950 Panasonic btw. The picture quality is superb, especially with good quality feeds. Smart UI stuff is pretty average, but I mostly silent with a fire tv. Only really need to use the TV stuff for iPlayer uhd.

I bought a JVC smart telly a couple of years back . Awful sound quality, picture certainly wasn’t very good . Was about £350.
It died within a month, so I took it back, upgraded to an LG at about £500. The difference was astounding. LG all the way for me now

All slim TVs now struggle with sound as there’s no physical depth for decent sized speakers. 4K picture is only 4K when there’s a 4K source. So I think you’ll be fine with it and invest any savings in a speaker system.

The current Which Best Buys are all LG at the lower end of the price range. I have just bought the 55" LG 55UM7510PLA. Bought from John Lewis for the 5 year warranty. Was £449.

They rate the sound as good for a flat screen. I'm happy with the picture. THe "magic remote" lets you select from the onscreen menu with a pointer rather than clicking through the menu. Sounded like a gimic but is actually usefuel. The magic remote also has voice control apparently but I've not tried that yet.

"Overview

By bringing high-end quality to its cheaper TVs LG has done something few brands manage and the 7510 deserves to be a huge success.

What is it?

It's a 55-inch 4K set that makes up part of LG's more basic LCD range, hence the low price. It's on the upper end of that more basic spectrum though, so you get the Magic Remote and some extra audio processing tech."

But don't take my word. I took the free £1 trial membership to access their reports. Worthwhile for a circa £500 or more purchase.

Also consist of the screen is too big (or even to small!?) for your room.

Being sat too near a huge screen gets old very quickly.

I was in an airbnb a while back that had a fancy telly. We were watching a film but it just looked.....weird. Like the picture quality was so good that it made it weird. Made it look like a documentary or something, not cinematic if that makes sense. I'll stick to me old telly with the big pressure streak across the top corner of the screen where the gf wiped it too hard 😂

True story. Anyway, sorry. Carry on.

Like the picture quality was so good that it made it weird. Made it look like a documentary or something, not cinematic if that makes sense

That's known as the soap opera effect, its caused by having motion smoothing turned on. Basically your mind expects films to be jerky (filmed at 24fps), and if the tv can cleverly interject frames to make it smooth ,whilst the picture is better, some folks (myself included) find it massively distracting. You can disable motion smoothing and it all goes back to looking nice and jerky

For me, the extra price for oled is well worth it, the picture quality is miles ahead of anything else. I would probably say hold off until the lockdown is lifted and go into a currys and watch some sets in person to decide for yourself whether the extra quality is worth it. Pretty much all the features can be added with a £30 fire tv stick which can then be upgraded, so dont focus on that

My usage would be mainly watching Netflix an iPlayer, and playing on a PS4 pro, if that’s relevant.

Not a gamer myself but I think 'Lag' is in issue to watchout out for with gaming. If you hark back to the old days when you could leave the house and stand in a shop.... if you saw a line of tellies all showing the same TV program the 4k tvs would be running noticeably behind the 1280p ones because all those pixels take longer to process. Nothing to notice about that when watching telly at home unless you watch more than one TV at a time and they're all on the same channel -  but it can be an issue with gaming if theres a delay between your inputs and what happens on the screen. So 'input lag' is something to be aware of in that respect

Yeah for gaming get a decent TV. 4k isn't all that but hdr effects look bloody brilliant.

Bought from John Lewis for the 5 year warranty.

As long as you don't need to use the warranty. I've been left without a decent telly twice (10 days each time) in the last three months after the backlights failed (and failed again) on my Samsung tv (which is still <2 years old). Their service was shocking - I couldn't get through to their helpline at all then went into a store where it took an age to get anyone to deal with me. Even with photographic evidence of the issue, they insisted on an engineer coming out to see it to diagnose the problem (which I already knew after a 2 minute Google) then another two or three weeks each time before the television was collected for repairs. Utter rubbish.

If you can get hold of a Sharp TV for that price I think you'd be very pleased. I grabbed a 40" one for the garage for less than £180 from Tesco's eBay store a year ago and I've been really impressed.

Completely thrashes the £1,000 Samsung LCD that my parents bought three years ago. My advice is avoid Samsung at all costs - their smart TVs now have adverts in the EPG and the colours have always been wonky anyway.

LG or Sharp, then Philips if you like the Ambilight thing.

I reckon the big difference will be in the operating system.

There is a massive difference in 'picture quality' (whatever that means it's pretty subjective) between TVs at different price points and within price points. I recently bought a 43" TV and was willing to spend upto £500 so was looking at sets between about £350 to £500 from all the usual brands. The good news is at that price point you get alot of features and good on-paper spec's, but after cruising the usual high street shops to see them in action was the vast difference in picture quality. Alot of this is subjective of course but I hate the super colourful high contrast pictures alot of the latest generation TV's kick out...looks completely unnatural to me and prefer a much more mellow and natural kind of picture...this immediately narrowed my choice down to two sets..a Sony one and Panasonic one as the Samsungs (had a Samsung TV before) and LG and other brands seem to go for the high colour contrast artificial image I don't like. Sure you can probably mess around with the settings, but why bother. I'd rather have a set I like out of the box.

Other thing you might want to consider is the smart features and access to apps. I went for the Panasonic at the end of the day based on picture quality, but Panasonic software isn't the best - Samsung probably the best for that side of things, but I figure these things move on all the time and a small smart tv box is cheap and small so not a major problem to sort out so would rather spend my money on the picture quality.

Forget about sound quality..it is crap on every TV set. If you want decent sound you'll need a separate audio system. can get away with it for a bedroom set where it will be played on low volume but for a main telly for watching movies and things where you want more volume then you're farting in the breeze.

happy with a samsung 65" non-oled. I didn't do oled as I game a lot and this tv had really low lag, much higher brightness with reasonable contrast and no chance of burn-in. Colour out of the box is nuts, aimed at making them look bright and saturated in shops I expect. Cinema mode or my tweaked game mode are fine though. Sound is crap, I use an AVR and speakers.
There are ads in the UI but they are tiny boxes and I don't notice them. It has a fast cpu so the UI and apps are really responsive, which is the key difference in cheaper sets. I have a cheaper samsung in the house too and the ui is ponderous on that in comparison.
I'd buy again.

PS4 Pro alone warrants avoiding cheap I spent ages making sure I got one to give the most from my PS4 Pro.

Samsung, Sony and LG came up best I’ll try and find the models they’re probably a lot cheaper now too.

Things you get in more expensive sets:
- Higher end processor for processing images (a good thing)
- Higher end processor for internal smart features (only useful if you don't use a streaming device)
- Higher end sound (only useful if you use the TV for sound, personally I don't)
- Better contrast ratio panel (deeper blacks)
- Better LED arrays (better contrast between light and dark areas on screen and avoidance of 'banding')
- OLED as opposed to LED arrays, so single pixels can be lit as opposed to areas
- Better refresh rates (smoother motion)

There may be others, but these are the things I'm aware of that would help make my decision. But I've not bought a new TV for 9 years as the Panasonic I bought was really good and still works perfectly well so I can't really justify a bigger fancier TV.

I’ll stick to me old telly with the big pressure streak across the top corner of the screen where the gf wiped it too hard 😂

Couldn't you just use a beaker like any normal person?

I used this site it’s been updated you need to check the model numbers as EU use different ones sometimes.

https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/us/best-4k-gaming-tv,review-4837.html

This seems to be the newer version of what I got at about half the price.

Argos linkSorry this one

toby1 covers it. Also those saying they got a 40"/43" and the picture was good, do realise that that is a TINY screen!
(ie. picture quality is not as important)

Yeah, what you're paying for is pretty much as toby1 has it, then ideally all you'll be doing is seeing how the cost/benefit works out for you. In the end I settled on a mid-range Samsung which I thought did a notably better job than the sets I saw at the budget end of the market, but beyond that price point I didn't see anything that I thought was worth paying the extra for.

Sure you can probably mess around with the settings, but why bother. I’d rather have a set I like out of the box.

Pretty much every TV you can buy is set up really badly 'out of the box.' Why spend north of 500 quid on something and not spend five minutes setting it up properly?

Other thing you might want to consider is the smart features and access to apps.

Chromecast / Firestick / a.n.other device. TV smarts are at the very bottom of things I'd worry about when buying a telly, they're almost universally crap.

TV smarts are at the very bottom of things I’d worry about when buying a telly

This! From time to time my 'smart 3D' tv thinks it's about to show some 3D content. I never wanted 3D as a feature it just came as default on the model I wanted, it's always wrong too!

Sure you can probably mess around with the settings, but why bother. I’d rather have a set I like out of the box.

I’d rather spend 10 minutes researching and 5 minutes setting my TV up to get the best out of it.

Also those saying they got a 40″/43″ and the picture was good, do realise that that is a TINY screen!

Subjectively, perhaps, but not everyone needs or wants a 60 inch plus monstrosity taking up half the room.

You're only telling half the story here as well, viewing distance is a big factor.

I bought a midrange LGi 2018 and the wi-fi card died in it. (I googled to work out the issue)

LG sorted the FOC repair in under a week, which i thought wasn't bad to be honest.

Aside from that it's been great in a "just works" kind of a way.

Ive been looking into this too and it seems to me spending near enough £1000 for OLED is a bit much considering the cheaper models with HDR10 and all that still look pretty great. Anyone getting a big tv should be using a soundbar or surround system so speaker quality is irrelevant for me. I went with Philips ambilight as it looks like a really cool feature and everyone who has one says it really adds to the viewing experience.

If you want to keep the thing for any length of time, rather than getting something disposable;
You want HDR
You want something compatible with all the HDR formats commonly used by the service providers (HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision)
...and you want it to be OLED to actually make use of the HDR

TDLR; get an LG OLED 🙂

Sure you can probably mess around with the settings, but why bother. I’d rather have a set I like out of the box.

No TV will look good out of the box. The 'out of the box' settings are designed to make the picture stand out when it's displayed next to 20 other TVs in a badly overlit branch of Best Buy. The out of the box settings will be called something like 'vivid' or 'dynamic'. These always have massively oversaturated colours, excessive sharpness and all sorts of motion smoothing type 'enhancements' switched on.

What makes a screen stand out next to a bunch of others bears no relation to what looks good at home in normal viewing light levels. See -

I was in an airbnb a while back that had a fancy telly. We were watching a film but it just looked…..weird. Like the picture quality was so good that it made it weird. Made it look like a documentary or something, not cinematic if that makes sense.

My in-laws insist on using whatever the default is on their tv and I avoid watching anything I really want to enjoy when I'm there. I think it's the sharpness setting that seems to give it an artificial 3d effect (a bit like a view master picture)

Generally, the advice is to switch off all of the 'enhancements' and use what's probably called the 'cinema' preset (which will look really dull compared to the 'dynamic' until you get used to it) and then tweak from there.

https://www.whathifi.com/advice/how-to-set-your-tv-and-get-best-picture isn't bad.

The ‘out of the box’ settings are designed to make the picture stand out when it’s displayed next to 20 other TVs in a badly overlit branch of Best Buy.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttttt.................

All TVs have 'out of the box' settings – they can't all stand out from the one they are sat next to in a shop. I have never found much need to fiddle with picture settings and can't say I have ever felt that a (correctly working) set has had a bad picture 'out of the box'.

Same here johndoh, but we're clearly not proper expert TV watchers.

I've got one of the LGs mentioned above, it is bloody good. It didn't stop the pain of me smashing the previous one with the Hoover, but still.

Downsides, the case/chassis whatever you want to call it feel very flimsy / cheap, but as you rarely actually touch the thing it's not a biggie.

If you want to put it on a stand rather than mounted on the wall (something I personally hate) than putting the legs at the very end means you need a pretty massive stand! I ended up buying a metal central stand that mounted to the VESA mounts, it not only makes it seem more secure when 5 year olds are running around, it allows for tilt/swivel which is nice and add some weight to it which helps with the above.

Oh, the sounds are a little too good, it's very cinematic, the loud bits of film / tv are LOUD whilst speech is quieter. My last 2 LG TVs were the same to a lessor extent, but you could turn it down. Now I spend my entire life (or feels like it since lock-down constantly turning it up so I can hear what's being said, then turning it down again when my wife nags "it's too loud" must put her off gawping at FB.

We picked up one of these (50") for £389 just before the lockdown:

https://www.lg.com/uk/tvs/lg-50UM7500PLA

That was from Richer Sounds who price matched and beat the JL price at the time by a tenner.

Fab telly, really nice upgrade in quality from our old Samsung. The 4k stuff on Disney+ looks stunning.

EDIT: the in-built speaker sound in suprisingly OK. But, we routinely use a Q Accoustics M2 soundbar.

No TV will look good out of the box. The ‘out of the box’ settings are designed to make the picture stand out when it’s displayed next to 20 other TVs in a badly overlit branch of Best Buy.

Just not true. The only check I do with a new tv is to turn all the settings off then good to go and achieved the best picture quality to my eye. The shops turn the contrast up as high as possible and use specially created demo footage to pipe into their screens so they all look super sharp and high in contrast and produce a look it is impossible to achieve at home no matter what TV service you're subscribed to...which I don't like. A key give away are look at skin tones, especially on cheeks...that gives alot away and alot of TV's even expensive ones fail to replicate the detail and just show a kind of skin coloured mush.

I've always bought Panasonic and they've been perfect out of the box. I even carried out a calibration on my main TV and it was spot on out of the box. But alot of people criticise Panasonics for not being sharp or bright enough. Well it's all a compromise and depends what you're after...playing games...you want that high colour contrast look but for movies its unrealistic.

Just not true. The only check I do with a new tv is to turn all the settings off then good to go

You do realise he said exactly that below don't you?

DezB maybe you really don't have the eye for it, ever considered that? I liken it to the time the half deaf guy 30 years older than me told me there was no difference between a CD and mp3. I mean, it's not like we're in directional cable territory here.

Some of these cheaper TVs aren't really '4K'. They cheat by counting subpixels, so its only really 2.8K. Look up RGBW.

Alot of this is subjective of course but I hate the super colourful high contrast pictures alot of the latest generation TV’s kick out…looks completely unnatural to me and prefer a much more mellow and natural kind of picture

When I bought my Sony Bravia I went online to check out settings, and AVForums were the goto for setting up a tv. Mine was from Dixon’s, in a Boxing Day sale, so had display settings. I followed the instructions, watched it for a bit, tweaked it a bit more, watched, tweaked a little bit, and it’s been fine for the last sixteen years, although it’s starting to show some dark vignetting along the bottom edge. Cost me £899, down from £1499 at the time. I’d avoid those cheap Aldi/Lidl bargains, I did some research on those, and the reviews, including on AVForums, aren’t all that. LG, who make a lot of the panels that other manufacturers use, seem to get good reviews, I’d look at them, Sony, Panasonic, possibly Samsung, and I’d look at AVForums for settings, just because no telly comes out of the box perfectly set up, and spending 30 minutes one evening is a small price to pay for enjoyment of a great picture for the next fifteen years or so.

The two budget TV's I've bought I have had to replace within two years. Hanspree and Hisense.
I could just be unlucky, but the Samsung in the living room is about six years old and still going strong.

Buy cheap, buy twice.

DezB maybe you really don’t have the eye for it, ever considered that?

I do believe that’s pretty much what I said. duh