Every year after CES, there can be a new pile of buzzwords and tech shortcuts that can go over the heads of many consumers — even when those acronyms often describe significant advancements worth knowing about.
So, with all the latest TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Hisense and more announced and due to ship over the next few months, now seems like a good time to review the features you should be looking for when shopping. of TV.
Stay tuned over the next few months for TV and soundbar buying guides. But if you’re looking for a new TV at present, these are the terms you should look for when comparing products.
What do TV hardware features mean?
ALLM: Auto Low Latency Mode is a useful feature that detects when you’ve plugged a gaming system into your TV (or started playing a game on a streaming box) and automatically activates “game mode” TV with optimized settings that produce the lowest possible input lag. This means there will be minimal delay between when you press a button on the controller and when you see the resulting action in-game.
Dolby Atmos: An immersive surround sound format that goes beyond previous experiences by introducing height channels, which make the audio more three-dimensional. Home theater systems and Atmos soundbars often include trigger speakers to make certain on-screen action seem to be happening overhead.
eARC: The Enhanced Audio Return Channel is usually labeled on one of your TV’s HDMI ports. This is the port you’ll want to plug your soundbar or home theater system into. On modern televisions, eARC enables the transmission of immersive, uncompressed 7.1 Dolby Atmos surround sound and eliminates the extremely frustrating audio synchronization frustrations that can be present when using soundbars on some older televisions. Make sure your next TV has eARC among its features.
HDMI 2.1: The “definition” of HDMI 2.1 was recently turned upside down when it was discovered that an HDMI device or cable labeled as compliant with the 2.1 specification in fact guarantees nothing. Instead of focusing on HDMI 2.1, the best practice for consumers now is to check out specific features like [email protected], VRR, and others mentioned in this list. In terms of cables, it’s also important to look for something that supports 48 Gbps throughput.
HDR: High dynamic range is a must-have feature for any TV in 2022. It produces much brighter highlights and deeper, more vivid colors when playing HDR content. Besides the widely supported basic HDR10 format, other HDR formats include Dolby Vision, which allows different frame-by-frame picture optimizations, and HDR10 Plus, which offers similar benefits but with a smaller content selection.
MicroLED: Throw away everything you know about regular TVs. Samsung’s MicroLED displays bring together the best features of OLED (self-emitting pixels, perfect blacks, etc.) without most of the drawbacks. MicroLEDs use microscopic, inorganic LEDs that individually produce light and color.
These micrometer-scale LEDs are transferred to tile-like modules, allowing a display of various shapes and potentially any size. Samsung is also selling more TV-like MicroLED displays at preset sizes. But, unfortunately for most of us, since MicroLED is still a new and expensive technology, it is extremely expensive, and these screens cost more than most cars. (Think over $100,000.)
Mini-LEDs: In recent years, many of the best LCD TVs have used a backlight system called “full-array local dimming” with a number of individual LEDs behind the screen that light up and dim depending on the content being displayed. . These LEDs form dimming “zones” that allow certain areas of the screen to be very dark while other sections can simultaneously be powerfully bright with HDR content.
Picture: TCL
Mini LED iterates on this approach by significantly shrinking the LEDs – and cramming much, much more into the backlight array. The end result is more accurate contrast and less “blooming”, which occurs when a halo of light can be seen around bright objects or on-screen text. The mini LED does not completely eliminate the bloom, but it is often less noticeable. All those tiny LEDs also allow for better overall brightness uniformity across the TV screen.
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL: They’ve long been hailed as the best TVs you can buy for a reason: OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs deliver perfect blacks thanks to their self-emitting pixels and don’t need a traditional backlight. Viewing angles are stellar, contrast is unmatched, and OLED can make virtually anything you put on screen shine.
That said, OLED TVs aren’t great for all: they generally trail LCD TVs in terms of overall brightness, and the possibility of permanent burn-in has not yet been overcome, although LG, Sony and other OLED TV manufacturers have measures in place which makes the problem very unlikely.
QD-OLED: CES 2022 marked the grand debut of QD-OLED panels in TVs and gaming monitors. These quantum dot OLED displays are made by Samsung Display and differ from those made by LG Display as they offer true RGB color reproduction and can maintain vivid colors throughout the brightness range.
Traditional OLEDs emit light through a color filter, but QD-OLED emits blue light through quantum dots to create red and green and produce the rest of the color spectrum. This more efficient approach has benefits, including improved overall brightness levels and even better viewing angles than OLED already offers.
The first QD-OLED TVs are expected to ship in 2022 and will likely cost significantly more than LG’s, so we’ll need real time to determine if these improved panels are worth the full price. But it’s always exciting to see the best TV technology (that normal people can potentially afford) continue to evolve.
VRR: The latest variable refresh rate TVs allow games on PS5 or Xbox Series S/X to adjust their refresh rate up to 120Hz for much smoother on-screen action. (In 2022, some TVs will bump that up to 144Hz for PC gaming.) VRR also proves useful for smoothing out brief hiccups or frame rate drops to the point that they’re often imperceptible, allowing you to focus on the game itself. instead of the technical performance of your console.
Terms to ignore and/or avoid in 2022
8K: Manufacturers keep churning out new 8K TV models every year, but the entertainment industry as a whole still hasn’t put a dent in the biggest problem: there’s still a dearth of easy-to-stream native 8K content. .
Edge-lit LED: Cheaper LCD TVs will often have edge lighting – with LEDs around the perimeter of the screen instead of behind it – which results in significantly lower picture quality, uneven uniformity and poor black levels per compared to sets with local dimming. It can be tempting to buy a giant-sized TV on the cheap, but as the old saying goes, if it’s too good to be true, it usually is.