TV sales are as predictable as the changing seasons, with prices across many brands and models falling steadily this time of year. As Black Friday has become more of a month-long free event than a weekend event, you’ll find many of the best TV deals available, making it the perfect time to get your deal done. Translate your big purchase. Below are some of my favorites and top performers at various price points for your reference. And don’t forget to check out ours Black Friday shopping tips And Curated gift guide when you check your shopping list.
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TV deals
LG’s C4 (9/10, WIRED recommended) is known as one of the Best TV you can buy, for good reason. You get the stunning contrast and perfect black levels of a flagship OLED display, rich and natural colors, clear image processing, and consistent brightness with support Dolby Vision HDR. LG’s smart interface is quirky but lightning fast, and the Magic Remote works like a Nintendo Wii remote for flexible control. Extras like four fully loaded HDMI 2.1 inputs to deliver top-notch gaming features make the C4 feel like a flagship TV at a second-rate price. (Note: We’ve seen this price fluctuate over the past few weeks, dropping to as low as $1,400, so you might want to open the buy tab and get ready to go.)
Not to be outdone, Samsung’s second-rate OLED (9/10, WIRED recommended) is one of my favorite TVs of the year. The 65-inch model’s QD-OLED panel (the 42, 48, and 83-inch models use a more traditional WOLED panel) offers incredibly rich colors and a slight increase in brightness over the C4 version, along with Perfect black levels and excellent visibility. Image quality from every angle helps OLED TVs perform at their best. Like the C4, you’ll get HDMI 2.1 support on all four inputs, and Samsung’s Game Hub lets you stream games from an impressive list of services, including Xbox. Like all Samsung TVs, the S90D does not support Dolby Vision, the most popular standard Dynamic HDR formatchoose HDR10+ instead. Otherwise it is difficult to find errors.
If you’re looking for something more budget-friendly, Hisense’s U7N QLED TV (8/10, WIRED recommended) is our choice because best television for most people these days, thanks to its combination of killer brightness, vivid quantum dot colors, and excellent contrast. We did notice some uniformity issues during testing (aka the dirty screen effect) but it wasn’t noticeable in most cases, and the TV’s mini-LED backlight system excels. Goes a step further than conventional LED TVs, with countless dimming zones to minimize “blooming” or light washing around bright images. The intuitive Google TV interface and premium gaming features round out the package for a TV that costs much more.
Sony A95L (9/10, WIRED recommended) simply best 4K TV I’ve seen it before. It’s so good that Sony has decided not to update it for 2023. Instead, the company is shifting its focus to backlit LED TVs like the Bravia 9 (9/10, WIRED recommended), but the A95L is still the company’s best product yet. You get perfect black levels for incredible contrast, sweet and accurate colors, and impressive brightness for an OLED display. The frosting on this cake is Sony’s XR processing, which provides crystal detail for incredibly vivid images. The TV adds solid features, including a Google TV interface and support for next-gen gaming (though only on two of the four HDMI ports, which helps keep the TV a perfect 10). It’s an expensive monitor that’s a bit easier to use at 55 inches, and is especially attractive when there’s a big sale.
Are you looking to break the barrier of brightness? Hisense U8N 65 inch TV (8/10, WIRED recommended) is one of the brightest lights we’ve ever tested, outperforming the vast majority of LED competitors thanks to its brilliant highlight and massive quantum dot color. You might think all that power would make it perform poorly in the dark, but the U8N’s advanced mini-LED backlight allows for pitch-black levels with very little light bloom. You’ll also get top-end gaming features and the Google TV interface. The TV’s off-axis picture quality and motion handling are decent, but on the other hand, you get a lot of the great features found in high-end TVs for much less money. Add to that a good sale and it’s hard to say no.
If affordability and convenience top your TV checklist, this balanced base model from Roku is an attractive choice. Roku’s simplified interface runs the show, making it easy for the less technically inclined among us to navigate between inputs, broadcast TV, and your choice of hundreds of streaming services. The TV’s picture quality isn’t top-notch, and its 60 Hz refresh rate may not appeal to avid gamers, but you get good brightness, vibrant colors, local dimming to get solid black levels without dull highlights and smart support for Apple Homekit, Alexa and Google Assistant.
Another brightness champion, Bravia 9 (9/10, WIRED recommended) matches next-generation LED performance with excellent balance to produce one of the most impressive performances of any TV I’ve tested. You’ll almost feel the heat of the sun or laser beams across the screen, while Sony’s exclusive backlighting and processing system delivers incredible contrast and clarity. You’ll get Sony’s Google TV smart interface for simple navigation and premium gaming features, including in-house PlayStation exclusives. The TV’s off-angle viewing is good, not great, and I wish Sony would offer HDMI 2.1 gaming support on more than just two of its four inputs, but if you’re after the best LED TV on market with the lowest price, nothing.
If I knew Bravia 7 (7/10, WIRED recommended) would drop so low, I’d honestly give it a higher score. It seemed a bit steep at its $2,300 MSRP, but now that it’s $1,000 less and $400 off the original sale price, it feels like Sony is giving these things away. My main gripe about the Bravia 7 is its noticeably poor performance from the side. However, if you mostly watch it live, this is a great show for the money. The TV’s mini LED backlight is bright, with vibrant colors, great contrast and excellent clarity of content. Like most TVs in its class, it has top-notch gaming features (though only two of its four HDMI inputs), and its Google TV interface adds intuitive controls. At this price, this is one of the best options for anyone after a bright yet sophisticated TV experience.
