I feel like it used to be size, color, and clarity meant more expensive. Now I look at a 500$ 4k TV and a 2000$ 4k TV and I don’t know what the difference is. They can both be smart TVs, be the same size, and have a lot of same advertised features, but what are the subtle unspoken mysteries that justify a huge price gap?
If you want the best bang for your buck, in my opinion, you have two options.
One is to go cheap. For personal use I buy Visio displays, and have had nothing but success. I never connect them to the internet, and use my PS4 as my media player.
The other is to buy a commercial grade display. This usually means no media apps at all, but they are designed for 24/7 operation. Look for something advertised as a digital signage display.
As the other poster mentioned, OLED is supposed to have better contrast and black, but I’ve never noticed much of a difference.
Have you seen them side by side? The difference between backlit LCD and OLED is massive. It’s a much greater jump in quality than going from 4k to 8k (which IMHO is barely noticable)
In a controlled environment, side by side, yes there is a noticable difference.
I work in AV, and have seen the top end stuff for sure. Maybe I’m old and my sight isn’t what it was, but for home use I just don’t care.
With HDR in a dark room w a “properly calibrated” LED I get as good an image as I could want.
This is actually pretty crazy to me, I watch <1hr of TV a week but can immediately tell OLED from LCD. It’s the perfect absence of light on black screens, though I’ll admit I don’t see a lot of LCD and may just be encountering only mid ones.
I’m ex-tech so I don’t use my devices, barring my phone, a lot these days but I can’t unsee the difference. I always get OLED when available; had a “next best thing” miniLED iPad that was unbearable in the dark. But I’d rather not care like you do: objectively speaking you miss out on nearly nothing and don’t have to frown at remaining non-OLED devices like car screens or laptops. Even going weeks without computer usage I’ll still notice, and honestly after typing all this I’m kind of jealous.
And y’know, perfect black aside, I don’t think I’d notice otherwise. Really unfortunate thing that my brain notices without thinking about and it’s cost me thousands + fear of static screens causing burn in
Aside from excellent color on OLED tvs, in a brightly light room (sunlit), you can’t really tell. However, in a dark room you’d have to be blind not to instantly notice how much better OLED looks due to the inky blacks which makes the colors pop. A properly calibrated LED tv is still going to look washed out in comparison. Even my neophyte wife thinks our theater OLED tv looks a lot better than our daily use LED tv and they’re in different areas of the house.
Saying that, I would never buy current OLED tvs for a brightly lit room as they aren’t bright enough to overcome the sun. That’s where LED tvs shine (pun intended).
One thing about 4K and 8K is there’s not a lot of media available for that format.
Most streaming media is going to come in at 720p or maybe 1080p unless you are comfortable with paying top dollar for your streaming.
My tv is just a 720p panel 😂
I have some smaller, older Vizio TV’s that were great, no issues. I recently bought 3 large, expensive Vizio TV’s and had problems with all 3. All issues dealing with updates. Had 70" get stuck in an update cycle, no fix, even customer service couldn’t help. Other 2 repeatedly will not turn on after an update. Problem persists occasionally, but usually resolves in 5-10 minutes.
Done with Vizio. Sony if I want to spend a lot, Samsung if I want to spend a little less.
That’s literally why they said they don’t connect them to the Internet. Just get a separate streaming service and forget about updates or internal software.
I wish that’s advice I had at the time. Live and learn.
If you’re out of options, it ain’t hard to hunt up a replacement motherboard for $100 or less. I got a 55" TV for $80 like that.
I just threw it away, I was done with it. I definitely should have tried to repair it, but my frustration with all things Vizio made that an unappealing option at the time. The others I just moved to less used areas.