I went OLED bc all the reviews (and BBIers) say it's the best pic quality, as far as contrast, deep blacks without adjacent light bleeding and response time. I have no complaints.
Sometimes I'll put on an underwater (ocean) youtube video and it's pretty impressive.
The new Sony replaced a Vizio QLED that was only a few years old. There was a problem with a backlight which made it look sort of like a poop smear, especially when watching the Rangers with the white ice background.
Without the details I’d go OLED all day, every day. I jumped on the Costco sale of the Sony A80J and got the 77” last week. I’m still playing around with it, but almost have the perfect picture (if you go OLED look for calibration settings from D-Nice on AVS Forum).
I moved my 2 year old Sony OLED to the basement and plan to flank that with 2 43” TV’s for the fall. It’ll be the ultimate mancave.
Used to go to CES every year. Learned a lot. Some thoughts:
As noted above "UHD" has to do with number of pixels/screen resolution, and you probably won't find a big flatscreen nowadays that's just "HD" (1920x1080 pixels). So assume you are getting 4K UHD. You could spring for 8K but I wouldn't even think about it right now unless you are getting a wall-sized TV, and even then I would have a hard time justifying the cost.
Much more important: High Dynamic Range (HDR). You want to pay attention to how this is implemented. Dolby Vision is the best HDR technology out there, I insist on getting devices that support it. (Samsung TVs do not.) However just as important as the HDR technology is the brightness of your TV. For HDR, you want as bright a screen as you can afford. OLED is good for HDR because the blacks are so black; HDR can sort of go wonky if there's not enough contrast between the blacks and the peak-brightness highlights. (You end up with the main part of the seen being too dark.) A very bright screen helps.
I also went with AppleTVs because they support Dolby Vision and Roku did not at the time. Worth it IMO, you may disagree.
OLED has a somewhat checkered reputation because of past manufacturing issues (high failure rate for screens) and burn-in problems. Burn-in is a risk on OLED so if you want to leave it on your favorite sports, news or business channel all day long, with a logo and ticker sitting in the same place on the screen, you're better off going with a different screen technology.
A while back an expert engineer who works in this field told me that Quantum Dot LED was a superior technology to OLED. But I'm not sure that the QLED you see in the marketplace today is exactly what he was talking about.
We recently bought two new TVs. For our main TV, we got an LG G1 (Gallery series) OLED, 55" inches. We love it. The picture is super bright and the color is fantastic. I have a modest home theater system (3.1 with plans to upgrade to 5.1 eventually) so I don't worry about the TV's speakers. If you're investing in a really good picture it's worth it to at least get a sound bar anyway
This TV has an anti-burn-in system built in. After the TV has been running for four cumulative hours, the next time you turn it off, it automatically does pixel clean-up. But there's still some risk of burn-in.
For our second TV, we got a Hisense Quantum LED 50". Very very nice picture, not as fabulous as our LG G1 but very good. Very bright, nice color. I gather both the above TVs are good gaming TV but we don't use that feature. Yet.
Our old living room TV is now in our guest bedroom. It's an older LG 4K LED model. LG fixed problems with the backlight a couple of years ago; it has a few more years left. It has an Amazon Fire TV Stick on it. I like AppleTV best but I think the difference between AppleTV, Roku, Chromecast and Fire TV is personal preference, other than availability of the apps you want (always check) and support for third party tech like Dolby Vision.
I am still sort of old-school, using a mid-level Denon AV receiver and running everything through that. Nowadays you don't really need to do that if you want to go with a wireless speaker system, but I'm not ready to invest in that tech yet.
And, for what it's worth, I have a Logitech Harmony Hub universal remote system, which let's me control the system with Alexa ("... Turn on AppleTV") rather than fumble with several remotes. I would recommend it but Logitech discontinued their whole Harmony line of universal remotes. (???!!!!) I guess the trend is toward universal remotes that control more smart-home devices, including lights and smart locks. (Open to recommendations!)
Finally, one tip: We recently moved and I just set up my home theater system in the new home yesterday. Was getting rhythmic noise from my subwoofer, even when it was disconnected from the amp. WTF??? Then the penny dropped: I had put the mesh WiFi node about an inch from the sub. Moved the node, noise gone. So beware of EM interference with your components.
and a brand you're comfortable with. The technology is so advanced that there are no really bad options. Remember when you get it home usually there won't be three or four TVs next to it to compare it to. In your room it will look fantastic as a stand alone. Unless you're a really sophisticated eye you can buy a great 65" or bigger TV from Samsung or Sony for under 2K
Every time I go into BB I end up standing in front of it.
It has full-array local dimming and XR contrast booster, which gets QLED to be close to OLED in contrast (which is the biggest benefit of OLED). QLEDs are very bright, which is their benefit, and this TV also has X-angle viewing technology which supposedly helps if you are watching from the side. All I know is the picture is bright and fantastic
Sometimes I'll put on an underwater (ocean) youtube video and it's pretty impressive.
The new Sony replaced a Vizio QLED that was only a few years old. There was a problem with a backlight which made it look sort of like a poop smear, especially when watching the Rangers with the white ice background.
I moved my 2 year old Sony OLED to the basement and plan to flank that with 2 43” TV’s for the fall. It’ll be the ultimate mancave.
As noted above "UHD" has to do with number of pixels/screen resolution, and you probably won't find a big flatscreen nowadays that's just "HD" (1920x1080 pixels). So assume you are getting 4K UHD. You could spring for 8K but I wouldn't even think about it right now unless you are getting a wall-sized TV, and even then I would have a hard time justifying the cost.
Much more important: High Dynamic Range (HDR). You want to pay attention to how this is implemented. Dolby Vision is the best HDR technology out there, I insist on getting devices that support it. (Samsung TVs do not.) However just as important as the HDR technology is the brightness of your TV. For HDR, you want as bright a screen as you can afford. OLED is good for HDR because the blacks are so black; HDR can sort of go wonky if there's not enough contrast between the blacks and the peak-brightness highlights. (You end up with the main part of the seen being too dark.) A very bright screen helps.
I also went with AppleTVs because they support Dolby Vision and Roku did not at the time. Worth it IMO, you may disagree.
OLED has a somewhat checkered reputation because of past manufacturing issues (high failure rate for screens) and burn-in problems. Burn-in is a risk on OLED so if you want to leave it on your favorite sports, news or business channel all day long, with a logo and ticker sitting in the same place on the screen, you're better off going with a different screen technology.
A while back an expert engineer who works in this field told me that Quantum Dot LED was a superior technology to OLED. But I'm not sure that the QLED you see in the marketplace today is exactly what he was talking about.
We recently bought two new TVs. For our main TV, we got an LG G1 (Gallery series) OLED, 55" inches. We love it. The picture is super bright and the color is fantastic. I have a modest home theater system (3.1 with plans to upgrade to 5.1 eventually) so I don't worry about the TV's speakers. If you're investing in a really good picture it's worth it to at least get a sound bar anyway
This TV has an anti-burn-in system built in. After the TV has been running for four cumulative hours, the next time you turn it off, it automatically does pixel clean-up. But there's still some risk of burn-in.
For our second TV, we got a Hisense Quantum LED 50". Very very nice picture, not as fabulous as our LG G1 but very good. Very bright, nice color. I gather both the above TVs are good gaming TV but we don't use that feature. Yet.
Our old living room TV is now in our guest bedroom. It's an older LG 4K LED model. LG fixed problems with the backlight a couple of years ago; it has a few more years left. It has an Amazon Fire TV Stick on it. I like AppleTV best but I think the difference between AppleTV, Roku, Chromecast and Fire TV is personal preference, other than availability of the apps you want (always check) and support for third party tech like Dolby Vision.
I am still sort of old-school, using a mid-level Denon AV receiver and running everything through that. Nowadays you don't really need to do that if you want to go with a wireless speaker system, but I'm not ready to invest in that tech yet.
And, for what it's worth, I have a Logitech Harmony Hub universal remote system, which let's me control the system with Alexa ("... Turn on AppleTV") rather than fumble with several remotes. I would recommend it but Logitech discontinued their whole Harmony line of universal remotes. (???!!!!) I guess the trend is toward universal remotes that control more smart-home devices, including lights and smart locks. (Open to recommendations!)
Finally, one tip: We recently moved and I just set up my home theater system in the new home yesterday. Was getting rhythmic noise from my subwoofer, even when it was disconnected from the amp. WTF??? Then the penny dropped: I had put the mesh WiFi node about an inch from the sub. Moved the node, noise gone. So beware of EM interference with your components.
It has full-array local dimming and XR contrast booster, which gets QLED to be close to OLED in contrast (which is the biggest benefit of OLED). QLEDs are very bright, which is their benefit, and this TV also has X-angle viewing technology which supposedly helps if you are watching from the side. All I know is the picture is bright and fantastic
It is hands down the best TV I have ever laid eyes on yet owned.
If you have a extremely bright room with a lot of glare on the TV go QLED, anything else go OLED 1000%