This probably isn’t the right place for this, but close enough.

The wife and I are buying a tv for the first time in 10 years. We haven’t had one before, don’t watch a hell of a lot of TV, and when we do it’s on iPad.

I hear horror stories about people buying smart TVs that display adds everywhere, sometimes after first purchase. And I hear words like plasmas and LCD.

I know nothing.

I want a good tv, can get Netflix’s ect, not hugely annoying to use. Middle size (don’t have massive house). What brand/type should I look at?

Help me DLP, your my only hope.

 

@Jack-O Gave me really good advice when I was buying mine.

 

https://slickdeals.net/tv-deals/

Even huge TVs are cheap nowadays. I wouldn't spend over $1,000 unless you have very specific needs.

 

Yeah but that’s my point, I’d rather spend more on a ok one that wasn’t loaded with adds and spywear.

 

Well i have a 55" Samsung TV that I'm fairly unhappy with and a 65" Roku TV that I much prefer. If you're going to get a smart TV (and it's hard not too), I would definitely recommend Roku over Samsung.

 

For what is worth, wife and I compromised on this Samsung and we really like it. No ads I can think of and it looks super nice decoratively and for gaming

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-55-i...t=&hvlocphy=9011165&hvtargid=pla-900019730781

 

I have a 65" Samsung plus a Fire Cube, and they're excellent. Would definitely recommend it.

 

AFAIK Samsung no longer sells TVs that don't have their proprietary smart TV OS on them.

Not sure if it has changed but some Samsung TVs do have ads built into the OS - basically there's a spot on the main menu that shows an ad when you scroll past.

Also some models require you to make a Samsung account before letting you download apps.

If all you're after is Netflix specifically you can probably get away with any brand that has a good enough screen and hook up a chromecast/fire TV or whatever. Then you won't need to connect the TV itself to the wifi and you can dodge any built in ads that way.

If your current TV is ~10 years old you really can't go wrong with what's out right now. Just don't go with the ultra cheap no name Chinese brands and you should be safe.

Edit: Jon makes a good point. If you do decide to check out TVs in person a lot of them have store/demo modes that change a bunch of settings up to make them look better in a well lit environment. Like Jon said you will probably need to adjust a bunch of settings on your own to make it look like it did in the store.

 

Yup thats the sweet spot I am looking for. The TV has capability to do some stuff, with out being bloated by other crap or being to complicated to point and click.

Thanks for the feed back. I have gone to a few shops to look. But I don't trust anything a sales person tells me, since they tend to want to sell me something.

 

Take a look at LG tvs. I have 3 of them in my house and as far as I know they don't have the ad problem. But than again I don't actually watch TV and all of them are just screens for various devices.

Their smart os is (used to be? All my TVs are like 5 years old now) the best around. Netflix/Youtube/Streaming from Plex over wifi/Watching videos from usb hard drive etc. Has never been a problem.

The only issue I have with them is some sort of weird bug with what I assume is the smoothing feature for the bedroom one that has a pc plugged into it via a long ass hdmi cable. For some reason any streamed video looks like shit on the TV while working perfectly on a monitor. Games work just fine, so I haven't really looked into it.

 

Your big decision is what panel technology you want to use. The main choice is between OLED (LG and Sony have TVs using this tech) and (Q)LED LCD (much more common, often just called LED).

Screen tech 101: OLED pixels are individually activated, whereas LEDs are lit by a backlight. This means that OLEDs have less motion blur and greater contrast, especially with blacks, because they can turn individual LEDs off to achieve complete black rather than just very dark grey. It also means greater precision in lighting - on LED screens, you will get halo effects around brightly lit elements because the backlight can only be so precise. The overall effect is that, in ideal conditions, and OLED screen will look better than an LED one.

The main downside is that OLEDs can't get as bright as LEDs because of the lack of a backlight, which can mean HDR content isn't as good and also reduces the TV's ability to handle brightly lit rooms.

OLEDs also have a risk of "burn in" where images get "burnt" into the screen but this is only a problem if you watch the same content for very long periods of time eg. if you just leave the TV on CNN all the time then the CNN logo would eventually burn in.

Basically: if you are mostly going to be using the TV in a dark(ish) room and don't watch loads of content with repetitive features like logos, get OLED. The picture quality will be higher.

If, on the other hand, you are likely to be watching TV in a brightly lit room, or don't want to worry about burn in, get an (Q)LED LCD.

The current leading OLED is LG's C series, with the most recent version being the CX. You could probably pick up a C9 relatively cheaply, however.

The best LED TV out there at the moment is probably the Samsung Q series, with the 2020 iteration being the Q90T/Q95T.

Either way, don't forget that all TV speakers are shit so you should also budget for some sort of speakers.

If you want something more towards the budget end (which will rule out OLED), I'd recommend checking out this video: Best TV Under $400 In fact, I recommend watching it anyway, because the things they talk about will give you a good sense of what it is that your extra money is buying when you go high end (and therefore whether going high end is worth it for you).

 

Brilliant thanks @Taure thats hugely helpful!

 

Get yourself a network-level ad blocker to clean out the spam on a smart TV. I recently set up a Pi-Hole at @The Iron Rose 's suggestion and it's worked like a charm.