How to choose a TV at this stage? Don’t buy 4K, 1080p is the best

It's the TV buying season again, and the "holiday price haggling" is about to begin. Is it worth it for consumers to pay more for a 4K TV this year? The most direct and ruthless answer is - "It's best not to buy it, you're just buying a high-end TV." As in the previous TV market, complexity, confusion and hype are intertwined. No TV manufacturer or store clerk can tell you that 4K TV is worth the money. They just use slow motion, high-quality demonstration videos, "artificial" comparisons and other tricks to convince you to spend more money.

Why 4K TVs aren't worth the money yet

Take two 50-inch TVs, one with 4K resolution, priced at $999 (about 6,119 yuan), and the other with standard 1080p resolution, priced at $899 (about 5,506 yuan). The picture quality of the two TVs is almost the same. However, we still recommend you buy a 1080p TV. The reason is that 4K resolution does not show its obvious visual advantage under the normal viewing distance range (about 2 meters and more) and display size.

When we sit in the living room and watch 4K TV, most users do not appreciate the visual quality that exceeds 1080p resolution. American technology website CNET has found through a large number of 4K TV reviews that there is not much difference between 1080p resolution TV and 4K TV, and the improvement of 4K TV is almost negligible. In other words, 4K TV does not improve 1080p.

When will 4K TVs become worth the money?

Readers may have noticed that "4K TVs and 1080p resolution TVs have not seen any improvement in picture quality" mentioned above. In the current TV market, TV manufacturers offer their best LCD TV picture quality in 4K TVs. In other words, the best LCD TVs are equivalent to 4K TVs, and they have not seen much improvement in resolution.

Take Samsung, the most popular TV brand right now. In the US, Samsung offers several 1080p and 4K TVs, but the only non-curved TV that makes a noticeable improvement in picture quality is the 4K HU8550 series. It's a decent 4K TV. If you can stomach its high price, it's a good choice. Another better choice is the Samsung F8500 plasma TV, which lacks the 4K element but offers better picture quality at a lower price.

For those who watch TV within 2 meters, 4K TV can be an option, especially for those who plan to use 4K display as a large PC monitor. In these two cases, it is worth spending more money to buy a 4K TV. If 4K display is applied to the field of gaming, games and images can be clearer than other video content.

Price issue

Most TV buyers want the best picture quality. This year, Vizio won CNET's value ranking. The company's M-series and E-series TVs offer great picture quality. Both 1080p resolution TVs use local dimming. The M-series was the better choice in CNET's tests. Despite the "cheap" price, consumers will definitely be excited about the picture quality.

We were expecting the 4K Vizio P-Series to deliver better picture quality, but that didn't happen. The company is slashing prices on several other TVs this holiday season, which could lead to some of the lowest-priced 4K TVs. But even so, those 4K TVs will still cost more than the M-Series.

However, Vizio may release a software update for the P-series TVs to improve the TV picture quality. However, it is not clear when exactly. In addition to Vizio, other TV manufacturers are also launching lower-priced 4K TVs. CNET believes that most of these 4K TVs do not provide better picture quality than the best LCD TVs.

Lack of 4K content

Televisions have been around for so long that you might be wondering if 1080p TVs will become obsolete in the next 5-10 years. The answer is: No.

The only reason to retire a 1080p TV is that it can't play 4K content. Right now, 4K content is limited to a few streaming services, like Netflix and Amazon, and expensive content from Sony. Neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 can play 4K content, and there are no 4K Blu-rays or TV channels on the market. It may take years for TV stations and producers to replace all HD equipment with 4K cameras and equipment.

Even if they do, there's no guarantee that these 4K over-the-air programs will be better than HD programs. Even now, there are differences in picture quality among HD channels, mainly due to bandwidth limitations rather than resolution differences. For example, popular TV channels (like Fox, ESPN and ABC) actually broadcast content in 720p resolution, not 1080i or 1080p.

Meanwhile, standard 1080p TVs bought in the next few years are fine. To be sure, they may not play the best quality 4K content at 4K resolution, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. A recent test by CNET found very little difference between Netflix 4K streaming content and 1080p streaming content.

Who is the best choice?

You may still be thinking, "I still want a 4K TV, it has more pixels, but I don't want it to cost more than a 1080p TV." 4K TV prices are falling rapidly, and there doesn't seem to be a slowdown. Next year, 4K resolution TVs will become more affordable and smaller. 1080p LCD TVs will start to enter the "low-cost" era.

Still, there are plenty of cheap, good 1080p TVs on the market in 2014, and some of them are even better than 4K TVs. To be sure, 4K TVs are better than 1080p TVs in terms of sound quality and design, but the advantages are not significant. Unless you are targeting other high-end markets or using a 4K TV as a super-large PC display, 1080P TVs are still the better choice this holiday season.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.