TV Reviews PCMag. The Best TVs of 2. Nows the Time to Buy a New TVThe TV market has been changing a lot recently, both in terms of technology and price. New types of screens with organic light emitting diode OLED panels and ultra high definition UHD, or 4. K is replacing the 1. If you want a new television, you now have more options now than ever. But which one should you buyHere are the main points to consider when shopping for a new set, as well as the best TVs weve tested. The Best 4. K TVs. The TV resolution question used to be between the options of 7. Then it moved on to 1. Ultra HD, or 4. K 3,8. Now its no longer a question 4. K has become the standard for medium sized and larger televisions from every major manufacturer. The higher resolution no longer commands a huge premium, and you can now find a 6. K TV for under 1,0. Realistically, youd be hard pressed to find a TV from a major brand larger than 4. K. In fact, every TV on this list is 4. K. Most 4. K TVs have connected features that let you stream 4. K content, but if they dont you can add any 4. Samsung-Smart-TV-Apps.jpg?resize=640%2C433' alt='Vizio Smart Tv Web Browser Hack' title='Vizio Smart Tv Web Browser Hack' />K media streamer like the new Apple TV 4. K using an HDMI 2. K content is now freely available on many streaming services and on Ultra HD Blu ray discs, even if it hasnt been adopted by broadcast or cable TV services yet. If you have a very fast internet connection, you can watch some excellent shows on Amazon and Netflix in 4. K and most new original programming on the services is being produced at that resolution. New films are also coming out digitally in 4. K through various on demand streaming services like Vudu. Ultra HD Blu ray discs are a relatively new physical media format similar to Blu ray discs. Dont expect to play them on your current Blu ray player, though you need a dedicated Ultra HD Blu ray player or a Microsoft Xbox One S to handle the format. The good news is that it stores 4. K video with HDR explained below, and even can handle advanced surround sound audio if your speaker system supports it. Since its a physical media format, you dont need to worry about your internet connection to be sure youre getting 4. PCMag provides uptodate coverage and product reviews of TVs. A Guide on how to install Kodi smart tv. If you want to install kodi on Samsung smart TV then also you can read this. Samsung, LG, XBMC, Amazon. K, either. High Dynamic Range HDRWhile 4. K is now established as a no brainer, theres a new next step video technology to consider when shopping for a TV. High dynamic range HDR content gives much more information to the display than a standard video signal. The resolution remains the same as UHD, but the range of color and amount of light each pixel can produce is significantly broader. Thanks to new LCD and OLED panel technology, high end televisions can display wider color gamuts and finer gradients of light and dark than before. Standard video was built around the limitations of older televisions, intentionally using a set range of color and light information in the signal. HDR breaks those limitations and uses expanded ranges with finer values between them. Basically, this means HDR displays can produce more colors and more shades of gray or, rather, luminance values than standard dynamic range displays. HDR is still a developing technology, and its easy to be confused by it. There are two major HDR standards out there with commercially available content HDR 1. Dolby Vision. HDR 1. The UHD Alliance certifies televisions that meet the HDR 1. Ultra. HD Premium. Acrobat Distiller 5. Dolby Vision is a closed standard used by Dolby, which supports 1. Televisions that support Dolby Vision will note so on their packaging. Some newer HDR standards and variants are starting to pop up, but theyve yet to see the acceptance in TVs that HDR1. Dolby Vision have. Hybrid Log Gamma HLG is a standard developed by the BBC and Japanese broadcaster NHK, which is backward compatible with standard dynamic range TVs. Meanwhile, Samsung and Amazon Video are working on HDR1. Well see how they are adopted in the future. HDR content is generally more rare than UHD content, but its becoming increasingly available. Ultra HD Blu ray uses HDR 1. HDR standards, and Netflix and Vudu offer Dolby Vision films and shows digitally. Whether one standard is better than the other is difficult to determine at this point HDR 1. Dolby Vision is designed to specifically fit the needs and limits of whatever television you use. No matter which you use, HDR capable televisions can produce a better picture than TVs that dont support the wider color gamuts or increased range of luminance information. LED or OLED Plasma TVs were the only flat panel models available when they were first introduced more than a decade ago. Theyre now a dead category, and you wont see a major television manufacturer offering a new plasma television any time soon. That means your choices will mostly consist of LED backlit LCD TVs also simply called LED TVs, as well as much less common, much more expensive OLED displays. First, a note LCD and LED TVs have been generally considered separate, despite both using LCD panels. LCD panels themselves arent lit, so they need to be illuminated. LED TVs simply backlight the LCDs with LEDs, while LCD TVs use CCFL cold cathode fluorescent lamps for backlighting. CCFL backlit designs have fallen by the wayside, and nearly every LCD television out there right now is lit by LEDs. Heat Load Calculation Software Australia Post. There are further differences in the various designs. LED TVs can be either edge lit or backlit. Edge lit TVs light up their screens with arrays of LEDs along the edges of the panels, allowing the set to be thin and light. Backlit TVs use a large array of LEDs directly behind the panel, making the screen a little thicker, but allowing it to more evenly illuminate the panel and, for high end screens, adjust individual LEDs to enhance black levels in scenes. Very good edge lighting systems can produce excellent pictures, though, and TV manufacturers are making backlit LED arrays smaller and thinner, so the distinction means less than it used to. No matter the technology, an LED TVs thinness and brightness will be roughly proportional to its price range. OLED organic light emitting diode displays are a relatively new and very rare technology for TVs, and despite their name are drastically different from LED backlit televisions. In fact, theyre closer to plasma screens in how they work. Each diode generates both color and light, like in plasma screens, but they can be much smaller and thinner than even LED lit panels, and can produce some of the best black levels possible. Currently, LG and Sony are the only television manufacturers that offer OLED models, and they remain extremely expensive, with 5. TVs starting at 2,0. What Screen Size Should I Get A big TV thats too close can be just as uncomfortable to watch as a small one thats too far away, so dont assume that the biggest screen available is the best choice. There are a few different rules of thumb regarding TV screen size based on your distance from it. Generally, the distance of your couch to your TV should be between 1. So if your couch is six feet away from your screen, you can comfortably watch an TV between 4. If your couch is five feet away, a 3. Refresh Rate and Contrast Ratio. One of the biggest problems with narrowing your choices to a single TV is the sheer number of specs. To make your job a little easier, two of the biggies, refresh rate and contrast ratio, are safe to ignore. Refresh or response rate, the speed at which your TVs panel refreshes its image, is expressed in hertz 6. Hz, 1. 20. Hz, 2. Hz, 4. 80. Hz, or 6. Hz. The theory is that a faster refresh rate results in a smoother image.