Can’t decide which smart TV to buy? Our guide to the best TVs in 2021 can help point you in the right direction.
If you’re looking for the best TV to buy this year, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve brought together the definitive list of the best TVs available to buy today from QLED and OLED TVs to new Mini LED contenders, all of which are smart TVs that offer great on-board streaming services. Every TV technology brings something different to the table but they all have similar key aims – to offer better contrast, better light control and more vibrant colors. Each of these is well worth your consideration and can truly elevate your TV watching or gaming experience. In particular, if you love watching movies or playing games, a big screen investment can make a huge difference here. The good news? Big-screen TVs have really come down in price. While you might’ve easily dropped $5,000 to $10,000 on a new 75-inch or 85-inch screen, you can find dozens TVs at half the cost now. It’s worth mentioning too that with Black Friday 2021 right around the corner, many of the TVs you’ll see below will be getting a price cut – so be sure to check back often. If you’re after more affordable screens, you can check out our best cheap TV deals and Black Friday TV deals pages, but we’d steer you toward the TCL 6-Series with Mini LED or Hisense H8G Quantum, both of which offer spectacular performance for the price. The picks you’ll find below represent the absolute pinnacle of what’s possible in the best smart TVs today – 4K resolution, colorful HDR, and robust feature sets plus support for HDMI 2.1 and VRR for the latest game consoles and PCs. 8K might feel a bit like overkill to some, but there’s no doubt in our mind that the Samsung QN900A Neo QLED 8K TV has ushered in a new era of flatscreen television technology. Samsung’s Mini LED-sporting QN900A Neo QLED 8K TV offers stunning picture quality, exceptional color and brightness, terrific sound and outstanding blacks – all in a package that’s unmatched in terms of design. For the uninitiated, Samsung’s ‚Quantum‘ Mini LEDs are 1/40th the thickness of a regular LED, meaning thousands of smaller LEDs can be packed together in a much tighter fashion, allowing for far more accurate dimming zones and black levels that are practically indistinguishable from an OLED. As the LEDs are far smaller, they’re able to achieve far more precision and less blooming, so the act of seeing bright areas of the screen unnaturally bleed over into darker spots should be greatly reduced or not evident at all. And because it takes advantage of Samsung’s Multi-Intelligence AI upscaling, the QN900A is consistently able to produce images that looked better than their source. Not only does the Samsung QN900A Neo QLED 8K TV offer the latest HDMI 2.1 and eARC features, it’s also ideal for gamers who’ve recently invested in a next-gen console or beastly gaming PC thanks to support for 4K/120fps or 8K/60fps gameplay via HDMI 2.1, Game Motion Plus and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. It’s the flagship 8K TV to beat in 2021. Read the full review: Samsung QN900A Neo QLED 8K TV After a flatscreen TV that’s a bit more stylish? The LG G1 OLED is a knockout television that builds on the sleek design of last year’s Gallery Series OLED and somehow makes it better. The real hero here is LG’s new OLED evo technology, which updates the panel structure to eke out even more brightness – without increasing blooming effects or, we’re told, the chance of burn-in. The LG G1 looks to be a real revolution for the OLED TV maker, then, and certainly offers an upgrade over the cheaper LG C1 OLED – unlike last year, when the CX and GX models were worlds apart in price but effectively offered the same picture performance. It’s an expensive set, and the Dolby Atmos sound system isn’t the best for bass – something that will effect all the other LG OLEDs in this guide. But the breathtakingly slim design makes it a real centerpiece television, with the contrast and color benefits of OLED pushed to new, lighting-enhanced heights. The new a9 Gen 4 AI processor is even more capable of smartly upscaling and processing onscreen objects, too, with motion processing in particular getting an upgrade. Watch out though: the G1 is really designed to be wall-mounted, and it won’t come with a TV stand or feet out of the box. You can buy a floorstanding Gallery Stand alongside, or find a third-party solution for placing on a counter, though. Read more: LG G1 OLED TV review LG has made a number of small tweaks to last year’s CX model: It’s now using LG’s Alpha a9 Gen.4 processor for better upscaling and virtual surround sound audio, and with four separate HDMI 2.1 ports, it’s ready for the PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and whatever next-gen consoles can throw at it.
