If you want to buy a new television set, you will find a lot of offers. The large selection makes it cheaper, but not necessarily easier. You should therefore determine some basic decision-making criteria: What size and what equipment is the minimum, what is the price limit.

The question of resolution currently does not arise: Everything above 32 inch diagonal (80 centimeters) should be 4K resolution with 3840 × 2160 Have pixels. Even more pixels like those on 8K displays are currently of little use – the content is missing. You shouldn’t rely on the supposed future security: If you buy an 8K TV today, you will probably not be equipped for the next few years. Too much has changed for the video formats and interfaces.

Some people may not be looking for a television at all, but actually just a large display: A “stupid” TV, i.e. a smart TV without smart functions, can be accessed with a streaming client Getting ready for Netflix & Co. Such televisions do exist, but you will hardly find them on the store shelves of Saturn, Expert & Co. Instead, there are smart TVs that have built-in apps for streaming in addition to tuners.

Large displays without smart functions and without TV tuners are usually significantly more expensive than their smart colleagues. The reason: They are designed for 24 / 7 operation . There are a few “stupid” TVs with tuners but no internet connection. However, these have disadvantages compared to smart TVs: They typically lack special processors for image processing, such as moving image compensation, effective noise filters or sophisticated image presets. Smart TVs generally have much more to offer here.

Instead of using the built-in streaming apps, you can upgrade the TV display with a streaming client like Google’s Chromecast.

Help with buying a TV: What you really need and what you can do without The appropriate display technology When searching for TV, you will find yourself using various technologies faced: LCD, QLED, LED, OLED or also micro-LED. The first three are televisions with liquid crystal screens, micro-LED also means LCD TV or describes a completely new display variant, OLED TVs use an organic display.

You don’t want to anymore as 364 Euro, the question arises whether LCD or OLED is currently hardly – OLED- TVs are generally more expensive. LCD TVs are recommended for very bright rooms because, thanks to their higher maximum luminance, they can also present images with sufficient contrast. Attention: With the cheapest liquid crystal screens the manufacturers save on the backlight, this does not apply to such devices.

OLED TVs are in principle very high-contrast because their pixels simply remain off at the points where the picture content is black. Color perception also benefits from the rich black. However, the maximum brightness of OLED TVs is lower and the black level increases due to reflections on the screen in a bright environment. Therefore, the display on the OLED TV fades in the light-flooded living room. OLED displays offer the greatest viewing angles, i.e. images with high contrast and color, even if you look at them from the side.

With displays with micro-LED technology, you have to differentiate between conventional LCDs, in the back many small diodes illuminate the LC layer, and displays in which the LEDs themselves serve as pixels. The latter are still a long way off. On the other hand, you can already buy LCD TVs with a direct LED backlight and local dimming (FALD): If the TV has a large number of LED zones, this ensures impressive contrasts, which is particularly beneficial for HDR content. The black level of the LCD pixels is not better as a result and the FALD backlight does not help against the viewing angle dependency of many LCD TVs either.

In the thermal image it becomes clear which television is a direct LED backlight uses (left) and who uses LED strips of the Edge LED (right).

High-contrast display Modern televisions can almost always reproduce high-contrast HDR content. However, the result depends heavily on the device and the TVs support different HDR formats depending on the manufacturer and model: HDR 10 and HLG dominate almost everyone, at HDR 10 + and Dolby Vision, however, are divided. With HDR 10 + and Dolby Vision, the video data are displayed dynamically adapted to the respective image content: Samsung relies on HDR 10 +, Sony and LG on Dolby Vision, manufacturers such as Panasonic and Philips bypass possible conflicts and simply support both.

If no HDR formats are played back, for example when watching TV, most TVs can still display them in HDR – prepare accordingly. The result is often brightly colored, overexposed images.

c’t 25 / 2020 In c’t 25 / 2020 the editors provide selection aids for TV purchases and a test of smart TVs. Lots of handouts and a test of current e-mail clients should help you to stay ahead of the daily flood of e-mails. The c’t editors have discovered a data leak at the navigation specialist TomTom and they are analyzing the surveillance pieces from Office 364. There are also many other tests and not to forget a whole bag full of nerdy gift tips for the upcoming Christmas party. c’t 25 / 2020 is now available in the Heise shop and at the well-stocked magazine kiosk.