Stephan Jukic – October 17, 2016

Like their resolution, backlighting technology and their smart TV features, color in today’s 4K TVs has also become more sophisticated and as a result more complicated for consumers to understand. The main reasons for this are the different color standards you’ll see thrown around about 4K TV color and which TVs come with what and thrown into this mix is all sorts of possibly mysterious technical jargon such as 10-bits, 8-bits, HDR color, quantum dots, phosphor coloring and so on.

Obviously enough, the mix of all these things can get downright confusing even for 4K TV buffs, let alone for consumers who just want a great 4K TV without saturating themselves with all sorts of details.

However, if you are one of these 4K TV buyers who wants that great TV, it is a good idea to know at least the most important stuff about how color works and which TVs deliver it at its absolute best. That’s what we’re going to tell you here with as much clarity and simplicity as possible. Here are the most important things you should know about 4K TV color today.

What exactly do you mean by 4K TV color?

You see, 4K TVs don’t all come with the same color coverage or even color technology across the board. There are older color standards for older ultra HD Televisions, which are basically the same as those found in most HDTVs and newer standards which are found in the latest and best 4K TVs with high dynamic range.

The older color standards also cover contrast levels, black performance and brightness and the TVs which can only display these are called SDR 4K TVs, just as the vast majority if not all models of non-4K UHD televisions can be considered SDR TVs.

4K TV color in these older TVs with only SDR display capacity was of a weaker sort with more limited color space coverage and color depth and this is something which 4K TV manufacturers and 4K content creators sought to change by developing what is now called HDR color display and standards, which are made up mainly by the standards of wide color gamut (WCG) and 10-bit color (as opposed to the 8-bit color of SDR content and TVs). This enhanced 4K TV color is what we’re mainly talking about here and it’s what offers the absolute best in today’s 4K TV display technology.

Pixels which support enhanced color and HDR are commonly called “Better Pixels”

If you want the best possible 4K TV with the most future-proof display performance for the next generation of HDR 4K content, an enhanced color 4K TV is what you need to get your hands on. We also cover these in much greater detail throughout our guide to high dynamic range (HDR), found here.

Now you know what we’re going to discuss when we refer to 4K TV color but you’re probably still confused about what all the jargon in the previous paragraphs means. After all, what is wide color gamut, 10-bit color, SDR, HDR and so on? These things are what we’re going to cover now, one by one.

What is SDR color?

As we said, SDR color represents what you’ll find in today’s HDTVs and in many of the older 4K TVs still sold on the market (mainly from early 2015 and 2014 or before) But what exactly is it? Quite simply, it is digital TV color without the latest enhancements such as wide color gamut and 10-bit color depth. No 4K TV with SDR (standard dynamic range) color specs can display 4K HDR content and no such 4K TV can offer the full depth of enhanced color that has been mastered into the latest and best sources of 4K UHD HDR content.

A 4K TV with SDR color can only display a total of 16.7 million colors because it offers only 8-bit color depth and only display a limited part of the whole visible color spectrum because it doesn’t offer wide color gamut according to the best 4K TV display standards available today for high dynamic range in particular. The current benchmark for these wide color standards is called DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema Initiative-P3) and SDR TVs without WCG can display no more than maybe 80% of this color space. HDR 4K TVs with Wide Color Gamut can on the other hand display more than 90% of the same color spectrum space.

What is HDR color?

HDR color is found only in the most modern and generally best 4K TVs released in mid to late 2015 and in all of 2016. It is increasingly found in a growing percentage of all 4K TVs released by each of the major television makers today and it is what covers the essence of “enhanced” color as you the consumer need to understand it.

Full enhanced HDR color basically consists of wide color gamut and 10-bit color as we described them above and it’s found in all the flagship 4K TVs of late 2015 and all of 2016 and also found in many of the mid-range and even budget 4K TVs for 2016 in particular. Most 4K TVs will come with full HDR color by 2017 as far as we can predict and this is a wonderful thing to behold because the color enhancements delivered by wide color gamut and 10-bit color are huge when compared to what you’d see with regular SDR display and 8-bit color.

What about HDR color and HDR Contrast?

On the other hand, not all HDR 4K TVs come with HDR color. You see, as we cover much more fully in our HDR standards guide, high dynamic range is about both color enhancements and greater range of contrast steps between enhanced dark levels and enhanced levels of peak brightness. Thus, a 4K TV with HDR can have either both or just one of these pillars of high dynamic range. Some 4K TVs can come with HDR contrast enhancements but lack HDR color enhancements and other 4K TVs can come with exceptional HDR color performance but lack certain aspects of HDR contrast performance.

The best possible color performance in a 4K TV will however come from HDR TVs which offer both enhanced color and exceptionally high levels of peak brightness, deep local dimming and black performance. This is because brightness, black performance, local dimming and contrast range are integral to making the colors they work around stand out more vibrantly and realistically. Our guide to 4K TV backlighting goes into a lot of detail about how backlight technology in 4K TVs enhances overall picture quality.

However, all premium 2016 4K TVs such as Samsung’s KS-Series SUHD TVs, Vizio’s P-Series 4K TVs and Sony’s XBR-ZD and XBR-XD 2016 4K TVs all come with both HDR color and HDR contrast performance.

What does 10-bit color mean?

Now to define just what the 10-bit color we’ve been referring to all this time means. Quite simply, it defines the range of possible color values per RGB subpixel in each pixel of a 4K TV display. All 4K TVs create their entire range of colors through the use of Red, Green or Blue (RGB) sub-pixels inside each individual pixel on their screen. White is created by activating all three sub-pixels at the same time in a certain way though with some 4K TVs there is also a pure white sub-pixel and in a rare few 4K TVs there are also yellow sub-pixels. For the sake of simplicity however, the vast majority of 4K TVs come only with the three RGB sub-pixels per full pixel. Each of their subpixels can either be 8-bit or 10-bit. In an 8-bit pixel, the colors it represents (red, green and blue) can be varied to 256 different shades each. In a 10-bit TV display, each sub-pixel can on the modified to 1024 different tones of teach RGB color (again, either red, green or blue).

Now, to really see just how much impact these two extra bits offer in a 10-bit HDR 4K TV color display, we need to multiply all the primary color mixes possible by each other. Thus, for an 8-bit 4K TV, you get 256 x 256 x 256, amounting to a total of 16.8 million colors and in a 10-bit TV, you get 1024 x 1024 x 1024, amounting to 1.07 billion color possibilities per pixel.

This is why a 10-bit TV panel or a 4K TV panel which simulates 10-bit display effectively (as most panels actually do without truly offering 10-bit color depth) can create a far richer, smoother quality of color for 10-bit HDR content. The effect created is one of much better realism and much better color accuracy if you’re using an HDR TV to watch content mastered with 10-bit color depth.

What does Wide Color Gamut mean?

Wide color gamut, or WCG, is a bit of different thing from 10-bit color depth. It represents all the possible colors of a color gamut that a 4K TV can display. Thus, a 4K TV with HDR color can show a much larger area of the total visible color spectrum than a SDR TV without enhanced color.

The specific color gamuts most often used to denote what means wide color gamut and what means narrow color are Rec.709, DCI-P3 and Rec.2020. The Rec.709 color space is what was used for years and still is used as the maximum color coverage of HDTVs and most SDR broadcast and other digital media content. However, Rec.709 is only a smaller part of the bigger DCI-P3 color space, which is itself a smaller part of the newest digital enhanced color broadcast space known as Rec.2020. No TV in existence today shows full Rec.2020 coverage but all HDR 4K TVs with enhanced color show at least 90% of the DCI-P3 color space and more than 100% of the Rec.709 color space. A 4K TV which shows 90% or more of DCI-P3 color is however only showing something around 60% of the Rec.2020 color spectrum.

The bottom line for wide color gamut is that it’s a key part of HDR color in a 4K TV and that this technology is what will let the television you buy fully display the wide spectrum of colors which have been mastered into the high dynamic range content that’s available from sources like 4K Blu-ray, Netflix, Amazon Prime and other streaming content providers.

So where does HDR and SDR content fit into the picture (literally)?

HDR color through WCG and 10-bit color depth only apply in your 4K TV when it comes to watching content with HDR color support (WCG and 10-bit color) mastered into it during production. Today’s 4K HDR TVs with enhanced color won’t use their full color enhancement capacities if they’re displaying the vast majority of content which is still 8-bit and SDR in its color gamut coverage.

This is unfortunate but it is at least changing as more HDR content gets produced in 4K resolution for the growing percentage of HDR 4K TVs. Also, TV makers themselves are working on new upscaling technologies for the best 4K TVs sold today so that they not only upscale non-4K video to look sharper and more ultra HD-like (as all 4K TVs of both the HDR and SDR type already do), but also upscaled SDR video from broadcast, disc and streaming sources to benefit from some of the built-in 10-bit and WCG color capacities of these 4K TVs. Two notable examples of premium 4K TVs which are doing this include Sony’s latest Z9D HDR models, Samsung’s 2016 SUHD TVs and LG’s 2016 OLED HDR televisions like the G6, E6 and C6 4K TV.

This HDR-upscaling effect is still far from perfect but it is working to at least partly improve the quality of content with SDR color formatting as it renders on a 4K HDR TV display.

However, for now, the absolute best entertainment you can get if you want your TV to really show off its enhanced HDR color capacity is native HDR 4K video from a 4K Blu-ray disc or Netflix and Amazon’s selections of streamed HDR programming.

Entertainment such as 4K Blu-ray discs can be viewed in enhanced color on HDR 4K TVs

What about Quantum dots, phosphor coatings and all those other buzzwords?

If you’re looking to buy a 4K TV with high quality enhanced color, you’ll also hear a lot about the presumed benefits of technologies like quantum dot color and color enhancing phosphors in premium 4K TVs from Samsung, LG (quantum dots) and Sony (Triluminos Display, which means colored phosphors on TV backlight LEDs).

All of these technologies are basically additional means by which TV manufacturers make their 4K HDR TVs display wide color gamut and 10-bit color even more effectively and precisely. A 4K TV with enhanced color doesn’t need quantum dots of Triluminos Display to offer wide color gamut and 10-bit color but these types of technologies allow the TV to offer even better color saturation and color tone variation than would be possible without them.

Quantum Dot Materials for a Samsung QD TV and Triluminos Display for Sony 4K televisions

What about future-proofing my 4K TV for upcoming color standards?

Most of the 4K HDR content that already exists has already been mastered to display wide color gamut and color depth which far exceed what even the best 4K TVs of 2016 can actually offer. In this one way, what little HDR content that exists is already far ahead of the much more commonly seen technology of HDR color 4K TV display in its specs.

Thus, while even the best 4K TVs of 2016 can only manage 10-bit color depth and 96% DCI-P3 color space coverage for WCG, HDR 4K video formatted for the Dolby Vision HDR standard is already capable of displaying at 12-bits and better than 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut coverage, if it were only to be played in a 4K TV capable of showing these sorts of visuals. The growing percentage of HDR entertainment content that gets created will come with the same capabilities. What this means is that the most future-proof 4K TVs today for the most advanced content sources which already exist are those with full HDR color which includes 10-bit color depth and WCG, as well as full HDR contrast specs.

On the other hand, the vast majority of broadcast, hard disc and even streaming digital video content isn’t HDR at all and is in fact formatted to only display in 8-bit color. Thus even today’s 4K TVs are capable of more than most content can render on a screen. In other words, while you should absolutely get a 4K TV with Full HDR color, don’t worry about it being obsolete any time soon as far as the vast majority of your TV watching is concerned.

Okay so what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is this. 4K TV color can be of the more narrow SDR kind described above or it can be of the HDR color type that’s increasingly being formatted into the latest digital video entertainment. If you can get your hands on a 4K TV with full HDR, then do so, because it will offer you the best quality for the latest color and contrast mastering in today’s most recent HDR movies and TV shows. However, don’t obsess too much about color beyond this either since home entertainment video itself still has plenty of catching up to do before most of it is 10-bit or WCG-capable.

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Stephan Jukic – October 19, 2016

The same factors which make 4K UHD TVs and particularly HDR 4K TVs into superior home entertainment systems when it comes to movies and general TV programming also come into play when we start to talk about console and PC gaming on these same televisions. The extra sharpness, high-end connectivity specs, high dynamic range, enhanced colors and overall higher quality of most name brand 4K ultra HD TVs allow them to turn both TV watching and gaming through a TV-connected console into something better than it was with HDTV or an ordinary PC monitor

And just as HDR movies and TV shows from streaming sources look particularly stunning on an HDR 4K TV, so too do the new generations of HDR games with 4K upscaling capacity which are emerging for the latest console systems if played on an HDR 4K TV. This is now the case like never before due to the emergence of new HDR consoles which also offer 4K game resolution either in native or upscaled form. We’re referring particularly to the new Xbox One S and PlayStation 4 Pro platforms which have been released or are on the verge of being released to the market now.

Thus, the following list is our compilation of the best 4K TVs for console gaming in both HDR and SDR. We’ve considered a mix of factors such as price, display quality, the (obviously) presence of high dynamic range color and contrast and of course how well each TV performs at handling input lag for consoles. All of the following TVs are 2016 editions and most of them offer HDR specs of some kind, though not all.

1. Samsung 2016 KS9000 SUHD HDR 4K TV $$$

The Samsung KS9000 (or if you prefer its essentially identical but curved version the KS9500) offers what we consider to be the best overall combination of display quality, top-shelf HDR and very good input lag with robust console gaming connectivity. This TV manages deliver absolutely excellent motion control specs with a motion blur refresh rate of only 15 miliseconds, a superb refresh rate and a nicely low input lag of just 20 milliseconds while also being a 2016 4K HDR TV with some of the best color and black level/peak brightness specs you’ll find on sale among this year’s LCD TV models. For this reason we give the KS9000 our top spot on this listing for HDR console gaming and console gaming in general since its high display quality makes even SDR games upscaled from HD resolution look wonderful. The KS9000 is also an excellent TV for use as a gamer’s PC monitor due to its compatibility with multiple resolution and refresh rate formats.

We also gave the KS9000 our top rating because despite being such a stunning premium TV for gamers and movie fans alike, it isn’t as expensive as some other top-shelf HDR 4K Televisions. On the other hand, the KS9000 is still definitely not cheap, with the smaller 55 inch model costing a fairly hefty $1,797.99.

2. LG OLED B6 4K HDR TV $$$$

LG’s B6 OLED offers what are without a doubt the absolute best high dynamic range, black performance, color and other display specs of all the 4K TVs for gaming on this list. It also delivers some virtually perfect upscaling of non-4K content and stunning motion control performance pretty much across the board, with a motion blur response time of just 0.1 seconds. Additionally, this particular 4K TV also offers excellent performance as a 4K PC monitor for gaming through PC instead of console due to its robust support of different resolutions, frame rates/refresh rates and color sampling ratios.

On the other hand, despite its ability to offer some of the most stunningly superior console gaming visuals for HDR color, black performance, contrast and sharpness on native 4K or upscaled games from the Xbox One S or another platform, the B6 does come with two key points working against it. First of all, this is definitely the priciest 4K TV on our list, with even the 55 inch model costing $2,497.00 and the 65 inch version costing well over $3,000. Secondly, like all of the OLED TVs on sale from LG, the B6 offers a considerably weaker input lag than we’d like between the screen and console. At 43 milliseconds even for 1080p console gaming, the input lag for this TV is not ideal for high speed competitive gaming.

3. Sony X800D 4K HDR TV $

Now moving on to a much more budget-friendly piece console gaming TV, we come to the Sony X800D. This particular TV is extremely affordable while still offering some excellent HDR color performance with 10-bit color, wide color gamut and superb black levels. It’s also decently bright and comes with some very strong motion control specs, especially for motion blur control in all fast-paced content types displayed on its screen. This of course includes 4K and upscaled console or PC games.

Additionally, the X800D delivers  fairly decent console/PC gaming input lag of 33.2 milliseconds in 1080p resolution and 34 milliseconds when used for native 4K gameplay in its built-in menu option of “Game Mode”. The X800D’s support for different resolutions and frame rates/refresh rates when hooked up as a PC monitor is also excellent.

Like we said, the X900D is one very affordable 4K TV, with the 49 inch model costing well below $1000 at $798.00.

4. Samsung KS8000 SUHD HDR 4K TV $$

Moving back to pricier offerings with plenty of quality to offer in exchange, we reach the Samsung KS8000 4K SUHD HDR TV for 2016. In most ways it’s very similar to the KS9000 which takes our top spot and its motion control specs and PC monitor connectivity capacities are pretty much identical to those of the KS9000. However, we consider the HDR display brightness, color and black performance of the KS8000 to be slightly lesser than those of the KS9000. On the other hand, this model is cheaper than its higher SUHD cousin. The 55 inch version costs a few hundred bucks less at $1,397.99.

Basically, the KS8000 is the cheapest top-shelf performance HDR TV selling now for high dynamic range console and PC gaming.

5. Vizio P-Series 2016 HDR 4K TV (50 inch or 65 inch and larger models) $/$$

Vizio’s V-Series 2016 HDR TVs are absolutely excellent models when it comes to stunning color performance, deep, rich blacks and some very decent brightness. They also offer superb motion control specs and particularly excellent motion blur control which will help both movie and gaming content move along smoothly and crisply. Furthermore, the basic input lag for SDR 4K and 1080p video at 60Hz is excellent at 19 milliseconds.

However, while the Vizio P-Series 4K TV is a superb model for displaying high dynamic range in both the HDR10 and Dolby Vision standards for both movies/TV programming and HDR games from consoles like the Xbox One S, its biggest problem is that the TV offers a terrible 63 millisecond input lag in 4K resolution with HDR enabled during console gaming.

That said, as long as you don’t mind slow input lag as a trade-off for gaming with HDR color and vibrancy, the 2016 P-series is an excellent console gaming 4K TV and a nicely priced one as well, with the 50 inch model  selling for $1000.

Bonus: Vizio D-Series 2016 4K TV. $

The 2016 Vizio D-Series 4K TV doesn’t come with any sort of high dynamic range, it doesn’t offer very good connectivity as a 4K PC gaming monitor since it only supports 4k resolution at 60Hz in 4:2:0 and we think its motion control specs are only moderately good. However, what the 2016 Vizio D-Series model does offer and better than any other 4K TV we know of is superbly low input lag for regular SDR 4K and upscaled gaming. At 13.2 milliseconds, this is the most competitively low input lag you can get your hands on in a 4K TV if you’re into competitive online console gaming. Again however, the drawback is that the rich HDR gaming visuals of the Xbox One S and PS 4 Pro consoles won’t display on this model.

The D-Series is one highly affordable 4K TV to boot, with the 55 inch model retailing for just $553.59. This makes it the most affordable 4K console gaming TV on this list by far.

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Stephan Jukic – November 3, 2016

The world of compact consumer UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) or drones for short is growing tremendously from the nascent market that it was just a couple of years ago and right from the beginning, compact camera technology has been an integral part of their design. Thus drones have always either been built with camera mounting built into them for external accessory recording devices or, more commonly in more recent models, have come with their own integrated recording systems right out of the box.

And also naturally enough in a world of digital video recording which is moving steadily towards standardized 4K UHD resolution the more premiu consume drones sold today more often than not feature either 4K video recording with their integrated cameras or are capable of taking on external 4K action cameras such as GoPro’s Hero 4 Black and similar models.

Typical 4K UHD Drone footage, from a Mavic Pro in this case

The situation as it stands today is one of numerous different drone models being sold at a wide range of prices and with some remarkable design variations. Affordability is only increasing in these consumer UAVs while their performance specs and features become ever more impressive.

With that said, we move onto our own listing of what we consider to be the 7 best mass market UAV drones on sale today, listed from the best on downward. All of the following devices either come with integrated 4K video recording technology or at least are capable of mounting a 4K action camera of some kind. All cost less than $3000 and most of them cost well below $1500.

A quick note on drone terminology

Before we get down to our listings of all the assorted drones that we consider to be the best on today’s market, we need to clarify our use of drone terminology a bit. As you’ll notice, we refer to these devices as drones, quadracopters and UAVs randomly. This is because all of the models we cover can be called by any of these names though there are also some differences to be kept in mind for the terms themselves. A drone can be any unmanned aerial vehicle, from a simple mass market flier like the GoPro Karma right up to a military surveillance and combat drone like the Reapers you might have heard of in the news.

The same applies for the term UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). However, while all of the models listed below can be considered drones and UAVs, what they most specifically are is quadracopter versions of both. This is because virtually all current consumer market drones fly through the use of four rotors mounted to each corner of their frame with mostly cosmetic variations on how the different rotor designs look. On the other hand, as you’ll see below, one of the best drones on today’s market and in our listing is in fact a hexacopter, with six rotor arms.

DJI Mavic Pro compact 4K drone: $799 and $999 with controller included

DJI is perhaps the current leader in the consumer drone market and with good reason. The Chinese company’s UAVs are fast, powerful, light and relatively affordable while also offering a great load of autonomous flight and recording features. Furthermore, they more recently have been coming out with their very decent own built-in 4K cameras for even easier setup and flight right from the box.

Among all the DJI consumer drones we’ve reviewed so far, the Mavic Pro has got to be our favorite. It offers a design which departs heavily from previous DJI drone builds and offers an extremely compact (able to fit inside the extended palm of your hand when folded down) body but with all of the same functionality of slightly pricier models from the same brand. This cool, insectile looking little drone can stay aloft for more than 25 minutes, offer a flight range of several miles and comes with some excellent 4K video and 12 megapixel still shooting chops. It’s also capable of rather unique things like gesture controlled flight and control purely through the DJI smartphone app. Furthermore, the Mavic is one wonderfully stable drone in the air considering its especially small size and quite fast with a top speed of just over 40 miles per hour. Priced at $999.99 for the basic model, the Mavic Pro from DJI is our pick for 2016’s best overall 4K consumer UAV.

Mavic Pro Controller

Go Pro Karma 4K UAV: $999

After a couple years spent selling the 4K and HD action cameras that have become extremely popular for mounting to other companies drones, it should be little surprise that GoPro decided to enter the UAV market for itself. The result is the Karma, GoPro’s first ever and very robust UAV. This drone has been a long time in development and we’d say that the wait was worth it considering the Karma’s specs.

The Karma offers a range of cool and partly unique features. For one thing, it comes with a detachable gimbal which can be attached to the included Karma Grip stick and used for hand-held recording. Furthermore, GoPro has included a smartphone app feature for the Karma which lets your friends also view live feeds from the drone’s camera on their own mobile devices and even control the camera while you fly the UAV itself. Like the DJI Mavic Pro, the Karma can be folded down into its own hard storage case for easy transport and while not as small as the Mavic Pro listed above, it is quite compact and lightweight. The Karma’s controller also comes with a touchscreen for easy flight and camera control while the drone itself is loaded with autonomous flight features and offers a decent 20 minute+ flight time.

On the other hand, GoPro has not included one of its awesome 4K action cameras like the Hero 5 with the basic Karma package and the no-fly-zone flight limitation feature built into the Karma’s controller can be annoying.

DJI Phantom 4 quadracopter with built-in 4K camera: $1,069.00

DJI’s classic Phantom line of drones includes some of the most well-known consumer UAVs on sale today and the design of the Phantom 2, Phantom 3 and Phantom 4 drones has become a benchmark for UAV design as it stands today. Among these models, the Phantom 4 is the best and newest and while it was first released in 2015, this bulky looking little drone still offers excellent flight specs.

For starters, the Phantom 4 comes with its own built-in 4K UHD camera with a very decent capacity for taking 12 megapixel still photos and the ability to shoot 4K video in “True” 4K resolution at 4096 x 2160 pixels, as opposed to the more common 4K UHD video resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. The Phantom 4 also offers a wider array of automated flight options than its predecessors the Phantom 2 and 3 drones and these flight options include crash avoidance technology via body-mounted sensors and GPS. In basic terms, the Phantom 4 still holds a fairly firm claim to being DJI’s flagship 4K drone and it remains one of the best consumer UAVs on sale today for under $1500. It’s 20 minute flight time has now been beaten by DJI’s Mavic Pro but the Phantom 4’s maximum flight speed of roughly 45 miles per hour makes it the faster drone.

Yuneec Typhoon H Hexacopter UAV with 4K camera: $999.00

Yuneec’s Typhoon H drone is a definite step up from their previous Q500 model UAV, with a fr superior obstacle avoidance system, a dramatically revamped physical design and a much faster flight speed thanks to its powerful motor and array of 6 rotors to keep it aloft and zooming through the sky even if one of the rotors stops working for whatever reason. This alone is one very unique design feature of the Typhoon H. Another design aspect of the Typhoon H which you’ll find in few other drones on the market today is the build of its 4K UHD camera gimbal, which can swivel a full 360 degrees, letting you take complete panoramic shots even while the drone floats completely still in the sky.

We also can’t help but love the large and easy to use controller of the Typhoon H and its built-in 7 inch LCD display is another rare find in a drone market that tends more towards controllers with external smartphone-based displays or 5 inch screens. Finally, the Typhoon H can stay aloft for a solid 25 minutes, which is quite impressive when you consider the extra battery power its six rotors probably consume.

Yuneec Typhoon H controller

Yuneec Typhoon Q500 drone with 4K camera $699.00

Yuneec’s Q500 drone has now been superseded by the company’s even more advanced Typhoon H drone we listed above but it’s still one awesome looking UAV with plenty of features and a great built-in 4K UHD camera on offer. This sexy looking drone comes with a gimbal mounted camera which can shoot the standard 12 megapixel still photos and record 4K UHD video at 30 frames per second while offering a 115 field-of-view.

As for the drone itself, its 25 minute flight time is a definite benefit in the Q500’s favor along with the drone’s relatively decent aerial maneuverability. Furthermore, the Q500 drone comes with a fairly high maximum altitude of just under 2,000 feet. On the other hand, the Q500 isn’t exactly fast, with a maximum speed of just under 20 miles per hour, which is quite a crawl by the standards of many newer drones. Despite this, the Q500 has definitely become more affordable recently, with a retail price of just $699.00.

3DR Solo Drone Quadcopter $475 for drone and controller

The 3DR Solo is one heck of a powerful drone as far as its design and flight specs go. However, while cheap by itself at just $475, it’s price rapidly climbs up towards the $1000 margin if you add in a 4K action camera like the GoPro Hero 5 and a gimbal, which is also not included in this model. This is the main reason why we gave the Solo drone a lower ranking. That said, this particular UAV delivers some great flight performance, with a maximum flight time of a respectable 22 minutes, a superb controller and app combo for excellent aerial control and some great autonomous flight modes. The Solo is also superbly responsive despite its somewhat boxy looking design.

One other cool feature of the 3DR Solo UAV is that it’s company embraces open-source design in their software and hardware, making this a great drone for users who love to tinker with and modify their gadgets.

3DR Solo Controller

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Stephan Jukic – November 16, 2016

If you’ve been on the market for some serious 4K home theater technology and have a heftier sort of budget to work with, you might have put some thought into foregoing a TV completely and simply going for a projector with the ability to display this resolution. Yes, 4K TVs are available with some truly enormous screen sizes but pretty much no normal TV, even among the largest and most expensive models can quite match the sheer possible size of a projection display space, which in most models sold today for the home can reach up to 300 inches.

Then there are all the other factors you’ll have to consider in a weigh-in between these two 4K display device types. This includes things like high dynamic range, contrast, color, usability, smart features and even resolution itself since this can get tricky when it comes to projectors.

With all these things to consider if you’re actually deciding between these two display technologies, let’s simplify things a bit for you by tossing forth our own learned opinion of what practical results you can expect from both 4K TVs and 4K projectors under several key categories.

We note that many (but not all) of the below sections apply specifically to a comparison between 4K HDR projectors and HDR 4K TVs since this is where the standard for both technologies is absolutely headed.

4K TV vs. 4K Projector: Resolution

Resolution seems like a moot point in discussing 4K projectors and TVs but in the case of projectors it definitely bears clarifying. The reason why is quite simple. With a 4K HDR TV, the display resolution you’ll get your hands on will absolutely be 4K ultra HD, with 3840 x 2160 pixels to work with. Anything less and a 4K TV is no longer a 4K TV and in any case all 4K TVs really do feature 4K resolution, so you can be sure of getting this if you buy one of any size. Furthermore, all content with HDR mastered into it will absolutely be designed to scale correctly for 4K.

With projectors on the other hand, things get a bit fuzzy. For starters, many of the so-called 4K projectors sold on today’s consumer market don’t actually even offer real 4K resolution. Instead, they deliver an upscaled pseudo-4K through various types of pixel interpolation tricks. Worst of all, even with these technologies being used, many projector models offer what really amounts to only upscaled 2K resolution from a native 1080p image sensor and only the ability to read and display 4K content sources. Currently, some of the only true native 4K consumer projectors being sold on the market belong to Sony’s VPL line of models. These however are exceptionally expensive, while the pseudo-4K models like Epson’s or JVC’s projectors come priced at levels comparable to those of TVs.

Winner: 4K TV

4K TV vs. 4K Projector: Display size

When it comes to the raw matric of display size, it’s pretty much impossible to bet a projector not only in just how big and cinematic you can make your “screen” llook for watching the latest X-Men movie but also in the simple fact that these devices are so flexible, with the ability to present a viewing space that can typically be any size between 50 inches and 300 inches. And as a bonus, you get 4K resolution (or pseudo 4K) and HDR in most newer projector models. Even movie theater displays can’t often compete with these latter two specs.

4K HDR TVs screens have gotten steadily more affordable to the point where even a giant 65, 75 or even 85 inch TV can now be bought for less than the cost of almost any 4K projector but the size you get is the size you’re stuck at and it still doesn’t compare to the 300 possible inches of any 4K home theater projector display.

Winner: 4K home theater projector

4K HDR TV vs. 4K HDR Projector: HDR, Brightness and contrast

It’s very tricky to compare brightness between projectors and 4K TVs. The simple reason why is that while display brightness in a 4K HDR TV (or any sort of 4K TV) is measured by cd/m2 or nits (same thing) generated by the display itself, in projectors, brightness is generally measured by lumens reflected off a display surface. Furthermore, while the peak brightness of a TV display is pretty much fixed regardless of ambient conditions, in a 4K projection it can vary depending on the colors being shown, the nature of the projection surface or how dark a room is. That said, most projectors don’t quite generate the same levels of projection brightness as a 4K TV, even in fairly dark rooms. The difference is small but it is there and this is one of the tradeoffs that comes with getting your hands on a device that can so flexibly create a cinematic display anywhere you like.

On the other hand, with contrast –which is the difference between light and dark in projected or displayed content– can indeed be quite comparable to that of even a good LCD 4K HDR TV. The simple reason why is that the darker areas of the projection surface will have almost no light shine upon them at all and this contrast quite deeply with the lit areas of a projection space. In other words, high quality 4K HDR projectors tend to create higher contrast ratios than most LCD 4K HDR TVs, at least by a slight margin though under some settings they can deliver real contrast ratios of well over 20,000:1 and no 4K LCD HDR TV can match this.

One exception to this rule is OLED technology. While OLED TV displays are dimmer than those of many high-end 4K HDR LCD TV displays, their contrast is far superior to that of either a 4K projector display or an LCD screen simply because OLED blacks are total and perfect.

Winner: Tie between both 4K HDR TVs and projectors. TVs manage slightly better brightness but projectors win on contrast, at least slightly.

4K HDR TV vs. 4K HDR Projector: Color management

Both 4K HDR TVs and 4K HDR projectors are absolute killers at delivering some awesomely crisp, bright and vibrant colors. Furthermore, since both device types now typically offer high dynamic range wide color gamut and 10-bit color, they can easily display more than 90% of the DCI-P3 HDR color space beautifully and offer more than 1.07 billion color shades for maximally smooth color gradation.

However, in our experience, projectors tend to display a wider area of the Rec.2020 color space and thus the DCI-P3 color space as well, with over 100% of DCI-P3 color capability and sometimes nearly 80% Rec.2020 color gamut coverage. Very few if any 4K TVs can match this. On the other hand, Colors on a 4K TV can look better simply because of a TVs innately superior brightness.

Winner: The decision is a tough one to make but HDR projectors win very slightly in terms of raw color space coverage, but the effect is only stunning with the right viewing conditions for high projection brightness.

4K HDR TV vs. 4K HDR Projector: Smart features

4K HDR projectors generally don’t come with smart interfaces crammed with streaming media and other apps right out of the box. Instead, you generally have to connect them to some other device which does have its own smart platform. This can be a set-top streaming media box like the Roku Ultra, a 4K UHD Blu-ray player or maybe even a 4K gaming console like PS4 Pro or the Xbox One S (which also offers 4K Blu-ray playback).  This may be a bit of  hassle but if you’re spending money on a projector, these types of devices are pretty much necessary for a top-shelf content viewing experience, particularly for 4K Blu-ray movie watching.

On the other hand, 4K TVs all now come with smart TV OS platforms that are crammed full of streaming media options right of the box. Furthermore, the smart platforms of today’s best 4K TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony or Vizio are downright superb to boot. This means that you can start streaming movies, TV shows and other programming as soon as your 4K TV is plugged in, web-connected and turned on.

Winner: 4K TVs due to out-of-the-box smart platform usability without extra expense.

4K HDR TV vs. 4K HDR Projector: Installation and Pricing

Without a doubt, 4K HDR TVs are the winner when it comes to affordability and ease of installation. Now that both 4K resolution and high dynamic range are established standard features in most new TVs, prices for these models in a highly competitive market with many brands have dropped like a stone and you can get your hands on even a huge 4K HDR television for below $4000 and many models with a display size of 65 inches or less are easily available for less than $2000. Furthermore, when it comes to installing a 4K TV, your work consists mostly of setting it up on the nearest convenient elevated flat surface, plugging it into your electrical sockets and moden via Ethernet, and turning it on. It’s mostly that simple with 4K TVs.

The same is not the case in the 4K HDR projector market. No 4K home theater projector with native 4K resolution and HDR costs less than $10,000 (!!!!) and all of them are currently made by Sony or, in the case of one model only (the $35,000 RS4500), JVC. There are on the other hand a number of pseudo-4K upscaling projectors being sold today, such as Epson’s 6040UB and 5040UB models, which can play back 4K HDR content and offer high dynamic range but none of these offer true 4K resolution. Instead they upscale native 1080p display resolution to 2K and call themselves 4K projectors because they can play back 4K content. Even these models will set you back by at least $3000 and usually cost between $3000 and $5,000. At that price you can buy some of the best and largest native 4K TVs on the market today and even go for a large OLED 4K TV. With HDR.

And as for installing 4K projectors, for one thing you’ll probably need to mount them to your ceiling or some sort of elevated position and this requires a certain amounnt of effort and the use of power tools. Furthermore, while a white living room wall can be used to display projected content decently enough, it’s absolutely better to actually buy a proper white projection screen. This will cost extra money too.

4K projectors don’t necessarily need to be mounted to a ceiling but it’s considered ideal

Winner: 4K TVs by a long shot

Our Final Opinion

In our final opinion, we’d simply argue that 4K HDR projectors may be stunning and superb but their price simply doesn’t justify the one major advantage they offer over 4K TVs, which is their flexible and potentially gigantic display size. In all other important regards, the two devices are either tied or TVs win by a certain margin. At the same time even pseudo-4K HDR projectors are very expensive and true 4K HDR models cost a fortune. Too much to justify buying them for a small display edge that they offer.

Unless you hve a very large budget that can accommodate both a 4K UHD HDR TV and a projector as dual home theater options in your house, we’d suggest simply going for a TV. It offers more overall right out of the box and in most cases will cost much less while doing so.

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The post 4K UHD TV vs. 4K Projector: Your definite guide to which is the better option appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – November 24, 2016

Amidst all the complex discussion about the latest 4K TVs, their detailed specs and the almost constantly shifting new technologies that revolve around these awesome pieces of home theater technology, it’s sometimes easy to forget the fact that many readers visit our site while still unfamiliar with some of the more fundamental points that are important to know for anyone who wants to buy a 4K UHD TV.

Of course, we have our numerous topic-specific guides on 4K TV types, TV refresh rates, high dynamic range, 4K TV color and other key areas of these technologies but to simplify things even further in a brief form, here is our listing of some essential Q&A about 4K ultra HD TVs and what you should keep in mind when buying a new UHD TV.

We also highly recommend that you check out our new and extremely comprehensive ebook guide to buying a 4K TV, It covers all of the crucial details that you’ll need to know so you can make the best possible buying decision for your home no matter what kind of budget you’re working with. As a bonus, the ebook guide gives you a chance to email me directly for detailed answers to any TV related questions you might have.

Now, onto the Q&A

1. What does “4K” mean, what does “Ultra HD” mean, and what are the differences between the two?

Quite simply 4K is used to refer to a resolution which amounts to about four times the pixel count of Full HD resolution. Full HD is measured at 1920 x 1080 pixels and for most consumer purposes, 4K UHD resolution is set at 3840 x 2160 pixels, which is roughly 4 times as many pixels as FHD (Full HD). They’re also colloquially called 2160p and 1080p resolutions respectively. There is also a less common 4K resolution called DCI 4K, rarely found in 4K TVs but common in 4K home theater projectors and some 4K video cameras. This is set at 4096 x 2160 pixels and offers roughly half a million pixels more than 4K UHD.

As for ultra HD, it has a more flexible meaning. Right now it’s practically synonymous with 4K UHD TV displays and other 4K consumer products but when other resolutions like 6Kand 8K become more common, they could also be called ultra HD.

2. Why are 4K screens/displays preferred over 1080P – what are the advantages and why is this technology worth it? How does this ultra-high definition technology change the user experience for the better on various devices (TVs, computer monitors, phones and cameras)?

4K resolution isn’t actually easy to distinguish from normal FHD on smaller display devices of less than 45 inches across (diagonally) unless you get really close up to  the screen but aside from this 4K definitely brings with it a much better level of sharpness on all larger screens and even on smaller screens, the sharpness and smoothness of digital video looks far superior when viewed close up. Aside from these obvious benefits, 4K display devices come with the best peripheral display technologies these days and 4K recording devices are obviously better because their 2160p video output is more future-proof for being displayed on larger screens (which are becoming more popular among consumers).

3. What are the current 4K screen technologies available to consumers (e.g., HDR, OLED, AMOLED, Quantum Dot [QD], UHD, etc.)? Please describe the differences between these technologies mentioned and list any others that I failed to mention.

The most important 4K display technologies (mainly for 4K TVs) currently available are HDR and OLED. Quantum Dots and other brand-specific technologies mostly revolve around enhancing 4K resolution or HDR in any case. OLED is its own distinct display technology for display design and it is also found in non-4K screens.

To break this down a bit further:

HDR means high dynamic range and it is a new process for expanding the range of colors, contrast peak brightness, and black levels in a piece of content or a digital display screen. HDR in TVs is currently only found in 4K models and it greatly enhances picture quality and realism, However for a TV to display content in HDR, the content itself also has to be formatted and mastered during production for HDR brightness, color, contrast and dark tones.

OLED is an entirely different and (in our view) far superior display technology to LCD/LED TV screens. It’s found in 4K and Full HD TVs and the difference between LCD and OLED is simply this: LCD/LED TVs offer an array of LEDs along the whole display or edges of a panel behind their LCD display panel. Those LEDs turn on and off as needed for areas of brightness or darkness in content, but the specific zones aren’t always precise in how they illuminate or darken. In OLED TVs, there is no back panel of LEDs. Instead the actual pixels on the display itself crate their own light individually and this can be precisely controlled on the level of each individual pixel. This means much better control of local dimming (making specific parts of the Display darker or brighter for content as needed) and much thinner display design.

Quantum Dots are a sort of accessory color technology which consists of thin films made of differently sized nano particles between a TV’s LEDs and the LCD panel. As light from the LEDs hits the different layers of film, it polarizes the nanoparticles in each to create different colors. As a result, the overall color saturation of the TV display becomes richer.

4. What important criteria should consumers look for when they are shopping for a 4K display/screen, especially a 4K television? What should consumers consider carefully before purchasing a 4K/ultra HD TV/display? What do the best 4K TVs/displays include when it comes to specs, and why are these features worth the money?

 All modern 4K TVs pretty much offer the same connectivity specs and core 4K content viewing technologies like HDCP 2.2 and H.265 (the first is used to protect 4K content from piracy and a TV must have it to view consumer UHD content sources and the second is the compression technology for making 4K video easier to transmit over the internet or connectivity cables). So display is where things can vary a lot among different TVs. The smart TV platforms on all 4K TVs are also similar enough to each other to not be THAT important as a reason for picking one brand over another. And all models from any one brand will offer the same content upscaling engine (for non 4K content and the same smart TV platform in both their best and worst 4K TVs. So none of these are massive factors for choosing which TV to go for.

Instead, all potential TV buyers should really pay attention to display performance. The best 4K TVs will have deep rich black levels, high contrast, wide color gamut (HDR color) 10-bit color saturation and best of all, should have HDR display if possible. A 4K TV with these specs covered will perform much better than one which fails at black level, color or contrast. 4K TVs should also offer good performance at making content move across the screen smoothly and with minimal blur (motion handling).

5. Besides televisions, is 4K/ultra HD currently available for other types of screens – including computer monitors, smart phones, and cameras? If not yet, when is this bump up to 4K expected for other types of screens?

4K resolution is appearing in nearly everything digital these days! It’s now found in all higher quality PC monitors, consumer projectors, cameras, camcorders and gaming consoles. It will also soon be much more common in smartphone and tablet displays and is already found as a recording spec in all of the best smartphone cameras as well.

6. Where can consumers currently get/watch 4K content (e.g., streaming sites, 4K UHD Blu-ray players, etc.)? Why isn’t broadcast TV in 4K yet, and when is this coming?

 The best and most easily accessible sources of 4K content for anyone anywhere in the world are 4K UHD Blu-ray discs. You’ll need a 4K Blu-ray player to play them but if you get one, you can watch any of the dozens of 4K movies now coming to Blu-ray on your 4K TV even if you have no other source of 4K content or the right internet connectivity to access streaming media apps. After 4K Blu-ray, the most easily accessible content in 4K is the stuff available from streaming internet services like Vudu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and others and apps for all of these are found on most 4K TVs right out of the box. However you’ll needs at least 20Mbps of connectivity to your home in order to stream 4K video from said apps.

Some broadcast/satellite operators like Dish and Comcast are now offering live satellite feeds of sports and other programming in some parts of the U.S through their own DVR devices.

7. Technology seems to change so fast – what will be the next advancement after 4K (8K?), and when do you expect this technology to arrive and garner significant interest from consumers?

I think that 4K is already garnering some serious interest from consumers. It’s in fact becoming seriously mainstream and nearly half the new TVs sold in the U.S in 2016 will be 4K UHD models according to the latest consumer research findings. 4K content still needs lots more development but these TVs also upscale non 4K content to display on their screens much better than it would in a non-4K TV so consumers can still get lots of benefit from them even if they’re not using their new TV to watch native 4K video sources.

As for the next major developments. I think that 8K is still at least a couple years away and a lot of problems with transmitting that much video data first need to be fixes before we really see 8K TVs and content appear anywhere in a real way. Instead, the biggest developments to come in the next year and 2018 will be with much bigger enhancements to HDR technology, with TVs coming out with much better color delivery, much higher display brightness capacity and better black performance. All of these things will combine to create picture realism like nothing human beings have ever seen before in a digital screen.

A couple key buying tips for getting your first 4K TV:

Most importantly of all, buy the TV with the biggest display you can reasonably afford. 4K resolution and HDR both look much better on larger screens.

An HDR 4K TV is definitely much better than a non-HDR 4K TV and man very affordable HDR models are now sold, such as Vizio’s excellent P-sereis TVs or Sony’s very low-price X800D and X750D 4K HDR televisions.

Pay attention to the real display specs of your 4K TV, the smart platform and other “features” like “Motionflow” “AutoMotion Plus” and “HDR1000” are mostly unimportant or completely dishonest in conveying actual display performance.

Don’t buy a 4K TV that’s from before early 2015. Many older models are no longer up to the current standards for viewing the best 4K content sources.

There are many excellent 4K TVs with HDR even sold now for less than $1000. So buying one doesn’t have to be a budget breaking event.

OLED 4K HDR TVs offer some of the best overall TV display and performance specs available today

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Stephan Jukic – January 24, 2017

In the aftermath of CES 2017 and all its stunning new premium HDR 4K television reveals, it’s really easy to start wondering whether you should bother with a 2016 HDR TV at all if you were on the verge of buying one, or if you should replace your older TV with one of the 2017 models (assuming you’ve got the spare cash ready). Well, to clear up the doubts on this issue let’s take a peek at what sorts of benefits and costs each decision carries and which is right under what circumstances.

Are the 2017 Models Better?

Without a doubt, the 2017 TVs are promising to at least match their 2016 counterparts in many crucial ways, particularly as far as picture quality is concerned. Furthermore, at least for some specs like peak brightness, viewing angles and smart functionality, the premium LCD HDR 4K TVs and even their OLED cousins will almost certainly outperform what we’ve seen in 2016. This however doesn’t have to mean that the 2016 models are anything less than superb for all but the most absolutely exacting consumers.

Furthermore, at least in some key respects, the 2017 TVs will likely perform no better than their 2016 cousins or deliver performance that’s only marginally and almost unnoticeably better. It’s also worth bearing in mind that new 4K TV models can sometimes actually perform WORSE than their older cousins in some ways. With Samsung’s 2017 KU-Series TVs, we noted this in a couple of key regards such as connectivity options and motion handling and with Sony’s 2016 XBR-D TV models, black level performance was at times inferior to that of Sony 2015 HDR TV models.

With that in mind, here’s our opinion of 2016 vs. 2017 broken down by TV type and at the end, consumer circumstances, where we cover some scenarios in which you should or should not buy a 2017 4K TV.

LCD TVs

For the premium LCD TVs of 2017 and those from Sony and Samsung in particular, you can probably expect much of the same performance on motion handling, black levels and color spectrum coverage as was the case in the 2016 premium TVs from both brands. The same will almost certainly be the case with LG’s Super UHD 4K LCD TVs.

What we have noticed is that Samsung and LG are both implementing new color and viewing angle technology though quantum dots in their 2017 models and with the inclusion of this, the 2017 LG Super UHD TVs and Samsung’s new QLED successors to last year’s SUHD TVs will almost certainly offer marginally better color performance and notably better viewing angles. The difference in color performance will almost certainly be small enough that someone wouldn’t notice it without using color testing equipment. Most of Samsung’s 2017 QLED lineup will still come with edge-lit backlighting panels just as was the case with all but one of the 2016 SUHD TVs.

In Sony’s case, there will be one new OLED TV range whose performance will almost certainly outclass that of almost all of the company’s LCD TVs for this year or last year. This OLED TV, the A1E, which will come in three different sizes, should perform at least as well as LG’s 2016 OLED TVs. Sony’s LCD lineup for 2017, the XBR-E Series models, on the other hand is expected to offer superior backlight control technology for better local dimming and quite possibly also for superior levels of black depth. Other than this, The Sony LCD lineup will still mostly consist of edge-lit TVs.

A couple of areas in which we’re expecting major improvements among most of the name brand LCD TVs of 2017 and particularly the premium models from the major brands are peak brightness and HDR support.

Samsung and Sony have both worked towards giving their premium 2017 TVs levels of peak brightness which beat even those of the already superb 2016 models and Samsung’s QLED TVs in particular are slated to reach unprecedented brightness levels of 2000 nits, putting them a solid 500 nits above the best possible performance of their 2016 cousins. Sony’s XBR-E models likely won’t reach these same brightness levels but we do expect them to perform better than their 2016 cousins did. As for LG’s LCD SJ-Series Super UHD TVs for 2017, we’ll likely see moderately improved peak brightness even though all of the brand’s LCD models will be edge-lit.

Sony’s new XBR-X940E model

Finally, in terms of HDR performance, as a direct result of slight to major improvements in wide color gamut rendering, black levels, local dimming and peak brightness, all of the 2017 TVs will probably be slightly better HDR performers. Sony’s XBR-E TV models will see particularly high improvements in HDR compatibility due to the inclusion of Dolby Vision HDR in their specs. This is a major improvement in the 2017 Sony lineup.

The bottom line for the name brand premium LCD TVs of 2017 is that they’ll be better than they were in 2016 but not dramatically so for the most part. On the other hand, some of them will include new display features that are lacking in the 2016 models

OLED TVs

When it comes to OLED 4K TVs, the choice between a 2016 model you can go out and get right now for a surprisingly decent price and waiting for a 2017 TV that may or may not (but probably will) cost more while offering little extra benefit becomes a bit more clear-cut.

Let’s start this section off with a mention of LG’s 2016 B6 OLED TV. This model was the most affordable of 2016 and by the end of the year had become cheaper than any OLED 4K TV had ever been before. Not only did the B6 come with this benefit, it also delivered display specs that were more or less the same as those of 2016’s flagship LG OLED model, the G6, which cost almost three times as much. The B6 had a much more conventional design, yes, and it lacked the 3D technology that all the other LG OLED TVs of 2016 came with but nearly everything else about its picture performance was identical to the specs of its pricier cousins. Even more impressively, the one display spec on which it was significantly different from its OLED cousins, peak brightness, was actually superior in the B6 (at least according to our own review testing).

LG 2016 OLED B6 HDR TV

Thus, for 2016, unless you insisted on 3D in your OLED 4K HDR TV, the B6 was the best choice of the year and definitely the most affordable with a year-end price of just $1,800 for the 55 inch model ($2,800 for the giant 65 inch version).

Now, for 2017, While LG has definitely taken OLED TV design to new levels of showiness, in terms of improved performance, the company is mainly promising the following:

• 25% higher peak brightness
• 2% better DCI-P3 Wide Color Gamut coverage (claimed to reach 99%)
• Support for the new HLG broadcast HDR standard (for which there is so far virtually no content anyhow)
• A new “Active HDR” mode for upscaling of SDR video
• Dolby Atmos Sound support.

Quite frankly, none of these are major enough improvements to justify replacing a 2016 OLED TV if you already own one and unless Dolby Atmos audio is something you absolutely insist on having, the other improvements will at best only be slightly noticeable for normal home entertainment. Basically, except for the Dolby Atmos sound, the 2017 OLEDs will perform almost the same as the cheapest 2016 OLED, the B6 and since it offered above-average brightness to begin with, even the 25% peak brightness improvement of the 2017 TVs may not make much of a difference.

LG’s 2017 OLED B7 looks almost the same as the 2016 B6

What’s more, the 2017 OLED TVs will almost certainly cost more than their 2016 cousins and the B6’s replacement, the B7, will probably be at least a few hundred dollars pricier (though we can’t yet be sure of this, it matches the pricing trends we saw when last year’s new OLED TVs replaced their 2015 cousins).

Other details for the 2017 OLED TVs which are worth bearing in mind include the fact that none of them will offer curved display and that none of them will come with 3D technology, which all of the 2016 OLEDs except for the B6 offered.

So what does this means for buying a 2017 OLED vs- buying a 2016 OLED? Quite simply that you’re almost certainly better off sticking with a 2016 model and replacing it only when the 2018 TVs go on sale and the 2017 models start selling for reduced prices, just as many of the 2016 OLEDs did at the end of last year. Quality-wise, the 2017 TVs will offer little to justify whatever extra money they cost and only their designs are to some extent markedly cooler and more innovative than those of the 2016 models were.

The Bottom Line

If you already own a 2015- 2016 HDR TV

It’s quite simple. If you already own a 2016 4K TV or even a 2015 HDR television model and literally like what you’re seeing, there is no practical reason for you to buy a 2017 model for the time being. You’ll gain little in the way of additional performance benefits even though you might end up having to spend a fair bit of extra money on the newer model. This applies particularly to choosing a 2016 OLED TV vs. a 2017 OLED model. Even if one of the newer 2017 LCD or OLED TVs happens to have some feature you particularly like, such as Dolby Vision HDR in the 2017 Sony TVs or the extra 500 nits of peak brightness in the 2017 Samsung QLED models, we’d argue that these extras aren’t enough to justify a new TV until the prices of the 2017 models go down by the end of 2017.

For the vast majority of normal home entertainment, the HDR and SDR content viewing specs of both 2016 and 2017 model premium 4K televisions will look similar enough for there to be no practical difference.

LG OLED W-Series Signature flagship TV with “wallpaper” design

If you don’t yet own a 2016 4K TV

If on the other hand you don’t yet own a 2016 4K TV and want to finally replace your older HDTV model or a much older 2013-2014 4K television that lacks cool features like HDR and 10-bit color, then the choice comes down to budget more than anything else. If you want to save a bit, go for your favorite 2016 model and enjoy the savings while getting some generally superb display performance and HDR specs which are more than good enough for the vast majority of high dynamic range and normal entertainment content you’re going to see emerge in 2017. If on the other hand you don’t mind waiting a bit and want the very best, then yes, wait for the 2017 models to come out in the next couple of months and check out our reviews of them as they emerge to pick your potential favorite.

The new premium HDR TVs aren’t revolutionary but they will generally be at least a bit better than their 2016 counterparts.

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Stephan Jukic – February 1, 2017

Buying a new 4K ultra HD TV isn’t exactly rocket science, but it does have its little quirks. After all, you’re going for a complex piece of performance hardware in a market that’s saturated with different models, marketing buzzwords, constantly evolving new features and technologies. And you’re going to spend anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on the particular TV you decide to buy. Thus, it’s important to avoid making some fundamental mistakes, and here are some that we consider to be the biggest causes of buyer’s regret.

1. Buying a TV in the wrong size

As a general rule when it comes to 4K TVs, bigger is better if you want to really appreciate the ultra HD resolution. This has however diminished a bit due to the advent of HDR, which can be appreciated equally even on much smaller TV displays but even in this case, bigger always looks much more impressive. That said, a giant 70 inch monster of a 4K TV in a tiny studio living room, just 4 feet from your face is absolutely overkill and a small 43 inch display in a family-sized living room is going to leave you squinting way too much.

Thus, while for most people it’s a good idea to go for a TV of at least 50 inches even in the smallest setting, the general living room/den rule should be to measure the distance in inches between where you want your TV and where you plan on sitting most of the time and divide that by 1.5 to get the rough display size you’d like. Buy the TV you can afford that’s closest to this size.

2. Focusing on unimportant features

4K TVs come with all sorts of overhyped extra features which do nothing to improve their overall performance and most annoyingly, these extras can confuse would-be buyers into analysis paralysis when it comes to buying a new set. What unimportant features are we referring to? Examples include 3D (most consumers don’t use it and it’s completely secondary to picture performance), pointless curved displays, absurdly high made-up motion rates (250Hz, 400Hz, and higher) and other types of mostly pointless things like local dimming hype in a TV which doesn’t even have full-array LED backlighting (Check out our guide to local dimming and backlighting for more on how this works).

The most important features of any 4K TV are the standardized display performance specs it delivers. These include how well the TV shows color, how well it delivers black levels, how bright it is, how high its native refresh rate is (60Hz to 120Hz) and whether or not it has HDR if you want a model that’s ready for the future of TV content.

4K TV color space coverage is much more important than things like fake motion handling numbers and curved vs. flat screen design

3. Getting a TV that’s not future-proof

Most 4K TVs today come with standardized display specs, connectivity options and features like HDR10 or Dolby Vision HDR support. Thus, most newer 2015, 2016 or 2017 4K TVs are already fully future-proofed for most of the content and content sources that will emerge for several years to come at least. Furthermore, firmware updates will likely come along to address many specs as th come along for newer televisions.

That said, while you absolutely don’t need to buy one of the newest and best 4K TVs on the market for a rock solid home entertainment experience, do try to go for the newest model you can reasonably afford. They are for the most part genuinely superior in their picture performance and will at least let you enjoy the essentials of a great home entertainment experience for several more years. Most 2014 name brand 4K TVs and all 2015, 2016 and 2017 4K TV models sold now offer the essentials for ultra HD home entertainment but the most future-proof TVs right now are those with HDR support, so get one of those if at all possible.

Even some of the cheapest 4K TVs today are mostly future-proofed for HDR support

4. Believing manufacturer hype

Following the manufacturer hype around any 4K TV on the market will give a gullible reader the impression that even the cheapest televisions deliver stellar, top-shelf performance that will leave you breathless. This is obviously not the case. Not all 4K TVs are created equal and all jargon aside, most budget TVs will deliver picture quality which is notably inferior to that of their pricier premium cousins.

The better TVs on sale offer true local dimming with full-array LED backlighting (LEDs across the entire display space) or OLED display panels (which are the best of all panel types so far in existence), 120Hz native refresh rates, deeper contrast levels, richer black levels, superior color performance and better motion handling. These technologies do make a difference and if a 4K TV lacks some of them, it will not be an exceptional performer regardless of how hyped up its core features are. Our best advice is to always research any TV you’re going to buy as carefully as possible and if you can, get a live view of how well a model you want to buy displays content, preferably next to other 4K TVs from other brands for easy comparison.

5. Worrying too much about Smart TV Features

All newer 4K TVs are now smart TVs. From 2015 onward, this became a completely integral technology of every model from pretty much any brand worth mentioning at all. However, not all native smart TV platforms are created equal, with some offering better 4K content apps access, better usability and other perks like web browsing and so forth. Our particular favorite so far is WebOS 3.0 from LG followed by Samsung’s Tizen smart platform for all its TVs then Sony’s Android TV. However, in their essentials, all of these platforms offer a solid user experience, meaning that they should almost never be the reason why you choose a particular TV over another one.

Furthermore, if you’re not happy with any one smart TV platform that came built into your particular television, there is a whole range of external media boxes and streaming sticks available on the market to completely ignore your TV’s own smart platform with. From Roku TV to Google Chromecast to Android TV, any of these external smart platforms can be plugged into your TV at any time, offering their own range of specific layouts and content choices.

All modern 4K TVs and external smart TV platforms come with the essentials of 4K streaming content services

6. Failing to address your personal needs

Different 4K TVs are ideal for different uses. Some are particularly great for live sports, others are especially good gaming TVs and others offer the best of all worlds but usually also cost quite a bit as a result. The important thing is to go for what appeals most to your needs and habits. Don’t necessarily buy a huge 75 inch model 4K TV just because your cousin or buddy has one, even though you might need the television for a much smaller space. Instead, do your research and ask questions, using reviews of major models such as those we have on this site to pick the TV brand and model that most suits your budget and needs.

7. Spending too little

It’s okay to look for the best value per dollar spent on a 4K TV and in the process forsake a few truly premium features. However, this should never mean that you buy cheap for cheap’s sake alone. While there are many superb 4K UHD TVs even with many previously premium features like HDR and full array backlighting available for excellent prices by now, a lot of the really low-priced models out there offer fairly weak display quality and deciding to spend just a modest amount more on a model with some premium extras can make a world of difference in home theater enjoyment. Try to find a good deal, by all means but don’t let price alone be your deciding factor.

8. Spending too much

Just as it’s possible to skimp too much on a 4K TV and suffer the consequences of weak performance, it’s also possible to overspend on something you don’t need at all. This point ties into several above about not buying into marketing hype and pricey but useless extra features that sometimes bloat 4K TV prices dishonestly.

One excellent example of overpaying for the pointless is having to get a bigger TV than what you’d really need for a perfectly awesome time using it. Another example is going for a cool new design fad that does nothing to boost TV performance but is used as justification for pricing a TV a couple hundred bucks higher. Curved TVs fit the bill on this trend perfectly. Samsung in particular released several models with curved and flat screen versions, with the curved models costing between $150 and $250 more than their flat but otherwise identical cousins.

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Stephan Jukic – February 28, 2017

Premium 4K UHD TVs, whether they’re the latest 2017 models or older 2016 and 2015 televisions, can be quite pricey. This applies particularly no name brand former or current flagship TVs from the likes of Sony, LG and Samsung and it applies even more so to the best TVs with today’s best display technology, OLED.

With this being the case and plenty of potential buyers working with a tight budget, it’s easy to understand why you might want to look out for incredibly good deals on these kinds of TVs and get excited if you find them. This we can all understand.

Thus, we’re not talking here about new TV purchases from authorized new-model retailers like Best Buy, Amazon and other smaller players. Often they’ll have superb discount prices on high-end 4K HDR TVs and if you stumble across them, go for it if you like what you see. For our tips on buying those TVs, check out this post. Even used TVs bought through Amazon or other retailers can be a great deal assuming there’s a warranty involved and you know exactly what that warranty covers. It’s second hand and other secondary market 4K TVs that get sold under some less than ideal conditions that might be problematic for you as a buyer.

In other words looking for a deal by itself obviously isn’t the issue. No, the problem is what might happen when you get so hooked on a too-good-to-be-true price for a very high-end TV that you forget to worry about warranty protection and the potential for crappy product quality. Let’s go over the pitfalls and possibilities.

Warranty Issues

Modern TVs are pretty tough and a unit that’s fresh out of the box will almost certainly work just fine for a long time before it starts glitching up.  However, TVs are also far from failure-free and they are indeed very complex pieces of hardware with expensive parts. Furthermore, even completely new models can sometimes breakdown quickly and unexpectedly, or come right out of the box defective. If you bought a brand new premium TV, having these defects happen is annoying but easily fixed by a call to your retailer or manufacturer.

With used TVs from second-hand retailers, private sellers or other kinds of unusual retailers who offer major discounts in exchange for lack of replacement and repair coverage, what you paid for is what you get and there’s no going back on the deal. So even if your newly bought 2016 Samsung SUHD KS9000 TV cost you $700 less than it would new from some second-hand seller, if you come home to find the screen unable to display light, you’re stuck with what you’ve got. Worst of all, paying to get the TV fixed will possibly eat away almost all of the savings you thought the TV had given you (and this is not to mention time lost driving it to a repair shop and back again).

Bottom line here: You absolutely should get a solid warranty and preferably from the manufacturer itself, for at least a year of coverage. This is worth more than any used TV discount.

Untrustworthy retailers and used/open-box TVs

The internet is a great place for buying great electronics at seriously competitive prices from reliable, honest retailers but at the same time, this huge space can be an ocean of shady sales practices and shady sales websites. Some websites offer suspiciously deep discounts on premium 4K TVs and while the offers they present can look tempting as hell, they’re a serious case of buyer beware. From used TVs with high likelihoods of damage parts to mostly new 4K TVs with after-market parts which void their factory warranty and also void their normal factory standards of quality, all sorts of consumer-unfriendly sales practices can be found on the web from lesser-known third party sellers.

This isn’t to say that these types of retailers are all dishonest, far from it, and the majority are probably going to do their best to offer a great product at a competitive price, but if you see a website selling a premium 4K TV like one of Samsung’s 2016 SUHD HDR models, Sony’s premium HDR 4K televisions or even OLED HDR TVs from LG at discounts that cut hundreds of dollars off the typical retail price. You might be buying a TV that’s already been used too much, returned and possibly had some of its parts replaced with cheap knock-offs that don’t deliver the same sort of quality. (This can be a particular problem with TV display panels).

One possible example of at least part of the above that recently came across our attention here at 4K.com was a case of a retailer called Abe’s of Maine which one of our readers claimed was offering exceptionally deep discounts on Samsung’s 2016 flagship, the KS9800 for as low a price as $2,399 and supposedly claiming that they were selling two different versions of the TV on their site! with the more affordable version being a Chinese-made model with a 4-bit display panel. Now while we ourselves have never dealt with this retailer and can’t vouch for the validity of the reader comment in question, we’ve never heard of KS9800 modles with 4-bit panels. Furthermore the claim described sounds very familiar as a sort of bait & switch offer on a used, previously repaired TV that no longer comes with the original quality parts it’s supposed to include. A run-through of reviews of this particular retailer indicated that multiple consumers had experienced similar situations with other electronics bought through them.

In another possible discount TV scenario, you might be getting your hands on a an “Open-box” TV that’s basically “new” in the sense that it hasn’t been used much or at all but which was at some point removed from its original packaging for some reason and then placed back in. TVs under bought with these conditions attached to them may end up working just fine but they could also end up defective and, again, with no complete factory warranty to cover you if they break down. Again, deep discounts are worth little if they mean a high likelihood of damaged goods or failure shortly after purchase.

It’s also worth noting one more reason to be suspicious of overly large third party retailer discounts on what should be a new, fairly high-end 4K TV model. Most major manufacturers try to sort of protect their biggest retailers’ sales margins and they do this mainly by establishing what is called a “unilateral pricing policy”, by which they convince retailers not to discount prices too much by threatening to refuse further product shipping or not honor factory warranties for those who overdo their MSRP discounts.

Shipping Problems

Finally, there’s the issue of shipping problems with used 4K TVs of any kind. The premium HDR TVs of today are robust, well-made pieces of consumer technology but their original factory packaging offers the best overall guarantee of their quality at the time they were made and boxed. This applies to their safety during shipping too. Every subsequent time these TVs get pulled from their padded boxes and repackaged for any further sales makes them less secure during whatever secondary shipping they go through and makes the likelihood of defective parts and problems with the TV much higher.

What you absolutely want to aim for is a 4K TV that has been packaged and shipped as minimally as possible and new TVs from reliable retailers or the manufacturer itself are the winners at this.

A Final Word

We’re not at all saying that you should completely stay away from any 4K TV unless you can buy it from its manufacturer, Amazon, Best Buy, or some other mega-corporation. Supporting smaller re-sellers while trying to get a legitimate good deal are both great ideas. What we are however recommending is that if you’re going to go buy what you hope is one fantastic piece of home entertainment technology, you might as well make sure to get the best product protection you can for it. This is worth more than pinching on sales price savings and your best bet for such protection is to avoid all the pitfalls above.

A brand spanking new Samsung KS9800 SUHD 4K HDR TV

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Stephan Jukic – April 3, 2017

For novices to the world of 4K UHD TV technology, a lot of terms like OLED, LCD, LED and now even QLED pop up all over the place to confuse the buyer and leave a bit of doubt about what the hell kind of TV is simply best for you and your budget? In addition to these bits of display technology terminology, you’ll also hear about stuff like IPS display and VA display, possibly wondering what the differences between those two mean as well.

Well, while we’ve explained many of these different technologies throughout the pages and posts of 4K.com, we think it’s maybe worth giving a bit of robust clarification in a single concise post where OLED, QLED, LCD/LED and their details are all laid out clearly.

Let’s start with the most widely known, affordable and common type of TV panel, LCD/LED. This is also where VA and IPS panel subtypes come into the picture. These two display panel technologies will shortly be covered more robustly in another post.

LCD/LED 4K TV

A Samsung KS8500 LCD HDR 4K TV from 2016

The oldest and most traditional TV display type among the three television technologies discussed here is LED/LCD. The vast majority of 4K TVs sold today are LED/LCD models and even QLED TVs  (for now) follow this basic design type, as we’ll explain further below in the QLED section.

In basic terms, LED/LCD display technology works by delivering light from LED backlight arrays of different types to an LCD panel in which RGB (Red Green Blue) pixels are integrated. The light passing through the pixels produces brightness and color in an LCD/LED TV while technologies such as local dimming (by which select areas of the LED backlight array can be shut off, check out our guide on this here) and light blocking filters in the pixels themselves create dark areas on a TV display. Not all 4K TVs have local dimming capacity and even the majority which do only offer the technology to a very limited, imprecise degree. Thus, the black levels in LCD/LED TVs are generally far from perfect, even though they have gotten much better than before in newer 4K TV models of this kind.

Some high-end LCD TVs offer full-array LED backlighting in which their backlight LEDs cover the entire rear of the screen, while other TVs only offer LEDs along the display edges. Furthermore, many newer, premium LCD TVs offer special quantum dot color filters in their LCD panels for delivery of wide color gamut. This in fact makes them similar to QLED TVs as they stand today.

Generally, LCD/LED TVs are among the most affordable 4K HDR or SDR TV types sold on today’s market due to the high standardization and establishment of their display technology. This however doesn’t mean that they lack for high quality picture performance, as we’ll shortly cover.

QLED 4K TV

QLED technology is two different things right now. On the one hand, it’s the potential future of 4K TV display due to certain developmental elements which promise to almost completely rework how 4K TV displays work.  On the other hand, the QLED display type that we see actually on the market in the 4K TVs (from Samsung only for now) of 2017 is almost identical to LCD/LED TV display but with some moderate modifications for increased color performance and viewing angles. In other words, QLED, as it’s available now, mostly consists of a marketing name attached to what are in fact LCD/LED TVs of the same kind that has been available for a while.

One of Samsung’s 2017 QLED 4K LCD TV models, the Q7F

The one main difference between today’s QLED TVs from Samsung and that brand’s or any other company’s LCD/LED TVs is that the new QLED models offer new, specialized metallic quantum dot nano-particle filters over their LEDs for purer, more accurate and more saturated colors.

Unlike many marketing names for 4K TVs today, Samsung’s QLED label does actually have some serious substance to it, and while the brand’s QLED TVs are in many ways just like their other premium LCD/LED TV cousins, they offer a genuinely superior level of color performance, even if the extra wide color gamut percentage is fairly small.

It’s also worth noting that QLED TV displays come with the same LED backlighting arrays and comparable black level/brightness specs to their non-QLED counterparts. Samsung’s Q7F, Q8 and Q9F QLED TVs, for example, are all edge-lit, just like most of Sony’s, LG’s or Samsung’s previous LCD 4K TVs.

A Special note on the future of QLED:

The above describes QLED technology as it stands today. However, there are developments taking place right now for a much more advanced QLED display technology by which, in very basic terms, the pixels of a 4K TV themselves will be made up of light-reacting nanoparticles that not only glow when electrical is run through them but also provide their own specific RGB color emissions. This new development would make future QLED TVs very similar to OLED TVs in their fundamental design but even better performers than OLED due to much more direct color creation inside the pixels themselves.

Quantum Materials for current and future QLED display technology

OLED 4K TV

OLED TV display technology, as we explain here in our OLED vs. LCD Guide, is fundamentally different from all existing LCD/LED TV designs and in most ways, a far superior performer at nearly every picture quality spec there is. OLED TVs are today generally the most expensive and best performing types of 4K HDR or SDR TVs being sold.

The way in which OLED works is largely responsible for such high performance metrics: Unlike LCD/LED TVs, OLED televisions have no backlight at all. Instead, each pixel on an OLED panel contains a tiny organic light emitting diode that lights up or completely turns off into full darkness depending on whether current is being run through it or not. As a result, OLED 4K TVs are capable of delivering perfect local dimming right down to the single-pixel level of precision (in a 4K TV this effectively means 8.29 million local dimming zones ) and due to the total black they can create by deactivating pixels, OLED TVs also deliver perfect, infinite contrast.

Color in OLED TVs is delivered by blue and yellow OLED crystals whose light then passes through red or green filters in different configurations over each pixel to create all the display colors and white that you see on the screen. OLED TVs are known to be less capable of high peak brightness than their best LCD/LED counterparts but this is now changing drastically and in any case, due to the perfect black levels of OLED, even a dimmer display panel creates far better perceived contrast.

Black & Contrast Performance between LED/LCD, QLED, OLED

Moving on to the performance differences between all three panel types, we start off with the single most important pair of specs for 4K TV display quality: contrast ratio and black levels. In LCD TVs these can vary enormously depending on manufacturer, panel type (IPS vs. VA mainly) and the presence of local dimming technology. In OLED TVs, black levels are almost universally perfect and contrast ratios are almost universally infinite. In today’s QLED TVs, the same applies as for LCD TVs but with less variation since all current QLED TV models come with VA display panel technology, which is known to deliver much better black levels than IPS panel display in 4K TVs.

contrast differences between VA Panel LCD TV display and its IPS counterpart

In basic terms, if you want perfect contrast, perfect black levels and pixel-perfect local dimming, an OLED TV cannot at all be beaten by either LCD or QLED TVs of any kind. If however you can’t afford the typically steeper prices of some OLED TVs, then a 4K LCD TV with VA panel display will normally deliver contrast ratios of 4000:1 or higher and the best LCD 4K HDR TVs with VA panels today normally deliver excellent black levels of 0.016 to 0.020 nits. All QLED TVs are VA models so all of them deliver this kind of contrast ratio and black level or better. Local dimming in premium 4K LCD TVs can allow for certain darker areas of the TV display to deliver extremely deep black levels but this can’t be done with anything close to the precision with which it’s possible in OLED displays, for which a single pixel can be made to emit no light whatsoever even if it’s surrounded by lit pixels.

IPS 4K LCD TVs, especially those without local dimming, typically offer the worst black levels and contrast ratios of all models, with contrast commonly topping out at 1100:1 and black levels hovering at 0.080 nits in even the very best IPS 4K HDR TVs sold today.

Brightness between LED, QLED, OLED

Brightness levels aren’t nearly as important as black levels in any 4K TV and even in HDR models, mid-range peak brightness can be compensated for by deeper blacks which increase the perception of brighter highlights in an on-screen image. Nonetheless, the major race today among manufacturers of virtually all premium 4KTVs of all types is for panels that reach previously unheard of levels of peak luminosity. The winners in this area are without a doubt LCD/LED TVs and QLED LCD TV models. The best televisions with both technologies can reach between 1400 and in some cases even 2000 nits of peak brightness. This is a lot and it comes much closer to simulating reality than anything yet seen in home television technology. For the majority of 4K LCD/LED TVs, peak brightness rarely exceeds 500 to 700 nits and many mid-range LCD TV models only manage about 400 to 500 nits even with HDR contrast enhancement technology built into them.

Contrast and brightness differences between OLED and LCD 4K HDR TVS (OLED on the left middle)

QLED TVs in particular, because they are all premium models, offer particularly high brightness levels of 1000 nits or more, with the top-shelf Samsung Q9F QLED TV model managing almost 2000 nits of peak brightness in a 10% area of its display. This is impressive indeed and only matched by Sony’s best LCD 4K TV, the Z9D, whose backlight array can manage as many as 2000 nits as well.

OLED TVs are a bit trickier to pin down on brightness performance. On the one hand, OLED has traditionally been associated with lower levels of peak brightness due to developmental limitations in the organic light emitting diodes which generate brightness in these TVs. However,, on the other hand, because OLED TVs create perfect blacks and infinite contrast where needed, their bright highlights stand out far more impressively than they do in almost any LCD or QLED LCD TV. Furthermore, while some of LG’s earliest OLED TVs could barely deliver peak brightness levels of 300 nits, the newest HDR models from 2017, such as the Signature W-7 OED TV, can offer peak brightness at nearly 1000 nits, enough to put the vast majority of LCD TVs to shame. In absolute terms however, the very best and brightest LCD and QLED TVs still massively beat the very best OLED TVs at how high their peak brightness can go.

Peak brightness in a 4K TV screen over a 2% window.

Color Performance between LED/LCD, QLED, OLED

Color performance between LCD TVs, QLED LCD TVs and OLED TVs is in many ways similar. Furthermore, now in the age of HDR wide color gamut TV technology, all premium 4K TVs of LCD or OLED design come with wide color gamut of over 90% DCI-P3 color space coverage for more saturated, vibrant and more realistic color performance. In other words, you’ll get awesome colors, and especially for HDR-mastered content from any of the above display types if you’re buying a full HDR TV (as all QLED TVs and most OLED TVs are in particular).

However, what we’ve noticed from our reviews of OLED, conventional LCD and now QLED TVs is that QLED technology from Samsung for quantum dot nano-particles does indeed deliver measurably higher levels of color performance over those of either OLED TVs or other premium HDR TVs we’ve looked at so far. OLED TVs on the other hand do deliver particularly realistic colors and their superb black levels particularly enhance the perception of vibrant color delivery, so they’re definitely, slightly superior to even high quality conventional LCD TVs we’ve looked at.

Motion Blur between LED/LCD, QLED, OLED

Moving pictures in a 4K TV can to some extent blur as the pixels which they shift through change from one color to another. The response time of these pixels, or the speed at which they change colors to represent motion in a picture is what most affects whether a TV smoothly handles fast picture motion or does so in a blurry way that can even be painful to watch. This applies especially to action scenes and lower response times mean less motion blur than higher response times.

Motion blur

LCD TV response times can vary enormously, with some low quality 4K TV models creating major blur during fast moving action and many premium HDR 4K LCD TV models delivering excellent motion blur control. QLED LCD TVs in particular are showing themselves to be great at handling color changes in their pixels very quickly with a particularly low response time by LCD TV standards.

However, OLED is unbeatable at motion blur handling. Due to the nature of their light and color emitting organic diodes, the pixels in these TVs can change colors virtually instantly with an extremely low response time.

What Kind of TV Display Should I Go For?

The bottom line is this. If you can afford it, go for an OLED TV due to their performance superiority across the board. However, if you want the best possible brightness and color performance so far, the best of Samsung’s new QLED TVs are even better performers in these two key areas. As for the majority of 4K LCD TVs and particularly those with HDR, it will depend a lot on specific model characteristics but in general, most of today’s 4K TVs perform wonderfully for most content as far as the average viewer’s needs are concerned. If you’re on a tight budget, many mid-range LCD TV 4K models from Sony, Samsung, LG and particularly Vizio will still deliver excellent display quality for most TV, disc, media player or streaming content since most of it isn’t HDR-formatted anyhow.

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Stephan Jukic – April 6, 2017

Recently, we covered the pros, cons and differences in general between three types of modern 4K HDR TV panel. These were OLED TVs, LCD/LED TVs and, the newest additions to the television landscape, QLED TVs. In covering those technologies, we briefly alluded to VA and IPS displays in 4K TVs for the QLED and LCD variations of TV display as it exists today. Now we’re going to give you breakdown of what these two terms mean and how they’ll affect your 4K TV experience. It’s also worth noting here that VA and IPS display panel technologies have nothing to do with OLED 4K TVs, those are an entirely different matter.

IPS and VA are two types of LCD TV panel technologies that completely dominate today’s LED-backlit 4K TV market. All LCD TVs sold by the major US and overseas brands that you’re going to find from any retailer right now come built either with VA display panel technology or IPS display panels. This also applies to today’s QLED TVs from Samsung since, all marketing jargon and a few color deliver improvements aside, QLEDs are still basically LCD/LED-backlit TVs (at least for now). So obviously, with this much market presence, VA and IPS are important, and knowing which means what will have an impact on what sort of 4K TV you buy, because both VA and IPS come with their own specific pros and cons, as we’re going to cover now.

Differentiating VA and IPS

VA stands for vertical alignment in a display panel and IPS stands for In-Plane Switching in a display panel. While both panel types do the same basic thing, which is filter LED backlighting through their pixel designs and color filters to create an image on your 4K TV, they each perform this fundamental task in their own highly particular ways. This of course heavily affects how both technologies perform.

To summarize, all LCD TVs, 4K or not, basically operate by using tiny liquid crystal structures inside the RGB (Red, Green Blue) color packets which make up each pixel to form different colored images through reactions and position changes in these crystals when they’re charged with electricity. Depending on how said LCD crystals are being charged, their positions will also change and either block light or allow it to pass through them to certain degrees.

Typical IPS pixel structure

As a result, both IPS and VA panels create their specific levels of brightness, black depth and color delivery. However, as we said, each performs the above process in its own way and with very different performance results between the two. In the case of IPS display panels, their LCD crystals are horizontally aligned by design and when they’re charged, they rotate in ways that either let light flow through or block it. With VA panels, crystal alignment is vertical (as the name suggests) and these crystals only move horizontally when charged to allow light through.

However, because VA display crystals are vertically aligned when closed and thus more narrowly positioned, they block out light far more effectively if needed. In contrast, IPS crystals tend to allow more backlight light bleed due to their constant horizontal position. Another effect of these different alignment patterns is that, while VA panel crystals are far better at blocking light due to their vertical closed positioning, this same design causes viewing angles in VA TVs to be much narrower.

Typical VA pixel structure

There are other differences between the two TVs, as we’ll cover in a second but in basic terms, IPS TV display panels deliver much broader viewing angles at the cost of weak black levels and contrast ratios. VA 4K TV panels deliver far superior blacks and contrast, which are both extremely important for high picture quality, while IPS panels are weak on contrast and black level but manage superb viewing angles. Let’s look at these and other details a bit more now.

Black Level & Uniformity

Absolute black levels are without a doubt better in Vertical Alignment panel 4K TVs. This is something we’ve noted across the board in all cases of VA design in any 4K TV from any brand when compared to IPS models from the same or any other brand. Your typical 2016 or 2017 VA panel display can deliver black levels of between 0.025 and 0.015 nits while their IPS counterparts from even the best manufacturers like Vizio, Sony and LG manage between 0.075 and 0.090 nits. This is a major difference and it’s particularly notable during high contrast scenes or when watching a TV in dimly lit rooms. It’s probably the single biggest negative to IPS display panels and because contrast and deep rich black levels are so important to high quality visuals, the weak blacks of IPS displays can negatively affect color perception and realism. They can also affect HDR quality since even in HDR IPS TVs, black levels remain poor.

It should however ne noted that some 4K IPS TVs come with local dimming technology. A particularly good example of this are several of Vizio’s 2016 and 2017 HDR LCD 4K TVs. Local dimming, which actually shuts off some of the LED backlights in an LCD TV’s backlight array can thus allow an IPS TV to deliver much deeper black levels when the feature is activated. This applies especially to full-array LED backlit IPS 4K TVs like Vizio’s P-Series 55 inch model.

Black uniformity in IPS 4K TVs also suffers heavily due to the design of IPS pixel arrays. Because their pixels bleed more light in general, small variations in light bleed or LED backlight brightness are much more easily visible, creating cloudy effects when a display is set to deliver complete blackness.

Our Verdict: VA panel technology is an absolute winner at delivering superior black levels and black uniformity.

Contrast Ratios

The answer to which display panel type wins at this comparison should be obvious. Given the far superior black levels of Vertical Alignment technology, contrast ratios in VA panel TVs are dramatically superior to those of IPS models unless high quality local dimming is taken into consideration. The difference is enormous too. While a typical VA 4K TV model can manage native contrast ratios of 3500:1 at the very least, and in many cases deliver contrast ratios of 6000:1 or better, we have yet to see an IPS 4K TV handle contrast ratios that go beyond 1400:1. For most IPS 4K TVs such as the majority of LG’s LCD models, contrast is actually even weaker than this, in some cases sitting at 850:1 or even lower. This is to be expected of IPS but it’s not a good spec for quality picture performance.

VA contrast vs IPS contrast on right in a darkened room

Our Verdict: VA is the winner at contrast by a huge margin.

Color performance

When it comes to  both SDR 4K TVs and HDR models with wide color gamut and 10-bit color, the raw color volume differences between IPS models and VA models are almost null. In other words, all HDR wide color specs being equal, the two different display panel types perform about the same at delivering high dynamic range color, 10-bit color for 1.07 billion color values and overall color saturation. LG’s Super UHD 4K HDR TVs such as the UH9500 and UH8500 are two particularly notable IPS TV models with superb color performance despite their weak contrast ratios and black levels compared to a typical mid-range VA HDR TV with the same HDR color specs.

However, black levels and contrast do create a visual perception of more vibrant colors due to how the human eye perceives contrasts. Thus, a VA TV with deeper, richer blacks can look like its delivering sharper, richer colors in content simply because the onscreen dark tones contrast so much more sharply with colorful objects in the same piece of content. This is something that viewers should keep in mind and a reason why black levels and high contrast are considered so important for a more realistic and vibrant level of picture quality.

Our Verdict: IPS and VA technically tie here based on review examinations we’ve done and actual raw color volume coverage comparisons. However, in terms of human visual perception, the higher contrast and richer blacks of VA will possibly make a viewer perceive higher color quality.

Other Display Characteristics and Motion Handling

So where do IPS 4K TVs really beat their VA counterparts? Well, two important factors stand out. First and foremost, IPS –due to its horizontal pixel alignment—delivers far better viewning angles than VA display. An average VA 4K TV display will lose a significant amount of its color accuracy and contrast quality at angles of more than 20 to 25 degrees from dead center, while an IPS TV can often continue to deliver excellent display quality even when viewed from well over 50 degrees off center. This means that if you have a big living room and some of your viewing areas are way off to the side of where your TV is going to be sitting, VA will mess up the quality of the viewing experience, while IPS will work as an excellent alternative.

Secondly, IPS TVs tend to consume less power than their VA cousins due to their tendency toward lower peak brightness levels. This does of course mean that your TV can’t push out the bright highlights as well as some VA rivals but if you’re worried about saving money in the long term with your light bill, IPS gives you a bit of an edge.

It’s worth noting here that motion handling in 4K TVs is not noticeably affected by whether your TV comes with IPS or VA panel technology. In our experience, TVs with great motion handling can come in IPS versions and VA versions while performing equally at managing motion blur, judder and other things like motion interpolation. A TV that’s bad at motion control won’t be bad at it because it’s either IPS or VA in other words.

Bottom Line

Some would argue that neither IPS or VA display types are inherently superior to each other and while there is some validity to this claim due to the fact that both have uses in which one panel would be much more ideal than the other, we do think that VA is the overall better choice for most people who don’t have issues with accommodating wide viewing angles in their living room or den. Assuming you don’t need to view your 4K TV from well off center, a VA display simply delivers better performance at three of the most important display specs there are: Black level, contrast and black uniformity.

Story by 4k.com

The post VA Display vs. IPS Display in 4K HDR TVs: What You Need to Know appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – May 15, 2017

Having recently published a review of LG’s “mid-range” 2017 OLED, the C7 and now being in the process of completing a review of Sony’s first-ever OLED TV, the new A1E, we were given a great chance to actually compare these two 4K OLED TV models and decide which one is the better overall performer.

Now, one might argue that the comparison is slightly unfair since the A1E represents the very peak of Sony’s flagship 4K TV model range while the C7 is LG’s least expensive 2017 OLED 4K HDR TV model, with several more such as the G7, E7 and flagship W7 Signature model above it in price and supposed display quality. However, it is exactly for this reason that the following comparison becomes so valid. Sony has priced its A1E OLED model quite steeply and the 65 inch versions of both that we’re specifically comparing here (though the display performance of 55 inch versions for each brand will be virtually identical in its metrics) are priced at dramatically different levels with the Sony model being the much more expensive OLED television.

The natural conclusion many consumers might draw from their price differences is that the Sony model delivers superior performance to at least partially justify a price that’s that much steeper and for this reason, we want to see if Sony’s TV even outperforms LG’s cheapest 2017 OLED model enough to make paying extra for the A1E worthwhile.

Let’s take a look at how they measure up against each other across several key performance and design metrics.

NOTE: LG tends to manufacture its 4K OLED HDR TVs with remarkably similar display specs and completely identical smart TV and connectivity specs across all models for each year, so aside from differences on pricing, some aspects of motion handling and possibly minor peak brightness differences, many of the measurements for LG’s C7 below apply fully to the company’s other 2017 OLED 4K TVs.

Design

Design is one highly subjective measurement for 4K TV quality. Some people like curved displays, others prefer bulky TVs and others like some particular detail of a certain brand’s designs that just makes them stand out in their eyes. Thus, as far as this metric goes, the only things we can really objectively judge on design quality are characteristics of a TV which functionally improve or decrease its usability to consumers.

With that in mind, we’d say that the A1E and LG’s OLED C7 are pretty much on par with each other. The C7 offers a much more “classical” OLED 4K TV design that’s very similar to those we’ve seen in previous mid-range OLED 4K TV models from the company in past years, with a fairly narrow support that sits under the TV itself and a vertical flat screen like those found in most premium Sony, Samsung or LG LCD TV models. The A1E however delivers a sort of new take on TV design that works remarkably well but is decidedly unconventional. It stands up in the same way that a framed photo would with a rear support that goes from the top of the TV to whatever surface it’s placed on. Thus, the A1E actually reclines slightly when set on top of a surface from which it will be viewed. At first this takes a bit of getting used to but the overall viewability of the TV isn’t affected much at all. More interestingly, because of its design, the A1E can present only its display to a watcher even without being mounted to a wall.

Winner: LG’s C7 by a very slight margin due to its smaller footprint and perfectly vertical display.

Black level and OLED Dimming

There’s not much to say here. OLED is OLED and if there’s one thing it should be able to pull no matter what brand of TV it’s built into that’s the creation of perfect total blacks and dimming or brightening down to the single pixel level if necessary. Both the A1E and LG’s C7 pull this off identically with perfect infinite contrast and single pixel local dimming (as it applies loosely to OLED display technology). The LG C7 does gain one advantage on the A1E in one metric that relates to this one but we’ll cover that in further detail shortly.

Winner: Perfect tie between the LG C7 and Sony A1E.

HDR & HDR Color

Sony’s picture processing engine has always been excellent in our view and in the ultra-premium A1E, the company installed their best version of it to date. This is called the 4K HDR X1 Extreme Engine with HDR Remaster, and it does as fine a job of processing light, shadow and HDR in individual pixels as needed for any piece of content. Both of these 4K TVs support or soon will support (depending on firmware update schedules) the same HDR formats, including HDR10, Dolby Vision, and the HLG broadcast 4K content format, so in terms of high dynamic range compatibility they’re about on par.

Furthermore, the color quality delivered by both the A1E and the C7 is virtually identical. We noted a very slightly higher (less than 1 percentage point) level of DCI-P3 wide color gamut space coverage in LG’s C7 model but this difference is so small that it may vary to the Sony OLED’s favor in other units and in either case it will not be noticeable to even the sharpest naked eye. Both models obviously support 10-bit OLED RGB color value rendering for 1.07 billion colors but Sony’s A1E performs ever so slightly better at creating flawless color gradations without any visible banding whatsoever. On the other hand, LG’s C7 OLED delivered an ever so slightly superior delta E for accurate color delivery, though the difference is again so small that the naked eye of most viewers will be unlikely to notice a difference. In the case of either OLED TV, you’ll get color performance that’s equally visibly spectacular pretty much across the board.

Winner: Tie between the Sony A1E and LG C7 model despite some minor quirks in one or the other TV’s favor. The A1E does however display superior 10-bit color rendering with no visible banding.

Brightness

Brightness is one metric of display performance where the LG C7 basically kicks the A1E’s ass in comparison to how closely they match in so many other display specs covered here. Measuring their comparative peak brightness levels under SDR and HDR content viewing conditions is where the A1E really underperforms the C7 since it can create a maximum sustained or peak brightness that’s almost uniformly inferior to the LG model under all display brightness percentage areas. Thus for example: the A1E’s SDR content peak brightness for a 10% window sits at 381 nits while in the LG C7 it reached up to 390 nits. In a sustained SDR 50% display brightness area, the A1E performs even worse, with a brightness measurement of 225 nits while the C7 LG OLED managed up to 375 nits. These are notable differences with all other things like color performance and black levels being pretty much equal in both TVs.

For HDR content display, which is where today’s HDR OLED TVs deliver typically higher levels of brightness, the LG C7 comes out as a winner once again: 10% peak brightness display in the A1E measured at 679 nits while in the C7 OLED it peaked at 732 nits. For sustained 50% display space HDR brightness, the A1E reaches up to 235 nits while the LG C7 model managed 292 nits. In the majority of all other measurements of peak and sustained brightness over 2%, 10% and 50% display areas, the C7 beats the A1E by a notable margin. One major exception to this LG OLED edge on brightness is performance when the entire screen of both TVs are set to emit peak or sustained highest brightness. At these 100% display surface brightness settings, the two OLED 4K TV models perform almost identically in both SDR and HDR, with a 5 nit higher level of brightness in the A1E under SDR content viewing conditions.

Winner: LG’s C7 OLED HDR TV performs notably better on the majority of brightness measurements.

Motion Handling and upscaling of content

In terms of motion handling, both the A1E and the LG C7 are nearly equally matched across the board with one exception that we’ll get to momentarily. We come here again to the excellent picture processing engines of both TV models and how excellently they upscale non-4K content sources, even adding to them some touches of HDResque color, contrast and richness. In this area both the A1E and C7 are pretty much on par, upscaling 480p, 720p and 1080p content from well-mastered sources beautifully.

Both TVs handle motion blur better than any LCD TV we’ve yet seen could hope to match, with response times of less than a millisecond and beautiful, perfect motion interpolation for content sources with lower frame rates than these televisions’ native refresh rates of 120Hz. It’s only on 24p content playback that the Sony A1E falls just a bit flat since, unlike the LG C7, it does not support judder-free playback of 24p video via 60p and 60i signal formats, only through a 24p signal.

Winner: LG’s C7 model beats the A1E on one single spec for 24p content playback.

Connectivity

Both Sony’s A1E and LG’s C7, along with all the rest of each company’s premium 2017 4K HDR smart TVs come with nearly identical and superb cutting-edge connectivity specs. Both TVs offer up the same HDR compatibility that we mentioned earlier above through their connectivity ports and settings and both 4K TVs deliver the same number of HDMI ports and USB ports. Beyond this however, a couple of physical connectivity differences favor one TV over the other. On the one hand, the Sony A1E offers single 3.5mm Analog Audio Out and IR In ports which the LG C7 lacks but on the other hand all four of the C7’s HDMI ports offer full HDMI 2.0 bandwidth size and only ports 2 and 3 in the Sony A1E offer HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.

Winner: We’ll call this a tie between the two though the LG C7 offers more HDMI ports with 2.0-level throughput.

Gaming Chops

Gaming connectivity-wise, the two TVs are almost equally matched in terms of format support but with the C7 winning out on input lag. Both offer Game Modes and gaming functionality in Game Mode for 4K at 60Hz, 4K with HDR at 60Hz and also options for 4K with 4:4:4. However, the A1E also offers a setting for 8 bit HDR gaming in 4K resolution at 60Hz which the LG C7 lacks. On the other hand, while both TVs provide good input lag in these different gaming settings for gamers, the input lag of the LG C7 is consistently lower at 21ms than that of the Sony A1E, which measures at around 30ms almost across the board in its game mode.

Winner: The LG C7 4K HDR TV beats the Sony A1E on input lag performance.

Smart TV Functionality

We love both of the smart TV platforms in LG’s and Sony’s 4K TVs of today, and both have their distinct benefits. While the LG WebOS 3.5 platform of the C7 is definitely the more user-friendly of the two, Android TV comes with integrated access to the Google Play Store and its huge trove of smart apps. Sony has also improved usability in Android TV’s latest version by adding a quick list of frequently used settings for easy access and a microphone in the A1E’s remote for voice search of content. A ‘Chromecast built-in’ addition to Android TV or the A1E is also a useful piece of software technology.

WebOS 3.5 in the C7 also comes with a microphone feature and excellent usability overall while including buttons for quick menu items. Again, we like both smart platforms in their own ways and can’t decide which is “better” in objective terms.

Winner: Tie between Sony and LG on this one

Pricing

Pricing is where the LG C7 and Sony A1E 65 inch models (the ones specifically mainly being compared here) show the greatest disparity of all in LG’s favor. As our comparison above notes consistently, the two OLED TVs are remarkably similar performers with the C7 actually beating the Sony A1E on certain key performance metrics. Despite this, the Sony model is retailing for roughly $1500 more than its LG counterpart. That’s right, at least as of this writing, Sony’s 65 inch XBR65A1E sells for $5,498 while LG’s 65 inch OLED65C7P sells for “just” $3,996.99. This is a huge nearly $1500 difference for such minor performance variations between the two TVs.

Check the Sony A1E 4K OLED Ultra HD HDR LED TV (2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

Winner: With pricing and performance balanced out, LG’s C7 is the much better deal against the Sony A1E OLED.

Final Opinion

There is no objective doubt about it based on all the information and comparisons we’ve covered above: Both the A1E from Sony and the C7 are superb pieces of 4K HDR display technology and either would make almost any consumer very happy in the living room. However, LG’s cheaper 2017 OLED HDR 4K TV the C7, in both its 55 inch and 65 inch versions offers the much better value if you want a new HDR OLED TV and some savings. It delivers the same as or slightly better than the Sony model A1E in almost all metrics of TV performance while costing hundreds or even more than $1000 less than Sony’s first-ever 4K high dynamic range OLED model.

Check the LG C7 4K OLED Ultra HD HDR LED TV (2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

The post Sony’s A1E OLED 4K HDR TV vs. LG’s C7 OLED 4K HDR TV: How They Compare appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – July 15, 2017

The LG OLED 4K TV lineup has never been about budget pricing. Anyone who follows the 4K TV market to any reasonable degree knows this and in the case of many consumers, they still decide to buy one of these televisions, and for a very good reason: They’re damn spectacular. In virtually all across the board tests done among premium and ultra-premium 4K HDR TVs since way back in 2015, the OLED models of LG scored top positions in virtually every important metric of picture performance with very few and very specific exceptions.

This applies today with the 2017 OLED models from this brand more than it ever has before due to their having the highest peak performance specs we’ve yet seen from LG’s OLED 4K TVs. At the same time, LG and its associated retailers have brought the prices of the main 2017 models down to their lowest levels yet. Making them one exceptionally attractive option for would-be buyers of a new premium 4K TV with the best possible display specs available today.

LG’s OLED “mid-range” C7 2017 HDR OLED series of TVs in particular has seen its price drop to levels that put it only about $400 or even with some models much, much less pricier compared to its closest 2016 counterparts (previously, when initially released, the 2017 models cost a solid $1000 more than their 2016 cousins).

LG’s 2016 C6 and E6 OLED 4K TVs

Some examples of these differences can be seen here, with the C7, which we chose as the best representative of LG’s OLED 4K HDR TV models for reasons we elaborate on further down:

LG OLED 2017 model C7 55 INCH: $ 2,496 99

LG OLED 2017 model C7  65 INCH: $3,796.99

LG OLED 2016 model C6 65 inch: $2,996.99

LG OLED 2016 model C6 55 inch: $1,996.99

As you can see, the Amazon.com new model price differences between these two key 2016 and 2017 LG OLED TVs are somewhat varied. The 2017 55 inch model costs a little over $400 more than the 2016 model while the 65 inch 2017 model is nearly $800 more expensive than its 2016 cousin.

Now there is a further interesting thing about these TVs that you as a consumer need to consider. This is the fact that picture performance is remarkably uniform among all OLED models for a given year. Color, contrast, brightness and black level metrics as well as important connectivity specs all stay remarkably uniform regardless of if you’re measuring them in a lower-priced LG OLED model or the company’s most insanely expensive flagship OLED for a given year, such as 2017, in this case.

What this essentially means is that unless you’re really dead-set on the stunningly innovative designs of LG’s premium 2017 LG TVs such as the “picture-on-glass” G7 and E7 models or the even more impressive W7 flexible screen OLED TV, you’ll get the same quality of display from any of the LG lineup. This means that going for the cheapest C7 model for this year will give you the same movie watching experience as going for the $10,000+ W7 flagship LG TV, which we reviewed here This is why we particularly love the C7 LG OLED for this year and why we also highly recommended the 2016 cheapest OLED TVs that were the B6 and C6 models. They give the same visual quality for a fraction of the price of their showy, arguably awesome looking higher-end cousins for each year.

The LG 2016 C6 also happened to be curved, unlike its 2017 C7 counterpart.

Thus our point is this: If the C7 2017 model is what you’re happy to settle for because you don’t particularly care about external design differences between OLED models, the prices you’re looking at paying boil down to those shown above (depending on further pricing changes depending on when you read this) and the quality you get will be as good as anything you could get with the pricier OLEDs for this year.

With the above in mind, should you rush out and get yourself a 2017 LG HDR 4K TV? Well maybe but there’s one further crucial thing to consider:

Quite simply, it’s also worth knowing that LG’s 2017 TVs are only marginally better performers than the company’s 2016 models. They do indeed deliver slightly higher levels of HDR brightness and better high dynamic range wide color performance along with superior gaming specs for fans of console gaming, but in virtually all other regards, the models from both years perform almost equally well even under precise testing conditions. Under ordinary viewing conditions, even the specs that the 2017 TVs do better like color and brightness will barely be noticeable for their superiority since the differences are mostly fairly small. Thus, if you already own a 2016 model or want to save even more money on OLED technology, you can easily settle for the 2016 OLED TV and still get an almost identically great premium OLED 4K HDR TV experience. Furthermore, as 2017 wears on, and especially during the upcoming Christmas holiday months, we’re expecting the 2016 models to cost even less than they already do –though the 2017 TVs will see some price reductions as well.

However, if you truly want that extra bit of superiority in your 4K TV and don’t already own a 2016 model, yes, we’d recommend the 2017 OLEDs over their last year’s counterparts. We especially recommend the C7 editions for the reasons stated above and since the current price of the LG OLED 55 inch C7 is only about $50 higher than that of its 2016 counterpart, Yes, absolutely, go for it..

Check the LG OLED C7 4K HDR TV(2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

The post LG’s 2017 OLED 4K HDR TVs Are Cheaper Than Ever But Are They Worth Buying? appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – October 17, 2017

Microsoft’s executives are definitely sold on the 4K HDR TV revolution and their Xbox One X console is the crowning showpiece of just how much the company has invested in the rise of these new display technologies. That’s the key reason why the upcoming 4K Xbox is being promoted so heavily for exactly these kinds of specs

And it’s worth noting that this isn’t something that Microsoft does for just any new technology. There has to also be conviction that what’s coming is here to stay for at least a reasonable length of time. These at least are the thoughts of Microsoft’s own Xbox development head Albert Penello, who recently stated that the company doesn’t jump onto just any new tech fad. His main example being the development of 3D TVs during the last few years, a technology for which Microsoft never really modified any sort of Xbox features due to a lack of belief in the persistence of 3D. In that case they have definitely been right as even 4K TV manufacturers have now mostly taken 3D away from even their most cutting-edge newer 4K HDR TV models.

As for 4K however, Penello explained that Xbox definitely recognizes the quality of the new resolution in display and Microsoft wants to get involved heavily here because they believe the technology will have major staying power. This is why the Xbox One X was developed with such a powerhouse emphasis on 4K UHD specs and with support for the even more recent but also crucial home entertainment display standards of high dynamic range, both of which are supported by the console.

According to Penellos’ own words, “We saw the 4K shift coming. We pretty much skipped 3D if you remember in the 360 era, so we really believe in 4K. We were convinced and we wanted to create a box that was the showcase device for 4K televisions”. The Xbox One X was their flagship design for this. Previous to it, the 2016 Xbox One S console was also released by Microsoft as a sort of gap-filler between the outdated Xbox One and what the company really wanted to express their faith in 4K display but unlike the upcoming Xbox One X, the One S model only supports 4K pass-through, 4K UHD Blu-ray disc playback and upscaling of 1080p content to simulated 4K. For full blown native 4K UHD gaming and all the accessories, the One S is nowhere near powerful enough. It did however support HDR as well, which requires little in the way of additional processing power despite its enormous display performance enhancements.

The Xbox One X does however come with all the 4K HDR trimmings and is without a doubt the worlds most powerful console across the board. Sony released its own attempt at 4K gaming in the form of the PlayStation 4 Pro in late 2016 but this console was more on par with the Xbox One S and its 4K upscaling-oriented specs than with any true attempt at a full 4K UHD gaming device. Sony promoted the PS4 Pro as being ready for native 4K but subsequent trials and consumer use of the console have indicated otherwise for the most part.

For the Xbox One X, Microsoft wants no doubts. At $500 the new console will indeed be pricey after its November 7^th, 2017 release date but gamers who go for it and own a 4K PC monitor or TV will get the sort of real ultra HD gaming experience that the PS4 Pro from Sony and the Xbox One S only played around with without getting serious.

Consequently, new game releases for the upcoming console have to also keep 4K resolution firmly in mind, and this is already happening. Existing releases such as “Forza 7 Motorsport”, “Middle Earth: Shadow of War” and “Assassins Creed Origins” among a number of others. While all of these games and others which are pending release will also be retro-compatible with older Xbox consoles, they reserve their very best 4K ultra HD performance mixed with HDR color/contrast details for the Xbox One X 4K console.

Furthermore, these new games are designed to leave the offerings that have been released by Sony and its partners for the PlayStation 4 Pro in the dust in terms of overall gaming experience and visual quality.

For his part, Penello claimed to be full of respect for the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro, claiming to “give them a lot of credit for what they did there” and further stating that “for me, the most interesting observation is that we both arrived at a similar idea even if the execution is slightly different”.

He also explained that:

“We don’t have insight into what their plans are, so when they announced the Pro, I was as surprised as anybody else was. They had a different idea in mind for what they wanted to build, so in retrospect it may seem like we were reacting to what they were doing. But people in the business know that this has been in the works for years, and we have to lock the specs years in advance.”

The specs differences between the two devices are indeed different at that. The PAS4 Pro is a fantastic console at a much more modest price and has plenty to over both 4K TV owners and regular HD gamers but in terms of specs, it simply doesn’t match what the Xbox One X is bringing. Aside from costing over $100 more than the Sony console, the One X offers up 8 custom X86 cores clocked at 2.3GHz vs the PS4 Pro’s 2.1GHz 8-core AMD Jaguar CPU, 6 teraflops of performance vs. the 4.2 of the PS4 Pro and a 12GB GDDR5 RAM vs. an 8GB GDDR5 RAM in the Sony platform. Both offer comparable storage space but the Xbox One X also throws in a full 4K UHD HDR Blu-ray player while the PS4 Pro delivers only HD Blu-ray playback.

In other words, for 4K gaming, the One X is the closest any console has yet come to PC GPU levels of power while the PS4 Pro is only a few notches above a normal HDTV game console.

On the gaming front, those who buy into One X and its lineup of 4K UHD-capable games can almost certainly look forward a far superior experience in terms of details, frame rates and obviously resolution. PS4 Pro and Sony’s lineup of games for the device will probably indeed probably be crushed on the performance front.

On the other hand, most TV owners and console gamers are still firmly in HD territory, (at least for now) so for this majority, there’s a good chance that the considerably cheaper price of the PS4 Pro will cause serious competition for the Xbox One X despite its better chops. In terms of prestige and market leadership though, Sony definitely has incentive to come up with a truly powerful new PlayStation release in 2018 to rival what Microsoft has now done.

Story by 4k.com

The post Xbox One X vs. PS4 Pro: Microsoft Wants To Crush Sony With 4K Gaming appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – November 23, 2017

Black Friday and the days leading up to it are genuine opportunities for some major and unique discounts on both 4K HDR TVs and a whole pile of other electronics. Yes, a lot of the deals being found aren’t all that great at a closer look are more fluff than real value when you take a closer look but among them there are many sincerely excellent gems for hacking dozens to hundreds of dollars off of some of the best consumer electronics made this year. We’ve covered several of these particularly solid discount deals for this week’s shopping session and we’re going to be delivering many more leading into Cyber Monday

In this post however, we’re taking a step back and giving you a more practical look at Black Friday shopping with several extremely crucial key points that you absolutely should keep in mind before you press that “add to cart” button or pull out your money at an in-store location. The following buying tips apply to any TV purchase you might make this week from any retailer and some of them even apply to other electronics, so we recommend keeping them in mind regardless of what you’re going to be buying.

Refurbished vs. New 4K TVs

First and absolute most important is making sure you’re getting exactly the product you want in the best possible condition it can have, and with maximal warranty protection. This almost always means going for a brand new TV even if it’s still slightly on the pricey side after any Black Friday or Cyber Monday discounts you’re seeing for it. The thing here is that many online and offline retailers come out with what seem to be even more awesome discounts for so-called refurbished versions of today’s newest and best-selling 4K HDR TVs. These often beat even the best Black Friday discounts you’ve seen for factory models of the same products but they might have a problem:

Yes, these sound good but you need to be extremely careful about going for them. In many cases, refurbished means inferior replacement components and in the worst cases it can even mean no warranty or extremely limited warranty protection. The screens or other parts on such TVs may not be original factory versions and as a result their actual performance is much weaker than it should be. If they break down later or simply disappoint, that possible lack of warranty coverage which all new televisions do come with could bite you badly. We’ve written a whole previous post on this subject and here we repeat the essentials of our argument again. Some refurbished 4K TVs can indeed be great and honest deals, but don’t get blinded by their low prices either because the risk of problems is much higher than the shaved dollars in many cases. It’s usually better to just go for something new.

Look Out for HDR

HDR has become an absolutely crucial spec of virtually all newer 2016 and 2017 4K UHD TVs being sold today. It’s now being included in a growing percentage of 4K UHD content and even the world of console gaming is seriously getting in on this new technology. The reason why is simple enough. Even more than 4K resolution itself, high dynamic range creates a genuinely superior level of picture quality wherever it’s added to content or supported by a display of any kind. Thus, if you’re going for a new 4K TV anyhow during these days of discounts, you might as well go for the most future-proof model you can. Your TV having HDR is a crucial part of that future-proofing. Fortunately, virtually all 2017 4K TVs you’ll find being sold anywhere for Black Friday/Cyber Monday are automatically HDR models, and many of them are extraordinarily affordable while including some of the best possible HDR specs you can buy today. Getting the one that best fits your budget and brand preferences is not at all difficult.

UHD HDR TV Connectivity Specs You Need

Diverse connectivity ports and other specs in today’s 4K HDR TVs are a crucial part of what makes these machines so flexible for a broad array of content options. Most importantly, a TV should have HDR/4K@60Hz-capable HMDI ports (as many as possible), USB 3.0 connectivity, Ethernet and a robust WiFi package. If any of these are missing or defective in the 4K TV you want to buy, don’t go for that model in most cases. Fortunately, most of today’s 4K TVs come with pretty universal connectivity specs that are cutting edge almost across the board. However, some models can come with 3 HDMI ports instead of 4 or offer 4K HDR support on only a couple of the HDMI ports they do come with. If you already have a bunch of external streaming 4K media devices and game consoles such as the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro (both of which support 4K and HDR) in your home, then go for a new TV with as many 4K HDR capable HDMI ports as possible. Samsung’s and Sony’s 4K UHD TVs are particularly good in this regard. So are any of LG’s OLED 4K TVs.

Our 4K TV connectivity guide explains all the details you need to know about the right connectivity for your TV.

Refresh Rate Details

Refresh rate is a crucial factor in how smoothly your 4K TV plays back all sorts of content. Among the 2016 and 2017 4K televisions you’re likely to find being sold on Black Friday among any major retailers right now, all will come with either a native 60Hz refresh rate or a native 120Hz refresh rate. Actual native screen refresh rates don’t go higher than 120Hz at this time. Any number beyond that is a sort of artificial doubling of real refresh that adds little to picture quality. However, because TV makers like to hype their products with cool sounding jargon, they’ll often tout these inflated fake refresh rates with names like “Motionflow”, “Automotion Plus” or “ClearMotion” and claim them as double what your TVs actual refresh is. Thus a native 60Hz TV will be labeled as having a 120Hz (insert fancy word with “motion” in it here) rate and a native 120Hz TV will claim 240Hz. Without going into too much further detail, two things should be kept in mind with these numbers: First, pay attention only to native refresh rate, not the false motion interpolation rates. 60Hz and 120Hz are the only mainstream native rates and the only ones that count. Secondly, if you can get the higher REAL native 120Hz rate within your budget, go for it, it is slightly better.

Our detailed guide to 4K TV refresh rates explains all of the above in fine detail if you want to know more.

A Bad TV On Sale is Still A Bad TV

This point is loosely related to our first one above about refurbished 4K TVs, but in a more general sense. Quite simply, some 4K TV models just aren’t very good, and despite whatever awesome Black Friday discounts you may find on them, well, a bad TV is a bad TV no matter how affordable it is, and if you’re looking for value and quality, don’t go for that kind of television regardless of its price discounts. In other words, check the models that interest you carefully. Look through existing reviews of their performance, visit our own 4K TV guide page where we list our top 10 4K TV picks and further down, the best televisions and brands in each category of TV size. It’s better to spend a bit more on a television that can work great and stay future proof for years than save a bundle on something craptastic that you hate within a few days of plugging it in.

Future Proofing Is Key

4K TV display and connectivity standards are evolving almost all the time, so it can be hard to keep up. This however doesn’t mean that you need to replace your 4K TV every year just to stay up to date on the content you want to watch with it. Instead (and this relates to our points above about connectivity issues and buying bad TVs) just make sure that you buy the newest possible 4K HDR TV from a brand that’s trustworthy that your budget allows. These TVs may have their comparative defects but they will all at least get the essential specs and firmware updates for a future-proof entertainment experience well after you buy them.

Further Reading:

Our Top 10 Picks for today’s best 4K TVs and Buying Guide

Top 50 Inch 4K HDR TVs of 2017

Top 55 Inch 4K HDR TVs of 2017

Story by 4k.com

The post 6 Things You Need to Know Before Buying a 4K TV On Or After Black Friday appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – Updated November 24, 2017

Black Friday is less than a day away but so many of the genuinely good 4K TV, camera, console and other electronics deals are already here and ready for taking advantage of. Others are just hours away but might quickly lead to stocks running dry if the discounts are good and the value high enough. There are literally dozens of 4K electronics deals to choose from and the listings of cool products grow even larger if we include TVs or other gadgets that don’t include ultra HD specs. It can get just a bit confusing.

However, here in this one comprehensive post, we’ve cleared up all the mess for you and put together our collated, measured list of what we consider to be the absolute best 4K TV and other electronics deals available right now between today and tomorrow. If you’re looking for a 4K ultra HD HDR TV in particular, you need go no further than this list and the links presented on it for the best possible deals by specific product, retailer and device type or brand. We’ll be updating this product roster right into Black Friday itself until the deals run out.

Also check back to the site for our individual deal special posts, which cover product offers which we consider to be particularly awesome.

The Three Absolute Best Black Friday 4K HDR TV Deals (to start things off)

First and foremost, these three are the best 4K HDR TV deals we’ve found so far of everything that’s been shown to-date. We’ll see if further discounts or even better offers come along tomorrow but for now, these are the best ones that are live and ready to go right now.

LG B7 OLED 4K HDR TV 55 Inch Model: $1,499:

Check the LG B7 4K Ultra HD HDR OLED TV (2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

It just doesn’t get any cheaper than this to own one of this year’s OLED 4K HDR TV. NewEgg was briefly offering this model for even cheaper at $1,399 but that sale has already expired as of this afternoon. The Amazon offer is live right now and we definitely recommend it if OLED is what you want. This TV performs virtually as well as its much more expensive cousins but at a far, far lower price.

Sony X900E 4K HDR LCD TV 55 Inch Model: $998 

Check the Sony X900E 4K Ultra HD HDR TV (2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

This is one of the genuinely stellar 4K HDR TVs of 2017. Sony really delivered a fine piece of home theater technology in the X900E and despite it’s being classified as a mid-range model, this television delivers picture quality that’s comparable to what you’d find in most premium TVs from other brands or even Sony itself. Full-array LED backlighting, local dimming, stunning HDR color and contrast and some superb peak brightness all work inside the X900E. $998 is an absolute bargain for the 55 inch model.

Sony X690E 4K HDR LCD TV 70 Inch Model: $1,198

Check the Sony 70 inch X690E 4K Ultra HD HDR TV (2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

This is probably the single best 4K TV deal we’ve found so far for Black Friday. The 70 inch X690E is an absolute best of a large TV and getting it for just $1200 is a fantastic bargain. This is one of Sony’s 2017 4K TV models and though it doesn’t offer HDR display specs, the X690E does deliver above average SDR picture quality with great color, contrast and deep, rich black levels. The same connectivity specs and some truly excellent console gaming compatibility round this offer off to make it truly outstanding.

Other Particularly Awesome 4K UHD HDR TV deals

Sony 75-inch X850E HDR 4K UHD smart LED TV (2017 Model) for $1,999.99 (usually $2,498)

Samsung UN65MU9000 65-inch 4K UHD HDR smart TV (2017 model) $1,597.99 (Usually $1,997.99)

LG Electronics OLED65C7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV (2017 Model) $2,699.99 (Usually $3,197)

LG Electronics OLED55C7P 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV (2017 Model) $1,697 (Usually $2,197)

Budget 4K HDR TV Deals

Samsung UN55MU6300 55-Inch 4K ultra HD HDR LCD TV (2017 Model): $530, previously $930

Mid-Range 4K HDR TV Deals

Samsung UN65MU8000 65-inch 4K UHD HDR smart TV (2017 Model) for $1,297.99 (usually $2,199.99)

Samsung UN55MU8000 55-inch 4K UHD HDR TV (2017 Model) for $897.99 (usually $1,197.99)

Samsung UN65MU9000 65-inch 4K UHD HDR smart TV (2017 model) $1,597.99 (Usually $1,997.99)

Awesome Premium 4K HDR TV Deals

LG Electronics OLED55E7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV (2017 Model) $2,496.99, usually $2,996

LG Electronics OLED65E7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV (2017 Model) $3,497.99, usually $3,996.99

LG Electronics OLED65G7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV (2017 Model) $4,997, usually $6,999

LG Electronics W7 Signature Flagship 65 inch 4K Ultra HD OLED TV (2017 model): $7,497.00

Samsung Electronics QN55Q7F 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart QLED TV (2017 Model) $2,197.99, previously $2,497.99

Samsung Electronics QN565Q7F 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart QLED TV (2017 Model) $2,197.99, previously $2,497.99

Amazon Deals on 4K Cameras, Consoles, PC Monitors & Other Electronics

Dell U2718Q 4K ultra HD PC monitor: $409.99, usually $729.99

Panasonic Lumix G7 Mirrorless Camera With 4K UHD Video: $497.99, usually $799.99

16-50mm and 55-210mm lenses. Also, for $733 there is a6000 Black Friday Bundle with 16-50mm and 55-210mm lenses, Sony LCSU21 Soft Carrying Case and a Sandisk Ultra 32GB Micro SDHC Card. $733

NVIDIA SHIELD TV 2017 Streaming 4K HDR Media Player with Remote: $149, previously $199

PlayStation VR – Gran Turismo Sport Bundle – %25 Off (Save $100)

PlayStation VR – Gran Turismo Sport Bundle – %22 Off (Save $100)

PlayStation VR – Headset + Camera Bundle – %8 Off (Save $33.8)

NVIDIA SHIELD TV 2017 Streaming 4K HDR Media Player with Remote & controller: $169.00

4K UHD HDR Blu-ray Offers

See our main 4K HDR Ultra HD Blu-ray post for the full listing of ALL titles currently being offered at a steep Black Friday discount.

Here is a partial listing below:

• Allied UHD 4K– From $49.99 to $27.83
• Angels & Demons 4K UHD UV– From $34.99 to $25.00
• Argo Theatrical 4K Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $29.99
• Arrival UHD– From $48.99 to $24.99
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice– From $41.99 to $14.99
• Battleship– From $29.98 to $9.99
• Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk– From $30.99 to $22.99
• Birth Of A Nation– From $29.99 to $19.96
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula– From $30.99 to $14.99
• Central Intelligence 4K Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $29.99
• Chappie– From $34.99 to $22.96
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind Director’s Cut– From $30.99 to $19.96
• Concussion– From $30.99 to $24.99
• Creed 4K Ultra HD– From $29.95 to $28.34
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 4K UHD UV– From $34.99 to $22.99
• Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes– From $39.99 to $28.29
• Deadpool 4K Ultra-HD– From $29.99 to $14.99
• Despicable Me 2– From $39.98 to $16.49
• Despicable Me– From $39.98 to $12.96
• Dracula Untold– From $29.98 to $19.99
• Dredd 4K Ultra HD– From $22.99 to $16.59
• T. The Extra-Terrestrial– From $39.98 to $24.96
• Eddie the Eagle 4k Ultra Hd– From $29.99 to $19.96
• Everest– From $29.98 to $9.99
• Extreme Adventure Collection 4K Ultra HD– From $30.98 to $19.92
• Extreme Nature Collection 4K UHD– From $30.98 to $15.49
• Fantastic 4 4K Ultra HD– From $29.99 to $18.62
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 4K Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $14.99
• Fast & Furious 6– From $39.98 to $22.25
• Fifty Shades Darker– From $39.98 to $17.88
• Fifty Shades of Grey– From $29.98 to $12.99
• Furious 7– From $39.98 to $22.25
• Get Out– From $39.98 to $19.99
• Ghost in the Shell 2017– From $37.99 to $27.98
• Ghostbusters II 4K Ultra HD– From $34.99 to $22.59
• Ghostbusters– From $30.99 to $22.99
• Goodfellas 1990 4K Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $14.99
• Great Gatsby, The 4k Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $16.96
• Hancock– From $35.99 to $24.99
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.1 Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $29.85
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.2 Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $34.82
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $29.54
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $29.24
• I Am Legend 4K Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $22.68
• Ice Age 5: Collision Course– From $29.99 to $22.99
• In the Heart of the Sea 4K Ultra HD– From to $31.99
• Inferno– From $30.99 to $22.99
• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back– From $49.99 to $28.60
• Jason Bourne– From $29.98 to $9.99
• John Wick: Chapter 2 – 4K Ultra HD– From $42.99 to $14.99
• Joy– From $29.99 to $16.18
• Jupiter Ascending 4K Ultra HD– From $41.99 to $28.81
• Keeping Up With The Joneses– From $29.99 to $22.99
• King Kong– From $39.98 to $16.49
• Kingsman: The Secret Service Premium Edition– From $39.99 to $29.99
• Labyrinth 4K Ultra HD– From $34.99 to $14.99
• Life of Pi 4K UHD– From $39.99 to $21.96
• Life– From $30.99 to $14.99
• Lone Survivor 4K– From $29.98 to $9.99
• Lucy– From $29.98 to $9.99
• Mad Max: Fury Road 4K Ultra HD– From $44.95 to $14.99

B&H Photo Video Black Friday 4K UHD Offers

LG B7A-Series 55-inch Class HDR UHD Smart OLED TV for $1,497 (usually $2,299)

Samsung MU8000-Series 49-Inch HDR 4K Smart LED TV for $698 (usually $1,198)

Samsung 55-inch HDR 4K Smart TV for $898 (usually $1,198)

Sony XBR-X900E-Series 65-Inch Class HDR UHD Smart LED TV plus a free Jam Voice Wireless Speaker for $1,498 (usually $1,998)

Samsung MU8000-Series 75-Inch Class HDR UHD Smart LED TV for $2,298 (usually $3,798)

Samsung Q7C-Series 55-inch Class HDR UHD Smart Curved QLED TV with free Amazon Echo for $1,697.99 (usually $2,997.99)

Samsung Q8C-Series 65-inch Class HDR UHD Smart Curved QLED TV with free Amazon Echo for $2,997.99 (usually $4,797.99)

Best Buy Black Friday 4K UHD Offers

Samsung 65-inch 4K smart TV for $749.99 (usually $1,099.99)

Samsung 50-inch 4K smart TV for $399.99 (usually $699.99)

Sony 60-inch 4K smart TV for $599.99 (usually $999.99)

Sharp 50-inch 4K Roku smart TV for $179.99 (usually $399.99; in-store only)

Toshiba 55-inch 4K smart TV with Chromecast for $279.99 (usually $479.99; in-store only)

Story by 4k.com

The post The Best Black Friday 2017 Deals There Are: 4K TVs, Consoles, 4K Cameras & More appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – December 15, 2017

Actual native 4K TV content for 4K ultra HD TVs can come from many sources, both digital and physical. In addition to this, the vast array of regular HD or even 720p or lower resolution content you view on a relatively high quality modern 4K HDR TV will indeed look at least a bit better on your new set due to upscaling technologies and a generally superior user-friendly design. However, the real value in and main reason for anyone wanting a 4K TV is so that they can enjoy the cheapest, most diverse and quickly accessible native ultra HD video on it as soon as they get that sucker into the living room. This of course means streaming media, and that in turn means a certain minimum of internet bandwidth.

So How Much Bandwidth Do I need for 4K?

Getting that cheap, diverse and instantly available accessible 4K content mentioned above of course invariably means hooking yourself up to the broad range of streaming content applications that your TV will almost certainly come with right out of the box. The same streaming media apps and others can also be found as an integrated part of any external, additional streaming media gadgets you have and can connect to your TV for an alternative smart TV interface (check out our in-depth guide to these 4k streaming devices here). Streaming ultra HD video from these applications, which include Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Vudu and many, many other potential entertainment sources, means having plenty of bandwidth, because 4K resolution definitely needs it to work.

How much bandwidth? Well, while conventional 1080p HD video sources can stream smoothly with a reliably constant broadband speed of well below 8Mps (megabits per second), 4K ultra HD video needs at least 20 at a bare minimum. Different streaming services offer slightly different recommendations but for safety’s safe, the bottom line is 20Mbps. Amazon claims that as little as 15Mbps is needed while Netflix recommends a constant minimal internet connection speed of 25Mbps. Other sources of live 4K UHD content such as sportscast providers might need even more at 30Mbps or higher.

Basically, your best bet will be the largest reasonably priced internet connection speed you can get your hands on with a baseline minimum of 25Mbps or more. Even if 4K streaming requires a little less than this, you also need to bear in mind other broadband-consuming devices in your home and the simple fact that both WiFi and internet connection speed in general can suffer slight to moderate bandwidth drop-offs from their stated speeds. Because of this, out of a 25Mbps connection, actual practical connectivity could possibly sink to as low as 2/3 of what it’s supposed to deliver.

Thus, for ideal 4K streaming connectivity that delivers consistently smooth native ultra HD picture quality, we ourselves would suggest getting an ISP package which offers at least 50Mps for some genuine reliability. If you’re one of those people who’s lucky enough to live in a place with ultra-high-speed fiber internet services that offer 500Mbps or even 1Gbps of affordable connectivity, even better! Those will absolutely be awesome for even the most intense 4K media streaming you can cram through them and more power to you.

What about the HDR part of streamed 4K content you ask? Well, since we’ve already mentioned it, it’s worth mentioning that HDR isn’t the problem when it comes to broadband connectivity requirements. It’s the 4K resolution that carries the major load, with high dynamic range mastering included as a minor add-on that takes up very little bandwidth. Thus, as long as you have a 4K TV with the ability to display the high dynamic range color and contrast that are baked into the ultra HD video sources you’re paying for, you’ll get your HDR as long as you have enough internet connectivity to get 4K video in the first place.

Also Read:

Our comprehensive all-in-one Guide to the latest 4K streaming media devices on sale today

Our guide to and ranking of today’s best 4K Ultra HD HDR TVs on sale right now

No Access To High-Speed Internet Connectivity?

Obviously enough, not everyone has the option of simply calling up their local ISP and forking over the cash for a high-speed plan that offers a minimum of 25Mbps. In the U.S.A, it’s estimated that roughly 10% of Americans can’t access what is now classified by the Federal Communications Commission as broadband internet at 25Mbps. This is nearly 34 million people and some of our readers might number among that percentage of the population. If we consider international internet access, the numbers of people without broadband connectivity become even more dismal overall. So what about all the 4K TV owners in these parts of the U.S and the world?

Well there are alternatives available, at least a few of them in fact.

4K Blu-ray

First, you have 4K ultra HD Blu-ray discs. These offer an ultra HD/HDR visual experience that’s arguably even better than what you’d get from any streaming service since it doesn’t suffer from any streaming connectivity issues or the same level of data compression that streamed 4K media has to go through to be sent. Furthermore, because 4K Blu-rays aren’t coded to specific geographical regions in the way that DVDs and older HD Blu-rays are, any 4K Blu-ray disc bought from any source can be viewed on any 4K disc player anywhere in the world.

Of course, if you want to enjoy 4K Blu-ray from your TV, you’ll need to spend a bit extra on a 4K Blu-ray player but the good news here is that these have become cheaper than ever, with some models selling for just $200 and game consoles like the Xbox One S and One X offering integrated 4K Blu-ray disc players while also giving you an awesome gaming experience as a bonus.  Currently, Amazon and other online retailers are selling a constantly growing selection of nearly 300 different ultra HD Blu-ray titles and it will only get bigger from here, so there’s no shortage of cool entertainment to keep you buy via this medium.

Cable, Satellite & VOD

Beyond 4K Blu-ray, there’s also cable/satellite 4K content to consider. This won’t be available everywhere but some providers are delivering a pretty decent selection of live sportscasts, movies and other programming through their satellite broadcasting services via set-top DVRs. In the U.S two of the most notable services with this option are DirecTV, Dish and Comcast, through its Xfinity service. They’re all worth a look if you can get them in your particular region. Dish and Comcast even offer streaming apps like Netflix via their DVRs, meaning that you can possibly get the same extensive 4K content as the streaming web version of the app offers via an alternative route. These services offer both VOD movies and satellite/cable streamed entertainment channels.

Another 4K content option for 4K TV owners who don’t have a powerful enough internet connection for ultra HD streaming but do have enough internet connectivity for decent download speeds are downloadable 4K ultra HD content and Video On Demand services. These include Sony PlayStation Video, Vudu and several others including iTunes 4K (if you own an Apple TV 4K set-top box). Via these services, you can download your 4K ultra HD HDR movies and though you’ll need to wait a while to see those huge downloads complete, no 25Mbps+ internet connectivity is required. We should however note that if you’re downloading 4K ultra HD movies, you’ll need a storage device for keeping them hooked up to your 4K TV since an average UHD movie file takes up a whopping 40GB.

Also Read: Our 4K UHD Movies page, where a complete listing of all currently Available 4K UHD content 

Broadcast TV? Not Yet

As for Broadcast TV, it’s still almost strictly limited to HD transmissions even though the FCC under Ajit Pai has fairly recently voted to allow broadcasters in the U.S to start beaming out 4K HDR signals through the newly developed ATSC 3.0 standard. However, current 4K TV models don’t have tuners with this standard integrated into them anyhow so for regular broadcast 4K TV entertainment, we’re still out of luck, though 2018 is looking promising.

What About Upscaling?

On a final note, we also mention that most non-4K content upscales quite nicely on any decent 4K HDR TV available today. This doesn’t always apply perfectly to older or badly formatted broadcasts and content sources but your average HD video feed from any source will look great on your native 4K ultra HD televsion’s screen and be nicely improved by the generally higher levels of peak brightness and deeper, richer black levels that 4K TVs tend to offer over their HD cousins. So even if you’re completely out of luck for any sources of true, native 4K ultra HD entertainment, not all is lost for your TV.

Story by 4k.com

The post New 4K HDR TV? What You Need To Know About Streaming Bandwidth & Content Alternatives appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – December 19, 2017

If there’s one company in the display technology market that should really know its stuff when it comes to quantum dot technology, it’s Nanosys. With over 60 different quantum-dot enabled products on the market and numerous aspects of their technology also present in Samsung’s newest and most impressive QLED 4K HDR televisions, the people at Nanosys are experts when it comes to next-generation display technologies.

Now, this same company is working to make the relatively new and constantly developing technology of quantum dots into something that not only creates better picture quality than ever before seen in TV and other displays, but also into a razor-thin and highly affordable means of pulling this off.

Before we go further though, a quick explanation of what quantum dots are is in order here. For starters, we have QD technology on the consumer market as it stands today. This is what’s now mainly found in Samsung’s 4K HDR TVs from the last couple years and consists essentially of extremely thin filter sheets impregnated with quantum dot nano-crystals which have been applied between the backlight and the display surface of these televisions. As the light from the LEDs behind the display hits these filters (each filter being filled with different sized crystals which emit different colors when hit by light), they convert that light into vibrant, rich high dynamic range colors for the content being displayed. This is what the quantum dot technology of Nanosys delivers right now for the 4K QD displays of today, most notably in the Samsung QLED TV lineup.

What quantum dots are supposed to eventually do though, at least within a few years’ time, is something much more refined. This future of quantum dot displays is what Nanosys is aiming to make reality and it’s what the company (and its partners) hope to see compete with OLED technology such as that found in LG TVs for sheer picture quality and luminance precision.

This future vision of quantum dots means taking them away from the photoluminescence that they currently have (sheets of QD crystals glowing when hit by light from an external LED backlight) and creating electroluminescent quantum dots at the sub-pixel level. This next generation technology would mean tiny quantum dot crystals inside individual sub-pixels within a 4K TV’s pixel array being charged by electrical current to create distinct patterns of extremely refined color and light. In other words, goodbye LED backlights and hello extremely thin QD displays.

Nanosys calls this technology Electro Luminescent Quantum Dot display (ELQD) and it believes that their development will completely disrupt the current television display industry, in which OLED dominates as far as sheer advancement goes.

These new ELQD displays will in fact work a bit like OLED screens in that they won’t require a backlight of any kind but they’ll create a further advantage due to their superior color palette creation ability –to a degree even higher than that achievable by OLED. At the same time, because each QD subpixel inside such screens will be capable of individual activation/deactivation, ELQD screens will deliver the same perfect blacks, pixel-perfect local dimming and wide viewing angles as those achieved by OLED screens today. Another benefit of such pixel luminance efficiency would be lower overall power consumption, since relatively inefficient, broadly luminous LED backlights can (literally) be removed from the picture.

According to Jeff Yurek, Director of Marketing and Investor Relations at Nanosys, this new technology isn’t too far off for the consumer market:

“We expect to see these displays in the three to five year timeframe. We think that quantum dots have the potential to deliver on the promise of OLED.”

OLED technology is of course already delivering something very similar to ELQD displays of the type being worked on by Nanosys. With OLED, individual Organic light emitting diode (OLEDs) inside a TV screen are charged with electrical current to create light that can be turned on or off at the single pixel level. Color filters inside each OLED pixel then create vibrant color patterns. Thus OLEDs too are capable of perfect black levels and pixel-precise dimming of scenes on a display. More importantly still, OLED screens are already here and being used in a growing part of the 4K TV display (and smartphone screen) market. Additionally, while they’re expensive, they’re also getting more affordable as their quality improves. ELQD technology on the other hand is still in its developmental form, without a working consumer screen in sight.

This isn’t deterring Nanosys and its partners however. The company is arguing that their ELQD technology will deliver superior results when it does come out and even the current limited form of QD crystals as they’re found in today’s Samsung HDR TVs does indicate this: Right now, quantum dot material can create superb color accuracy via the individual crystals in the filters we described above. Most importantly, crucial blue light emission performance by quantum dots is nearly perfect. On both of these fronts, OLED in its current form doesn’t quite compete. Today’s latest Samsung QLED TVs and LG’s best OLED TVs in fact bear this out in one notable way: The QLEDs we’ve reviewed deliver minorly but measurably wider wide color gamut coverage and color accuracy than their OLED counterparts (though the OLEDs beat them in most other key respects).

Furthermore, OLED displays, due to the organic nature of their pixel particles are notably weaker performers when it comes to handling moisture. The inorganic crystals of both current QD crystal filters and near future Electro luminescent QD pixel crystals will not have this same limitation, possibly making them much better choices for any display that’s likely to be exposed to rain or other water sources –like a smartphone screen or an outdoor commercial display for example.

Where all of these competitive issues between OLED and electro luminescent quantum dots could really come to a head is in the area of printed, ultra-thin display surfaces, or “active surfaces” as Nanosys itself is calling them. This has also been a developmental promise of OLED technology for a few years now and LG has even unveiled a few prototype screens in which they showcased just how thin OLED display can be made. ELQD screens are supposed to eventually pull off the same feat and Nanosys (like LG) wants to take this technology to a place that goes beyond mere TV displays. According to Yurek,

“Printed quantum dots can really change how we think about our relationship with technology. We are thinking a lot about moving away from a device-centric world to a world of ‘Active Surfaces.’ These surfaces are interactive; they can display information or disappear into a home’s décor or even clothing. They need to be bright, power efficient, sensor-enabled, and rugged.”

Due to the superior ruggedness and color performance that ELQD particularly offers over OLED, achieving these printed screens could give LG’s rival technology a serious run for its money.

However cost remains a huge obstacle. While Nanosys claims to already be able to create inkjet printable quantum dot display surfaces and has even demonstrated this technology to research organizations, the price of doing so is nowhere near commercially viable. The company is thus aiming for further refinement of both quality and cost. “If we can get the cost of making a display down to $100 per square meter, which is basically the same cost as printing a high-resolution poster or printing a T-shirt, then displays could be everywhere,” According to Russell Kempt, VP of sales and marketing at Nanosys. He also claimed that due to its inherent benefits, quantum dot technology is the only way by which this could be done effectively for numerous commercial applications.

Quantum dot liquid filter medium

Nanosys further claims that all of its current ELQD display work is already being done via printing techniques, regardless of whether the resulting technology is used for the next generations of 4K HDR TV screens or other even more radical applications. OLED for its part is still stuck inside hard display surfaces even though it’s already on the existing consumer market.

Of course, all of the above predictions are just that, predictions, and by a company that’s naturally enough eager to promote its own technology as much as it can. What we can say however is that even with their existing consumer market applications, quantum dot crystals inside filter screens on 4K TV displays have indeed shown themselves to be subtly fantastic performers. And if Nanosys or some other company can indeed cheaply create the paper-thin pure ELQD crystal displays they’re trying to make printable, what we’ve seen so far of QD technology bodes well for claims of ELQD crushing the competition with OLED.

We’ll see what the next three years reveal. LG also has the same time-frame to pull out its own surprise improvements for organic light emitting diodes.

Story by 4k.com

The post How Electro Quantum Dots Might Crush OLED In 4K TVs & Other Devices appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – December 23, 2017

This is probably one of the best times there is for buying a 4K TV. Why? Because for one thing, 4K TV technologies for display and compatibility, as well as premium features, have finally become standardized enough for stable, quality future-proofing for at least the next few years and secondly, because the last month of this year and the first month or two of the next year are always the times when newer television models start selling at their lowest prices.

Furthermore, if you’ve gone at least a couple years or more since your last TV purchase, this is a very solid opportunity to upgrade in terms of genuinely useful new technologies such as high dynamic range, wide color gamut, better-than-ever display brightness and connectivity features. In other words, today’s 4K televisions are the best they’ve ever been at the lowest prices they’ve ever had, and they’re good enough to stay awesome for several more years even if new technologies emerge in next year’s models or those of 2019 and so forth.

With that said, let’s get down to the key things you need to know if you’re going to be buying a new model for this year’s Christmas season or any time soon.

Picking the Right 4K TV For Your Budget

As a general and very basic rule, some of the most expensive 4K TVs on the market today will also be the most expensive models available, with the best technologies. However, this doesn’t mean that excellent large and high quality TVs can’t be found for less than $1500 or even $1000 in some cases. Our listing of Best 4K TVs for $1000 or less on this page offers and excellent rundown of the best budget models.

Beyond this, we can’t recommend much on price because budgets will vary enormously by individual buyer. However so long as you keep certain key considerations in mind based on your specific budget, you’ll have a much lower chance of buyer’s remorse. These are as follows:

• OLED TVs are almost always more expensive than LCD TVs in the same size range. They deliver better picture quality in many ways but it comes at a price.
• Local dimming, complete HDR (for both color and contrast) and exceptional brightness will all cost more, but they’re usually worth it.
• Go for the brightest and most HDR-complete TV you can comfortably afford, you’ll be thankful of the picture quality improvements.
• Smart TV platforms by brand of TV don’t really matter, there are plenty of external streaming devices out there with their own huge selections of apps.
• Also get the biggest size of display you can comfortably afford, it will make a difference.

4K TV Size Essentials

For any TV, the bigger the better but for 4K ultra HD TVs, this applies with particular rigor, but with some limits. For one thing, the resolution provided by a 4K display can best be appreciated at a comfortable viewing distance with TV sizes of roughly 49 inches or larger. So if the 4K sharpness is something you really want to enjoy and be able to notice, you’ll probably need to get a larger television than what you might have been used to with older HDTVs. Smaller rooms like bedrooms or studios can comfortably do with a 40 to 45 inch (the smallest that 4K TVs go) UHD television since you’ll be view9ing them from close enough to appreciate the ultra HD despite the smaller screen but if you’re going for a living room TV, keep proportionality to the rest of your room and your average viewing distance in mind. The image below delivers an excellent guide for the ideal screen size for a given viewing distance, but you can also just get a larger TV despite this. The extra pixels on the screen will ensure that it avoids the blurriness you might get from using a really large 60 inch+ HDTV inside a small room.

That said, for most average-sized living rooms, a 55 to 65 inch television will both look ideal and offer more than enough display real estate at an average viewing distance of 10 to 12 feet. This is in fact why these are the most commonly manufactured TV sizes for the vast majority of today’s 4K UHD TVs.

The bottom line is that as long as you get the ideally-sized TV for your space, it’s up to you if you want something even larger if you can afford it, as long as you don’t mind it looking disproportionately big where it’s positioned. If huge size is what you’re after, you’re also in luck: getting a bigger 4K TV is now cheaper than ever as many budget HDR models (such as those listed below) hit the market with prices of less than $3000. Ultra-premium 60 inch+ 4K UHD TVs however still sell for hefty prices and most will cost well above $3000.

Why You Also Need HDR

We already mentioned HDR technology above and here we’re going to go into a bit more detail on it. This is the major new display spec that virtually all 2017 4K TVs now come with by default, and even most 2016 televisions include it as well to some degree. This is the case for a reason. High dynamic range really does create a difference in the quality of the home theater experience if it’s used to view HDR content. Colors, contrast, shadows and just about every aspect of picture quality look more vibrant, more realistic and much better overall if the content is mastered in HDR and viewed on an HDR TV.

Unfortunately, HDR content sources are still not as common as we’d like them to be but this is changing at an accelerating pace and right now a majority of new 4K content of any kind comes mastered with HDR by default, ensuring that the technology spreads faster and sticks around.

In other words, if you’re going for a new 4K TV, a model with HDR is going to ensure that it’s much more future proof and that it delivers a generally better content experience for the latest sources of 4K ultra HD entertainment.

Now, not all HDR televisions are created equal. The spec can vary by model and price. The better HDR specs in existence today offer support for 10-bit color, wide color gamut and extremely broad contrast with high peak brightness. Lower-end HDR TVs often don’t offer particularly high brightness or support for wide color gamut. Thus, yes, pricier 4K TVs do generally offer high quality HDR performance but this isn’t absolutely, always the case. There are lower priced models such as those listed below which are excellent producers of high dynamic range color and contrast despite their more affordable prices. Additionally, some 4K TVs support multiple HDR formats, especially both HDR10 (which is pretty much universal in all HDR TVs) and the more refined Dolby Vision, which is available in certain 4K HDR TVs such as all models from LG, all Vizio models, all premium Sony TVs and TCL’s premium but highly affordable 4K HDR TVs.

                 Also Read: Our In-depth review of TCL’s P-Series 4K HDR TV with Dolby Vision

The bottom line for high dynamic range is that most newer televisions now have it to some extent at least and that you should absolutely get a TV with the technology

Other Key 4K HDR TV Technologies

Besides HDR and the obvious feature of 4K resolution, several other key specs are ideal for your next 4K TV. Though they’re not essential for a good display experience, they definitely add to picture quality. These are the following:

Local Dimming: This guide here covers local dimming and backlight in 4K TVs in details, but in basic terms, this feature allows for sections of the LED backlight in LCD TVs to turn off for better black levels in darker scenes. The result is superior contrast and a more realistic level of picture quality. You don’t need local dimming for decent picture quality but it definitely helps contrast and HDR rendering. Get it wherever you can afford it. Vizio and TCL’s 4K HDR TVs, as well as Sony’s X900E television and Samsung’s MU8000 or higher 4K HDR TVs all offer local dimming despite being priced relatively affordably.

High Peak Brightness: This technology relates to HDR. The brighter your TV screen is capable of going, the better it will deliver on overall picture quality. Fortunately, since most 4K TVs for 2017 come with high dynamic range, they’re also brighter than ever before as a general rule. However, some premium models offer peak brightness specs of over 1000 nits (brightness in a TV screen is measured in nits, from 0 to an absolute maximum of 2000 with current TV technology). Most mid-range televisions can manage at least 400 nits of peak brightness while Sony, Samsung, and other brands best ultra-premium televisions can hit 800 nits or higher. Buy whatever you can comfortably afford but as a general rule, the higher the peak brightness, the better.

           Also Read: Our in-depth Review of Samsung’s brightest 4K HDR QLED TV, the Q9

If you want to know the peak brightness of a TV you’re thinking of buying, all of our own reviews at 4K.com include the brightness specs of each model. These can be found under the “Visual Specs” section of each review.

Refresh Rate: All 2017 4K TVs come with two possible refresh rates: 60Hz or 120Hz. Many of them will have hype for features like 240Hz or even higher supposed refresh rates but these are just that, hype for mostly useless enhancement technologies. In terms of actual native refresh, it’s either 60Hz or 120Hz. Our guide to refresh rates in 4K TVs covers this in lots of detail.

120Hz native refresh rate does create a better overall smoothness for gaming or fast-paced sportscast content but even most newer-model 60Hz TVs these days offer excellent motion handling despite their lower refresh rate. In any case, Native 4 UHD video won’t reach your TV at more than 60 frames per second anyhow due to HDMI connectivity limitations. Thus, go for a 120Hz 4K TV if you can afford one but understand that an otherwise good 60Hz 4K TV will still offer a generally decent to great content motion handling experience.

Smart TV: All modern 4K Televisions come with their own native smart TV platforms. These offer access to content apps, web browsing, gaming and other interface features which can all be accessed via the TVs remote control. Most current television smart platforms come with a large selection of 4K and ordinary content apps but if one doesn’t on a TV that you otherwise really like, it’s no big deal either. External streaming media devices like the Roku Streaming Stick+ or the Amazon Fire TV 4K are available with their own smart platforms which you can plug into your TV and use instead right away. In other words. While a good native smart TV platform is great to have, this feature isn’t as important as sheer display quality.

OLED vs. LCD vs. QLED

Our guide to OLED vs. LCD cs. QLED TVs covers the difference between all of these types of models in detail but to give you a basic rundown of what’s what, the best overall 4K TV performance comes from OLED TVs. They create perfect black levels, perfect infinite contrast and excellent color management. They’re also usually more expensive than their LCD TV counterparts. Most 4K HDR TVs are LCD televisions and all budget 4K TVs being sold today are also LCD TV models (though OLED TVs are getting cheaper by the year). QLED TVs are sold only by Samsung so far and consist of the brand’s top-shelf models. However, don’t be confused by their name. These are also still just LCD TVs but with special quantum dot color filters built into their display for better color rendering. If you can afford an OLED TV, we definitely recommend it. LG’s B7 and C7 models are especially affordable and excellent performers. However, most LCD 4K HDR TVs also deliver fantastic performance that a majority of buyers will be happy with.

              Also Read: LG’s B7 offers the best OLED 4K HDR TV value of 2017. Our review explains why

Other Things You’ll (Maybe) Need

Internet Connectivity: 4K TVs deliver most of their content and benefits via streaming media apps and thus, they’ll absolutely require at least some consistent internet connectivity to really work well For effectively streaming 4K video from apps like Netflix or Amazon Prime, they’ll need at least 25Mbps of constant broadband speed to give you a smooth viewing experience. Thus, if you can at all get your hands on it, go for an ISP plan that offers the above speed if you want to see native 4K video play on your TV. Our guide to 4K TV content sources, here, goes into all your options for getting the best entertainment value from your TV. If you can’t get your hands on a 25Mbps+ broadband connection in your area, not all is lost. For one thing, 4K TVs make even most streamed HD content look fantastic, and secondly, as we cover in the guide we linked to above, there are plenty of alternative 4K content options out there which don’t rely on high-speed internet

Sound Power: Most of today’s 4K TVs offer…. decent…. Native audio power but if you want some serious kick, an external speaker system or sound bar will give you a much better sound experience. These can be bought for as little $100 but for a really robust audio experience, you’ll likely be spending at least $180 to $250 for a sound system. If immersive audio is really important for your home theater system, a sound bar will be a must-have extra.

Media Devices: Our Media Devices page covers pretty much every possible existing streaming media option on the market today. However to give another brief rundown of these, they’re a plug-and-play alternative to your 4K TV’s native smart platform. Most smart TV platforms in today’s TVs offer all the essential 4K content apps and hundreds or even thousands of other media apps but if there’s some particular feature you can’t get from your TV’s own smart platform, external streaming media devices like those listed on our media devices page are an excellent option.

Where to Buy & When to Buy Your 4K TV

Right now, at the end of the year and into the beginning of 2018, before the new 4K HDR TV models for next year get announced and then released is probably the single best time of the year so far to buy a new 4K HDR TVs. The models of 2017 are still the latest there is but their prices are now competitively falling almost across the board, along with those of any 2016 4K TVs you might still find from assorted retailers. In other words, your best discounts on brand new HDR 4k ultra HD televisions are going to be found right around the holidays.

As for where to buy them. Well, almost any major retailer is a good choice since most of them maintain pretty narrowly competitive pricing amongst each other. However, if you’re buying online, we’d say that the most reliable overall shipping and low price deals are those you’ll find with Amazon.com due to its sheer size and customer-obsessed sales policies.

As a final caveat, we mention what we covered in detail here, in this guide to used TVs vs. New TVs. Buy a new model with a full warranty whenever you can, even if it costs a bit more. They’re worth the extra dollars spent and problems with parts quality that you might have with refurbished, used 4K TVs.

            Also Read:

             Our Top 10 Picks for today’s best budget and premium 4K TVs

             Top 50 Inch 4K HDR TVs of 2017

             Top 55 Inch 4K HDR TVs of 2017

Story by 4k.com

The post Buying A 4K HDR TV For The Holidays? Here’s Everything You Need To Know appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – January 16, 2018

With the recent reveal of a new 4K HDR enhanced version of the already visually spectacular game “Forza Horizon 3” for Xbox One X, the full list of all games with either HDR or 4K ultra HD graphics enhancements for the new super-powered console has grown just a bit bigger from an already fairly extensive size.

As we covered here yesterday, Forza Horizon 3 is now officially an Xbox One X Enhanced game for the One X and despite a lockdown to just 30FPS with the console, sources have confirmed that the new update to the Forza edition does indeed let users of the Xbox One X play with native 4K UHD graphics and not just upscaling or other pseudo-enhancements to native resolution. Even owners of non-4K TVs who own One X consoles will benefit from this update to Forza Horizon 3 due to certain improvements in how key aspects of in-game graphics are rendered.

Here’s a intro video to the new Forza Horizon 3 enhanced edition

Both of the above –4K resolution augmentation and HDR or other visual enhancements—are the main components of Microsoft and its game creating partners in the Xbox One X Enhanced program, which is designed right from square one to deliver superior graphics for both older upgraded and completely new games that are added to it, even if they’re played on older TVs without the benefit of ultra HD resolution and high dynamic range. The game enhancements apply mainly to users of Microsoft’s newest console, the Xbox One X but some of them are also usable for players using older versions of Xbox, such as the One S.

Other improvements to Xbox One X Enhanced games include (in many cases) 60FPS gaming at 4K resolution, increased texture details, higher, more stable frame rates and expanded dynamic range for colors and contrast. Any 4K Enhanced, or Xbox One X Enhanced game released by Microsoft’s partners comes with a logo icon which delineates it as such.

Check the Microsoft Xbox One X 4K HDR game console (2017 Model) on Amazon

4.7 – 4 Reviews

The following is the most recent list of all games that are now Xbox One X Enhanced for Xbox and we can pretty much guarantee that it will grow considerably into 2018. We’ll be providing a frequently updated list of all Xbox One X or 4K Enhanced games on our main “Games” page.

Also Read:

Our In-depth review of the rather stunningly powerful Xbox One X 4K HDR gaming console

Our In-depth Review of the Xbox One S HDR Gaming console and 4K Blu-ray player

A

• A Plague Tale: Innocence
  • A Way Out
  • Agents of Mayhem
  • Anthem
  • ARK: Survival Evolved (Game Preview)
  • Ashen
  • Ashes Cricket
  • Assassin’s Creed Origins
  • Assault Android Cactus
  • Astroneer (Game Preview)
  • AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected

B

• Battlerite
  • Below
  • Biomutant
  • Black Desert
  • Brawlout

C

• Call of Duty WW2
  • Chess Ultra
  • Code Vein
  • Conan Exiles
  • Crackdown 3
  • Crossout

D

• Danger Zone
  • Dark and Light
  • Darksiders Warmastered Edition
  • Darksiders 2 Deathinitive Edition
  • Darksiders 3
  • Dead Rising 4
  • Deep Rock Galactic
  • Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition
  • Dishonored 2
  • Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
  • Disneyland Adventures

 E

• Elex
• Elite: Dangerous
• Everspace

F

• F1 2017
• Fable Fortune
• Fallout 4
• Far Cry 5
• Farming Simulator 17
• Fe
• FIFA 18
• Final Fantasy 15
• Firewatch
• For Honor
• Fortnite
• Forza Horizon 3
• Forza Motorsport 7

G

• Gears of War 4
• Gravel
• Greedfall
• GRIDD: Retroenhanced

H

• Halo 5: Guardians
• Halo Master Chief Collection
• Halo Wars 2
• Hand of Fate 2
• Hello Neighbor
• Hitman
• Homefront: The Revolution

I

• Immortal: Unchained
• Injustice 2

J

• Jurassic Park Evolution

K

• Killer Instinct
• Killing Floor 2
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance

L

• A. Noire
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm

M

• Madden 18
• Mafia 3
• Mantis Burn Racing
• Marvel Heroes Omega
• Marvel vs Capcom Infinite
• Metal Gear Survive
• Metro: Exodus
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War
• Minecraft
• Minion Masters
• Monster Energy Supercross: The Official Videogame
• Monster Hunter: World
• Morphite
• MX vs ATV All Out

N

• NFL 18
• NBA 2K18
• Need for Speed Payback
• Nine Parchments

O

• Okami HD
• Ooblets
• Ori and the Will of the Wisp
• Outcast – Second Contact
• Outlast 2

P

• Paladins
• Path of Exile
• Pixar Rush
• PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
• Portal Knights
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2018
• Project Cars 2

Q

• Quantum Break

R

• Raiders of the Broken Planet
• Railway Empire
• Real Farm
• ReCore
• Resident Evil 7 biohazard
• RiME
• Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Riverbond
• Roblox
• Robocraft Infinity
• Rocket League
• Rugby 18

S

• Sea of Thieves
• Slime Rancher
• Smite
• Sonic Forces
• Star Wars 2 Battlefront
• State of Decay 2 Steep
• Strange Brigade
• Super Lucky’s Tale
• Superhot
• Surviving Mars

T

• Tennis World Tour
• The Artful Escape
• The Crew 2
• The Darwin Project
• The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
• The Evil Within 2
• The Last Night
• The Long Dark
• The Surge
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• theHunter: Call of The Wild
• Thumper
• Titanfall 2
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
• Tom Clancy’s The Division
• Train Sim World
• TT Isle of Man – Ride on the Edge

U

• UFC 3
• Unruly Heroes

W

• War Thunder
• Warframe
• Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide
• We Happy Few
• Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus
• World of Tanks
• WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship

Z

• Zoo Tycoon

Story by 4k.com

The post This Is The Updated List Of All Xbox One X 4K & HDR Enhanced Games appeared first on .

Stephan Jukic – January 22, 2018

4K UHD entertainment options on Netflix have been steadily growing in scope over the past few years and at this point, the streaming media app’s selection of ultra HD titles is one of the best and most accessible in the world. This accessability, coupled with the fact that the app comes baked right into virtually all smart TV platforms and streaming media device smart systems are what makes Netflix so particularly useful and user-friendly as a quick, affordable source of numerous 4K ultra HD movies and shows for your new UHD TV. Basically, if you’ve just unboxed, hooked up and turned on your 4K TV, almost anywhere in North America and most of the world even, Netflix can get you checking out just how well your television delivers UHD video in seconds, so long as you have enough internet connectivity and a paid up Netflix subscription (sorry, no free content from this service).

Also Read: 4K Streaming Media Devices, the Complete Guide: Everything you need to know in one page

So without further ado, here is a basic guide to getting your hands on Netflix 4K UHD content and following that, our complete list of all currently known 4K ultra HD video and 4K HDR content options on the app.

First, How To Access The 4K Streaming content of Netflix:

The following are the essential steps you need to take if you want to enjoy the full value that Netflix offers to owners of 4K TVs and most of all, to owners of 4K HDR TVs of some kind or another.

1. Obviously enough, you’ll need to own a 4K UHD TV, and with HDR display capability preferably, at least if you also want the growing selection of HDR ocntent in the lists below to render on your TV in high dynamic range glory. Luckily, pretty much all 4K TV models manufactured in 2017 and beyond offer HDR to at least some degree.
2. You’ll need to find the Netflix app either inside your 4K TV’s smart OS platform (all of them have Netflix included pretty much by default) or in the smart OS app menu of any external streaming media device you’re using on your TV instead (all streaming media devices also have Netflix pretty much by default)
3. You’ll absolutely a decent internet connection – preferably above 16mbps but we note that Netflix recommends a consistent 25mbps or more for smooth 4K video streaming.
4. Only one of the several different Netflix streaming account packages offers 4K ultra HD and HDR content access. This is the most expensive “Premium” plan and it costs $13.99 per month. One nice bonus of this package is that it also lets you stream to four different devices at the same time (the other plans allow only one or two devices at a time). You’ll need to get it, and yes, it’s worth the extra couple bucks.
5. You’ll need to pick a 4K HDR title from the giant Netflix library. Now, Netflix does offer a special category for 4K content since we last checked, but not all content in ultra HD or HDR is easy to find in a neatly categorized way (especially HDR movies or series), so use the list below as a convenient guide for what titles to search for if you want both UHD and high dynamic range.

Also Read: Our price-segmented Rankings of today’s best 4K HDR TVs, Find the best model for your budget

Story by 4k.com

The post This Is The Full List of All 4K And HDR Content Available Now on Netflix appeared first on .