TV Buying Guide

With older sets, if you sat too close, you might see individual pixels on the screen, which was very distracting. That's not a factor now because almost all larger TVs are 4K sets with more densely packed pixels. (HD sets have about 2 million pixels; 4K sets have more than 8 million.) You can go larger and sit closer for a more immersive viewing experience.

You don't want to sit so close to the TV that you can’t see the whole picture or so far back that you miss out on the high-definition detail you’re paying for. One general guideline is a foot of viewing distance away from the TV for every 10 inches of screen size. For instance, you'd sit 5.5 feet away for a 55-inch screen. (See the illustration above.)

Some sets retain picture quality better than others when you're viewing the screen at an angle. (That can be particularly important on family movie night or when watching sports with a crowd.) OLED TVs have nearly unlimited viewing angles, while many LCDs have narrower ones. Recently, though, we've seen some LCD sets with wide viewing angles, without losing much contrast, a typical trade-off. We include viewing angle scores in our TV ratings.

Wall-mounting a TV can make a big-screen TV a less obtrusive presence in a room. You can wall-mount a TV yourself or pay to get help. On the other hand, using a TV stand can usually make it easier to connect a cable box, streaming player, or game console. If you use a stand, secure the set to prevent TV tip-overs.

You'll find TVs with 720p resolution only in the lowest-priced entry-level models, with screens 32 inches and smaller. These sets are technically high-definition (HD), but they have the lowest screen resolutions: 1280x720, or less than 1 million total pixels. One of these sets might be an option if you need a smaller TV for a secondary room of your house.

TVs with 1080p (1920x1080) resolution are sometimes called Full HD sets because they have more than 2 million pixels, double that of a 720p set. But 1080p sets have all but disappeared in TVs with screen sizes of 50 inches or larger. We recommend a 1080p TV over a 720p set if you intend to also use the display as a computer monitor.

Ultra-high definition (UHD) TVs, also called 4K TVs, have screen resolutions of 3840x2160. They have more than 8 million pixels, four times that of a 1080p set, making them capable of even greater picture detail. The benefits of a 4K TV are most apparent in larger screen sizes, say 65 inches or bigger. Most 4K sets support high dynamic range (HDR), a feature explained in more detail below.

You can also buy 8K TVs, which have screen resolutions of 7680x4320 and more than 33 million pixels. However, there aren’t many of these TVs available yet, and they typically cost much more than comparably sized 4K sets. We don’t recommend purchasing an 8K set right now because you’ll pay a premium for it, and there’s very little native 8K content available.

When HDR is at work, you’ll see more detail, from the texture of the brick in a shady walkway to nuances in the white clouds in a daytime sky. You’ll also see brighter, more realistic “specular highlights,” which are glints of light, such as the sun’s reflection off a car’s chrome bumper or an airplane wing. With HDR, those highlights pop; without it, they wouldn’t stand out against other bright objects.

Typically, HDR TVs can produce more vibrant, varied colors than other sets. That’s because HDR is often paired with “wide color gamut,” or WCG, capability. Standard HDTVs can display about 17 million colors, but those with WCG can display up to a billion. That’s like giving your TV a larger box of crayons to play with.

There a several formats. All HDR TVs currently support HDR10. Two other types, Dolby Vision and HDR10+, support “dynamic” metadata, where the brightness levels for a movie or show can be tweaked scene by scene, while HDR10 sets those levels for an entire video. Another format, HLG (hybrid log gamma), was developed mainly for broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, not streaming.

Both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ have offshoots of their respective technologies—called Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive—that can be found on some newer TVs. They use the built-in light sensors found in many TVs to dynamically adjust the brightness, contrast, and color of images based on the ambient brightness in your room.

Our tests show that not every TV with “HDR” written on the box produces equally rich, lifelike images. That’s one reason we provide a separate HDR score in our TV ratings. Many less expensive TVs just don't have sufficient peak brightness to do HDR justice. You can find the highest-performing HDR sets in our TV ratings.