The 7 Best 4k TVs - Fall 2023 Reviews

The best 4k TV we've tested is the Samsung S90C OLED. It's an incredible 4k TV that looks amazing in a dark room, as bright highlights in HDR content stand out incredibly well, with no distracting blooming or haloing around bright areas of the scene. Its QD-OLED panel has much brighter and more vibrant colors than the WOLED panels found on TVs like the LG C2 OLED or LG C3 OLED. It runs Samsung's Tizen OS smart interface, which is easy to use and has a great selection of streaming apps and games.

The TV is also great for gaming thanks to its near-instantaneous response time, so there's no noticeable ghosting behind fast-moving objects. Its input lag is extremely low, resulting in a very responsive gaming experience, and it has a few great gaming features, including FreeSync variable refresh rate support to reduce screen tearing. Finally, it supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports, meaning you can take full advantage of the Xbox Series X and PS5, including 4k @ 120Hz support. It has a higher-tier model, the Samsung S95C OLED, but it's more expensive and is only a marginal improvement over the S90C, so the cheaper model is the better buy for most people.

If you want the absolute best TV for a basement home theater, get the Sony A95K OLED. It's significantly more expensive than the Samsung S95B OLED. Still, it's better for a home theater setup as it has wider format support than the Samsung TV and delivers a more accurate image overall, especially in HDR. It supports Dolby Vision HDR, which is more widely supported than Samsung's competing HDR10+ format, ensuring you'll enjoy the best HDR experience possible.

It also supports more advanced audio formats than the S95B, like Dolby DTS:X passthrough over eARC, so you don't have to worry about what audio formats are used on your favorite movies. It displays an incredibly wide HDR color gamut, and its tone mapping is nearly perfect, meaning images look the way the content creator intended. It also gets very bright, so HDR content stands out, and colors are bright and vibrant. This TV's successor, the Sony A95L, is now out. We'll receive it in our labs soon, so we'll know how it compares to the A95K.

If you're not in a completely dark room, the benefits of the Samsung S90C OLED or Sony A95K OLED are less noticeable, so an LED TV like the Samsung QN90C/QN90CD QLED might be a better choice. This TV delivers excellent picture quality, with deep blacks and very bright highlights that stand out the way the content creator intended. It's a fantastic choice for a bright living room thanks to its high peak brightness and superb reflection handling, so glare isn't an issue. It looks good in a dark room, but it relies on a Mini LED backlight to produce deep blacks, so there's more noticeable blooming around bright objects than on the Samsung.

It's a great TV for any use. It has a great selection of gaming features, including HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four HDMI inputs, meaning you can enjoy 4k @ 120Hz or up to 4k @ 144Hz on its two smallest sizes, gaming from recent consoles or a recent PC GPU. This TV's predecessor, the Samsung QN90B QLED, is getting harder to find in certain sizes. Overall, it's very similar to the QN90C, so it's a great alternative if you find it for a cheaper price.

If you want something cheaper than the Samsung S90C OLED, the best mid-range TV we've tested is the LG C2 OLED. It's an incredible TV that delivers similar picture quality to the Samsung model. It uses a different type of OLED panel that delivers the same perfect blacks in a dark room, but its colors aren't as bright and vibrant as those found on QD-OLED TVs, and HDR content doesn't stand out as well due to the LG's lower peak brightness.

Still, it's a fantastic choice for gamers, thanks to its wide range of gaming features. Like the Samsung TV, all four of its HDMI ports have HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, as well as support for FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and G-SYNC variable refresh rate (VRR) technologies, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-compatible source. It's not as good as the S90C or the Samsung QN90C/QN90CD QLED in a bright room, but that's normal when dropping a price point. The LG C3 OLED is now out, and it has some advantages over the C2. But it's also more expensive, which aligns with the S90C's price point. As the Samsung is the better TV overall, either go for the cheaper C2 or jump to the Samsung.

A cheaper mid-range option like the Hisense U8H is great if you want a TV with excellent value. It's a great TV with impressive picture quality in dark and bright rooms. It comes with the easy-to-use Google TV as its smart platform, and you can either watch apps directly on the TV or cast content from your phone. While it doesn't deliver the same perfect black levels and perfect black uniformity as the LG C2 OLED or the Samsung S90C OLED, it displays deep blacks with an impressive Mini LED local dimming feature, with almost no blooming around bright objects.

Unlike the top two TVs on this list, this one supports both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision HDR formats, so you can take full advantage of the content you're watching, no matter which format it's in. It also displays a wide range of colors in HDR and gets bright enough to make highlights pop and colors look vivid. It also has a great selection of gaming features, including FreeSync support to reduce tearing, and it supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, but only on two of its four HDMI ports. We're testing its successor, the Hisense U8K, so we'll know how they compare soon.

The best budget 4k TV we've tested is the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED. It's a good budget TV with surprisingly good picture quality and a wide selection of additional features. It's impressive for watching movies in a dark room thanks to its superb contrast ratio, fantastic black uniformity, and decent local dimming feature, meaning blacks appear deep and uniform in a dark room. It also has impressive peak brightness and decent reflection handling, so it's an acceptable choice for a bright room.

It's available in a wide range of sizes, and even the largest model is available at a budget price, so you can get the size that fits your needs. It runs the Roku OS interface, which is basic but easy to use and has a good selection of streaming apps. By going with a budget model like this one over the Hisense U8H, you're sacrificing a bit on picture quality, but the biggest difference is for gamers, as it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate. It's still great for gaming but can't take full advantage of an Xbox Series X, PS5, or powerful gaming PC.

If you want something cheap that gets the job done, the Hisense A65K is the best cheap 4k TV we've tested. It's a decent entry-level 4k TV that delivers satisfactory picture quality. It runs the Google TV interface, with many streaming apps available. It makes it a great choice for an office or guest bedroom, as you don't have to worry about buying an extra streaming stick to watch your favorite shows. Unfortunately, unlike the other TVs on this list, it's not a good choice for a dark room. It has a decent contrast ratio, but with a cheap TV, you're losing out on advanced features like local dimming to improve the appearance of dark scenes.

The TV is colorful due to its wide color gamut, but it doesn't get bright enough for a good HDR experience, so although it supports Dolby Vision HDR, this adds very little overall. Its predecessor, the Hisense A6H, is still available, but it's a worse TV overall. It has a much wider viewing angle, so if you're looking to buy a TV for a wide seating arrangement or to watch while walking around your apartment, the previous model is worth a look. Otherwise, the A65K is superior.