You can’t beat a big-screen TV with a picture that’s bright, crisp, and full of color. But the best LED LCD TVs use different display technologies, and each has its own pros and cons.
The best options for you will depend on your room’s brightness and contrast levels, as well as your budget. Our guide includes the best LED LCD TVs available right now, so you can find a model that fits your needs.
LG C2
The LG C2 is a beautiful OLED TV with a superb picture and the latest tech for gaming consoles. It also features webOS 22, which makes it easy to access a wealth of streaming services, including all the best free options and most subscriptions.
The C2 has a redesigned WRGB OLED panel that can achieve a higher peak brightness than the company’s previous OLED models, which is an impressive feat for a budget-friendly model. This is backed up by the Alpha 9 Gen 5 processor and Brightness Booster, which combine to give you a truly stunning image that’s both bright and dark.
Its superb color gamut is one of its main strengths, covering almost complete coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most HDR content, with good coverage of Rec. 2020, though it can’t cover the full range of greens or cyan.
In addition, the C2 has a wide viewing angle and is able to display a vibrant image even from an unusually large distance. This makes it a great choice for watching sports, movies or shows at a wider seating position.
For gamers, the C2 supports both Nvidia’s G-Sync and AMD’s FreeSync premium VRR for smooth, frame-rate-matched gameplay. Its Game Optimizer menu also offers quick access to a variety of gaming-centric settings, from standard input lag modes to gamma curves that can boost shadow detail or brighten the image.
Lastly, the C2’s four HDMI 2.1 ports are capable of handling 4K signals at up to 120Hz from PS5 and Xbox series X graphics cards. It’s not a huge advantage, as most competing QD-OLED TVs also have the same number of ports, but it’s a feature that future-proofs the C2 in case more powerful graphics cards become available.
The LG C2 is a fantastic TV that’s well worth the money. It’s an excellent picture quality, supports the latest gaming tech and has a wide range of streaming options that make it worth investing in for just about everyone. It’s a top pick for anyone looking to add an OLED TV to their home cinema.
Hisense U8H
If you’re looking for a new television, there are a lot of options out there. It’s important to know what you want in a TV and what your budget is. The Hisense U8H is one of the best choices for people who need a bright and colorful screen but don’t have a huge budget.
This model has some unique features that you won’t find on other brands such as Google TV, a mini-LED backlight and 4K inputs. These are all great features for the price and can help you get a better picture than you might have expected from a mid-range LED LCD.
As you would expect from a Hisense product, this set is very easy to use and includes most of the apps that you need in order to watch TV. There’s even a Plex app that will allow you to stream content from the cloud.
When we tested the Hisense U8H we played Halo: Infinite on Xbox and found that its picture quality was very impressive. Its colors were very accurate and its highlights and shadows were very strong.
Its contrast was also very good. This is important in a gaming TV as it helps to keep your characters on the screen for longer periods of time.
Black levels were also excellent. They were not overly bloomy or inky and they looked very natural in most scenes that we saw.
The Hisense U8H supports HDR10+ Adaptive and Dolby Vision IQ which helps to consider the light conditions in your room in order to make sure that you are getting the most out of your TV. This feature is only available on this model but it really does make a big difference to your picture quality.
In addition to the standard HDMI ports there is a USB port and a 3.5mm composite audio jack. The USB port is a nice bonus because you can connect a media player or other device to the TV and play music without the need for a separate audio system.
You can also connect a wireless router to the Hisense U8H via the Wi-Fi 6E adapter that’s included in the box. This will take advantage of the newly opened 6GHz spectrum in order to offer you better wireless performance than 2.4GHz.
Sony X85K
If you’re looking for an affordable 4K HDR TV that has the latest features, you’ll want to consider the Sony X85K. Its features include the X1 4K HDR processor, a 100/120 Hz VA panel, Direct LED backlight system, and the newest Google TV interface.
This is a great TV for the price and can handle almost any source material you throw at it. It’s also a really good choice for gaming as it supports all the necessary gaming features like VRR and HDMI 2.1, which makes it perfect for next-gen consoles and PC games.
The X85K has an excellent native contrast ratio, which means it displays deep blacks without blooming or overly bright highlights. It also has impressive black uniformity, making it perfect for dark rooms, but it doesn’t have a local dimming feature to improve the contrast further.
It has excellent peak brightness, which is great for fighting glare. However, it’s also prone to screen reflections, so you’ll want to avoid placing it in a room that’s lit with lots of natural light.
You can also watch HDR content with this TV, which offers enhanced color, depth, and clarity. HDR also provides more realistic contrast, so you’ll be able to see more detail in dark scenes.
Another benefit of the X85K is its ability to upscale lower resolution sources, including HD and 2K movies and TV shows. This process is powered by Sony’s 4K X-Reality Pro, which combines various noise reduction and image processing technologies to make your content look better than ever before.
In addition, the X85K’s 4K HDR Processor X1 delivers a smooth, real-time response that’s ideal for fast-moving action scenes. It also supports eARC, which allows you to use the AV output on your HDR television to send audio to an HDMI input on an AV receiver or soundbar.
The Sony X85K is an excellent value for the money, and it’s one of the best mid-range TVs we’ve tested. It’s especially a good choice for gamers, as it has the 4K HDR Processor X1 and HDMI 2.1 support to handle any gaming content you throw at it. It also has an excellent native contrast ratio and a decent amount of gaming features, so it’s well worth checking out if you’re in the market for an inexpensive TV that will deliver great performance.
Samsung QN90B QLED
The Samsung QN90B is the company’s mid-range 4K QLED TV, which sits between the budget-friendly QN85B and top-tier QN95B sets. It uses Neo QLED technology that fuses quantum dots with Mini LEDs for richer colors and improved contrast. It features a Full-Array Local Dimming backlight with finer control of individual zones, which CNET’s testing found makes images brighter and more dynamic.
The QN90B’s peak brightness is exceptional for an LCD TV, overcoming the glare that’s common in rooms with lots of windows and lights. It also has a great black level and is remarkably free of blooming, or stray illumination that can leak into dark areas from adjacent bright ones.
For a 40-inch display, it’s also quite thin and slim round the back, with a crisp finish that gives off a brushed metal look. Its stand is robustly crafted from brushed metal and centrally mounted, making it easy to position on even narrow pieces of furniture.
Speccing is excellent, with four HDMI inputs (HDMI 3 supports eARC for passthrough of audio to a soundbar), digital optical out, CI+ 1.4, two satellite tuners, an aerial antenna, and ethernet. There’s also Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi.
Another key feature of the Samsung QN90B is its high refresh rate, which helps improve the pixel response time of content to reduce motion blur. Unlike some other TVs, it can increase the frame rate of low-frame-rate content up to 120Hz, which is a big advantage when watching movies and shows with long action sequences.
Its fast pixel response is helpful for smoothing out motion on slow-paced scenes, but it also looks stuttery in faster ones. It can’t keep up with fast-paced content, though, so it will have to rely on interpolating for the most part.
As well as its fast pixel response, the Samsung QN90B has a great gradient handling and a Noise Reduction feature that helps to reduce banding in darker shades of red and green. The resulting images have an impressive amount of detail, but it’s worth noting that this TV can be susceptible to artifacts and distortion when watching high-quality content.