Tech

What Smart TV to buy? Everything you need to know to choose well

In general, you will have a very good experience above 43 inches. In that range there are already very good TVs with 4K resolution at quite affordable prices.

If you are looking for a small TV -because you have space problems, for example-, you should consider an extra factor. If you previously owned a 32-inch TV, don’t look directly for a replacement of the same dimensions. Measure the complete TV (length, width, height with foot and diagonal with the frames). Why? Because today’s televisions hardly have frames. This will allow you to buy a television of a few more inchesoptimizing the space you have.

What resolution is the right one?

Currently, all kinds of televisions with different resolutions coexist: from HD to 8K. If you are interested in a television to watch movies and series, such as a main television for the living room, It is recommended to look for a screen with 4K resolution (Ultra HD).

There are screens above this resolution, but you’ll be making good use of your money. There is hardly any content in this resolution, so we can use the budget to get a very good quality 4K television.

Regarding the resolutions that are below 4K, we can enter into debate. The resolution Full HD (1080p) still looks good, and screens with these panels will be with us for many years to come. If you are not very enthusiastic, you can still get a screen of this resolution. It’s not ideal, but you’ll save a lot of money.

Finally, what about televisions that have a resolution below 1080p? In general terms, you should only get a screen with these characteristics if you are going to do less active use, such as in a kitchen.

Don’t forget the refresh rate

The refresh rate is expressed in hertz (Hz), and it describes how many times an image is refreshed on the screen per second. The standard refresh rate is 60 times per second (60 Hz).

However, there are televisions with a refresh rate higher than 60 Hz. What is achieved by increasing this value is that the scenes of movement are seen more fluidly. In addition, a higher refresh rate helps reduce eye strain.

The refresh rate is very useful if you are going to use your television to play new generation consoles such as the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox Series X, which support up to 120 Hz.

Fine-tuning color with HDR and Dolby Vision

HDR stands for “high dynamic range” and refers to the panel’s ability to deliver more variety of colorsmore contrast levels and higher brightness.

The basic standard for high dynamic range content is called HDR10, as established by the UHD Alliance, an industry trade group. Dozens of companies support this basic minimum spec for HDR support, which is why you’ll see ‘HDR10’ or ‘Ultra HD Premium’ on supported TVs.

Dolby Vision is a more demanding version of HDR. It was created and licensed by the folks at Dolby, hitherto experts in surround sound and noise reduction.

This system includes dynamic metadata that adjusts the HDR effect frame by frame, so the results are much more precise and impressive. Until now, Dolby Vision has led the industry in proprietary HDR formats, and can be found in premium models from most brands.

Let’s talk panel technology

Once we have more or less in mind the size of the panel and the resolution, we may be faced with the question of which panel technology to buy.

OLED

Currently, OLED technology is one of the more advanced for televisions. It is available only for high-end televisions, and is carried by brands such as LG, Philips and Vizio.

OLED screens offer levels of contrast very high, with totally dark and deep blacks. They also guarantee brilliant color levels, with outstanding image quality and very good viewing angles. As a negative point, they do not usually have a very high brightness, they are sold at quite high prices and they can burn if we keep static images for a long time.

QLED

Samsung TV 2020

QLED technology is the alternative with which Samsung faces LG. Its main characteristic is that it offers higher brightness levels than OLED technology. Also, they are cheaper to manufacture and have higher durability. However, they are unable to achieve pure black, they do not have such good viewing angles or the response times of OLED technology.

leds

Xiaomi Smart TV p1

LED screens have been with us for many years. They do not have the best contrast in the world, because it is impossible for them to represent the color black. Most of these screens usually work at 60 Hz. There are many specifications of LED technology, but the most interesting is LED IPS.

IPS-LEDs

Televisions with IPS LED screens have accurate colors, the brightness is usually high and the viewing angles are usually quite good and they are not usually very expensive devices. Of course, they have their limitations in terms of contrast and also regarding the refresh rate.

Other LED screens

However, there are other LED screens that have much inferior features. The cheapest ones do not have good color accuracy and their viewing angles are not great either.

How important is the Operating System?

There are several operating systems for Smart TV. Samsung TVs come with Tizen OS. The ones from LG work with web OS and many others do AndroidTV.

Android TV is the system that will give you the most freedom, but it is also the most chaotic and messy. On the other hand, Tizen and webOS have greater limitations when it comes to installing apps.

Our recommendation at this point is that you do not choose between one television or another solely because of the operating system. Manufacturers support these systems for a limited time, so sooner or later you’ll have to connect a dongle or a tv-box to your television to be up to date.

Connectivity and number of ports

If you don’t want to spend all day plugging and unplugging cables, make sure the TV you want to buy has enough HDMI ports on the back or sides. Four is recommended.since if you connect a console, a sound bar and a Chromecast, you will still have an extra connector for some device that you use from time to time.

If you are going to get a television with an Ultra HD screen, the HDMI should be of the specification 2.0 or higher. However, the ideal would be to get a model that has HDMI 2.1.

And the audio?

LG SN4

We do not forget the sound. If we get exquisite, even the best televisions on the market have a pending issue with sound. For this reason, the most correct thing is to get a standalone sound bar.

Soundbars take just a few minutes to install, are quite thin, so they don’t usually cause a nuisance — or interfere with the picture — and are a huge difference from stock TV speakers.

Almost all televisions today have at least one HDMI port with Audio Return Channel (ARC) capability. This function of HDMI allows you to use it as entrance and What audio outputalso very useful to send sound from external multimedia devices to the sound bar without the need to use a special receiver.

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