If you’re upgrading your home theater, you can go big with the best 65-inch 4K TVs.
The best 65-inch TV in 2017 will make it so much easier for you to binge watch in a big way, seamlessly going from one cinematic experience to the next. These TVs may take up a lot of space, but that’s a small price to pay to have a theater-like experience without ever having to leave your home.
Any 65-inch TV that’s at the top of the ranks this year is going to have a 4K Ultra HD display and may also have High Dynamic Range ( HDR). 4K offers a super crisp image that’s a must on a 65-inch display, and HDR adds in stunning color recreation that will make the viewing experience even more impressive.
Inside those 65 inches of screen, you’ll also see Sony, Philips and Panasonic offering OLED display technology, which has amazing contrast ratios, while Samsung boasts its own QLED technology that functions similarly. There are even some LCD screens still showing great visual performance despite the age of the technology.
After all that, you’ve still got to find a TV with all the connectivity and access to content you want. But, we’ll help you narrow it down with our recommendations for the best 65-inch TVs of 2017.
Stunning pictures at an affordable price puts OLED back on top
At the top of our 65-inch TV list for 2017 is the LG OLED C7 – available in a 65-inch iteration as well as a 55-inch. It’s here because it delivers better brightness and light control than last year’s C6 (something we weren’t sure was even possible), making it a high dynamic range performer that doesn’t sacrifice OLED’s class-leading standard dynamic range capabilities. It delivers its new picture thrills at a price that finally makes OLED a financially viable alternative to top-end LCD sets making it, beyond a doubt, one of 2017’s most irresistible TVs.
There are other OLEDs worth considering this year (see: Sony’s A1E OLED or LG’s B7 and W7) but we considering just how much LG’s OLED C7 offers for its price, there’s just no panel from 2017 that beats it.
Sleek, capable and almost what we’d consider affordable
Although LCDs haven’t quite achieved the same black levels as their OLED rivals, the Sony X900E’s HDR performance comes tantalizingly close.
This is achieved through the set’s direct LED backlight, which allows it to achieve a brightness uniformity that edge-lit displays often fall short of.
Add in fantastic detail and motion handling, the Sony BRAVIA XBR-65X900E (called the KD-65XE90 in the UK) strikes an excellent balance between price and performance for mid-range 4K TVs and is well worth investigating … even if its Android TV interface can feel a little cluttered, and its remote a little cheap.
2016’s best 65-inch screen holds on for a second year
The first Ultra HD Premium-rated TV to land in the UK was a real head-turner. We loved the vibrancy of its images, and the native HDR the picture performance bordered on breathtaking. The full array backlight presented problems (don’t think we forgot), but we reckon the visual benefits probably outweigh content-specific backlighting issues.
Having Netflix and Amazon 4K on tap is a major plus point, and more good news is that it can also look pretty great with Full HD content, particularly Blu-ray.
It might not have the hutzpah to overtake some of this year’s best and brightest panels from LG and Samsung, but considering how well it performs for its price, it may very well be the screen to convince you that HDR is the next giant quantum leap in image quality we’ve all been promised.
Sony’s brand-new flagship TV for 2017 is returning to OLED
If you have the money to bankroll them, the 65A1E – and the A1E OLED series overall – are crowd pleasers in just about every way. Their ‘picture only’ design has been beautifully realized, managing to be simultaneously subtle and dramatic. Their vibrating screen delivers a far more powerful and effective sound performance than we’d ever thought possible.
The real stars of the show here, though, are the A1’s exquisitely detailed, contrast-rich and colorful pictures. These prove emphatically what we’ve long suspected: More brands using OLED technology can only lead to good things.
Turns out 1,500 nits peak brightness really brings out the best in HDR
Samsung was the first brand to introduce an HDR-compatible screen way back in 2015, but it’s not been resting on its haunches ever since.
It’s latest flagship, the QN65Q9F (QE65Q9FAM in the UK), is a perfect example of this. It ups the brightness to 1500 nits, 50% higher than the level required for UHD Premium certification, making it one of the brightest TV we’ve ever tested.
Outside of an impressive-sounding number this brightness has a real impact on the set’s image quality. Detail is preserved in even the brightest areas of the image, and colors are exceptionally vivid and bright. That means even non-HDR content looks fantastic thanks to Samsung’s SDR upscaling technology.
No TV is perfect, and the Q9F can occasionally suffer from some backlight clouding around bright objects and some settings cause color striping in HDR colors, but in all other respects this is the best television around at the moment.
Don’t forget about Sony’s 2016 flagship 65-inch screen
Look, there aren’t many people out there willing to drop a few months’ of rent on Sony’s 2016 flagship TV. But those who are will be teated to some of best images this side of a high-tech movie theater.
In fact, it might just be the holy grail of television for 2016: a TV able to combine the extreme, high dynamic range-friendly brightness of LCD technology with a 600 LED backlight arrangement capable of getting LCD closer than ever before to the stunning light control you get with OLED technology.
If all that wasn’t enough, the 65Z9D also sports the ‘X1 Extreme’ video processing system and the latest version of Sony’s reliable Triluminos wide color technology for unlocking the extended color spectrums associated with HDR sources – a must-have if you want to get the most from your movie collection.
LG’s entry level OLEDs continue to impress
LG’s ‘B’ line of OLEDs has consistently offered a great entry point into the display technology without compromising on what makes it so exciting.
And the B7 series is no different.
Contained within the TVs is exactly the same panel that’s powering the more expensive C7, E7 and yes even the W7 LG televisions, which means an exceptional bump over last year’s OLED panels at a much lower price.
