You'll also be able to find smaller OLED TVs, down to 48 inches.
Until recently, OLED sets were available mainly from two companies, LG Electronics and Sony, but this year you'll also be able to buy them from Skyworth, a Chinese brand, and Vizio, which launched its first OLED sets late last year. There's also some news in OLED TVs for 2021. And the zones can be controlled more precisely.īy increasing the dynamic range of the TV-the difference between the brightest whites and deepest blacks the screen can show-Mini LEDs can also help boost a TV’s HDR performance, which is discussed in more detail below.Ĭombine all this and Mini LED sets could perform more like OLEDs, while retaining some traditional benefits of LCDs, such as better brightness and a wider choice of brands and screen sizes. These are divided into dimmable zones, and because the LEDs are so small, there can be a lot of them-say, a thousand zones, instead of the dozens found in even the best LCD sets up until now. In fact, these sets can boast thousands of Mini LEDs behind the LCD panel. You'll be seeing this new backlight technology in TVs from LG, Samsung, TCL, and other brands.īy shrinking the size of the LEDs in the backlight, companies can use more of them packed together into the same area. Now, a new development in LCD/LED TV technology, called " Mini LEDs," takes local dimming one step further. The result is that dark areas look darker, and you’re less likely to see halos around bright objects on a dark background. That design is combined with a feature called local dimming, where the LEDs are divided into zones that can be illuminated or darkened separately. One reason is the rollout of full-array LED backlights, where LEDs are arranged across the entire back of the panel, rather than just along the edges of the screen. While OLED TVs top our ratings, the top-performing LCD TVs get better every year, edging closer to OLED TV-like performance. CR members can get test reports and complete details on more than 200 sets in our TV ratings.Ĭonsumer Reports also has advice on streaming media players, sound bar speakers, and antennas, along with ratings of internet and cable TV services. Once you know which type of TV you want, you can focus on getting the right size screen, and on a few other important features and performance characteristics.
These sets are pricier than the LCD/LED models that make up the bulk of televisions on the market-though that price gap narrows every year-so you'll need to decide whether an OLED is worth the extra money. Last, Consumer Reports members may notice that OLED TVs dominate our ratings of larger TVs. However, not all televisions deliver good HDR performance, and the ones that do better tend to cost more. Many sets feature high-dynamic range, or HDR, which promises brighter, more dynamic images and more vivid, lifelike colors. So one question you'll face if you’re buying a larger TV is whether it's time to move to one of these newer 8K UHD TVs or stick with a regular 4K set. Go shopping and you'll see plenty of Ultra High Definition (UHD), or 4K, TVs, and even a growing number of 8K TVs, which promise better picture detail than HDTVs offer, along with improved contrast and color. TV shopping has become a bit more complex in the past few years, mainly because of the proliferation of new features and choices.