Best TV for up to £500
- Thread starter PoD
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Soldato
OLEDs are better but much pricier. What size screen are you after?
Caporegime
You could buy a used B7 55 OLED for that but you would have to ensure it has warranty remaining and check the panel out on a 5% grey slide for severe banding.
You’re unlikely to get a new or even refurbished OLED for £500
You’re unlikely to get a new or even refurbished OLED for £500
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any cheap good branded one would do nowadays tbh
Usage is for a switch and Netflix, not doing anything high end.
55" would be ideal and I would obviously like the best, but if I have to sacrifice oled or some functionality for price then I just want the best I can get. If there is a better model within £50 then please recommend .
55" would be ideal and I would obviously like the best, but if I have to sacrifice oled or some functionality for price then I just want the best I can get. If there is a better model within £50 then please recommend .
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Rtings.com
For reference I went for the H55U7BUK as the U8B is almost impossible to find.
https://hisense.co.uk/tvs/all-tvs/u7b/
https://hisense.co.uk/tvs/all-tvs/u7b/
£500 for a 55" TV isn't bottom-of-the barrel money, but you're definitely paddling in the shallow end of the pool. If 55" is your preferred size, then TVs range in price from a shade over £300 to over £1200. A new OLED is completely out of your price range even if you step down in size. This then brings you in to the LCD-screen section of the TV market. Samsung have an improved-technology LCD called QLED and they also make standard LCD-screen TVs. Most of the rest of the market is based on the standard LCD-screen panels too.
QLED TVs are generally more expensive than their standard LCD-screen counterparts. The reason is partly in the screen tech - here's a primer on QLED tech - but there are other reasons too. One is the way the screen is illuminated. For higher-end QLEDs, the lighting sits directly behind the panel. It's called Full Array lighting. This has three main advantages: It's possible to get a brighter image and with a more even light spread. It also opens up the possibility of dimming portions of the screen to make blacks look deeper when the picture content doesn't need much brightness in that zone. This is referred to as Local Dimming, and so you might read chat about FALD panels which is Full Array Local Dimming.
The alternative is to put LED lights around the edge of the panel and cast the light across the back. Understandably, this is called Edge Lighting, and so you'll read references to edge lit panels.
Samsung has one QLED in your price range - the Q60R - but it's a stripped down version of the tech. It lacks the FALD features because the panel is edge lit to save cost. The upshot is that 4K UHD content making use of HDR (High Dynamic Range) from say Netflix doesn't quite shine or pop in the way it does with higher-priced fully-featured QLED sets. You can still watch HDR content on it, and it will be about as bright as other TVs in the £500 price range, so it's not the end of the world. It's a low lag screen too, so good for FPS gaming.
Where you're looking for feature count, Philips is worth considering. They're one of the few makers in this size & price category to include DolbyVision compatibility. This is the upper-most level of HDR standard. Have a look at the Philips 55 Inch 55PUS6704. It's available under £500, and has DolbyVision plus Dolby Atmos and Philips Ambilight feature.
If I was in your shoes, I'd concentrate on things such as "is it a good screen / what's the motion processing like / how are the viewing angles / how dark does black get / is the sound any good?" Stuff I would ignore is the smart feature set. History shows us very clearly that TV manufacturers skimp on the hardware and processing power to do a decent job with streaming sources. Instead, they rely on lite versions of the streaming services, and as we've seen with the BBC, after two-three-four years it's no longer economical for the Beeb to keep a dedicated lite service available, so when it closes the TV loses that functionality. You're far better off with something like an Amazon Fire Stick plugged in to a HDMI socket on the set. Buy a 4K Firestick on the next time Amazon does a sale.
Completely agree with you, except sound is not a concern as I have a decent AVR and speakers.
I went with the Hisense H55U7BUK as it provided the best options for the best money, such as supporting DolbyVision and HDR10 and has good black levels. It only uses ELED and the panels are known vary, but it appears to be the best option for the price I was willing to spend.
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