When's the best time to buy a new TV? We ask the expert (The Daily Charge, 7/23/2019)

Today, on the daily charge, in the market for a new television, you're in luck, TV guru, David [UNKNOWN] is here to rank 2019 top model. [MUSIC] Good morning, and welcome to CNET's Daily Charge. It's Tuesday, July 23rd, I'm Ben [UNKNOWN] I'm David [UNKNOWN] Let's take a look at TVs. Okay, so Amazon prime day Ended last week, but suddenly you have a hankering for a new TV set. You're now asking yourself what what is the best time of the year to buy? I've got with me the United States expert on the subject. That is David Katzmaier. David, thank you so much for coming. No problem. Newly rebranded 359 so let's jump into what everybody's here to know about. I want to talk to you about, a little bit about timing. Mhm. We talked a little bit about this yesterday, ahead of the show. We're talking about 2018 models versus 2019 models. Yep. It's kind of an interesting time of the year. In general, probably should wait if you do wanna buy a TV. Is that right? Yeah. So Prime Day was a big deal. I mean, that's kinda like, other retailers besides Amazon were doing TV sales, so. You saw at Walmart for example or Best Buy, all these guys are hitching to that. So now that that's over, it's kind of like this [UNKNOWN] period. And it's not gonna get really good in terms of TV price discounts until fall. Yeah. Like November-ish, Black Friday-ish, that's when you're really gonna start to see it. And the 2019 models are from what you know, at their highest level at this point in the year because they've just hit the market, is that right? Yes, so they've Kinda start coming in May, June, for a lot of manufacturers, April, and then they're at their highest. But now they've come down a couple discounts, you start to see a little bit of price discounts, but you won't see the real savings. If you're a savvy shopper, you wanna wait. Yeah, okay, so you also wrote About some timeless rules when it comes to buying on TVs. Let's talk about one of them, which I thought was really interesting is ignore the specs. Yeah. So TV specs are just there to confuse you. They're literally there to make you, you know, go, wow, that sounds really high tech, where's my wallet. So it's these things like queue lead, like HTC all these things are, They're generally especially if it has like a number attached to it like 960 motion rates, something like that. The higher the number, the crazier, even 4k, I mean, they can be inherently confusing and not necessarily indicative of real image quality improvements. Which is why we do these reviews! And we actually sit down and compare them, and- Okay. And figure out which ones are actually worth looking at. So, I would say, trust the reviews. Try to ignore the specs. Don't base your buying decision on a particular spec. So, jumping off of that, what should I base my buying decision on, then? Well maybe the one of the big things that really helps again ignoring oled tvs which we can get to a little bit but if you're looking at an lcd which is what most people looking at what you can afford full array local dimming is a really good picture quality step up so that's what you start to see in some vizios for example again relatively inexpensive but you get a really big image quality boost for that because it can localize the contrast Really improved pop, for a lot of different material really helps with HDR. So that's kind of the beginning as being of HDR it really it's on all TVs and 4k on all TVs today. Don't think that just because of this work, any car is going to give you necessarily a better picture. One of the other elements that you talk about is bigger is actually better when it comes to TV. Right? Always so I might my general rule is, Buy as big of a TV as you can fit into your space and that your family will allow you to. So you wanna be in this position where six months down the road you don't go man, I really wish I had a bigger TV. And they're so inexpensive now for that next step up in screen size. I say 65 is kind of the new 55. And of course it varies if you're in an apartment or something like that in a dorm or whatever- If you can't fit it in, obviously, don't. But otherwise, try to push out as much as you can [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, another way to think about it is instead of spending extra money on a new. And features something like that, that'll get two different price points. Spend that extra money on a larger size. Yeah okay, so anybody that's been listening to this and is a little confused. Not sure if I should pay attention to this element or that element. Let's just make it dead simple for everybody. Let's talk about like the three T.V.s that you should buy if you don't want to pay attention to any of this other advice. Yeah. So, we'll start with the least expensive. And the last couple of years we've been talking about the rise of the TCL, which is a brand that makes these Roku TVs that are ridiculously popular, and for good reason. We like them a lot. Their least expensive Roku TV is like a 32 inch. For 130 bucks, you can get up to 55 inch for like what? 330. So these are really inexpensive TV's and they have a great built in Roku operating system so they make it super easy to stream Netflix, Amazon, a million different other apps. And that's really what you want in an expensive TV is not have to much around with the streamer, a separate remote, all that sorta stuff, you want it right there, The picture quality is decent enough for most people, boom, you're done and out the door. The bump up is the 6 series, which you also recommend, and then I believe, if you've got the money, what is it? An OLED from LG, is that right? Yes, so OLEDs, they're like the Pinnacle in picture quality. And that six series is a really great TV for the money, but no LCD TV is gonna be able to compare with an LG Oled. Of course, they're really expensive. They started at about 1600 for 55 inch right now. Prices will come down as we mentioned a little bit later, but it's still it's a lot of money, isn't it? Yeah, it's quite a bit. Okay. So thanks again for joining us. Feel free to find us online. We're pretty easy to track down. Let us know what you wanna see more, or less up here on the show, for the Daily Charge. I'm Ben Fox Rubin, David Katz Meyer. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC]