What the Tech? Choosing the Right TV for You
By JAMIE TUCKER Consumer Technology Reporter
Everywhere you look thereโs another advertisement for blowout sales on big-screen TVs.
If you havenโt purchased a television in the last 4 years you may be a little confused when you walk into an electronics store or shop online. Thereโs a whole new alphabet for todayโs TVs.
Things like 4K, 8K, OLED, QLED, and ULED. What does it all mean?
4K is the norm now and plenty of pixels for most unless youโre building a home theater in which you may prefer to pay a lot more for an 8K television. The โkโ is simply referencing how many pixels are displayed on the screen.
Whatโs more important is how those pixels work. There are two primary technologies available. OLED and QLED.
QLED is the most advanced version of LCD technology. โLEDsโ stand for โlight emitting diodesโ and refers to the function of a thin layer of quantum dots that act as a filter between the LED backlight and the screen.
QLED TVs have bright, vivid, and saturated colors.
OLED TVs, according to Dalton Rigby of Electronics Express, present the best true colors of any TV ever.
โEssentially, most LCD TVs have a backlit screen as opposed to LEDs,โ Rigby explains. โOLED does not. Instead, it has over 8 million individual pixels that turn on and turn off to create that backlight. They call them self-lit pixels. When theyโre on you get a beautiful bright saturated picture like you see here. When theyโre off, you get the deepest darkest blacks you can get on
tv.
Night scenes look much better on an OLED TV and that technology is best for people who watch movies in a home theater setup. Rigby says an OLED TV might not be best depending on where you want to put it.
โThereโs going to be a lot of glare. Itโs going to be noticeable on the screen if, say for instance, youโre going to put it in a sunroom or something and OLED would not do very well,โ he said.
Everyone wants a big screen, but a 70-85 inch TV may be overkill in small rooms. While itโs personal preference, experts say if you sit less than 8 feet away from the TV, you probably only need a 60โณ screen.
Rigby says, 80โณ screens and even larger, are best for big rooms for a big crowd. โIf you have a big living room with vaulted ceilings. 85โณ could be absolutely perfect. If youโve got a big sectional sofa, maybe 8-10 feet away from the TV, itโs going to be an amazing viewing experience.โ
While itโs hard to picture the size of a TV in your room without taking it home, you can get some idea by using the Amazon app to find the size youโre considering and โview in your roomโ which uses augmented reality to show the TV on your wall from where you normally sit.
The last thing to consider: is framerate. If youโre a gamer or watch a lot of sports, the higher the frame rate, labeled โhertzโ on TV descriptions, the better the experience.
โIf youโre playing a game and itโs a faced paced first-person shooter on a 60-hertz frame, itโs not going to look right. On 120 hertz, itโs going to look fluid, itโs gonna look fast-packed, itโs going to be seamless almost.โ
Expect to pay $1,000-$2,000 for a high-quality QLED TV from Sony, SAMSUNG, and LG while a 77โณ OLED television from SAMSUNG is about $5,000.
