Buying a TV: what the specs do not tell you

Television listings are a wall of numbers designed to be compared rather than understood. Most of them do not affect what you see.

Panel type is the whole decision

There are three kinds worth knowing. OLED switches off individual pixels, so black is genuinely black and contrast is unmatched. Best in a dim room, more expensive, and slightly dimmer overall. Mini-LED uses thousands of small backlight zones to get close to OLED contrast while going much brighter — better in a bright living room. Standard LED lights the whole panel, so blacks look grey in a dark scene.

Everything else on the box is secondary to this choice.

What to ignore

Contrast ratios. Manufacturers measure these however they like. The numbers are not comparable between brands.

Motion rate, clear motion, and similar invented figures. The real number is the panel's refresh rate: 60Hz or 120Hz. Anything higher in the marketing is processing, not panel.

8K. There is nothing to watch in 8K, and at normal viewing distances you could not see it if there were.

What actually matters

Peak brightness, in nits, decides whether HDR looks like anything in a room with windows. Around 600 nits is the point where it becomes visible; 1000+ is where it looks like the demos.

For gaming: 120Hz, HDMI 2.1, VRR and low input lag. For a PS5 or Series X, these are the difference between the console running properly and not.

Sound

Every flat television sounds poor, because there is no room in the chassis for speakers that move air. Budget for a soundbar or accept it. Spending more on the television does not fix this.

Pricing

TV pricing follows a model year. A set launched in spring is at its cheapest the following January to March, when the next year's model is announced and retailers clear stock. The difference between last year's flagship and this year's is usually smaller than the price gap between them.