Time to replace the big screen TV

[Kev Williams]

Our ~11 year old 75" Sharp Aquos Quattron suddenly has decided to grow its own 'input selection brain', just keeps changing inputs by itself...

SO I'm looking at 85" replacements, which from where I'll be buying from boils down to LG, Samsung and Sony, and looking to spend no more than ~$2500...

I notice UHD, QLED, OLED, QNED types--

good bang for the buck is an LG UHD for $1300, seems pretty ok... For $1600-$1800 Samsung has a couple of QLED units, BUT, they only have 60Hz refresh rates where the cheaper LG has a 120Hz refresh... Only one LG I find, $2100, shows as an "ONED", 'Quantum Dot Nanocell Technology' I assume accounts for the acronym. "OLED" units seem to be for the rich crowd...

For $1300 the LG seems like a good deal, but the wife says 'don't cheap out'

Anyway, any recommendations?


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[Paul F Franklin]

No reco from me since I haven't bought a TV in ages...but if your current set has a physical button to select the input, you may want to futz with it in case it is sticking or dirty.

[Scott Clausen]

You must watch much more TV than I. Anyway in an attempt to assist you may want to check your inputs and disconnect unused inputs first. Some TV's have ARC inputs that can take commands from other devices to change the input. Others "sense" a signal from another source and auto change inputs. Until you remove others you will not know if it is the TV or another device. Sometimes removing one input from the ARC input and moving to a non ARC will resolve. Good luck!

[Brian Tymchak]

Also starting to look at a replacement for our big plasma. Power filters starting to fail.

More than likely will go with Samsung again. QLED 4K 65+" is the baseline. Haven't shopped seriously beyond that though. Seems to be a lot model options for Samsung. Guess I'll need to dive in to figure it out. Supposed to be a good Fall shopping season for electronics.

[Bruce Page]

I don’t have any recommendations on the current offerings. I did buy a TOL Sony OLED two years ago. It has the blackest blacks and best contrasts I have ever seen on a television. It is Android based but other than that, I’m very happy with it.

[ChrisA Edwards]

All three brands are good, but I have two Sony 75" and a 65", so I guess you can see what my recommendation is.

My last Sony 75" I bought from Costco.

Now I'll jinx myself, I've never has a Sony TV fail.

[roger wiegand]

All TVs beyond the no-name base models these days are so good it's really hard to go wrong. I'd base a brand decision on the operating system you prefer, then select for the connectors you need and the aesthetic you like. We have a cheap Samsung and and an expensive one, they operate identically (and picture quality is, to me, indistinguishable), but the expensive one is dramatically faster in operation than the cheap one, so much have a much faster processor.

[Jerome Stanek]

My best advice is to go to a couple of stores and look at the pictures. I looked at some Sony's LG's and Samsung's and the best picture was on a cheap Hisense I had a hisense in the bedroom and it is about 10 years old and still going strong

[Marc Fenneuff]

I got an LG C1 (OLED) this year and it has the best picture I've ever experienced at home. Sounds like the 85" C1 or C2 would be well out of your price range, though. If you are looking for a mid-range set, Roger's advice is sound.

[Jim Becker]

I have both Samsung and LG products currently and have been very happy with them based on when they were acquired and available features at that time, etc. If I was someone that watched a lot of video content, I'd shoot for the best screen technology, even if it meant a few inches smaller to get to a price point. I don't disagree with the advice to go and look at them physically in (the) store(s) if you can, but do keep in mind that things might be "juiced" in the setups to make them more vivid in the retail environment lighting. Pay attention to the blacks for sure.

[Ted Calver]

Just helped an elderly friend buy a TOL 83" Sony from Costco with an added sound bar from Best Buy. Beautiful picture and sound. That sucker was heavy...two man job for sure. She has yet to master the controls, as it is a huge step up in digital technology for her...still needs occasional assistance when she fat fingers a button. She paid for it using a Costco Visa and that extended the warranty.

My daughter and her husband recently gifted us a new 77" LG OLED and Sony AV amplifier as unexpected payment for some work I did for them. I like the LG picture as well, if not better than the SONY. My grandson hooked up the amplifier to our 4 old Klipsch speakers and the surround sound beats my friends new sound bar, hands down.

You won't go wrong with either brand.

[Tom M King]

We bought five LG's not too long ago for a rental house. I just bought them from Walmart. 75" was the largest one for the great room. None are the fancy OLED, or any of that, but I was surprised at the quality of the pictures they show. I think the 75" was a little less than $800. I wouldn't spend double that for a "better" picture for our own house.

[Kev Williams]

As to pic quality, hard to beat our old Sharp. The "Quattron" part of the name comes from the fact it has a 4th yellow pixel, according to Sharp it's to enhance blue's. And behind each cluster of pixels is black. To this day when I see a movie or old TV show in HD on it for the first time the pic quality amazes me. Never had an issue with it till now. Some googling found a few other people with similar input-switching problems, and common to them, and ours, is that it seems to be a 'cold TV' issue, once it's been on about an hour it seems to quit doing it. No known 'actual' fix. Ours does it with no remotes of any kind in the room, and the controls on the side only access the menu's to switch inputs, no direct access to change anything. It acts almost like the 'flashback' button is the culprit, but I've chosen 2 HD inputs just to see and it always switches to the 'USB' input. It's also switched to a 3rd input a couple of times, but the USB input is ALWAYS one of the switch-to choices regardless of the other one. And there's nothing in the USB port...

thanks for the comments! Seems there's no 'wrong' TV to buy these days

[Wojciech Tryc]

Go for the OLED. That is the only technology offering true black at the pixel level. The others are marketing gimmicks trying to promote LED with zones going black. Absolutely no comparison….
Sony will give you few extra features and it offers your Android based TV if you like it. As per the actual oled display, Sony uses LG brand

[Paul F Franklin]

One point I will add...when our high end SONY died a few years back, I replaced it with a TCL model at about 1/10 what we paid for the sony. It's been fine for us, since my wife isn't fussy and I rarely watch TV. But when we installed the TCL, I noticed that there are almost zero adjustments you can make to the picture. IIRC, brightness was it. The sony, in contrast, had an amazing array of adjustments to allow you to calibrate it to true color rendition and adjust for many lighting conditions. If you care about being able to tweak the picture make sure the one you buy has the adjustments you want.

OK, one more point: Another thing the Sony had was a very matte screen that showed almost no reflections of windows or lights in the room, etc. The TCL has a glossier screen and reflections are easily noticeable. If you are always watching in a darkened room it probably doesn't matter, but the reflections bother me on the rare occasions when I do watch something.