invited by petetherock to share my experience of buying TV
1) Bring your own demos
Bring along your favourite Full 1080p HD videos or your fav 4K netflix video, about 5 minutes duration will do, in a flash drive
preferably videos which has colourful scenes, dark/black scenes and white scenes, fast moving actions scenes.
2) Viewing Distance & Viewing Height
stand in front of the tv at the estimated distance away from the TV. The distance simulate your living room's viewing distance.
View it from the height of you sitting down, usually at sofa height or chair height.
3) Choose the right TV together with your wife/husband.
This is SUPER important. because both of you will spend many hours watching the same tv. Its important that both of you are comfortable viewing it.
4) How many HDMI ports you need.
Cheaper LED TVs will usually have 1-2 HDMI ports. More expensive ones will have 3 to 5 HDMI ports. If you have many devices which need HDMI connections, then you might wanna consider getting a TV with more HDMI ports OR get a AV HDMI Amplifier
Also... I NEVER understand why some TV gives you 5 USB ports but only 2 HDMI ports
5) Energy Saving.
The number of "ticks" [more ticks. more saving. more expensive]
6) "Smart TV" or "Dumb TV"
You can access 1 million & 1 things if you HDMI your laptop or MiniPC or android TV box (mini-x / xiaomi tv, Apple TV) to your TV
7) DO NOT get distracted by the Salesman.
They are gonna be blabbering none stop, follow you around and trying to throw you tonnes of technical terms or "gimmick terms".
Judge with your eyes...
8) Switch and play around with the various colour mode.
From Normal to Movie to Sports to custom... This is also to test the TV and see if there's any "pixel bleeding" or "colour bleeding"
AND... which is why NO TV reseller will show really show Dark colour videos. Most of them will show colourful videos
9) Digital TV Sticker
Make sure the TV is Digital TV ready or has built-in DVB. You don't wanna spend extra money to get a separate DVB setup box
10) Viewing Angle
This is to check for a few things
- Will the video or image becomes "washed out" if you are viewing from the sides? Some TVs have very narrow viewing angles. This is largely due to the quality of the LCD LED glass screens they are using.
- Check for light reflection off the screen
And why is this important? When you invite friends, relatives and people over to your house, only 3-4 people can sit directly infront of the TV. The rest of them will sit slated facing the TV.
I'm sure You don't wanna be hearing comments like: "Why your TV picture so lousy one ah?" or "Why the light reflection of your TV screen so jia lat one ah?"Especially when you spent a few Ks on this TV.
11) Remember to test EVERY SINGLE FEATURE of the TV.
You are paying for it. Test it.
DO NOT get distracted by the Salesman.
12) 3D or Non-3D
You be the Judge
13) 4K or non-4K
As pricing for 4K TV continues to fall almost every week.
With your own eyes, start judging every single TV which falls within the Size range and Price range.
And of course, before you go down. Remember to do your home work first and understand all the technical & fancy terms such as:
- UHD
- ULTRA UHD
- 4K X-Reality Pro
- 4K 800Hz BMR refresh Rate
- True Black
- Deep Black
- Peak Illuminator
- precision Black
- Prefect Black, Prefect White
- OLED
- LCD LED (LED Backlight)
- YELLOW
- High Dynamic Range (HDR)
- TV refresh rate in Hz. What it means and what it does? Do TV really refresh THAT fast?