The 10 Best 4K TVs That Guarantee a Great Viewing Experience (2024)

Like its immediate predecessors, the LG C3 Evo is a critics’ consensus pick for the best combination of ultimate picture quality for the price.

The C3 offers an amazing OLED screen that comes in a wide range of sizes, including 48- and 42-inches. It produces stunning colors and especially deep blacks and grays that make colors pop, thanks to its superior self-emitting OLED technology.

There is improved HDR compared to the 2022 C2 model thanks to a new processing chip. The C3 also is a great choice for gaming, with a 120Hz refresh rate, extremely low latency, and NVIDIA G-Sync built in. LG’s WebOS smart TV interface doubles as a smart home control hub.

Connectivity is better than most of the competition, with four of the latest HDMI 2.1 ports, including an eARC jack that turns a sound bar into your TV speaker controllable with your TV remote, in addition to USB and Ethernet jacks. All of this comes in at a high but still competitive price, which makes the C3 an easy top 4K TV recommendation.

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Equipped with more mini-LED backlights than any other Samsung mini-LED TV, creating a whopping 1,344 dimming zones, the QLED QN95C ranks as the ultimate LED TV. It's equally at home in dimly lit rooms for movie watching or in rooms drenched in streaming sunshine for sports viewing.

The QN95C also is also equipped with plenty of gaming-specific features such as a 120Hz display and automatic low latency mode (ALLM), and also produces above average sound.

Samsung has improved its still comparatively clunky Tizen smart TV interface, which includes not only connection to a variety of streaming services, but also Samsung’s dedicated Game Hub with access to the QN95C’s gaming settings and services.

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One of the brightest, most color accurate, and best sounding LED TVs for 4K viewing in my recommendations is the Hisense U8K mini-LED. It is more highly discounted than competitive sets, which makes it an even better 4K TV value.

Featuring a 144Hz refresh rate with variable refresh rate (VRR) and low latency for high-level gaming, the U8K supports all versions of HDR including HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) to vastly improve the look of broadcast and cable TV programming.

Feature-wise, the U8K provides excellent sound, the latest Wi-Fi wireless connections, four HDMI inputs, and is available in sizes up to 100 inches for an equally high-value price.

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TCL is well known for producing high quality 4K TVs for low prices, and the TCL S4 is perhaps the best price-to-picture quality set the company has produced.

With only a 60Hz refresh rate and no added quantum dot layer, the TCL S4’s picture won’t match top OLED or mini-LED models, but you’ll get arguably the most color-intensive LCD-LED picture and most features possible in a sub-$500 65-inch TV.

In addition to a brighter and more colorful picture than other models in its price range, the TCL S4’s picture also provides excellent off-center viewing and does an excellent job of improving standard definition broadcast and cable fare.

One caveat: since TCL uses the same series numbers from year to year, make sure the S4 set you choose is the most current model.

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In a recent 4K TV reviewer’s competition shootout, Sony’s Bravia A95L OLED model easily emerged as the “undeniable champion” 4K TV available, regardless of price, and was dubbed the “King of 4K TVs.”

Pushing the A95L over the top is Sony’s powerful image processing chip pushing the quantum dot-enhanced 120Hz OLED screen to deliver the broadest color spectrum and unmatched contrast for any type of content—gaming, movies, and sports.

In addition, the A95L’s screen doubles as a speaker, enabling the set to produce loud and immersive audio without a sound bar, and so it's arguably also the best sounding 4K TV extant.

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The Samsung S95C QD-OLED produces more colors than most TVs and delivers one of the brightest OLED pictures available thanks to its quantum dot layer. It also includes plenty of gaming-specific specifications and features, including game-specific 144Hz screen refresh, super low latency, automatic low latency mode (ALLM), and a dedicated Game Bar to access gaming settings.

To improve your TV room’s aesthetics, the super thin S95C requires only a single thin wire connection to Samsung’s One Connect Box, which handles and hides all the other messy cable connections. For convenience, the S95C’s minimalist remote won’t need to have its batteries replaced—it recharges via solar power.

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This inexpensive TCL Series 6 mini-LED model stands out as the best overall TV equipped with Roku, recognized as the best and simplest overall smart TV system as a result of its wide variety of streaming channel options and easy-to-navigate interface.

Featuring a bright and colorful QLED mini-LED display boosted by quantum dots, this Series 6 model also offers numerous gaming-specific enhancements.

To improve placement and connectivity, the Series 6 is equipped with a three-piece wedge center stand with a snap-on cover to manage and hide cables. The stand can be adjusted to two different height positions in case you want to slip a sound bar underneath the set.

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If you enjoy inviting friends over to watch the big game, you’ll find few TVs will offer a brighter picture in a brightly lit room than the Sony X93L.

This Sony set delivers a vibrant color spectrum to accurately reproduce colorful jerseys and shining green fields. It's particularly good at overcoming room glare and reducing reflections, and offers a high level of standard dynamic range (SDR) contrast to sharpen the images of broadcast sports that don’t get 4K HDR contrast improvements.

To fit your particular TV positioning needs, the two stand feet can be placed at three different width positions and at three different heights up to 3.7 inches to accommodate an added sound bar.

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Not everyone has room for a 65- or even a 55-inch TV. If you’re space limited, this Amazon-branded QLED TV delivers a surprisingly bright, precise, and colorful small screen 4K TV picture considering its low price.

While lacking a 120Hz refresh rate, the Fire Omni TV surprisingly includes automatic low latency mode (ALLM) and variable refresh rate (VRR) to improve gaming.

When the Amazon Fire Omni is turned off, its Ambient Experience mode lets you display artwork or your own pictures as a screensaver, or widgets such as weather, music, or smart home device status.

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Most movies want—actually need—to be seen on a giant screen, but 85- and especially 100-inch flat screen 4K TVs are prohibitively pricey and bulky.

If you desire a truly big screen movie experience at home at a flat screen TV price, consider an ultra-short throw (UST) projector. About the size of a DVD player, a UST projector sits only around a foot or two in front of a big screen but uses three lasers to create a bright, colorful image of up to 150 inches, even in a well-lit room.

While it may be an unknown brand to most TV buyers, the aptly-named Formovie Theater has quickly established itself among experts and reviewers as the top UST available.

Not only does the Formovie Theater project a brighter, more colorful, and higher contrast image than most of its often-pricier competitors, it includes a four-speaker Bowers & Wilkins audio system for near movie theater-like Dolby Atmos sound. All you’ll need is a big pull-down screen, which typically costs less than $300.

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Are there different types of HDR?

Yes, but you only need to concern yourself with the types your 4K TV includes. Nearly all bigger screen 4K TVs are equipped with a type of HDR (high-dynamic range) that creates visibly punchier, higher contrast images when viewing 4K content from Blu-ray or streaming channels.

Different HDR versions include the standard and most common HDR, as well as more specialized HDR-10, HDR-10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma), designed to deliver HDR benefits to lower non-4K broadcast, cable, and satellite TV fare.

While there are subtle visual benefits associated with each type of HDR, and while some TV makers, 4K Blu-ray producers, and streaming channels opt to deploy some HDR versions but not others, compatibility really isn’t an issue since all include a plain and widely compatible HDR version.

Bottom line: Any set featuring any type of HDR will produce a visibly better 4K picture than a set without HDR.

How soon will I need to consider an 8K TV?

8K TV makers may not want to hear this, but probably never. 8K TVs offer a display with a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, or 33 million pixels, more than four times the 8 million pixels that comprise a 4K TV display.

Prices are coming down to near 4K TV price levels for 8K models. But, for a variety of reasons, there is no existing 8K content—no 8K broadcast or cable, no 8K streaming, no 8K Blu-ray—and there isn’t likely to be for the foreseeable future.

The only benefits of an 8K TV is via upscaling or up-conversion of lower resolution programming to 8K. But realistically you’ll need at least a 75-inch TV to appreciate the difference between 4K and 8K.

How important is sound? What should I be looking for so that I have the best experience possible?

Imagine watching the movie "Jaws" without feeling that "bum-bum, bum-bum" bass in your gut, or not being able to understand character dialog over a swelling orchestral passage, or subtle sounds that lend a dramatic scene its key ambience.

A 4K TV may produce excellent picture quality, but most do not produce equally excellent sound which can dull or ruin your viewing experience. There is a fix for this. Instead of relying on a TV’s poor audio, you may want to pair your 4K TV with a sound bar via an ARC (Audio Return Channel) or eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel) HDMI connection.

An ARC-compatible sound bar connected to a TV via an ARC HDMI jack lets you control your TV’s picture and sound with a single remote, as if the sound bar were your TV’s speaker.

Just make sure to measure the space between your TV tabletop and the bottom of the TV display area so your prospective sound bar won’t block either the screen or the TV’s IR remote control sensor.