Gaming is enjoying an AV renaissance right now – so make sure you’ve got a TV capable of keeping up.
If you’re like us, you use the Xbox One and PS4 every single day. And while you could hook them up to any old 1080p TV, if you want the best picture quality, you’re going to have to net yourself a nice 4K TV.
When the original Xbox One and PS4 consoles came out, it looked like video games – on consoles, at least – had opted to sit out the 4K revolution that was already sweeping the TV world: Both consoles were originally resolutely HD-only, and there wasn’t so much as a sniff of support for the high dynamic range ( HDR) technology that was just joining 4K on the TV scene.
Skip forward three years and mid-generation hardware updates have given us the PS4 Pro and Xbox One S: consoles capable of outputting both 4K and HDR for video and gaming purposes. (Although, PCs are starting to see graphics cards supporting 4K and HDR, too.) To sweeten the deal, Microsoft just released the Xbox One X – the most powerful console ever made, capable of delivering a whole new era of native 4K/HDR gaming beauty.
While this is all brilliant news for the quality of our gaming experiences, though, it puts ever more pressure on your TV. A console can have all the power in the world, but if it’s attached to a TV that can’t harness that power it might as well be a ZX Spectrum. Well, not quite, but you get our point.
So what exactly does a TV need to be able to do these days to unlock your full gaming potential? Let’s start with arguably the most basic requirement: 4K.
The PS4 Pro outputs games in 4K too, using a mix of upscaling and in-game enhancement. The Xbox One X, meanwhile, has been designed with enough power to drive more games than ever before with native, game engine-integrated 4K support. Yes, you can still get non-4K Xbox One and PS4 consoles, and the Nintendo Switch isn’t interested in 4K either. And yes, non-4K games will have to be upscaled by a 4K TV, so won’t be totally ‘pure’. However, upscaling is remarkably good on the best 4K TVs now, and can be done without adding significant delay to the time it takes a TV to render pictures.
4K resolution can be transformative, especially on big screens. And basically 4K is just the way everything is going now (both in the gaming and video worlds), so not being set up for it with your new TV just doesn’t make sense.
The Xbox One S supports HDR on some of its games, and via some of its streaming apps. The same situation applies for both the PS4 and PS4 Pro, and naturally the Xbox One X will deliver HDR too. Most people would say that HDR done well delivers more impact than 4K, especially on small screens.
The only problem is that HDR puts a lot of pressure on a TV, since it demands both much more brightness than SDR, and better contrast so that the extra brightness and deeper blacks can potentially share the screen simultaneously. In fact, HDR done badly can look worse than SDR done decently well; something to think about if you’re considering buying a very cheap TV.
It’s perfectly possible for TVs to deliver great HDR pictures without reaching 1000 nits and more of brightness. This is particularly true with OLED screens, for instance. But the darker a screen, the harder its processing is going to have to work to try and figure out how to resolve picture information in HDR areas above its capabilities.
Again, manufacturers don’t tend to provide input lag figures in their provided specifications. However, we generally measure input lag on the TVs we test. Also, I’ve provided the input lag measurements for all of our recommended TVs.
With impressively good timing, LG is about to roll out support for Dolby Atmos over HDMI to its 2017 OLED TVs (some of which ship with integrated sound bars) any moment now. Also, while integrated Atmos support isn’t found elsewhere yet, this year has seen a surge in TVs featuring really powerful sound systems. So unless you’re thinking of investing in an external sound system, it will certainly pay you to have sound as well as picture quality in mind when you buy your gaming TV.
Things to pay attention to are whether speakers are facing forwards (as this will almost always give you a more direct, clean sound); rated power output; whether there’s a dedicated bass speaker (often found on a TV’s rear); built-in soundbars; and the number of individual speakers used.
OK, now that the essential buying advice done and you’re an AV expert, let’s now pick out our selection of the best gaming TVs you can currently buy, taking in a combination of price and sheer quality.
Low input lag, native UHD resolution, strong HDR support – Samsung’s Q9F has it all.
This high-end 65-inch Samsung set has a number of unique gaming-friendly advantages. For starters, unique screen filters mean that pictures are almost completely unaffected by ambient light. And trust us: being able to game in daylight and enjoy pictures that look as intense, bright and contrast rich as they do in a dark room is nothing short of a revelation.
The 65-inch screen also delivers hands down the brightest pictures the TV world has seen, which works wonders on the intensity of a typical game’s graphics – especially if the game is available in HDR.
The set resolves 4K resolutions majestically too, while its heavy duty build quality enables it to produce a fairly potent and distortion-free audio performance (despite its having seemingly no visible speakers).
If all that wasn’t exciting enough, the QE65Q9FAM blows out the competition with an exceptionally low 12ms of input lag when using its Game mode.
The QE65Q9FAM can suffer with some gentle light clouding issues during very high contrast HDR sequences, and it’s also, alas, painfully expensive. But if you want the best, etc…
The E7 is LG’s top-scoring OLED
While the OLED55E7 doesn’t have nearly as much HDR-friendly brightness as the Samsung Q9F range, it’s stunning when it comes to the other end of the brightness story, delivering gorgeously rich, deep black colours completely free of the sort of clouding issues that LCD TVs suffer with. Also, while OLED can’t yet go as measurably bright as LCD, the way the darkest pixel in an OLED picture can sit right next to the brightest with no contamination between the two gives the OLED55E7’s pictures a lovely luminous quality that’s particularly effective during dark game settings.
It’s great to see, too, that LG has got input lag down to just 22ms across all source types (using its Game picture preset).
One last big attraction of the OLED55E7 is its built-in sound bar. This will soon be able to handle Dolby Atmos from the Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles, and can produce a huge wall of bass-rich sound (provided you run it LOUD) that works brilliantly for gaming without the need for an external audio system.
If you’re already invested in today’s 4K consoles, these are hands-down the best 4K TVs for gaming that you can currently buy
Sony’s XE9305 range is unique in the LCD TV world for using two light guide plates. This essentially gives it twice as much control over how much light reaches different parts of the screen as you get with other edge-lit LCD TVs.
As a result, the 55-inch 55XE9305 – XBR-55X930E in the US – can put ferociously bright HDR highlights (up to 1400 nits and more) on the screen alongside deep blacks more effectively than any other edge LCD to date.
Colours also look superbly rich and vibrant thanks to Sony’s Triluminos processing, and no brands handle motion as slickly as Sony. You can sometimes see traces of light ‘blocking’ around stand-out HDR objects, but for the most part the 55XE9305’s pictures are blisteringly bright gaming nirvana.
The only niggle is the 55XE9305’s input lag figure of around 38ms. This is slightly higher than we’d ideally see, and occasionally momentarily slips to 52ms.
Big, bright and affordable – the MU7000 is great for gamers on a budget
Samsung’s MU7000 Series is the brightest TVs in their price class, immediately giving it an advantage over the affordable competition for HDR gaming – especially as they surprisingly manages to deliver better (or, at least, more consistent) black levels than Samsung’s more expensive 2017 models.
They don’t use local dimming, however. While this means it can’t get as deep with its black colours as TVs that do use local dimming, it also means you don’t see as many distracting clouding problems.
Oh, FYI: the 49-inch panel is only 8-bit, but colours still look rich and mostly free of striping (and bigger MU7000s are actually 10-bit). Even better, input lag on the UE49MU7000’s Game mode is a phenomenally low 12ms.
The 50-inch 50EX750 is a startlingly affordable 4K TV with crisp, clean pictures and a fast response time
Panasonic’s latest LCD TV might not be as bright as most of its rivals, but it does have a rather cool trick up its sleeve: new digitally enhanced backlight technology that adjusts the angle of each pixel to reduce the usual light clouding problems associated with LCD technology.
