In the market for a new TV. size 50-55 inch, probably 4K (for future proofing). Have always bought Sony in the past but their Android operating system seems poor (however will likely use an external device for streaming stuff). Not bothered about curved screen or 3D. Best quality picture with movies and gaming main priority. Ideally below £1000.

i”m in a similar position (or will be in the next month or so) and really like the look of the Vizio tv’s – only issue is they’re a pain in the butt to get hold of

Buying 4k at the moment isn’t future proofing.

Under a grand, I’d go for the best quality 1080 panel you can find – AV Forums will be your friend

edit – jeez, didn’t realise how much the price of 4k tv’s had come down already – saying that some will be bobbins though…

How bothered are you about ‘smart’ features? They may have just been unlucky but I’ve been very unimpressed by the smart aspect of some friends’ expensive Samsung telly. It’s buggy and slow and crashes regularly. Streaming from a phone just about works but is very unreliable. Wifi reception is poor too.

I recently bought a Panasonic and am very happy with it (not 4k though, but I’m really not fussed about that). Seemed far better picture than the rest (except the Sony or 4k’s) when I was shopping around.

But…

The only way to tell is to go to Currys or Richer Sounds or wherever and have a look. I thought they’d all be the same but they’re definitely not! With deals and price matches there’s no reason not to go into a store to buy one TBH. Also the menu/operating systems vary, so I gave up trying to find one that had ALL of the services I required and accepted I’ll be buying a separate box for that.

Plenty of deals around for way under £1k, and you don’t need a Tesco special to keep the price down when you can get nicer Panasonic/Sony etc on a deal.

Thanks all…not too fussed about the ‘Smart’ features as will likely use a separate streaming box which will be easier to upgrade as needed. The plethora of models and marketing blurb is unbelievable!

Panasonic or Samsung. Sony lost the plot a while back in my opinion. I swear by Panasonic and have so far yet to be let down. Very reliable, the best picture to my eye. Don’t get too hung up on 4k either way. Its the way its going despite the availabitliy of content lagging behind, and prices are coming down so not will soon be a pretty standard feature just as HD is, the fact that particular feature won’t be used most of the time is irrelevant.

The plethora of models and marketing blurb is unbelievable!

That’s why I went to a shop. Let them do the hard work explaining and demonstrating them all 🙂

Disappointed in my sony KDL-55W805C. It runs kodi which is about the only good thing about the otherwise laggy, glitchy, unintuitive and unhelpful Android TV operating system. Great panel, but the GUI annoys me every time I use it!

Thanks Gilesey…that’s helpful feedback

try this…. http://www.richersounds.com/product/tv—all/samsung/ue55ju6800/sams-ue55ju6800

As many have said above. Don’t worry too much about smart features, go for the best picture. I got an Amazon fire stick for the tv and it does Netflix, Amazon prime and kodi from a side loaded app. Been really impressed with it, occasionally lags but a quick restart sorts that, can also be used to screen mirror your phone etc as well. Great value for money (got ours for £25 a few months back).

Am I the only one that thinks it’s a bit weird that we are almost a full page into discussions about buying a new TV and picture quality hasn’t even been mentioned yet.!?!

Anyway, from my perspective there are a couple of things you can do to narrow your choices.
Don’t bother wasting your time looking at TV’s in Curry’s et al as they have them setup for instore demo mode which has massively overblown contrast and colour setups and the picture looks nothing like it should in the home and they won’t let you change the setups.
Richer Sounds and the smaller stores will change or allow you to change picture setup to get a genuine idea of picture.
To narrow down your choices I’d restrict myself to what you can buy in your price range at John Lewis, the after sales service and free 5 year warranty (which is pretty much no quibbles) are hard to beat when they will price match almost anything.

In my experience most (but not all!) Samsungs have picture engines that heavily over-emphasise contrast and saturation and it can be difficult to adjust the picture enough to get a natural image.
Panasonic are usually a safe bet as long as you aren’t wowed by ‘smart’ features, they focus on picture as they should.
Sony can be very good or awful, they seem to randomly lose the plot and then out of the blue release an awesome set with picture that’s astonishingly good. You really need to be infront of one that has been setup to your liking to know for sure, having said that they are still overpriced for what they are.

Still over your budget but the new LG OLED sets are amazing to look at, the picture is incredible. If you can wait for the prices to fall (which they are doing fast) then that’s definately worth looking at. All the other manufacturers are going to be doing OLED soon I expect but I believe LG are the only company actually manufacturing the panels.

I wouldn’t get hung up on 4K yet unless you have Netflix and a good fibre broadband. Broadcast TV isn’t going to get to 4K for a good long while yet and 4K bluray is likely to struggle for popularity due to price and having to rebuy your stuff (yet again!).

TLDR? Go to your local John Lewis on a weekday, grab someone and get them to let you fiddle with the sets you are interested in. Forget smart features and concentrate on picture then spend £70 on a FireTV/Roku3/AppleTV.

Edit: Just noticed your gaming requirement, make sure any set you consider has a ‘game’ mode that disables all the picture processing to minimise lag. The lag can be huge and ruin gaming on sets that can’t shut off the picture processing.

Panasonic or Samsung. Sony lost the plot a while back in my opinion.

Panasonic or Sony. Samsung have iffy reliability and poor upscaling.

I think an external device providing the smart features is always going to be better – more future proof, not reliant on the TV manufacturer to provide apps, etc.

To provide the smarts the TV has to run a little computer, probably running linux or android, and then running something like Java over the top. This is in addition to all the TV functionality/upscaling, etc. Not surprising this stuff is medeocre performing when you consider the price of some of these TVs.

Go to somewhere like Sevenoaks HiFi if you want to compare TVs, or somewhere thatsets them up decently. Currys and RicherSounds don’t really fall into that category, plus you have to deal with their sales staff…

Only get a 4K TV if it has good upscaling from 1080P and 720p as there is not enough content, and you are not going to see 4K over freeview.

Do you really need that size of panel, you had better be sitting a decent distance from it if any of your source material is not 4K or full HD.

If you need/want reassurance on your size choices try this…

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Article/How-Far-Should-I-Sit.php

Thanks all – and yes, for the avoidance of doubt (h1ghland3r) good picture quality is the most important feature 🙂
LG OLED’s look good but the only ones anywhere near my budget are curved! Right off to JL to see some in the flesh. Regarding size, the seating position is about 4M away which, according to the Panasonc recommendations = 50 to 55 inches. Will likely get one of the new Apple TV’s things when released. Also the 4K aspect, I’m not 100% committed but given I typically replace my set every 10 years and the fact that resale values are so poor I thought it might be worth getting one. I believe SKY will launch a 4K service very soon.

So narrowed down to LG 55UF860V and Sony KD55X8509CBU. LG cheaper and has a ‘IPS’ panel which I believe is what’s used in iPads and high end monitors. Thoughts?

Not sure the LG will make it to your 10 year replacement schedule – that’s why the company name starts with ‘Lucky’ (or did).

Review on youtube of the Sony – some bugs with the youtube but the picture quality is great :

I have a 40inch Sony and the picture is good, although I can see a lack of uniformity of whites across the screen because of the edge lighting.

Not sure the LG will make it to your 10 year replacement schedule – that’s why the company name starts with ‘Lucky’ (or did).

I’d agree with that, LG have had reliability issues on and off for a while, which is where your warranty and customer service comes in really.
The Sony is Edge lit which means you may see some banding and lack of uniformity which can’t really be helped, and I can’t be sure but I don’t think you’ll find a full array, local dimming LED backlight panel at this price. The Sony also has their X-Reality PRO processing engine which I have in mine and which Id rate for it’s ability to deal with upscaling and to give you a really natural, good quality image. All that is assuming it’s not a turkey which the reviews indicate it’s not.
All in all if I had to choose between the two and assuming there isn’t much to choose between them when you are sitting infront of them, I’d go with the Sony.

edit: In the interest of balance, my screen is a 3 year old Sony HX823 which I have been very happy with and has been faultless but it may have coloured my opinions somewhat.

but I don’t think you’ll find a full array, local dimming LED backlight panel

mine has local dimming but still has the edge lit problems. Stupid edge lighting – who cares if the panel is ultra thin – I am not watching it from the side…

mine has local dimming but still has the edge lit problems. Stupid edge lighting – who cares if the panel is ultra thin – I am not watching it from the side…

Mine is the same, it can be minimised by fiddling with the settings but you can’t get rid of it completely. Once I had mine wired up it took me the best part of 3 months of almost constant tweaking before I was completely happy with the picture.! 😕 But then again I did almost 9 months of research before I bought it so that maybe says more about me than it does the TV.!! 🙂

And of course when I am due to replace mine OLED will be the way to go as they don’t have any backlight.

I just keep remembering how good SD and HD pictures were on my Sharp LCD with 540 lines – inspired bit of engineering compromise.

After a bit of googling I think I can get the Sony for the same price as the LG. So reckon that’s the route I will go down.

On 4K remember…

There’s just about 0 content and the native resolution is 4K so everything will have to be upscaled.

Personally I can’t see much market for 4K optical media. Blu Ray is not doing terribly well as it is with DVD still vastly outnumbering though falling against downloads, streaming and general high availability of content on stuff like Sky HD that means people aren’t bothering so much to buy discs.

A 4K TV channel will be niche, much like 3D.

I’ve just been in the same buying situation.

I got a 55″ Hisense (1080, 3D, Android, etc). It’s a good panel and for the price it’s superb. Android functions are rubbish, but was always plugging in a Chromecast.

I’ll sort out 4k, if and when it arrives in anger. I’m not convinced. Too much cost for not enough benefit at the moment. 1080 is still excellent very good on a 55″.

Spend the change on holidays.

Samsungs have picture engines that heavily over-emphasise contrast and saturation and it can be difficult to adjust the picture enough to get a natural image.

Not that difficult really…

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