Some brands have taken the leap into the future of home entertainment and begun to offer 8K models which produce four times the resolution of 4K models and 16 times that of 1080p HD. However, this innovation often comes at a steep price, and 8K content isn’t available for streaming or over broadcast networks yet; though if you’re forward-thinking, an 8K television is a solid investment to future-proof your home theater. Check out our top picks below to see which is perfect for your next upgrade or your first smart TV. Cinephiles can also take advantage of several picture modes designed to bring everything from YouTube videos and classic Hollywood movies to the hottest blockbusters and latest streaming sensations to life in your living room. A built-in eco sensor not only monitors ambient lighting, but the temperature and color of that lighting to automatically adjust color reproduction for better saturation and contrast. The ultra-modern, sleek design is meant to enhance almost any home theater decor, and the integrated cable management channels and clips mean that you can focus more on your favorite shows and movies and less on messy cords. The integrated speakers use Samsung’s Space Fit Sound technology to automatically calibrate to suit your space; they also use object tracking sound technology to create virtual, 3D surround sound for a more immersive experience. And with Q Symphony compatibility, you can instantly pair Samsung sound bars for enhanced home audio. Each of the 4 HDMI inputs supports variable refresh rates for smoother playback while gaming or watching DVDs, as well as HDMI ARC connectivity for setting up additional home audio equipment. If you have other Samsung smart devices in the home, you can connect this TV to the SmartThings hub or app for better integration into your smart home network. A built-in eco sensor monitors ambient sound and automatically adjusts volume for optimal listening, and the Active Voice Amplifier boosts dialogue audio in your favorite shows and movies so you never miss a line. Along with excellent audio, you’ll get great 4K resolution with HDR support and a wider color range with the dual LED panel which creates warm and cool colors at the same time. The voice-enabled remote works with Bixby, Alexa, and Google Assistant for hands-free controls.
The Ultimate 65-Inch 4K TV Buying Guide
These days you can get some pretty huge TV sets, however 65 inches has been a standard for big screens for a long time as it’s still optimal for many home theatre setups, and remains right in the sweet spot of screen sizes for those who are looking to go big without overpowering their family room. As a result, there are a lot of options among 65-inch TVs, across a wide variety of brands and price ranges, which means that just because you’re going for a larger set doesn’t mean that you have to break the bank. When buying a 65-inch TV it’s still important to figure out what you’re going to use it for and where you’re going to put it, and if you’re simply buying it for casual TV viewing by the whole family as opposed to making it part of a blockbuster home theatre system, chances are you can save quite a bit by only spending what you need rather than automatically jumping to the most premium options.
Is 65 Inches the Right Size For You?
The first thing you should ask yourself is whether a 65-inch TV is even right for you. It’s easy to get trapped up in the idea that bigger is inherently better, but the truth is that even with the much higher resolution of 4K TVs, there’s a point at which they can be too big for your viewing environment. To be fair, this is less of an issue with 4K TVs than it was with older 1080p HD sets, since the higher resolution means that you can sit much closer to them without sacrificing viewing quality. In the case of a 65-inch TV, the ideal distance from your eyeballs to the screen should be somewhere in between 5 feet and 8 feet; the rule of thumb for 4K TVs is that distance should be 1x–1.5x the screen size. If you’re sitting less than 5 feet away, you’ll see too much detail for the 4K resolution, and if you’re more than 8 feet away, you might as well just have a 1080p HD set instead of 4K, as you won’t be able to tell the difference. So basically larger rooms demand bigger screens, but when you sit down and think about it, for most people the 5–8 foot viewing distance is fairly typical, and that only applies to watching 4K content. If you’ll also be viewing a lot of 1080p HD material, such as what you’ll typically find on over-the-air broadcasts and cable TV channels, then you can comfortably view the TV from about twice that distance, making a 65-inch screen more than enough for most households.
OLED, QLED, or LCD?
While 4K can offer an incredibly crisp and detailed viewing experience, its important to remember that this is just a standard for the format the video is in, and doesn’t inherently determine what kind of actual quality you’re going to get. That part is all on the screen, and not all screens are created equally in this regard. If you plan on watching blockbuster feature films in 4K UHD from Blu-ray discs or services like Netflix, you’re going to want a screen that delivers the kind of High Dynamic Range (HDR) that’s needed for movies to be seen in the best quality possible. While there are several HDR standards, such as Dolby Vision, HDR10, and more, at the end of the day what they all amount to is offering deeper and richer colours with brighter whites and blacker blacks than traditional content does. HDR is actually one of the biggest benefits to 4K, and may be even more significant than the increase in resolution from 1080p HD. If you’re building a home theatre system and have the money to spend, you’ll almost certainly want to go with an OLED set, since this is a completely new screen technology that offers contrast ratios—meaning deeper blacks—that normal LCD and LED panels can’t even dream of achieving. OLED is actually the spiritual successor to plasma TV technology, which still has a great many fans among home theatre enthusiasts, even though they’re not being made any more. The key behind OLED and plasma screens is that areas of the screen that are black are simply switched off, which means they’re truly black, as opposed to LCD/LED TVs, which are forced to simply dim them due to the nature of the technology, leaving you with a slightly more washed out grey experience. As an added bonus, OLED screens are also extremely thin, which means you can buy OLED TVs that are so slim and sleek that you’ll actually have to be careful to avoid bending them during moving or installation. OLED doesn’t come cheap, however, and as great as they are for film buffs, they also have a couple of disadvantages, not the least of which is that they’re not as ideal if you’re going to be putting your TV in a more brightly lit room, since they can’t achieve the same levels of brightness as LCD/LED displays. As a result, Samsung has gone in a different direction, pioneering a new technology that it’s dubbed QLED, which stands for “Quantum” LED. Despite the cool-sounding name, however, QLED is still just an evolution of standard LED technology, so it still has most of the same advantages and disadvantages of traditional LCD and LED screens, such as poorer contrast levels and a narrower range of viewing angles, as compared to OLED and plasma. That said, however, the “Q” is QLED also offers some important innovations where it counts, most notably in regard to colour reproduction. You get a wider colour gamut and even higher brightness levels than most traditional LCD/LED panels, making QLED screens a great choice if you’re looking for a set to put in your family room for more casual viewing of things like news, sports, prime-time TV, and kids’ shows. As for older school LCD and LED screens? These can still be great options if you’re on a tight budget, but if you’re buying a 4K TV this large, we’d really suggest investing in a QLED or OLED set if at all possible. Your eyes will thank you.
Audio Quality
These days a lot of modern TVs advertise features like “virtual” Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, and while there’s no doubt that many sets provide much better sound than they used to, you should be cautious about getting caught up in the marketing hype. By definition, Dolby Digital 5.1 means five discrete audio channels—front left, center, right, and rear left and right, plus a subwoofer—all separately encoded into the audio stream. These channels are designed to be heard as if they were coming from the appropriate directions, creating a true surround sound experience, and while acoustics engineers have done a lot of work in creating the illusion of positional audio from a single speaker, it still can’t compare to actually having five separate physical speakers surrounding you. That said, you probably don’t need a 5.1 channel surround sound system if you’re only watching normal TV shows and things like news and sports. In this case the built-in audio capabilities in most TVs will serve you quite well. Note that some sets also now include wireless Bluetooth capabilities, but don’t expect great surround sound quality over Bluetooth. This is mostly useful for pairing up a set of headphones for more discrete listening. On the other hand, however, if you’re building a home theatre system, you should pretty much expect that whatever speakers you’re getting in your TV aren’t going to cut it, so you should budget for external speakers and a home theatre receiver to handle the audio. If you’re streaming your content from an external device such as a cable box, digital set-top box, or Blu-ray player, then you won’t need to worry too much about the audio outputs on your TV, but if you’re buying a smart TV and plan to stream Netflix directly from it, you’ll definitely want to check that the necessary outputs are available to feed your sound system. This means that the set should include a digital optical audio output or HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC), depending on what kind of receiver you plan to hook up.
Smart TV Features
Almost all 4K UHD TVs these days have at least some smart TV features built into them, whether you like it or not. Of course, if you only plan to hook up a traditional cable connection or already have your own streaming devices, you may not care about the smart TV features, and can probably safely ignore them entirely; in most cases they won’t get in the way if you choose not to use them.
Plan on Streaming? Check Your Internet Speeds
One of the things that many consumers forget to check when purchasing a 4K TV is whether or not their internet connection will also be up to the task of streaming Netflix in 4K UHD. This not only means paying for enough bandwidth from your ISP, but also ensuring that your wireless router is up to the task, not only in terms of the router’s capabilities, but also where it’s located in your house relative to your TV. While the exact numbers vary between streaming services, streaming Netflix in 4K UHD requires that you be able to sustain a 25Mbps connection to the internet. It can also quickly chew through any data caps that you may have, at a rate of more than 10GB of data per hour of viewing. If you have a larger home and your TV isn’t close enough to your router, you may also need a longer-range router or mesh Wi-Fi system to be able to deliver a strong Wi-Fi signal to your entertainment room. Most smart TVs rely entirely on Wi-Fi, although a few offer Ethernet jacks to let you hardwire in, but this usually isn’t practical unless you’re willing to run cables; if your router is already close enough to wire in directly, you should be able to get more than fast enough Wi-Fi performance, so you wouldn’t need a wired connection anyway.
Picking the Best Brand
You’ll generally find that TVs in the 65-inch range are dominated by the major brands, and honestly if you’re looking for the ultimate home theatre experience, these are the way to go anyway, as they offer some of the most leading-edge screen technology available, and you really are getting what you’re paying for in this case. Among major brands, your choice is likely going to be determined by things like smart TV features and screen technology, since each company has carved out its own niche in that area. For example, Apple users may ironically prefer Samsung TVs as they include Apple’s TV app and iTunes Movies and TV Shows built right in, while Android enthusiasts might like Sony’s choice to go with Android TV as its operating system. Further, if you’re looking for a QLED screen, you’ll have to go with Samsung, whereas LG makes some of the best OLED TVs available. However, if you’re on a budget and only need a TV for more casual viewing, there are some great choices from brands you may not have otherwise heard of, such as TCL, which offer a wealth of advanced smart TV and connectivity features and still provide some solid LCD display technology.
