What’s the Best TV? 6 Options Ranked

In well-lit rooms, the brightness level of your TV, quantified in nits, is key to a great viewing experience. A TV that doesn’t meet the brightness requirement will struggle against natural and artificial light, resulting in a dim, lackluster image. Essentially, nits measure how well your TV can stand up to light interference, with higher values ensuring a sharper, more vivid display.

For standard viewing on the best TV, you should look for at least 300 nits to strike the right balance between clarity and color quality in standard dynamic range (SDR) content. For high dynamic range (HDR) content, which offers richer colors and greater contrast, a minimum of 1000 nits is ideal to truly appreciate the enhanced visuals. These brightness levels are recommended to ensure your TV performs well in bright settings, allowing you to enjoy your shows and movies without any loss in detail or quality. Aim for these minimums: SDR Brightness >= 300 nits; HDR Brightness >= 1000 nits for the optimal experience.

Discover the top TVs, ranked from brightest to least, all exceeding our brightness criteria.

Color gamut defines the range of colors a TV can reproduce, directly affecting how vibrant and true-to-life the images look. A wide color gamut in a TV brings out richer, more vivid colors – from the lush greens of a garden to the bright colors of animated characters, enhancing your viewing experience to closely mimic real life.

This concept is technically measured against standards like the DCI P3 xy, a benchmark for high-quality visuals. A TV covering a higher percentage of this color space can display colors more accurately and vividly.

For those who prioritize vibrant and immersive visuals in a smaller package, aiming for a TV with a color gamut of 90% or higher on the DCI P3 xy scale is ideal. This ensures that the content you watch is as vibrant and lifelike as possible, bringing a big viewing experience to a smaller screen.

Below are the top TVs, ordered by color gamut, all exceeding our testing criteria.

The Electro-Optical Transfer Function (EOTF) plays a critical role in ensuring the content on your TV looks exactly as the creator intended. This technical feature adjusts your screen’s brightness levels, ensuring every scene, from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights, is displayed with true-to-life accuracy.

In rooms flooded with light, a TV that nails EOTF calibration shines by preserving the intended contrast and detail in the picture despite the challenging conditions. It balances the brightness so that images remain vibrant and full of detail, unaffected by the glare of ambient light.

A TV that excels in managing EOTF offers an immersive and authentic viewing experience. It brings creators’ visions to life, accurately rendering every scene with the proper light and dark levels, no matter the lighting in your room. This means you get a consistent, realistic picture that captures the full spectrum of colors and contrasts, from the subtlest hues to the most intense explosions.

Below are all the TVs on our list, ordered by EOTF, all exceeding our minimum requirement.

For TV enthusiasts, a solid contrast ratio is crucial for enjoying your favorite TV shows or movies, especially in darker settings. This feature directly impacts how lifelike and dynamic the picture appears on your screen, ensuring that dark scenes are displayed with clear, crisp blacks instead of murky grays and bright scenes retain their detail without appearing washed out.

Put simply, the contrast ratio is all about the range of luminance a TV can produce, from the deepest blacks to the brightest whites. It’s what brings depth to the image, enhancing the realism of every scene. Watching a movie in the dark, for example, the difference between a TV with a poor contrast ratio and one with a high ratio is stark: the former struggles, blending shadows into a flat gray, while the latter delivers true black, making night scenes more immersive and detailed.

Ideally, a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 is what you should aim for in a TV. This level of luminance variance ensures that you’re getting a picture quality that can handle the nuances of lighting in any scene, providing a viewing experience that’s both rich and engaging. Note: OLED TVs have an infinite contrast ratio, indicated by “0.”

Below are the top TVs, ordered by contrast ratio, all exceeding our testing criteria.

Just as a slow response time binds you with invisible shackles, high input lag is like wading through quicksand, pulling you down when speed is of the essence. Imagine you’re facing an enemy in a duel; you press the button to leap or strike, but there’s a delay. Your character stumbles a moment too late, and the opportunity slips through your fingers. It’s not just about delayed reactions; it’s about being desynchronized from the game’s rhythm, turning your split-second decisions into missed chances.

What exactly is input lag? It’s the time it takes for your game console’s signal to translate into action on your screen. Ideally, for gaming, you’d want an input lag of 20ms or less to stay in perfect sync with the game. At these low latencies, your actions are immediate, your commands precise, and your timing impeccable. With minimal input lag, when you command it, it happens – instantly.

TVs designed with good reflection handling feature anti-reflective coatings or panel technologies that minimize the impact of ambient light. This ensures that the image remains clear and vibrant, preserving detail and color accuracy even when faced with direct light sources. It’s a key consideration for anyone looking to place their TV in a sunlit living room or a well-lit space where control over lighting conditions might be limited.

Choosing a TV with superior reflection handling translates to a more versatile viewing experience, allowing you to enjoy sports, movies, and other content without having to draw the curtains or adjust room lighting. It’s an essential feature for ensuring that your TV can deliver optimal performance across a wide range of lighting environments, enhancing overall viewing pleasure.

Viewing angles on TVs are crucial because they determine the quality of the image from different positions in a room. This is particularly important in living rooms or spaces where people are spread out across different parts of the room, ensuring everyone has a good viewing experience. TVs with poor viewing angles can exhibit color shifts, reduced brightness, and loss of detail when viewed off-axis, which can significantly diminish the viewing pleasure for those not seated directly in front of the screen.

Choosing a good viewing angle for a TV means selecting a TV that maintains image quality across a broad range of viewing positions, enhancing the flexibility of room layouts and seating arrangements. Typically, TVs with IPS (In-Plane Switching) panels are known for their wide viewing angles, making them ideal for environments where viewers are spread out or for those who frequently watch TV in groups.