Buying a TV is one of the biggest tech purchases you will make, and one you’d hope is going to last you a fair few years – so choosing the best TV for your needs is no quick or easy decision.
If you’re struggling to know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. This buying guide has our pick of the very best 4K TVs on the market right now – from OLEDs to QLEDs, big budgets to more humble ones. We’ve searched high and low and tested them too, to bring you a veritable selection of great televisions that will bring your home cinema to life.
Our Top Pick: Best 4K TV
LG/Pocket-lint
LG G3 OLED evo
1. Best 4K TV overall
$2688 $3300 Save $612
The LG G3 is the flagship 4K OLED from the brand in 2023, and is one of the best OLEDs we’ve ever seen.
- The brightest OLED pictures ever
- Sensational contrast and black levels
- Fantastic gaming support
- Disappointing sound quality
- Very slight desaturation in dark scenes
- Desktop stand costs extra
The LG G3 is, so far, the very best TV we’ve seen in 2023. It’s not cheap, but for those who are looking for the best of the best, this is it.
It’s an OLED TV, which most people know by now offers some fantastic benefits – a super-slim design, superb contrast and excellent viewing angles to name a few. However, the chief complaint of OLEDs is also addressed here, with the use of Micro Lens Array technology. This delivers the kind of brightness we thought impossible from an OLED panel, so even rooms with high ambient lighting can enjoy the benefits OLED can bring.
Of course, the picture performance is top-notch with incredible colour reproduction, the new webOS platform is well-equipped, and its gaming prowess is something to behold, too – thanks for four HDMI port supporting 4K/120Hz. Just be aware its Zero Gap design does mean it’s meant to be wall mounted – and that’s what comes in the box. If you want to stand it up you’ll have to buy the pedestal separately.
Samsung S95C
2. Best 4K TV for gaming
$2800 $3300 Save $500
The sequel to Samsung’s debut QD-OLED TV is all we could have hoped for and more. Anyone who thought QD-OLED was a flash in the TV tech pan needs to think again, and fast.
- Spectacularly bright OLED pictures
- Stunningly pure primary colours
- Beautiful local contrast
- Lacks Dolby Vision
- Messy out-of-the-box motion processing
The Samsung QE65S95C is another incredible 2023 TV, and pushes QD-OLED tech on further than we might have expected possible in just a year.
In many ways, Samsung’s approach to OLED keeps pace with its MLA-powered LG G3 rival almost every step of the way – even, arguably, stealing LG’s crown as the most exciting gaming display in town. There’s a little more punch here that makes games look glorious, but movies fare well too.
In a perfect world Samsung would finally have moved past its Dolby Vision blind spot and would provide a better out of the box motion experience – but when that’s all we have to grumble about from a technology only entering its second year – we’d say that’s a very accomplished TV indeed.
LG C2 OLED
3. Best 4K TV for OLED value
$1197 $1500 Save $303
Our favourite TV of last year, the LG C2 OLED offers an outstanding picture alongisde the latest technologies, like Dolby Vision IQ, and 4K/120Hz support for gamers.
- Gorgeous picture quality
- Good range of size options
- Robust smart platform
The LG C2 was our favourite TV in 2022 and it remains a top TV pick in 2023. That’s because the newer LG C3 – while fantastic in its own right – actually doesn’t move its performance on much from what we loved so much here. Considering the discounts the LG C2 is now on the receiving end of, it’s now a better buy than ever.
While it’s not as bright a panel as the LG G3, you do get a brighter panel than the LG C1, fantastic picture processing, outstanding gaming features and a wonderful smart TV system with all the apps you could need. The audio isn’t all that great though, so you’ll probably want to put aside some cash for a soundbar.
Considering the price difference the C2 and the C3, though, you’ll have money for to buy one. While the stocks of our favourite TV of 2022 last, your money is arguably better spent here if you’re considering a C Series purchase.
TCL/Pocket-lint
TCL C845K
4. Best 4K TV for smaller budgets
Marvellous Mini LED performance on a budget.
- Fantastically good value
- Uniquely bright pictures for its money
- Robust smart platformGood gaming support
- Care is needed with picture set up
- Some backlight clouding
- Default settings can come on too strong
The TCL 65C845K is easily the best value TV of 2023 to date – and it’s hard to imagine any other TV coming along in the coming six months that might knock it off that perch.
While its pictures might lack some of the naturalism, balance and refinement of the TV world’s most premium models, it delivers levels of brightness and colour we’ve simply never seen before at its price point – and thanks to its Mini LED and local dimming technologies, it’s able to combine those brightness and colour strengths with startlingly convincing contrast.
It seals its fantastic deal with a built-in sound system good enough to make adding an external sound system for movie nights a luxury rather than a necessity.
There are clearly some compromises to make here – and you should be aware of them if you choose to buy this set – but the fact is, this TV feels like it’s pushing new boundaries for affordable TVs. In the US? Take a look at the TCL QM8 for a similarly specced set.
Source: Sony
Sony A95K
5. Best 4K TV for movies
$2298 $3500 Save $1202
If you can afford it, TVs don’t come much better than the Sony A95K. You can read our in-depth review on why this made our best 4K TVs list and made our top picks for an OLED TV.
- Outstanding picture quality
- Strong motion handling
- Superb audio
- Connectivity could be better
- Stand design takes up a lot of space
- No HDR10+
If you’re looking for the finest picture quality that money can buy, you’ll definitely want to take a look at Sony’s A95K. Even a year on, it still produces some of the best pictures we’ve seen.
It uses QD-OLED panel technology to combine the inky blacks of OLED with the bright highlights of an LCD. The panel might not be quite as bright as the 2023 Samsung S95C manages to be, but best-in-class image processing still makes this one of the most cinematic TVs we’ve ever seen.
Motion handling is another strength here, plus it packs an impressive sound system too. It’s not cheap – even a year on – but the picture performance is incredible. Those that value a subtle and natural picture will be very impressed indeed.
Philips OLED807
6. Best 4K TV with Ambilight
Ambilight makes the difference, with Philips offering something unique, while also pushing superb picture quality from its OLED TV.
- Excellent picture quality
- 4-sided Ambilight
- Impressive sound
- Wide-ranging HDR support
- Complicated menu structure
- Manual tweaking required for best results
Philips has impressed with its OLED televisions, boosted by its unique feature – in this case offering four-sided Ambilight, for illumination that extends beyond the screen.
This is the successor to our Pocket-lint Awards 2021 winner and it supports all the latest standards – Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos for sound. It even offers a 120Hz display with support for gamers too with VRR, ALLM and FreeSync/G-Sync.
That results in excellent picture quality, bolstered by pretty good sound quality too, with a 70W output that surprised us with how detailed and weighty it is. It offers a good chunk of everything we loved in the OLED907 but at a cheaper price.
The only real downside is that it’s a little challenging to get around the menus and the interface, so it takes some patience to get used to.
Panasonic LZ2000
7. Best 4K TV for sound
Panasonic’s flagship 2022 OLED offers a high-brightness panel, novel beam-steering audio technology and an advanced gaming feature set.
- Superior 4K picture quality
- 360° Soundscape Pro Dolby Atmos audio
- Universal HDR support
- Only two 4K/120fps HDMI inputs
Panasonic’s flagship LZ2000 OLED panel from 2022 offers up truly wonderful picture quality. We’ve always appreciated the accuracy and cinematic presentation of Panasonic’s HCX processing, and here we see it at its zenith, coupled with a startling dynamic OLED panel.
There are also some impressive speakers onboard, with full Dolby Atmos support, so it works very well as an all-in-one solution. Our only real gripe is the lack of HDMI ports that support high frame rates, and it’s hard to find if you live in the States.
How did I choose the best 4K TVs?
All of the TVs above have been seen and tested by the knowledgeable Pocket-lint team of reviewers. As reviews editor and home cinema expert, I have seen the majority of these sets myself, but where I haven’t, I have spoken at length with our reviewers to understand how each of these sets sit in their market. We don’t disregard 2022 TVs just because 2023 TVs are now on the shelves – if you can still buy them and we think they are the best buy when it comes to performance per pound (or dollar), they will feature here.
Should I buy OLED, LED or QD-OLED?
This is the biggest battle in televisions right now and it’s here that you’ll have to make the biggest decision. What display technology are you after? Here’s the current state of play.
OLED produces the light from each pixel rather than having illumination from the sides or rear like LED. This means that OLED can achieve better absolute blacks, because the TV can just turn off that pixel’s illumination. Having greater contrast and better viewing angles often leads to richer colours and greater accuracy, but the brightness levels traditionally haven’t been as high.
That’s beginning to change with new technology from LG, and in the LG C2 Evo OLED recommended above, we’re seeing brighter panels that can compete with the likes of LED for the first time. This is in some part down to the use of heat sinks, which allows the panels to be run harder than before – without an impact on the panel’s lifespan.
OLED’s evolution is bolstered further by the development of QD-OLED panels by Samsung, which are also used in Sony’s flagship OLED sets. This hybrid technology combines the best bits of OLED and QLED displays, and uses a layer of quantum dots on top of the OLED material to boost brightness and improve colour saturation.
Traditional LED is still generally brighter, and often used at lower price points, with some TVs capable of outputting well o
|ver 2000 nits. QLED from Samsung is a form of LED, and while once their premium technology, is now the tech behind some of their more affordable panels now.
In its place is Samsung’s premium Neo QLED brand, which uses Mini LED technology. This rivals OLED levels of light control and accuracy, alongside incredible LED brightness, and that’s all because the LEDs in the backlight not only stretch across the whole of the screen but are also much smaller. This means there is much more control over the brightness levels in the different areas of the television, and reduces the blooming some standard LED TVs can experience.
Ultimately, if you’re buying a premium LED TV in 2023, you’re probably looking at choosing between OLED (or QD-OLED) or Mini LED. With both technologies pulling out the stops to fill in the gaps that they were lacking, it’s unlikely you’ll find much issue with picture quality in either. Instead, you may want to look deeper – to consider smart systems and included apps, HDR compatibility and gaming functionality, depending on your priorities.
What should you consider when buying a new TV?
When it comes to buying a new television there’s a lot to consider. The most important thing is size – you need to make sure that it’s going to fit into the room that you put it in. Despite changes in technology, it needs to be comfortable to watch, so so you can’t watch it without moving your head, then you might want to go smaller.
One of the big considerations at the moment is around resolution. With 4K now being fairly common and affordable, we have 8K waiting in the wings. But 8K is only really for larger TV sizes, those over 70 inches, where you’ll need that resolution to keep the picture sharp. There’s currently no real 8K source of content with everything based around upscaling instead, so for many, 8K isn’t really part of the equation right now.
The other biggest change is HDR. Every TV you buy from the premium manufacturers covers a number of HDR standards, which we’ve detailed below. The only real consideration is that if you’re buying a Samsung TV, you won’t get Dolby Vision support – and if you’ve got access to a lot of Dolby Vision content, you might want to look elsewhere. If you’re a keen gamer with the Xbox Series X or S or a PS5 – or you want to connect a PC – you’ll want that 120Hz support and technologies like VRR, ALLM and FreeSync/G-Sync.
We’ve discussed the panel type above and the battle between OLED and LED continues, with Mini LED putting up a valiant fight against OLED too. OLED is getting more affordable and is now available in a much wider range of sizes and is the choice for many – but top LED televisions can still offer a better HDR effect because of that higher peak brightness.
Ultimately, much might come down to what sort of deal you can get. TVs can drop in price fairly rapidly with a yearly refresh cycle, so checking out a slightly older TV, as long as it does what you want, might save you a lot of cash.
TV jargon buster
One of the confusing things about televisions is the jargon that goes along with them. Here’s a very brief run-down of the important things to look out for:
- HDR – high dynamic range, to bring the latest colour and contrast, also called HDR10, uses static metadata.
- Dolby Vision – an alternative form of HDR, promising a more enhanced HDR experience, uses dynamic metadata.
- HDR10+ – an evolution of HDR10, a competitor to Dolby Vision, uses dynamic metadata.
- Dolby Vision IQ – a version of Dolby Vision that allows for ambient light levels.
- Filmmaker Mode – a mode to show the content as the creator intended, overriding user settings.
- 120Hz – the refresh rate for the display, only really applicable if connecting an Xbox Series X/S or PS5.
- VRR/ALLM/Nvidia G-Sync/FreeSync – technologies to deliver superior experiences in gaming.
- HDMI 2.1 – the latest HMDI standard supporting 120Hz and 8K content.
- 1080p – also called Full HD, or 1920 x 1080 pixels.
- Ultra HD/UHD/4K – 3840 x 2160 pixels.
- 8K – the step up resolution, 7680 x 4320 pixels.
- OLED – Organic LED, where the light is emitted from each pixel, meaning deep blacks, vibrant colours and amazingly thin designs.
- QLED – Samsung’s quantum dot display, LED based and not to be confused with OLED.
- QD-OLED: Quantum Dot OLED, Samsung’s new hybrid OLED technology
- Direct LED – where the illumination source is directly behind the display, meaning deep blacks, but thicker designs, also called full array.
- Edge LED – where the illumination source is at the edges and channeled across the rear of the display, resulting in thin designs, but without the illumination control of direct LED or OLED panels.
- Mini LED – a form of direct LED, Mini LED features thousands of tiny bulbs that can be locally dimmed, offering superb brightness but without impacting on black levels.
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