TV Buying Guide: Sizes, Prices and When to Buy to Get a Good Deal
TVs
Speaker 1: Hey guys, if you're buying a new tv, you've come to the right place in this guide. I'll tell you everything you need to know about TV shopping today, including when's the best time to get a really good price, what size TV you want, and even what features and picture quality enhancements are worth the extra money. Now, I've been reviewing TVs for a long time, more than 20 years, and I use C Net's state-of-the-art TV lab to compare screens side by side to figure out the best TV for you. Over that time, I've learned a lot [00:00:30] about TV shopping in general, and I've gotten a lot of questions from readers about what they really should be looking for when they're out there. TV shopping, it's a lot of jargon, a lot of technology, a lot of terms you might not understand. We'll go through all of that and I'll tell you what terms to ignore.
Speaker 1: One of the first things people ask me is, when's the right time to buy a tv? Believe it or not, there is a specific TV buying cycle throughout the year. The beginning of the year is when new TVs are announced. Spring and summer is when prices are at their highest, and then in the fall [00:01:00] and winter prices start to drop as those models go on sale. For events like Black Friday, the holiday shopping season, and even the Super Bowl. Now, knowing that price cycle, yes, the best time to get the best price on a TV is later in the year, starting around September, but especially in November and throughout the holiday season Now with cheaper televisions that aren't maybe the top of the line, they're also going to be reduced in price, but there's a lot less price for them to fall, so you can actually be a little bit safer buying any of those cheaper TVs throughout the year. [00:01:30] Now of course, the caveat here is maybe you need a new TV right now you can take a bath and maybe a couple hundred dollars on a new television, but I would also encourage you to look at a TV that was on sale last year. If they're still on sale, that's going to be a lot less expensive as people try to liquidate those older TVs off the store shelves and vendors are looking to get those things out to make room for the new models.
Speaker 1: Now, once you've figured out that it's time to buy, the next step is how big of a TV you want. Spoiler, I think you should get the biggest TV you can. That's what I recommend. One of the things [00:02:00] that people tell me after they bought a TV is they regret going maybe a little bit too small. The bottom line is bigger TVs are even cheaper than they've been in the past. To give you a sense, TV sizes range for about 24 all the way up to 98 inches. Those huge TVs, especially 98, are really, really expensive, but 75, 65 and 55, those are the sweet spot for TV sizes. It also depends on your room in general. For a larger living room, I'd like to see at least a 65 inch TV for smaller ones, maybe a 55 inch in there, but the [00:02:30] larger screen is really good for a living room when you're sitting around the couch around nine to 10 feet from the screen in a bedroom.
Speaker 1: If you can get a 55 inch tv, that'd be great as well. Again, going smaller than that, especially if you're looking down across the bed, that TV can feel a little cramped. I'd recommend trying to get a TV that might be one size up from the size that you're currently looking at, especially if you're replacing an older television and if you have a piece of furniture you want to fit that TV into, you might be restricted in terms of size, but hey, maybe you can kick that old piece of furniture to the curb and get a bigger screen.
Speaker 1: [00:03:00] Now, let's talk a little bit about features. One of the things that most TVs have today is a smart TV system. That means that it has the streaming features built right into the television itself, so you don't need to connect anything to stream. The most popular streaming TV platforms are Roku, Amazon Fire tv, and Google tv, as well as proprietary platforms from LG and Samsung. Now, you might not have a choice in what streaming platform you have on the television. Maybe you got a really good price in a particular smart TV you like. That's really [00:03:30] not the end of the world because you can always connect an external device and they're really inexpensive. These little streaming devices are 25 up to $50. Sometimes they're really nice ones, but long story short, you can always change the smart TV system by buying one of those extra devices and connecting it. Now, if you're buying a budget tv, I'd suggest getting the smart TV system you like. My favorite is Roku. It's really simple. It gives you all the streaming apps you need, but if you're spending more for a mid-range or higher end model, it's generally worth it to connect [00:04:00] another smart TV streaming stick or box to improve that smart TV experience and your streaming.
Speaker 1: Now, another thing to look for when you're shopping for TVs is the gaming capability. Now, let's just set the stage here. Every TV can be connected to any of the gaming consoles out there right now and get a really good experience, but there are some mid-range and higher-end TVs that can fully take advantage of the features available on current game consoles. I'm talking about PlayStation five or an Xbox Series X, so those [00:04:30] consoles can connect to these TVs and get improvements in image quality. In particular something called four K 120 hertz and variable refresh rate known as V R R. These two features will improve smoothness and eliminate tearing and artifacts respectively, so they're worth getting if you're looking at a high-end tv, especially if you have one of those consoles and you want to take full advantage. But I'll reiterate that games do look really good from those consoles, even on mid-range and budget TVs that don't support those features, so you don't actually need four K, one 20 or V R R to get a really good gaming [00:05:00] experience. It just helps. And of course, there's other modes that are available for gaming too. Some of the television manufacturers have implemented menus that are specifically developed just for gaming, which allow you to display whether you're actually getting those extra features, for example, shows up right on the screen. There's different picture modes just for gaming too, and there are specific game modes that reduce or eliminate input lag, which is the delay between your controller and the screen. So those are all features worth looking for gamers.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned jargon at the top, [00:05:30] all those other things that get thrown at people when they're shopping for a television. One thing you want to ignore is resolution. Pretty much every TV today is a four K tv, so you can throw that out the window. Four K is the standard. Now, there are some TVs at the cheap end that are smaller that aren't four K, like seven 20 P or 10 80 P televisions, and there's also eight K tds at the very high end of the price spectrum. You could probably ignore those because they're really not worth the extra money. Now, in terms of features to pay attention to, the main thing you're going to be looking for is a feature [00:06:00] called full array local dimming. It costs a little bit more money, but I found in my side-by-side comparisons that it really helps improve the image quality and improves contrast, which is the depth of blacks and the brightness of whites.
Speaker 1: That also makes the image pop a lot better. There's another feature called mini l e d available in some higher end TVs and even some mid-range models now, which makes it even brighter and gives you more precise local dimming. Finally, if you want one feature that's really going to set the TV apart, it's an OLED screen. Organic [00:06:30] light emitting diode technology really improves the image quality. The downside is it's only available in the most expensive televisions, but if you're shopping for a high-end TV anyway, I'd certainly steer you toward an OLED TV in my tests. They really look better than any TV that doesn't use O L E D technology.
Speaker 1: So you might be asking, what are the best TVs right now? There's a full list at CNET that goes through the available models now that I think are the best. I encourage you to go and check it out. In general, if you look for those features [00:07:00] that are recommended for picture quality and take into account when to buy the TV and what features to look for from a smart TV perspective, you'll have a really good idea of what to get when you go shopping and you won't be overwhelmed. All that extra jargon and technology that TV manufacturers and the salesman like to throw at you. So those are some quick tips on how, when and what size of TV to buy. I'm David Katz Meyer for cnet. Be sure to check out the site and if you like what you see here, like and subscribe.
