If you’re in the market for a new television, some of our favorite QLED screens from TCL are almost half off for the start of football season. They’re already budget-friendly, so these discounts make them even more appealing as an upgrade, and they feature mini LED technology for impressive brightness.
While a variety of models are on sale, I want to focus on the two that have found their way into a few of our favorite television roundups. First up is the TCL QM6K (8/10, WIRED Recommends), a screen that impressed us with its excellent balance, screen uniformity, and color reproduction across the entire panel. It has great off-angle viewing too, if you’ve got a big or oddly shaped TV room, and has great quality-of-life features, like a dedicated eARC HDMI port for your soundbar.
If you have a particularly bright home, or a bigger budget, you might also consider the TCL QM8K (9/10, WIRED Recommends). This upgraded TV is one of the most premium mini LED screens we’ve had the pleasure of testing, with top-tier colors for the category. It’s also exceptionally bright, which is perfect if you’re stuck somewhere you can’t pull the shades and turn out the lights every time you want to watch a movie.
Photograph: Parker Hall
Photograph: Parker Hall
Photograph: Parker Hall
Both screens have Google TV for their interface, which is one of our preferred platforms for built-in streaming. It’s super fast and responsive, and has a massive catalog of apps and streaming options, even if you aren’t an Android user. Both the QM6K and QM8K also have impressively thin bezels, which doesn’t help performance, but will make these feel a bit more modern hanging on your wall or sitting on your entertainment stand.
The 65-inch QM6K is marked down from $1,000 to just $650, a healthy 35 percent discount for an impressive mid-tier television. Meanwhile, the 65-inch QM8K is discounted from $2,500 to $1,500. The discounts should run across official TCL retailers, so I was able to find both the QM6K and QM8K at Best Buy as well, if you’d prefer to try and find one locally, and there are markdowns on both larger and smaller examples as well, with some variation between them.
I was already impressed enough with Anker’s SoundCore Nebula X1 projector when I saw it back in April. We all dream of having our own full theater in our homes, or at least something transportable enough that we could hang a bedsheet in our backyard and pretend we’re at the cinema. It was one of the first projectors with its own internal liquid cooling system to keep it from overheating. Then came along the Nebula X1 Pro, a projector so big it could be a Star Wars droid that’s large enough to pack famed R2-D2 actor Kenny Baker inside (RIP).
Anker already shared a few details for the Nebula X1 Pro, but the company is showing it off for the first time at IFA 2025 in Berlin. The beastly all-in-one projector and speaker system is as tall as a 10-year-old and comes with its own retractable handle plus two wheels to roll it out when it’s time for family movie night. The device is truly the all-in-one projector setup nobody truly knew they wanted. It supports both Dolby Vision for HDR (for better contrast and brighter highlights) and Dolby Atmos sound through its pop-out wireless speakers.
The projector specs are very similar to the existing Nebula X1—which is to say it’s impressive. The Nebula X1 Pro uses a U-shaped optical laser system that supports 4K resolution up to 3,500 ANSI lumens. That will be plenty bright for dark rooms or nighttime operation. For playing movies during the day, it may still offer quality colors and deep contrast. Whether that will be better than a TV for its high price will be up to each user. The projector has automatic sizing, focus, and obstacle avoidance features to make the picture appear in the best frame possible.
The Nebula X1 Pro hides four fully wireless speakers you can set up around your living room or backyard. The 7.1.4 speaker setup includes four pop-out front and rear speakers connected to the main projector through 12-channel RF chips. The X1 Pro’s main body acts as the 8-inch, 80W subwoofer. Each speaker should have an 8-hour battery life—long enough to entertain your friends in a full-day movie marathon, though it won’t last long enough to watch all three Lord of the Rings movies (the extended editions, of course). If your space is more constrained, you could use the two front speakers as a soundbar. The lid comes up to reveal two microphones if you’re keen on having a karaoke night.
The projector’s bottom comes packed in with a 6.6-foot retractable power cord. You’ll still need an extension cord nearby, especially if you’re bringing this droid projector outside. There’s a lot to consider with projectors, more than with TVs. This giant box promises the full cinema experience, and that’s already enticing enough. But it’s going up on Kickstarter Sept. 22 for between $4,000 and $5,000, according to Anker. The Nebula X1 Pro can handle screen sizes up to 300 inches. You can get a smaller, high-quality QD-OLED TV from the pricier brands like Samsung and still save close to $1,000. We’ll want to see for ourselves if all the wireless speakers make it the droid we’ve been looking for.
While Dolby imposes no hard limit on the number or type of speakers (or subwoofers) you can use in a single FlexConnect system, each manufacturer’s choice of processor determines what’s feasible.
What you can’t do is use any other company’s wireless speakers—whether they’re FlexConnect-compatible or not. Naturally, this raises the question of compatibility. When other companies eventually make their own FlexConnect TVs, speakers, or soundbars, will they only work within that brand’s family of products? Dolby says this kind of brand lock-in isn’t built into Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, but neither does it require compatibility between FlexConnect products.
TCL Exclusive (for Now)
Photograph: Simon Cohen
Unfortunately for now, TCL’s implementation of FlexConnect is proprietary. I’ve repeatedly asked Dolby’s reps which companies have signed up to be a part of the Atmos FlexConnect world, but they’ve steadfastly refused to comment, choosing instead to let TCL own the limelight during the initial launch.
Each TCL Z100 is rated at 170 watts RMS, which is delivered via three front-facing drivers (woofer, midrange, and tweeter) plus an up-firing driver for height effects. TCL says it uses a 1.1.1-channel layout, which means it can receive and reproduce one front/surround/rear channel, plus height and low-frequency effects (LFE) channels.
TCL doesn’t say how low the Z100’s woofer can go, saying only that “low frequencies are optimized and gained, lowering the extension frequency to deliver more thrilling and powerful bass performance.”
You can’t configure the Z100 to be part of a multiroom audio setup like you can with a Sonos or Bose soundbar, but you can switch it to Bluetooth mode for direct audio streaming from a phone. Two Z100s can be stereo-paired. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth mode isn’t managed by Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, so you may want to think carefully about speaker position if you use it frequently.
Flexin’
Photograph: Simon Cohen
Unlike soundbars and AV receivers, which typically override a TV’s internal speakers, Dolby Atmos FlexConnect incorporates them, channeling content and frequencies in a way that works with the rest of the speakers in the system. Presumably, most of that content will be center channel (dialog, key sound effects), with the wireless speakers filling in as needed.
After more than 10 years, Dolby is ready to bring its game-changing Dolby Vision tech into the future with (drum roll) Dolby Vision 2. As a part of IFA 2025, Dolby took the wraps off its sequel to Vision, which brings an array of new capabilities to the company’s proprietary HDR format.
Powering Dolby Vision 2 is an all-new engine that enables tools like “Content Intelligence.” Content Intelligence, as you may have guessed, uses AI to better adapt your TV’s picture to content that you’re watching, fine-tuning aspects based on not only what you’re watching but also where you’re watching it. Within content intelligence, there are several more specific tools, including precision blacks that adjust dark scenes on the fly, which, if it works, is great for anyone who loves OLED panels but has gripes with their performance on darker content.
There’s also—and this one is pretty cool—a light-sensing technology that, according to Dolby, monitors ambient lighting in your room and can automatically optimize your TV based on the lighting in your specific environment. As someone with an unusually dark apartment, I’m all for that, though I’m curious whether tech like this would drastically turn the brightness on my TV way down. I wouldn’t be mad about that, but maybe other people will? Lastly, there are tweaks to Dolby Vision’s handling of fast-paced content like gaming and live sports that are meant to better adjust motion control and white point, which controls the color temperature of whites on your screen.
Dolby is splitting Vision 2 into two tiers—Dolby Vision 2 and Dolby Vision 2 Max—and it says the latter will be available on the “highest performance TVs” and come with “additional premium features.” Gizmodo reached out to Dolby to clarify exactly what the difference is between those two tiers. Here’s what it said:
“Dolby Vision 2 Max includes capabilities designed to unlock the full capabilities and best picture quality on the highest-performing TVs. This includes capabilities such as bi-directional tone mapping, Authentic Motion, and more advanced tools tailored for enthusiasts.”
That tells us a little more, I guess, but from the sounds of it, Dolby Vision 2 Max will be designed to take advantage of the higher fidelity of expensive TVs, while Dolby Vision 2 is geared more toward “mainstream” TVs, in the company’s words. To start, Dolby says it will focus on the “mainstream” side of things, since it will begin rolling out Vision 2 on Hisense panels, though there’s no word on timing and availability quite yet. It says those Hisense TVs will be powered by the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, though.
It’s been 10 years since the release of Dolby Vision back in the day, which allowed TVs to adjust and optimize content on your screen from scene to scene or even frame to frame and bridge the gap between cinema and at-home viewing. It’s been a long time in the works, but it’s no surprise to me that Dolby Vision 2 would be released now, given advancements in AI and their ability to understand context. More than that, though, Dolby Vision 2 should help better optimize current and future generations of TVs, which have obviously changed quite a bit since 2014. As always, though, seeing is believing, so we’ll be the judge of that when we can lay eyes on Dolby Vision 2-assisted content for ourselves.
We’ve all been there: You moved your TV or computer monitor with bare hands and got it all greasy, or you splashed a bit of liquid on it in sports- or video-game-fueled excitement. How do you clean your screen? Read our guide below for pro tips.
While older, glass-fronted TVs were easy to clean with any anti-static rag and cleaner, you need to be more careful with modern screens, which aren’t protected.
Photograph: Parker Hall
The best method for cleaning off the small amount of dirt, grease, dust, or other muck that has accumulated on your TV? Ditch the solvent and just use a soft, dry microfiber cloth ($26 for 80) to clean the display. Wipe in a circular motion, much like you would when brushing your teeth or cleaning your counters.
If things are too gunky for a clean rag to pick up, reach for some distilled and deionized water ($17 per gallon), which won’t leave spots or have impurities that can damage your screen. Put a little on the cloth and wipe, following up with a fresh dry rag.
In a worst-case scenario, you can add a tiny amount of Dawn dish soap ($15 for 112 ounces) to the water (read: add a drop to an entire spray bottle [$8 for 2]) and use that. If you do this, you’ll want to wipe a second time with distilled water, then again with a dry rag to ensure no residue is left behind. Remember: screens aren’t waterproof at the edges, so be sure to go lightly with water if you’re using it.
It is typically easier to see how dirty your screen is when it is off, so I recommend turning it off or unplugging it when doing a cleaning. Be careful not to press too hard when rubbing, as you can damage your screen.
As a Samsung phone user of more than a decade, I still mostly hate using Samsung TVs. The stupid interface is annoying and hard to navigate, the apps are not that great, and I often stumble into some random section or other when I’m looking for something basic, like an input button, on the remote.
The screen on Samsung’s flagship S95F QD-OLED is so utterly gorgeous that none of this matters. Gorgeous black levels, insane colors, and a truly cinematic matte screen make this TV the prettiest I have ever laid eyes on for an extended period. If you’re at the poshest end of posh when it comes to home theaters, this is the model for you. Just plug in an Apple TV 4K or Roku Ultra.
“Infinity One”
Photograph: Parker Hall
I am not sure what this means, but it’s what Samsung calls the design language of its latest flagship screen, offering us a hyper-thin display that can mount flush to the wall, thanks to a big all-in-one cable that can deliver power, picture, and sound to and from the display and to Samsung’s One Connect Box. This box plugs into the wall and can be placed somewhere more aesthetic than below your TV, for folks who like to hide away all the cables, and it allows easy access to peripherals like four HDMI ports, a cable or antenna connection, a network cable connection, and a USB port for powering streaming devices.
It’s a nice little setup that takes away the stress of tiptoeing behind the TV to plug and unplug stuff, but it does mean you’ll have to find a place to put it, which could be a downside for minimalist living rooms. For my review unit, I just put the thing on a coffee table in front of the TV; not super pretty, but extremely functional. If I were keeping this TV long-term? I’d probably put it down near my 4K Blu-ray player.
The included remote is small and not backlit, but it is solar- and radio-powered, which means that you’ll never have to struggle through the junk drawer for a pair of AAA batteries when you’re in the middle of a binge-watching session. I’d still love a backlight for the remote, though, because this TV is so incredible in dark spaces (more on this later).
Interface-wise, it’s the same annoying maze that I’ve been battling from Samsung for years. There are too many ads, and it feels clunky and old. The good news is that AirPlay 2 and Samsung Smart View come standard, so it’s at least easy to get your phone’s content onscreen. Onboard apps are fine and do stream well, but I prefer the speed of outboard streaming devices like the aforementioned Apple TV 4K and Roku Ultra for streaming on a TV this nice.
The short answer is price, performance, and usability. Most regular folks who ask me about a new TV are looking for something around $500 or less. Jumping up a few hundred dollars can often get you a lot more performance, but I understand that may not be in the budget, so this list generally aims for TVs at or below that magic number. To get there, we sometimes sacrifice size, often recommending 55-inch models rather than the 65-inch size that’s becoming the industry standard. Not everyone needs a larger screen, and the larger you go, the more you’ll notice performance imperfections.
As TVs get increasingly bigger, it’s also getting harder to find good TVs smaller than 55-inches, especially if you want features like High Dynamic Range and quantum dot colors that make for a much more vibrant and impactful picture. These features often go hand-in-hand with 4K resolution, so while you may not mind getting an HDTV at smaller sizes, all the TVs we’ve recommended offer 4K resolution. Wherever possible, we look for models that offer various size options to cater to all buyers and use cases.
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Basically every major product category has seen massive inflation over the past decade. Every category, that is, except TVs. For some reason, year in and year out, brands compete not only to make the best and brightest but also the best cheap models.
The new Vizio 4K TV (its literal model name) costs $328 for a 55-inch model, has excellent built-in casting and every app you could possibly want, and does Dolby Vision high dynamic range. It doesn’t have fancy backlighting for perfect black levels, but if you need a screen for cheap for a bedroom, office, garage, vacation home, corner bar, what have you, there really isn’t much this one can’t do pretty darn well.
Five years ago, a TV with specs like this would have been around a thousand bucks. Reverse inflation sure is nice for average viewers. Now you can get the massive 86-inch model for under a thousand bucks.
A New Black Box
TVs have gotten so good that the vast majority of us really don’t need to follow trends on the high end anymore. For well under $500, this model has all the features we’ve come to expect from higher-end TVs, including fit and finish.
Photograph: Parker Hall
It’s a simple black box with legs on either side of the screen. I’d prefer a pedestal mount, but I can’t get picky at this price, and you may or may not have a wall mount or other type of mount planned. The legs keep it steady enough on my TV stand, and a nice 2-inch thick case makes it easy to move the TV around without fear of breaking it.
Like all modern TVs, this one has super-thin bezels and is nearly all screen when turned on. It runs on Vizio’s SmartCast operating system, which is one of the better in-house smart TV interfaces we regularly test. It makes for easy casting between both Android phones (thanks to Chromecast) and iPhones (thanks to AirPlay 2), and it has its own variety of decent built-in apps for everything from Netflix to Apple TV. All of them work just fine in my testing, though I prefer my trusty Roku interface when given the choice.
Setup is quick and painless. Just plug in the TV, log in to your apps, and it’s off to the races. It comes with three built-in HDMI ports (one eARC for soundbar or receiver setup), which is more than enough for most modern homes. I plugged in my Nintendo Switch and Panasonic 4K Blu-Ray player and was watching Ferris Bueller in no time.
There are a few products in our lives we want to use all the time and never have to think about. Faucets come to mind—you want your faucet to turn on and off, not leak. That’s about it. Google’s new Google TV Streamer is an Android-powered TV faucet that never leaks. Once you log into your various accounts and start streaming, you hardly notice it’s there, but you’ll have easy access to all your favorite shows and movies. You can even use the remote to control connected devices in your home, like lights, speakers, and plugs.
Casting from phones is simple and easy, and this new $100 streaming device lacks the sometimes jittery performance we saw on last-generation devices like the Google Chromecast and some current-gen TVs powered by Google’s TV operating system. If you dislike your current TV interface or want to make sure you’re streaming from well-maintained apps on a device that supports Dolby Vision and a wired internet connection, this is an excellent choice.
Simple Setup
The flat, cylindrical streaming device and its pill-shaped remote are about as plug-and-play as things can get, but it’s worth noting this design is a dramatic change from the Chromecasts of old. No longer does Google’s TV dongle dangle off the side of your TV. This Streamer is meant to be displayed loud and proud on a media console.
Photograph: Parker Hall
There is a single HDMI 2.1 port, a USB C port for power, and an Ethernet port for wired internet. On the back next to the ports, you’ll see a tiny little button that can make the remote beep and reveal its location; my forgetful brain thanks the engineers at Google for this. I wish the Streamer included an HDMI cable, as I had to fish one out of my closet. This wasn’t an issue with its predecessors, which had a built-in HDMI cable.
The remote is large enough that you’ll want to find a cell-phone-sized flat spot to put it—not the most convenient thing ever but not the most annoying either. The buttons aren’t backlit, but they’re easy enough to see even in low light thanks to grey-black text on a white background. It’s a simple layout with volume buttons on the right side of the remote for easy access, and the home button in grey just above so you don’t accidentally press it in the middle of a movie.
Once you turn on the Google TV Streamer, log in to your Google accounts (and whatever other streaming accounts you have these days) and you’re good to go. You can do all this via the Google Home app if you don’t want to use the onscreen TV keyboard to enter passwords. I was watching Netflix in under five minutes. (It also supports all the major apps, like Max, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, and Pluto TV).
A Smart Home Controller
The Google TV Streamer can act as a smart home display to easily control lighting, security cameras, thermostats, and more if you have that stuff connected via Google Home. It pulls up a screen on the right side of the TV screen, called the Home Panel, and it shows you what you have connected and allows you to control it. This experience is similar to the Home Panel on the lock screen of the Google Pixel Tablet or even on many Android phones.
I’m not a smart-home guy; I use a few Alexa speakers to set alarms and play Spotify, but the rest of my house is woefully unconnected. I asked fellow WIRED reviewer and connected-home guru Nena Farrell to test the smart home features for me, and she reported that they work very well. Voice commands to Google Assistant are responsive, and she liked using her TV screen for smart home control. She successfully used the remote to turn off her lights even when the TV was off. It can also be used to monitor smart doorbells and cameras, something WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu says is very handy, as you can check for motion alerts without having to find your phone in the dark during movie night.
The Bravia 9 also offers new “Calibration” modes for Amazon Prime and Netflix. The Amazon version makes some interesting changes for different programming, though the Netflix version seemed to mostly just mirror the dimmer Dolby Vision Dark picture mode in the HDR content I watched.
Mostly Solid Digs
The TV is pretty well stocked on the feature front, starting with audio that rises above the crowd. This is one of the few TVs where I don’t mind cutting my audio system (with the A95L being another prime example). Sound is generally full and clear without getting super tinny. There’s some noticeable soundstage movement, and even effects like explosions come out all right.
I thought Sony’s new Voice Zoom 3 dialog booster was mostly marketing hype, but it works pretty well. At one point, I passively heard the entire story of a Sylvester Stallone anecdote in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 which I’d missed in about 7,000 previous viewings, including with soundbars and speakers. Dialog remained mostly clear and out front over several days, even when things got chaotic.
As expected, you’ll get the latest gaming features, including support for ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) at up to 120 Hz via HDMI 2.1. There’s a dedicated gaming mode for quick adjustments and PS5 optimization features like Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode. I’m no competitive gamer, and some have noted that the TV’s input response is relatively high for its price, but I adored playing my favorite RPGs. The shading, the colors, and the overall brightness brought the best out of games like God of War Ragnarok.
It’s frustrating that Sony continues to offer HDMI 2.1 support across only two of the TV’s four inputs, unlike most TVs at this level (and below)—especially since one of those is for eARC where you’ll likely connect a soundbar or receiver. The TV’s great sound means some may not add an audio device, but the potential need to swap cables for multiple consoles is silly at this price.
The Bravia 9 also omits one of the two main dynamic HDR formats, HDR10+, offering only Dolby Vision. If you can only pick one, I’d take the more common DV every time but it’d be nice to get both as you’ll find in midrange models from TCL and Hisense. That’s surprisingly common right now; LG and Panasonic TVs don’t support HDR10+, while Samsung won’t pay for Dolby Vision.
Sony is more inclusive on the audio side, offering both DTS:X and Dolby Atmos support. Other notable Bravia 9 features include AirPlay 2 and Chromecast streaming, and Google Voice search via the remote’s built-in microphone.
Sensibly Surreal
The Bravia 9 is an unadulterated brightness powerhouse. Yet, with Sony’s measured hand at the wheel, it doles out its power judiciously, providing subtlety where warranted and dazzlement when the moment strikes. Utilizing a new proprietary system that dims its backlighting with impressive accuracy, this TV is less a blunt force weapon as a mini LED laser beam, striking with white-hot precision. The result is fabulous contrast mixed with next-gen brightness for serious thrills.
Training the Bravia 9’s fire on one of my go-to test films, Moana, felt like proof of concept for a backlighting system some have clocked at nearly 3,000 nits peak brightness (or around double many OLED TVs). I’ve noted before how realistic the film’s Polynesian sun and surf can look with the best TVs, but here things pushed into the surreal. The sun blazed to near eye-squinting levels which, when mixed with the TV’s quantum dot colors and the stark clarity of Sony’s processing, gave me an almost hallucinatory sensation that I was actually at the beach with Moana and Maui. Other scenes like the glittering golden crab or the molten lava monster rose to exhilarating new heights as the light seemed to nearly bore through the panel.
Projectors offer larger screen sizes and a more cinematic viewing experience than their TV counterparts, but that doesn’t mean they’re easier to set up. That’s why we have an entire guide to How to Buy a Projector to check out!
Unless you’re going for a portable option, you’ll want to make sure you have a projector mount ($20) and audio cables properly routed to the location of your projector. This is because setting up full-size projectors to fit your screen, be in focus, etc., can be a pain, so once you get everything dialed in, you’ll want to leave it as-is.
Make sure you get enough lumens (how bright your projector will get at its peak, the higher the number the better). Over 2,000 lumens is a good starting space for any kind of lit viewing, but we recommend 3000 or above if you’re viewing in a bright room.
Another thing to bear in mind before you get a projector is just how much space you’ll need to properly set it up. In most cases, you’ll need 10 to 15 feet between the screen and the projector (be sure to check the “throw distance” listed by the manufacturer in the manual) to achieve screen sizes over 100 inches.
Without a completely dark room, the image can look washed out and be hard to see. If you don’t have a room without windows, consider getting blackout curtains. For more detailed information on how to set up a projector after it arrives, I highly recommend this video.
(left) Smart Schedule on Pixel-8 (center) Smart Ventilation on Pixel 8 Pro (right) System Health Monitor Pixel 8
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Finally, the Nest Learning Thermostat has a new System Health Monitor to flag potential maintenance needs by tracking your HVAC system’s behavior, such as when your air conditioner suddenly isn’t cooling rooms as efficiently as it used to. In addition, a new Smart Ventilation feature checks outdoor air quality before pulling air into your home, especially helpful if the air quality in your area is poor.
The new Nest Learning Thermostat (plus the included sensor) is available for preorder and costs $280. It goes on sale August 20.
The Future of Google Assistant
Google has been integrating its Gemini chatbot and large language models into its products and services over the past year, but what does that mean for Google Assistant? The Alexa and Siri competitor has been a mainstay for years but wasn’t mentioned once during Google’s developer conference in May. You’d think this spelled the end of Google Assistant, and that it’d eventually end up in the Google Graveyard, right? Think again.
Kattukaran says Gemini’s large language models will power Google Assistant, allowing it to “redefine the next era of the smart home.” The most immediate change? Google Assistant’s voice will sound much more natural and human-like, with improved pacing and rhythm. It’ll offer a more conversational experience and can maintain the context of your conversation as you string together multiple commands and queries.
This Gemini-powered experience will also improve existing features. For example, motion alerts from your security cameras will be much more detailed, allowing you to know exactly what’s transpiring without opening the camera feed. You can even ask the Assistant for information from your camera feeds, like if a FedEx delivery person showed up. Google wants people to ask Assistant to set up home automation too without getting bogged down in menus in the app.
None of this helps Gemini’s branding problem—there are so many variations with different capabilities, like Gemini Nano, Gemini Ultra, Gemini Flash, and more recently, Gemini Live. Google Assistant, on the other hand, was one neat AI umbrella that handled everything. But now with Assistant getting an assist from Gemini, the company is not yet ready to replace it anytime soon, meaning we have to live with two assistants even longer.
The new Google Assistant experience is available for select Nest Aware subscribers as a part of a public preview and is expected to roll out in 2025.
Back in the 1950s, when color TV was invented, everything was simple. TVs were either color or black-and-white, and you could tell at a glance which was which. Today, you can find TVs and monitors that somehow promise more colors, but what does that mean? And why do manufacturers use confusing jargon like color spaces and color gamuts to explain it? Let’s break it down.
Most likely, you’ve seen the terms “color space” or “color gamut” while shopping for a high-dynamic-range TV, but you’ll also see them pop up around certain computer monitors, especially ones designed for gaming. Sometimes a manufacturer will say that a display covers some percentage of a particular color space, like DCI-P3 or Rec. 2020.
If none of these words mean anything to you, then it’s probably fine if you ignore them. All most people really need to know is whether their display supports HDR—a significant upgrade to color displays that can produce over a billion colors in bright, vivid detail. But if you do a lot of media editing, or you care about getting the most accurate color reproduction you can, here’s how to interpret all the jargon.
What Is a Color Gamut?
As you might recall from middle school science class, color is simply how our squishy human eyes perceive different wavelengths of light. The spectrum of wavelengths that we can see is only a small subset of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. So, a color display will show all the colors that a human eye can see. Right?
Well, not exactly. In fact, every display you’ve ever seen only shows a small portion of the colors that your eyes are capable of perceiving. That portion is what’s referred to as a “color gamut.” A color gamut refers to the range of colors within the visible light spectrum that the display is capable of reproducing.
It might not seem like there are colors missing from your display, because you see approximations of most colors, but there are certain colors that simply can’t be shown. For a simple comparison, SDR (standard dynamic range) TVs are capable of displaying over 16.7 million colors—more specifically, there are 16.7 million unique combinations of the 256 different levels of red, green, and blue that the display can produce.
An HDR TV, on the other hand, is capable of at least 1,024 different levels of red, green, and blue each, for over 1.07 billion unique color combinations. This dramatically expands how much of the visible spectrum that displays can reproduce. But it also means that all the content that you see on your display—every show, movie, or video game—has to be created with those new color options in mind.
What Is a Color Space?
The term “color space” refers to not only a range of colors, but a specific way of organizing colors in a way that device manufacturers can refer to and support. For example, the sRGB color space is used to specify the 16.7 million colors that most SDR monitors and TVs have been producing for years.
Most of these color spaces are defined in part by their relation to the CIE 1931 color space, which quantifies all of the colors that are visible to the human eye. The plethora of other color spaces out there define a subset of these colors, with some used to define colors for purposes like printing. When shopping for a monitor or TV, there are a few key ones worth keeping your eye out for:
When my husband and I swapped out our Vizio OLED for Roku’s Pro Series QLED and switched it on, both of us gasped. Even my two children (7 and 9) were mesmerized when they turned on Steven Universe. “Why does it look so much better now?” my daughter asked.
The difference between OLED and QLED is palpable (as you can also read in our How to Buy a TV guide). OLED technology is beautiful, but it lends itself to truly black blacks; it’s best if you’re watching movies or gaming in an optimized, dark, home-theater-like environment. A QLED is just … brighter. That makes a huge difference when you’re 7 and 9, watching cartoons while jumping on the couch and waiting for dinner, or when you’re a mom who is trying to catch a bit of the Copa America games on the couch with her dog while working.
This is the first of Roku’s in-house-made TVs (Roku TVs made before last year were made by other companies, just with a Roku brain). My colleague Parker Hall tested the entry-level Roku TV, the Plus Series, and was very impressed. For a month now, my family and I have been testing the upgraded Roku Pro Series and have also been thrilled.
User Friendly
Specs and performance aside, one of the main reasons you buy a Roku anything is because of how easy it is to use. I really liked my Vizio OLED and just accepted that every time I turned it on, I’d have to spend five minutes sorting through the Vizio Smart interface and fiddling with cables if I wanted to play on my gaming PC.
Photograph: Adrienne So
It was with a deep sigh of relief that I plugged in my Sonos soundbar, PS5, and gaming PC into the Roku TV and watched everything just … show up in the Roku interface. (It has two HDMI 2.1 ports, HDMI eARC, USB-A, USB-C, and cable inputs.)
Although you can mount it, I just placed it on our console table with the two included feet and it fit easily. Adding all your apps—Netflix, Disney+, Fubo—takes about as long as clicking on the Add Channels button and signing in on your computer, which is basically zero time unless you’ve forgotten your login information.
Having an easy-to-navigate interface also makes it much easier to figure out other things to watch. Vizio’s interface was so cluttered that my kids often just went straight to Steven Universe. On Roku’s, the CuriosityStream and PBS Kids tiles are so easy to find that they ended up watching more educational content just out of, well, curiosity. That was an unexpected gift in summer, when all the neighborhood kids just end up watching TV at our house in the air-conditioning.
This tech comes at the expense of lower response times and more shallow viewing angles, which is why it’s less common than IPS. They’re also usually a little more expensive than IPS panels, so if contrast is important to you, you might expect to pay more for it.
Mini-LED: Local Dimming on a Smaller Scale
The backlights on most LCD displays are usually lit up across the entire screen, but TVs found a way to get better contrast by introducing local dimming. The only problem is that creating an array of backlights that could be controlled independently was difficult to scale down to smaller screens.
Enter Mini-LED. Mini-LEDs are smaller than typical LED backlights (around 200 microns), which means that display manufacturers can fit a lot more into a smaller space. To the tune of thousands of local dimming zones in laptop and tablet displays. Strictly speaking, Mini-LED is a backlight technology and can be combined with several different types of LCD panels, but it will improve contrast and black levels on any panel it’s used in. There is also a technology called “Micro LED,” where the pixels act as their own backlight, but that’s limited to super large (and insanely expensive) displays at the moment.
OLED: The Holy Grail of Black Levels
One of the few alternatives to liquid crystals are organic light emitting diodes (or OLED). These panels use pixels that emit their own light, avoiding the need for a backlight. Since each pixel can emit its own light, there’s no extra light bleed in dark parts of the image. The black levels on OLED panels are effectively infinite, since any pixel that isn’t activated is functionally the same as when the display is turned off.
Since there are no backlights involved, OLED panels are incredibly good at producing high-contrast images and accurately reproducing color. However, unlike LCD displays, they’re more prone to burn-in. There also aren’t many companies manufacturing these panels. In fact, the majority of OLED panels are produced by one manufacturer: LG.
This has made OLED panels more expensive than typical LCD displays, though they’ve gotten down to more reasonable prices in recent years. Still, if you want to get the best possible picture, you’re likely to run into OLED panels, and they’re likely to come at a premium versus comparable LCD screens.
QD OLED and WOLED: Brighter OLED
Quantum dot OLEDs (or QD-OLED) are a relatively new entry into the display scene from Samsung. While OLEDs emit their own light, they still need to use filters to produce red, green, and blue wavelengths. Typical OLEDs use a white subpixel to produce that light, increasing the brightness from each pixel.
Similar to other quantum dot displays, QD-OLED uses blue OLEDs as a light source that then strikes quantum dots to generate the red and green light necessary to produce a full-color image. This approach marries the benefits of OLED (no need for a separate backlight, high-contrast images) with the advantages of quantum dots (less light lost while passing through filters, more direct control over color precision).
Recent displays that use QD-OLED are among some of the prettiest panels we’ve ever tested here at WIRED. For example, the Samsung S95C (8/10, WIRED Recommends) blew away WIRED senior editor Parker Hall, with its perfect black levels, vibrant colors, and wide viewing angles.
WOLED is a similar technology that is also aimed at making things brighter, but comes with a white OLED layer as well. This is used in high-end models from LG like the new C4 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) to achieve peak brightness well over 1000 nits.
Since QD-OLED and WOLED panels are relatively new, displays using them are likely to be on the more expensive side for now, but you’ll likely be hard-pressed to find better image quality on monitors without them.
These days, you wouldn’t want to buy a TV that doesn’t support HDR unless you’re after a small/cheap HD TV. Even if you’re on a tight budget, you’ll also want to consider an LED TV with quantum dots (aka a QLED or NeoQLED display) for their brighter and more vivid colors.
Gaming Performance
Sony Playstation 5
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
If you’re going to be gaming on your TV, I highly recommend paying attention to two factors: refresh rate and input lag. You can often find these specs on the product listing or the box itself. Most standard TVs have a refresh rate of 60 Hz, which means the display can natively reach 60 frames per second (fps), or 60 images on the screen per second. However, modern consoles and games can support up to 120 frames per second, or 120 images per second. This offers smoother motion on the screen, making your game feel more fluid and responsive. For this reason, the best gaming TVs utilize a 120-Hz panel.
Input lag is the time it takes for your movement on a gamepad or keyboard to register on the screen. The lower the better. Most TVs hover at around 15 milliseconds of input lag (less if the game is running at 1080p and 60 frames per second). LG’s OLED models have shockingly low input lag times, but this is primarily beneficial for fast-paced games that require speedy interactions, like first-person shooter games.
If you’re an avid gamer, you’ll also want to ensure your TV offers advanced gaming features like VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) to sync with a game’s changing refresh rate without “tearing” or feeling sluggish, and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode), which automatically optimizes the TV’s input lag when turning on a modern console or gaming PC. In order to get those features in high resolution, you’ll need a high-bandwidth HDMI connection, and that means a TV with HDMI 2.1.
The Right Ports
Samsung S95D One Connect Box
Most TVs include an optical output for audio, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet connection, and three or four HDMI ports. As noted above, you should make sure your new TV supports at least one high-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 port (or more if you have multiple modern gaming devices), which allows for 4K resolution at up to 120-Hz for the best gaming performance, among other benefits.
All new TVs provide one HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) port, which lets you easily connect modern soundbars, powered bookshelf speakers, and A/V receivers with an HDMI cable—and even control volume and power from the TV remote. Most midrange TVs or higher will support the more advanced version of ARC, HDMI eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel). With higher bandwidth, eARC allows a TV to send uncompressed sound formats to a supported audio device. In essence, it supports better sound quality to raise the performance of the best soundbars and surround sound systems, but you’ll need a great setup to tell the difference.
I recommend buying all-new high-speed cables if you’re getting a new TV for the first time in a while like the affordable Amazon Basics cable linked above. Modern cables support higher data speeds than those from years past, and HDMI cables can wear out over time.
What About TV Software?
Photograph: Google
All major TV brands have a baseline smart interface with support for a large number of streaming services, including Vizio’s Home Screen, Samsung’s Tizen OS, and LG’s webOS. New Sony TVs, as well as most new Hisense and TCL models, come with Google TV, while Roku TVs come with Roku OS, the streaming brand’s simplified, tile-based interface.
Roku and Google TV are our current favorite smart TV interfaces, but if you’re not keen on your TV’s built-in operating system, worry not—you can easily add your desired streaming platform for very little money with one simple purchase. Just grab one of our favorite streaming devices, plug it in, and let your preferred smart interface do the heavy lifting.
How Much Should You Expect to Pay?
Hisense U8H
Photograph: Hisense
You’ll see quite a range of prices when shopping for a new TV. A lot of it comes down to the features you want. Here’s a basic price guide on what you can expect for the money. Be sure to check out our list of the Best TVs for specific model information.
Under $500
If you just want a TV with a large screen that can stream your favorite shows, this is a good starting place, especially if you’re on a budget. I highly suggest you avoid TVs that aren’t made by the likes of Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Hisense, Vizio, or Roku. Also, avoid spending less than $300 on anything, unless it’s smaller than 55 inches.
Between $500 and $1,000
If you watch TV often and want something between 40 and 65 inches, this is a great price category to shop in. Stick to the major brands above—especially our favorite value-oriented brands like TCL, Hisense, and Roku—and you can hardly go wrong. If you want the best from more premium brands like Samsung, LG, and Sony you’ll likely need to spend up.
More Than $1,000
This price range is for TVs 65 inches or larger, and/or those with advanced panel technologies, like OLED, and QLED/mini-LED. You’ll also typically get higher-end processing for improved upscaling, and better hardware like a 120Hz panel for video games and sports. Get into the $2,000 range and you’ll find top-rated 4K TVs from Samsung, LG, and Sony. Spend more than a few thousand, and you can begin to expect 8K resolution—not that there is currently much 8K content to watch.
Get a Soundbar or Bookshelf Speakers
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
TV speakers suck. Companies have tried to improve them, but even the best models still sound tinny. Just buy a soundbar already. Many modern soundbars come with built-in smart assistants like Google Assistant or Alexa, connect to streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify Connect, and offer advanced sound formats like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X to immerse you in sound. Our Best Soundbars guide has several recommendations at multiple price ranges.
If you’re more music-oriented and don’t care as much about surround sound formats, we recommend considering a pair of bookshelf speakers as a soundbar alternative. Many options in our Best Bookshelf Speakers guide come with built-in amplification and advancements like wireless streaming and HDMI ARC, so you don’t need a separate amplifier—just plug and play. If you’ve been listening to TV speakers up to now, you won’t believe what you’ve been missing.
Saving up for a new screen? Even if a giant TV is no longer the third-most-expensive thing some Americans own after their house and car, it’s still a big decision. Whether you’re a videophile or a normie looking for your first foray into Ultra HD, the best TVs available right now are bigger, brighter, and cheaper than ever before.
To help you navigate the dozens of seemingly identical TV models from Samsung, LG, TCL, Hisense, Sony, and other manufacturers, we’ve watched hundreds of hours of content to pick out the favorites from our recent reviews. We’ve listed everything from the very best TV we’ve tested to the best sets you can buy on a tight budget—with a few excellent choices in between.
All of these models have at least 4K Ultra HD pixel resolution (one has 8K), because there’s no reason to buy a standard HDTV anymore. TVs now come with wonderful displays, but they’re usually terrible at audio and can have lackluster interfaces, so you should consider investing in a good soundbar or pair of bookshelf speakers and a TV streaming stick. If you’re unfamiliar with much of the lingo TV manufacturers use, our How to Buy a TV guide can help.
Updated June 2024: We’ve added the Hisense U8N, the TCL QM8, the Samsung S95D, and the Samsung QN900C. We also added the Sony Bravia 7 to Honorable Mentions, and the Roku Pro Series as an upgrade to the Roku Plus Series.
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The U8N also lets you control the volume output of its optical port with the TV remote, making it much simpler to control older audio systems that don’t support HDMI ARC/eARC, like my original KEF LSX speakers. If you decide to settle for the onboard sound, the U8N’s 2.1.2 speaker system offers some decent detail, and a bit of extra bass punch for its woofers.
The TV is well stocked on the gaming front, including VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and AMD FreeSync Premium Proto for fluid high frame-rate gaming, as well as ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) for low input lag. Gaming feels realistic and responsive, with impressive HDR performance. I like the variety of available picture settings, including both Theater and Game modes, which provide rich contrast and vibrant colors for details like Kratos’ ruby red armor in God of War Ragnarok.
Peaky Blinder
The U8N provides an almost intimidating level of picture settings for deep-dive adjustments. The Peak Brightness setting is the most confusing. When applying my usual picture modes during setup, like Theater Night for standard dynamic range (SDR) and HDR Theater mode for HDR10, Peak Brightness was set on High by default, which really pumps up the overall picture. This can result in raised black levels and white-hot highlights in content and menu bars, especially with HDR video, leading my wife to call the U8N “the hurty TV” at first.
There are a few things going on here. First, Peak Brightness is primed for daytime watching in bright rooms with sunlight pouring in, allowing even the darkest scenes to pop. Hisense also includes an adjustable Automatic Light Sensor under the General picture settings, something most reviewers tend to turn off for consistent performance but is all but necessary for Peak Brightness. It does a relatively good job taming the splashy brightness in low lighting, even if I don’t always love how it reacts to each environment.
Still, Hisense’s decision to quietly set Peak Brightness on High (often without the light sensor engaged) in picture modes that are usually more restrained is confounding, even for someone used to digging through picture settings. A colleague suggested that the TV’s default Energy Saving mode—a dimmer setting that includes the light sensor on for Peak Brightness—is the one Hisense expects most viewers to experience since most folks apparently don’t change their picture settings. The light sensor is also helpfully engaged by default in some other modes, like Dolby Vision Dark.
If you decide to use Peak Brightness, which is necessary to reach the TV’s highest brightness levels, I suggest starting on Low and turning the light sensor for night viewing. This worked well for illuminating challenging SDR content like Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows during daylight hours, where the darkest scenes seemed to have even less pop than the U8K without the peak brightness setting on.
My brightest HDR testing content often looked overcooked and oversaturated in this mode. That’s not surprising, considering the TV can reach over 3,000 nits, or triple the brightness at which most videos are currently mastered (though this baseline will change with the latest mastering tools). I usually left the setting off for HDR, but it can be useful in brighter rooms, especially for the always murky Dolby Vision Dark mode. I couldn’t help but marvel at how vibrant and flashy some scenes looked with the setting on, such as the monster scene in Moana, where the giant crab Tamatoa’s golden shell burst to life in disco psychedelia.
Slackjaw Spectacle
However you utilize the U8N’s picture settings, it’s capable of the signature beautiful picture we’ve come to expect from the series, with deep black levels, fabulous backlight control, very little “haloing” around bright objects, and intense colors that sparkle like jewels in sunlight.
This is showy performance, especially for high-quality 4K HDR productions like Netflix’s Our Planet. Episode 4’s coral scene looks incredible, with dashing neon yellows, sapphire blues, and lifelike sunlight sparkling across it all. Occasionally the TV tends to oversaturate reds, especially when using the Warm1 color temperature, but even so it’s stunningly beautiful. It’s the kind of picture that makes you just want to sit there, slackjawed and dumbfounded, as the pretty colors and bright sparklies dance before your eyes.
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