My current tv is a ten year old 55" 1080p Sony Bravia. It’s works fine but between retirement and the pandemic, I am watching much more tv than normal and I am considering getting a new one. I stream content from Amazon Prime, Netflix and probably will get Hulu. I very rarely watch sports and I never play video games. I mostly watch dramas and not action adventure block busters.
Here are some assumptions that may be wrong:
I have a Firestick so I don’t need a smart tv.
I sit 12 to 13 feet from the screen so at least 65".
4K is sufficient. I don’t need 8k.
Curved tvs are ridiculous.
I can use my regular, fairly nice stereo system for sound (this is what I do now) and don’t have to buy a soundbar. This uses RCA jacks to go out though. Do newer tvs have those?
I just got a new TV delivered this morning. It is a TCL 635 which two review sites I trust said was the best picture under $1,000. I’m not opening it until my new stand comes. It is 65", 4K, and Roku enabled. I have a Roku stick but this should eliminate a remote.
I don’t think you can avoid a smart TV at 65 inches. I don’t know about the RCA jacks.
I got it because Jake Tapper started to look like the Incredible Hulk in skin tone on my old TV. Only 12 years old, tsk, tsk. Hope this helps. I’ll know more Thursday when the stand arrives.
I upgraded a couple of weeks ago to an LG 65" 4K OLED set, from a 2008 Sony 46" 1080p set (which is still sitting in the corner until I decide what to do with it). It’s much larger, which is nicer, although mostly I’m not watching 4K content. The theory (as presented by the Best Buy salesperson) is that since LG apparently makes the OLED panels for everyone, including Samsung and Sony, you may be better off getting an LG set. It is amazingly thin, but really that doesn’t matter, since I’m mostly sitting in front of it.
This particular set is $2300 at Best Buy; I don’t know if that’s within your expected price range.
Do you watch any traditional TV from antenna or cable?
I’m not sure you can avoid getting a smart TV anymore as most of them have that built in. Many smart TVs now have a standard platform from Google, Roku, or FireTV built in. I’m not sure of all the combinations, but I think Insignia TVs have FireTV built in, TCL has Roku, and Sony has Google. If you go with a TV that has FireTV built in, it would be easy to just use the native apps instead of your external FireTV device. And that would mean you could keep your old TV in a different room and still have access to all the same content.
First, all the viewing guides say that at 12-13 feet you’ll see no difference between HD and 4K unless your screen is 100 inches diagonal, which is projector size. You’d have to get an 85-inch set and move your seats to within 10 feet to see the enhanced resolution of 4k.
So unless you want to move your seats and get a much bigger set, you can save money by going for standard HD instead of 4K.
My seats are at about 10 feet, and I’ve been waiting for a few years now for decent 4K 85-inch sets to drop below $1,000. Still waiting.
It seems almost impossible to avoid buying smart TVs these says. You can get an industrial-quality monitor only, but it will be at least 2-3 times as much as a consumer smart-TV of the same size.
I’d stick with the top brands: Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, LG, maybe TCL.
And when you’re reading user reviews at Amazon, use Fakespot to make sure they’re reliable.
Check out the forums at AVSforums for more information (and opinions, good and bad) about TVs than you’ll ever need.
I just checked the Best Buy website, and except for a couple of sets for under $150 and no larger than 32", they were all 4K sets. So pretty much whatever you get is going to be a 4K smart TV. (Not curved, though. I think without researching that fad seems to have passed. Sort of how the 3D TVs came and went.)
I would say the LG WebOS models with a smart remote are the easiest to use by far, compared to Android TV, Roku, Fire Stick, etc. It’s the only smart TV I’ve ever used that I actively loved, just because I can turn it on and get right to the app I want without having to jump through so many freaking menus and hoops. The magic remote is really special too because you can wave it around like a laser pointer and just point directly at what you want (like in a Netflix grid) instead having to push arrow buttons over and over. Works really well when you’re lazy on the couch or bed. Roku has really gone downhill in recent years in their usability…
The LG picture quality was great too, and cost like $400 for a 55" model. Not OLED but didn’t need it. Never been happier with a purchase, especially at that price point. I was so wowed by it, especially having tried 3-4 other contemporary smart TVs and being annoyed by various issues and crashes (especially the Hisense/Android TV model… what a piece of crap… avoid at all costs).
Note that as a new LG owner, their “magic remote” works like a mouse on the screen. You have to move the icon around the screen and click on the item you want to choose. Reading some reviews, some people hated that.
It’s entirely optional. The mouse-like functionality only comes on when you shake the remote, otherwise you can use the direction buttons around the scroll wheel as normal.
A piece of advice I got when TV shopping, go big over going for features. Yes you want a decent picture, but you really want to spend on the largest size that fits. In my case I went for a 50 in, though I needed to bring it back due to a defect, but in mounting the 50 in I saw I could up size it another 5, WOW did that extra really make a big difference.
The other thing to make sure is it has those RCA out (or headphone out), I have one set that only has digital optical sound out which I got a adapter for, but then there is a adjustment for lag, analog connections just work.
Also, I second @kanicbird’s suggestion of getting the biggest screen you can afford that will fit your space. Maybe even a little more than you can afford. Even if it seems really big, no one ever bought a TV and said later, “I wish I’d gotten a smaller one.”
And mine is almost certainly smaller than yours, and I eventually got used to it. I’m probably an outlier, though.
I thought the point of the curved screen was to avoid glare?
Anyway, I’m mostly following this thread because years ago I had a WebOS palm phone, and it was the best phone interface I’ve ever had, except that the hardware wasn’t powerful enough to actually run it smoothly. So I’m really interested to read reactions to how it’s being used today. And… I guess if I decide to get a new TV I ought to get an LG.
I also just got a TCL 65" (6 series) a few weeks ago and I think it’s great. I probably checked the same review sites. We have had a 49" TCL (4 series) for a few years and the built-in Roku stuff is a nice interface. You pretty much have to pay extra to not get a smart TV these days, so might as well get one that has a good UI.
TV’s are one of the typical items with deep discounts during the Black Friday sales. I’m not sure if that’s going to be the same in years past, but traditionally it was a time to get a big TV at a pretty good price. Just keep in mind that manufacturers sometimes make special BF versions with limited features in order to have a lower price.
I will just recommend that you not go cheap. I got a great deal on a Vizio M557-G0 smart TV (55") UHD (3840 x 2160) at Costco. It was under $500. It really is a great deal and the TV is feature-rich but the picture quality is just not there. (It renders very dark colors and blacks poorly and visibility isn’t good if you are much more than 45° off the perpendicular). It also seems to have a flimsy build quality (the first one was DOA and I had to argue with the Costco manager about it to exchange it). I have a Sony that I bought several years ago (maybe more than 10) and the thing has great build quality and beats the new one on picture quality even though the technology is much older.
It’s good enough for me but if I had it to do over I would probably have spent 2-3 times as much to get a better TV.
I think size is overrated and costs a lot more for a little extra, but everybody wants what they want.
Yes, this is why I only recommend the top name brands. There are lots of “deals” with crappy picture quality, and apparently lots of people who don’t know or care that much about quality. Or, as in @CookingWithGas’s case, sadly learn too late.
As for size, when I started seeing my wife-to-be, about 11 years ago, she had a 32" set and I had a 55-incher that I moved into her bedroom to replace it. She “complained” about its size, saying it was “large enough for a Guatemalan family to live on,” but she got used to it pretty quickly. Just like @puzzlegal did with hers. We later upgraded to 65-inch, and my next one, as I suggested above, will be at least 82-85 inches.
My experience with smart TVs suggests that even if they come with built-in apps for Roku, Netflix, etc., using an external device (I have a Roku 3) may provide a better experience. For instance, I wanted to watch The Dick Van Dyke Show on Netflix but I couldn’t set my Panasonic TV’s app to “pillarbox” mode to display the original 4:3 image. It would only show it in widescreen mode, chopping off the top and bottom of the picture. The external Roku box did show the full image.
Also, external devices seem to get updates more regularly than smart TV apps, or if need be, can simply be replaced for under $100.