I feel like it used to be size, color, and clarity meant more expensive. Now I look at a 500$ 4k TV and a 2000$ 4k TV and I don’t know what the difference is. They can both be smart TVs, be the same size, and have a lot of same advertised features, but what are the subtle unspoken mysteries that justify a huge price gap?
In store, it’s hard to tell the difference. They run in a ”Store” / “Retail” mode that amps up the brightness and color saturation to a level that’s often unsustainable (it will damage the TV if you use it in this mode) and that doesn’t translate well to actual content because it’s too vivid.
If you’re interested in understanding more about modern TV technology / which TVs are best, I recommend checking out Rtings and HDTVTest (there’s a site, a channel on Youtube, a subreddit, etc). The former because the reviews are great; the latter because Vincent explains these things well. He talks about specific technologies like types of OLED panels, different LED technologies, different settings on TVs and what they mean, calibration, etc…
To answer your question, though: the more expensive technologies are what cost the most, and bigger versions (starting at 55”) also tend to cost more. Right now the best TVs you can buy are OLEDs - specifically, QD-OLEDs like the Sony A95L. A 55” is like $2500. By comparison, a traditional OLED (or “WOLED”) like the LG C3 is half the price - a 55” is $1300 - and nearly as good. (And a previous gen model, like the C2, will be even cheaper, if you can find one.)
pastabatman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The screen technology is the biggest differentiator. Cheap sets use LCD. Some will have local dimming zones where parts of the backlight dim in order to increase contrast a bit, but there is light bleed which I find distracting
There’s a newer tech called mini LED which is basically an LCD with an array of much smaller led backlights behind it than a cheaper set. This allows for much more precise local dimming of pixels, creating a picture with a better contrast ratio and much less light bleed.
The more expensive stuff is OLED which is a different technology entirely. Its main benefit is that each pixel is lit independently without the need for backlighting which provides VERY deep blacks (the pixels are off), often described as a near infinite contrast ratio, with no light bleed. The main drawbacks are low peak brightness and the possibility of burn in, though both are getting better with time.
The newest and priciest is micro LED, which uses self illuminating LEDs as pixels so it has the same contrast advantages as OLED but it has much higher peak brightness and no burn in. This is extremely expensive and not widely available yet, but is being pitched as replacing OLED eventually.