Good television for gaming

This will impact cost, picture clarity, and the vibrancy of the images you see, for example. If you already subscribe to a cable TV service, having a smart TV is convenient. Without access to cable TV or satellite TV programming, a smart TV is essential for being able to access programming without having to purchase additional equipment. Depending on what equipment you plan to connect to your television, such as a cable TV box, DVR, gaming console or computer, for example, the number of HDMI ports built into the TV is an important consideration.

Having at least four HDMI ports at your disposal will serve you well. Sound is also an important consideration. Most of the speakers built into TVs are small and not too powerful. Many smart speakers also offer compatibility to one or more digital assistants. Smart TVs run using an operating system—just like a computer, smartphone or tablet.

Many use a version of the Android operating system, but there are countless others that popular TV manufacturers use. While these monikers all sound similar, they all utilize different technologies to deliver a unique TV viewing experience, and each has its own benefits and drawbacks.

LED backlighting technology is the most common and oldest of the three. This technology has been round for more than a decade. LED screens are typically the cheapest to produce and therefore tend to be found in more affordable TVs. The technology offers good colors and contrast ratios while not being susceptible to burn-in. It's more of a marketing name than a distinct technology and is found in Samsung TVs, though other manufactures have begun to adopt it too. That allows for much improved brightness, but also more dimming zones, leading to much more nuanced HDR support.

That means OLED offers much deeper blacks, making it the perfect technology for immersive movies that play with darkness to great effect.

OLED is more expensive, however, and is more susceptible to image retention, where remnants of an image become permanently visible on the screen even when that content is no longer being displayed. Although this list of the best TVs is topped by LG at this time, that can change with new generations of televisions, the demands of buyers, and availability of new features.

As long as you buy one of the recognized big name TV brands, the longevity of your TV is more dependent on the model and technology inside it than the brand. LCD TVs can be rated for anywhere between 30, and 60, hours, so you're certainly likely to buy a new TV before any of these sets finally stop working for good. If you buy a brand that uses poor quality components or comes with a very limited warranty most major manufacturers offer between one and three years, depending on the model then you may find that your TV doesn't last that long.

Sticking to an established brand and focusing on the better models that company manufactures will guarantee that your TV lasts for many years to come. All Home. All Fashion. All Gear. All Gifts. All Deals. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here.

More From Vetted. Jan 19, , pm EST. It has excellent image quality, thanks in part to a new Cognitive XR processor rolled out to Sony's top sets, making for excellent upscaling and contrast control.

There are still a few lingering issues, including middling off-axis viewing and struggles with direct daylight — and the X90J will no doubt be beaten by the capabilities of its step-up X95J model for a small uptick in cost.

Still, the Sony X90J succeeds in delivering stellar performance for a reasonable price. The Q80T's biggest draw for gamers is its 8. You'll typically only see a subms input lag on a monitor, and Samsung only achieves this by reducing image processing.

If you want blur and judder reduction, you can activate the Game Motion Plus mode and get a respectable Samsung TVs are also well regarded for their AI upscaling. They can take SD or HD content, intelligently work out what something is on screen, compare the object against Samsung's texture database, and then fill in the missing pixels to upscale to 4K while looking more naturally high-resolution.

This ironically makes Samsung TVs just as good for retro consoles as for next-gen ones. While we've focused our list on HDMI 2. That benchmark happens to be the maximum spec for the Xbox Series S , making the budget next-gen console and budget TV a match made in heaven. We appreciate the 6-Series for its near-bezelless design, Roku TV OS, MiniLED backlight for excellent performance of black colors, quantum dot coloring, and other touches that make it pleasant to look at.

We measured the Game mode input lag at 18ms, at the higher end of our list but still at the low end at which you'll easily get accustomed.

The Nano 90 doesn't top our best Hz 4K TV guide in part because we noted some issues with its backlighting during our review. Bright objects can produce some blooming, the backlight can sometimes turn off entirely during dark scenes then visibly flicker back to life, and it doesn't perform as well in dark rooms. It also isn't as reliable with upscaling as its rivals on this list.

Despite this, we still found plenty of upsides to the LG Nano It has excellent HDR-quality viewing angles from the side, it uses tiny 'Nanocell' dots that filter out unwanted color wavelengths so color fidelity is highly accurate, it performs decently well with contrast despite a limited number of dimming zones, and the build-in speakers impressed us.

Do refresh rates really matter enough to justify buying a new television set? We'd argue that without an advanced television, the upgraded hardware in your new Sony or Microsoft console becomes superfluous.

All that power won't translate into better performance unless your TV can support it. Combine that with HDMI 2. If you're looking for an HDMI 2. The display offers rich picture quality with impeccable contrast and sharpness, superb HDR support and gaming performance that beats everything else we've seen.

Combine all of that with a stunning design and better-than-average sound, and you've got one of the best TVs you can buy. LG's webOS faces stiffer competition on app selection and features, but smart options, like your choice of Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice assistants, AI-driven sports alerts, and gaming features like the game optimizer menu and support for Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Cloud keep it in the mix for the best smart TVs.

All in all, it delivers incredible quality and solid value for the admittedly premium price, making it the best gaming TV we've seen all year. Brilliant color and unmatched brightness make for superb performance, and Samsung pairs that with a bounty of smart TV functions and genuinely intelligent features, like a solar-powered remote control that eliminates the need to swap out batteries — delivering eco-friendly design and unbeaten convenience at the same time.

The whole thing is packed into a gorgeous 1-inch-thick design that contains a huge array of smart features, potent Dolby Atmos sound and some of the best performance we've ever seen. HDMI 2. While all modern TVs have a low-latency game mode, the TCL 6-Series R is the first to get THX Certified Game Mode , which not only strips out the extra video processing that would slow down the response time for the player, it also meets a bunch of other criteria for high-quality images.

These stringent requirements look at everything from color quality and refresh rates to rise time, which measures how quickly the TV can handle dark-to-light transitions, essential for fast-paced games. All that feature support makes it ideal for handling the 4K, high-frame-rate gaming offered by the PS5 and Xbox Series X later this year. And any TV that's good for gamers will usually do pretty well at everything else. It impressed us in our testing, and it's more affordable than you'd expect given the feature set.

The CX's slim OLED display is gorgeous, and it boasts some of the fastest response times we've seen, with a tested lag time of It also packs other gamer-friendly features, like a full set of HDMI 2. On top of that, it's an incredible TV, with tons of smart features, like built-in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support, integrated smart home controls and an intuitive motion-control remote, and even AI-powered features for better video and audio quality and smarter content recommendations.

Selling for hundreds of dollars less than the competition, the Vizio OLED packs plenty of smart features alongside the 4K OLED display, and delivers the sort of premium picture quality that normally costs much more. Most notable is a slew of HDMI 2. Combine all of this with an improved remote control design and great sound with better-than-average bass, and you've got one of the best TV values of the year, and the easy pick for affordable OLED TVs. With a low lag time of 14 milliseconds, this set also will handle fast-paced gaming well.

It also has weak speakers, with little bass and limited power. If this is going to be your main TV, consider adding a soundbar to overcome the sound issues. The Toshiba C Fire TV is the addition to the small family of Amazon-powered smart TVs, offering good features and decent performance for its extremely affordable price. It's also a killer 4K gaming TV, with a It lacks HDMI 2. It's a decent example of the Fire TV template, combining good-enough 4K picture quality, impressively short lag times, and Amazon's great Fire TV smart features, like built-in Alexa voice control, a pretty big app store and of course an interface that puts Amazon's Prime Video service front and center.

If low prices are what you're after, then the Vizio V-Series model might be just the budget-friendly 4K smart TV you're after. With exceptional affordability, decent smarts from Vizio's SmartCast software and great gaming capabilities, it's a fantastic bargain, even when it's not on sale — and it frequently is, with steep discounts occurring throughout the year. A trio of HDMI 2. If you want great gaming performance for less, this is definitely the budget gaming TV to get.

But keep in mind that this is a 60Hz display, so variable refresh rates and high refresh rates are off the table. And general performance is decent enough, but the brightness isn't great and the audio would benefit from adding a soundbar. Read our full Vizio V-Series model review. It also offers both full Roku access and a smart home device that cooperates with your Alexa or Google Assistant ecosystems.

Though the 's performance is far from premium, the x p resolution satisfies for the screen's size. And it's excellent for gaming, with a lag time of This is what allows for truer blacks in OLED sets. With the ability to completely switch off each individual LED, you get sharp edges on images and deep blacks because there is no backlight showing through at all.

This means QLED sets offer brighter colors and better contrasts than any other panel type. The panel is still either back-lit or edge-lit like traditional 4K TVs, and this can make a huge difference when it comes to black levels. This makes them perfect for gaming. You'll hear a lot about the response time of a panel, especially when discussing gaming TVs. This is basically the speed at which a color can change on your TV eg.

Most 4K TVs have response times quicker than we can perceive them, so it makes no real difference to gameplay outside the twitchiest of shooters. However, purists will want a TV with the quickest response time possible.

This is the speed at which an image can be refreshed on your TV and shouldn't be confused with response time. A 60Hz 4K TV, for example, refreshes the image on screen 60 times per second, which allows a certain level of smoothness to the image. If the TV refreshes at Hz, the image is twice as smooth, and you notice that in how slick the motion appears on screen.

Many TVs 'game modes' will boost refresh rate artificially, usually by downgrading other display features eg. You need at least an HDMI 1. The majority of modern console games can't display at 4K 60fps, so as long as you have a 2. And no, you don't need to buy expensive gold-plated HDMI cables to get a better picture - just the Amazon Basics will do just fine. This is always a good question, but never one with a straightforward answer unfortunately. But, we'll try: as objectively as we can be, we don't think many people would disagree that if the absolute best screen type for presenting games to our eyes is probably a QLED screen or an OLED screen.

However, given all the information on this webpage, we can see that it's a bit more tricky than just trying to select an objective winner - and technical stuff aside, you always have to consider price, and what's best for you. If you can get to a store and see TVs running some imagery, then having an 'in the flesh' look will definitely help - but just for downright image brilliance, you have to look at QLED and OLED televisions.

I'm also a qualified landscape and garden designer so do that in my spare time, and use it to write about games' landscapes and environments too, including an upcoming book on the topic!

Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more! USA gaming TV retailers: Amazon Best Buy Dell Walmart If you're not only looking for a great gaming TV, but want to make sure it can make use of entertainment services like Disney Plus , and general movie and TV show viewing then rest assured, the picks on this page have been tested in these areas too. Best gaming TVs for Input lag: Display type: OLED.

Refresh rate : Hz. HDMI 2. Samsung QN95A. Reasons to avoid - No Dolby Atmos. Specifications Screen size: 48, 55, 65, or 77 inches. Input lag: 13ms. Refresh Rate: Hz. Reasons to avoid - Bass performance is a little light. Display type: QLED. Reasons to avoid - Lacks Ultra Wide Angle viewing tech. Hisense A6G. Display type: Direct LED. Refresh rate : 60Hz. Sony X90J. VRR: Yes pending firmware update. Reasons to avoid - Demands a premium investment - Feet or stand an optional extra.