Where To Buy Flat Screen Tv
Nearly all TVs sold now are flat-screen TVs. Curved TVs screens were once more popular, but they're increasingly hard to find now as both consumers and manufacturers prefer flat screens. Modern flat screens have gotten thinner and bigger, and a few are designed to look like pieces of art when wall-mounted. Finding the best TV for you all depends on your needs and what you're going to be watching; watching a ton of sports with friends requires a different type of TV than if you watch movies alone. Also, choosing one TV over another may simply come down to personal preference.
where to buy flat screen tv
We've bought and tested more than 375 TVs over the last nine years, and below you'll find our recommendations for the best TVs with a flat screen TV. Make sure to check out our recommendations for the best TVs, the best TVs for Xbox Series X, and the best TVs for PS5.
The best flat-screen TV we've tested is the Samsung S95B OLED. This remarkable TV delivers incredible picture quality, with deep inky blacks that look amazing in a dark room. Its near-infinite contrast ratio allows it to display incredibly bright highlights when watching HDR content, with no blooming or haloing around bright highlights in dark scenes. Its unique QD-OLED panel also lets it display incredibly bright and vivid colors, meaning the latest HDR content looks incredibly realistic.
The best mid-range flat-screen TV we've tested is the LG C2 OLED. It's an excellent all-around TV that delivers stunning picture quality and performs well for any use. OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, resulting in a near-infinite contrast ratio and perfect black uniformity. There's no blooming around bright objects on a dark background, making it a fantastic choice for watching content in dark rooms. It has great all-around features, whether you're gaming or simply streaming your favorite content.
The best mid-range flat-screen TV is the Hisense U8H. It's an impressive TV that looks great in any viewing environment. Although it can't produce blacks as deep and inky as the LG C2 OLED, it still has an outstanding contrast ratio and an impressive Mini LED full array local dimming feature, so there's very little blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. It's incredibly bright and has excellent reflection handling, so it's a great choice for a bright living room with many windows.
The best budget flat-screen TV we've tested is the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED. It's a surprisingly good budget TV that delivers a great overall experience. It's an impressive TV for watching movies in a dark room thanks to its superb contrast ratio, fantastic black uniformity, and decent local dimming feature, so blacks appear deep and uniform in a dark room. It also has impressive peak brightness and decent reflection handling, making it an equally good choice for a bright room.
You can still get an enjoyable TV experience without spending a lot. If you're on a tight budget, the best cheap flat-screen TV we've tested is the Hisense A6H. It runs the Google TV smart interface, with a huge selection of streaming apps available. It makes it a great choice for an office or guest bedroom, as your guests can watch their favorite shows without you having to worry about buying an extra streaming stick. It also has a wide viewing angle, so the image remains consistent when viewed from the sides, making it a great choice if you like watching TV while walking around.
If you would like to do the work of choosing yourself, here is the list of all our reviews of flat screen TVs. Be careful not to get too caught up in the details. While no TV is perfect, most TVs are great enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you really look for them.
Screen size also depends on how close you sit to the TV. Basically, if you can see the individual pixels of the screen, you're too close. A good rule of thumb is that you should sit at a distance from the TV that is three times more than the height of the screen for HD and just 1.5 times the screen height for 4K Ultra HD. In other words, you can sit twice as close to a 4K UHD TV.
Our what TV should you buy article has an in-depth guide to calculating the proper TV screen size based on the dimensions of your room, as well as the resolution of the TV. And check out the best TVs by size:
No TV buying guide, no matter how detailed, can replace your own experience and judgment. If you have the opportunity, go to a store (and maybe bring your family) and look at the TVs. Even though 4K content is less common than 1080p, its availability is improving through the likes of Netflix. you may want that higher-resolution technology if you plan to sit close to a very large screen.
But you should also consider where the TV will be going in your home. While the above advice is intended for living rooms and home theaters, you'll want to consider what size is appropriate for other parts of the house, like the bedroom or the kitchen, where a smaller TV may be a necessity.
The biggest benefit of 4K TVs is that small objects on the screen have more detail, including sharper text. Overall, images appear richer and more life-like than on an HDTV, but the benefits can be subtle. The sharper picture also has the added benefit of letting you comfortably view the screen from a shorter distance, making larger TVs more comfortable to view in a regular-sized home.
Ultimately, have a think where you are most likely to watch content and ensure your TV of choice supports that format - and your Blu-ray player too. Some support both formats to really future-proof you, but do check first.
The refresh rate, expressed in Hertz (Hz) describes how many times per second a picture is refreshed on the screen. The standard refresh rate is 60 times per second, or 60 Hz. However, in scenes with rapidly moving objects, a 60 Hz refresh rate can make things look blurry or jittery, particularly on LCD HDTVs. So, to create a more solid picture, manufacturers doubled the refresh rate to 120 Hz (and in some cases up to 240 Hz).
Pros: Wide array of prices, sizes and features; Some affordable Ultra HD 4K models; Bright screens visible even in a sunny room; Image quality steadily improving with full-array backlighting and quantum-dot technology.
LG isn't the only company actively pursuing OLED technology in large screen sizes, however. Sony has been offering OLED models for several years, and both Vizio and Philips are also on board with the tech. See our picks of the best OLED TVs you can buy for our recommendations.
While HDMI 2.1 is still relatively new, it's a must have for any of the next-gen consoles. And certain features offered by the 2.1 spec have become much more common, like Auto-Low Latency Mode (ALLM), which switches to game mode as soon as the console is turned on, and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), which matches the screen to the frame-by-frame output coming from the TV, synchronizing the two for judder-free gaming.
The contrast ratio describes the range of brightness levels a set can display. Better contrast ratios display more subtle shadows and hues, and thus better detail. However, the way manufacturers measure such ratios varies widely. Indeed, the specification has been so thoroughly discredited that if a salesperson uses it as a selling point, you should shop somewhere else.
One of the biggest revenue generators for big-box electronics stores is the extended warranty. Why? Because they are so rarely needed, especially for a flat-panel LCD set. Most of the components in an HDTV are remarkably resilient; even the LEDs used to light the picture are virtually shockproof.
If the prices are the same, and the models are generally the same or similar, where do you head? Good question. There are pros and cons to the top US stores, including warranty and return policies, but a major thing to consider is the nature of the store's TV section itself. None offer the ideal viewing environment to compare picture quality, but some are better than others. I visited a bunch of local stores to find out which one was best.
It's not a great place to look at a TV, though. There's marginal to no light control in the TV area. One store I visited had florescent lights right next to the screens, so it was impossible to tell any differences with all the reflections. TVs on the top shelf are not angled, so you can only see them off-axis (and therefore, can't judge their picture quality in any way). The video feed tends to be ads that don't show off detail or picture quality at all.
Though unrelated on the corporate side (Sam's is owned by Walmart, for instance), for our purposes they're quite similar. They're warehouse stores where you can get that 55-gallon drum of ketchup and that pallet of bean dip you need for watching football. They also sell TVs in their, combined, 1,300-plus stores.
There are tech support and extended warranty options, but both cost extra. Both are covered under its Geek Squad banner, and with TVs over 42 inches, it'll come to your house. Most interestingly, this warranty does cover burn in: "Pixel repair and burn-in coverage for TVs. We'll get your screen back to pristine condition if your pixels start looking weird or a shadow image sticks."
Mini-LEDs: Every LCD TV made today currently uses LEDs to produce the light that shines through the LCD panel. Most TVs use LED lights that pass through a diffuser to light up the entire LCD screen. Mini-LEDs, which some TVs use, are much smaller than traditional LEDs, so TV makers can install more of them and thus create more zones of local dimming, which means less blooming or halos around bright objects. Mini-LEDs are completely different from micro-LEDs, an available (though very expensive) technology that employs individual red, green, and blue LEDs to produce an image without needing an LCD panel at all.
Either way, your best bet when transporting a flat screen TV is to keep it propped up, instead of laying it down. Help prop it up in the moving truck by wedging it in between mattresses or other soft furniture items. 041b061a72