The best gaming TV today can deliver the same fantastic speed and fidelity as the best gaming monitors. If you’re planning to game on a big screen, perhaps next to one of the latest consoles, you want something that can still deliver the frame rates your device spits out, and doesn’t slow you down with high lag.
Even with largest PC monitor on your desk, you may not get the level of immersion a a good gaming TV can deliver, simply for a lack of size. And since the best gaming TVs actually rival gaming monitors in fidelity and response times now, it’s a much more valid option. No more making do with laggy gameplay at anything over 50-inches.
In buying a TV, it’s easier to bag fancier technologies like OLED panels too, since these haven’t extensively graced our desktops yet. Choosing a fancy OLED panel for desktop means either bagging a high-end gaming laptop, or a gaming monitor that’s entirely reasonably priced. But if you have the space, why not consider dropping one of the best gaming TVs onto your desk.
Since the Nvidia RTX 3080 and AMD RX 6800 XT launched, 4K gaming isn’t so far fetched as it once was. You can now nail over 120fps at 4K, and with the upcoming GPUs from AMD and Nvidia looking all the more capable, you’ll need to keep up. The best TVs for gaming also support HDMI 2.1, so you can actually hit silky smooth frame rates at that super high resolution, particularly with if you want your next-gen consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X to run at those speeds.
Best gaming TVs
(Image credit: LG)
The first OLED TV under 50-inches was always going to be a watershed moment for PC gaming. Sure, strapping a 65-inch monster to the wall so you can game on your couch is appealing, but this is the first OLED TV to actually retail in a 48-inch form factor you could realistically use on your desk.
When you consider Nvidia has been trying to pimp its Big Format Gaming Displays, which measure up to 65-inches and balloon far beyond the $1,499/£1,499 price tag for this, the OLED48CX no longer looks like such a colossal (or wallet-ruining) prospect.
It’s going to have to be a pretty big desk, and sturdy too, but you’d be surprised just how rapidly you will adjust to having such screen real estate in front of you. And given that actual OLED monitors are still rare as pigeon teeth right now, this is arguably your best bet for PC gaming on an OLED panel.
OLEDs are far more reflective than either your average IPS monitor or LCD TV, though, so if you’re looking to place it in a well-lit room, make sure you can block light with curtains or blinds, otherwise OLED as a display format may not be for you.
Though it is a TV, it’s certainly not devoid of PC sensibilities.
And though it is a TV, it’s certainly not devoid of PC sensibilities. LG has now added AMD FreeSync Premium support to the existing Nvidia G-Sync compatibility the company added to last year’s models.
LG has doubled the refresh rate at 4K resolutions compared to previous models, too. While last year’s Series 9 line-up could ‘only’ support 4K at 60Hz at launch (although firmware patches have increased this to 120Hz), the CX is capable of displaying pictures at 4K at 120Hz right out of the box. To get the most out of the OLED48CX, there’s no denying you need a monstrous PC.
Screen uniformity is also far better than your average TV; a factor that should be of huge importance to gamers. Pan the camera across a clear blue sky in an open world like GTA 5 on a LCD TV or traditional PC monitor, and you’re likely to see uneven vertical streaks/screen artefacts, known as “Dirty Screen Effect”. OLED doesn’t suffer from this issue, leading to images that look far more uniform when moving against an in-game sky or playing a constantly up-and-down game of FIFA 20.
In terms of picture quality, no other technology can match the contrast and black levels of the self-emissive pixels in an OLED screen. There are some minor issues when it comes to desktop resizing, however. The LG OLED48CX tends to have trouble with Windows, where even at 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, the edges of the screen are very slightly cut off. LG’s Screen Shift technology is the culprit, but that helps prevent burn in. To fix this, you can either set a custom resolution of 3,802 x 2,136 to squeeze in every onscreen pixel, or you can turn off Screen Shift in the TV’s Picture Settings menu.
Still, with the LG OLED48CX’s 120 Hz refresh rate and superior HDR chops, this is almost the perfect PC gaming screen, and certainly the best gaming TV.
Read our full LG OLED48CX – 48-inch 4K TV review.
(Image credit: LG)
With each year, LG’s OLED panels get stronger and stronger for gaming and a better contender for the best gaming TV title. The E9 is 2019’s model, and it packs in many of the same features from the previous year’s E8 (our favorite gaming TV for so long), albeit with some key changes.
The panel is still among the thinnest of all 4K TVs, and it brings unrivaled black levels thanks to the OLED tech, allowing individual LEDs to be completely switched on and off. That’s how you get such deep blacks and the clarity and sharpness of image with them. It makes the E9 panels perfect for darker games like Metro: Exodus and Resident Evil 2: Remake.
The even better news is that G-sync is enabled on all E9-series TVs when you have Game Mode active, so you no longer have to suffer through skipped frames and torn pictures when playing at higher frame rates. Unless you’re gaming on an AMD card… LG has recently stated it has no plans to support FreeSync on 2019 OLED screens at all.
The Dolby Vision here is superb.
Away from frame-syncing, HDR isn’t toned down in LG’s Game Mode either, so you still get that vibrancy while benefiting from a better response and refresh rates. Unfortunately, you can still only play 4K at 60Hz on the E9-series (as it was with the E8), but the response rate has been boosted over the previous year, and now sits at a handsome 6ms for 1440p and 13ms for 4K.
The LG E9 is also capable of Dolby Atmos 4.2 sound, which is perfect for 4K movies if you run them through PC, and while its HDR brightness isn’t quite on a par with the QLED panels from Samsung (which favor color vibrancy over deep blacks), the Dolby Vision here is superb.
As with most OLED panels, the thinness of the screen means the sound output itself is never going to be as rich as a separate speaker system (speaker size is sacrificed for aesthetics), but the E9 still manages surprisingly good audio that surpasses the E8. We’d recommend a premium gaming headset to really set the experience off, or a top-class audio system, but it’s by no means a deal-breaker.
Samsung Q9FN 55″ (Image credit: Samsung)
While OLED is best for the inkiest of blacks, Samsung’s QLED tech leads the way when it comes to vibrant colors and vivid contrasts. The Q9F is 2018’s best 4K TV, and consequently one of the best gaming TVs.
While it has now been replaced as the flagship model by the Q90R, it remains a showstopping panel. What’s more, you can now pick it up for half the price, making this elite TV actually affordable, and it has almost all the features present in the newer (vastly more expensive) Q90R.
The headline feature is its HDR 2000 tech, which is the most vivid HDR of any commercially available TV. It’s all very well boasting about it, but in testing we compared it to others and you can actually see a significant boost in vibrancy over plenty of other TV sets, with a noticeably broader range of colors.
4K content looks stunning, but the TV also does a fantastic job of upscaling regular HD pictures, and even SD content, making them more colorful and with smoother motion and edges. It’s a fantastic all-rounder, thanks to a direct full-array LED picture display, and the anti-reflection screen is the icing on the cake.
Considering it’s impressive HDR performance, and supreme colour handling, this one’s certainly a firm alternative to the LG OLED65E9PUA, or LG OLED48CX,.
(Image credit: HISENSE)
Price is often a huge factor in deciding on a gaming TV, and no less for us when deciding on the best gaming TV. For PC gamers on a budget, trying to find a TV that can do 4K and HDR can be a bit of a daunting task. The good news is Hisense has been making decent budget 4K TVs for a while at under $1,000.
We found the Hisense 55H8G to provide excellent color handling, great contrast and deep blacks. And considering it can handle 4K at 60Hz (240Hz at lower resolutions), and supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR right out of the box, it’s well worth a look. Particularly since this TV retails for less than $500 nowadays, which is a great price.
For gaming the Hisense 55H8G’s Black Frame Insertion feature helps reduce motion blur, and its game mode offers an incredibly low input lag. And while it doesn’t support any variable refresh rate technology, it’s still worth checking out as a cheap gaming alternative.
If 55 inches is still too small for your tastes, Hisense also makes a 75-inch version of the H8G Smart TV in all of its Quantum Dot glory.
(Image credit: SONY)
The Sony A8H is a solid OLED TV that’s best known for its stellar picture quality. The first thing we noticed testing this TV is how excruciatingly thin is it, which makes it perfect for wall mounting.
Not only will it go happily on the wall, this 4K OLED TV has a decent color range compared to others in its class, great gray uniformity, and rich, deep black levels. There is a risk of burn in as an OLED, but its still worth a look if you’re biggest concern is picture quality.
It’s lack of VRR and HDR10+ can be quite disappointing for gamers, and the response times are a little lacking for extreme competitive gaming, but the wide viewing angles can almost guarantee that anywhere on your couch is the best seat in the house to enjoy that 55 inches of delicious content.
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(Image credit: Future)
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If you’re looking to buy a 55-inch TV on a budget, look no further than the TCL 6-series. This is 2018’s model, but that means you can often find it on sale but, quite frankly, it’s a bargain at full price. While the earlier TCL models suffered from poor build quality, and several screen flaws, the 6-series solved these issues to deliver an ace Roku-powered TV.
What’s more, it makes a great gaming TV too. While it doesn’t have the low, low response rate of $1,000+ panels, it manages between 6–12ms, which is above average for TVs of this size and price. What’s more, it has full-array local dimming, which means the contrast ratios are good (the blacks, especially, are nice and deep).
Where the TCL suffers is in the color range, which is merely average for a 4K TV at this price. It has decent HDR, but that can’t quite mask the lower vibrancy of images, although (to be honest) you’re unlikely to notice much of a difference unless you’re playing the most colorful of games.
At 55-inches, it’s less noticeable too, although if you’re looking to go up to 65-inches you need to work out if you’re ok getting a TV that does blacks and dark tones better than colors and light tones. While not the best gaming TV, per se, for the price, however, it’s very tough to fault the TCL 617. It even comes with voice control.
You can even drop down to 43-inches if you’re looking for a 4K TV as part of a PC set-up or second room gaming rig. The contrast remains as impressive, and it’s obviously a little cheaper too.
Best gaming TVs FAQ
Should I use a TV for PC gaming?
Our advice would have traditionally always been that you will get the best experience from plugging into a monitor, but there are a couple of benefits to picking a TV as your primary display. For a start, a gaming TV, with a 120Hz refresh rate and high-quality HDR, will be noticeably brighter than your typical gaming monitor.
And then there’s the size—you’re likely to get a much bigger panel than you would with almost any of the traditional gaming monitors out there. Many high-end TVs also come with game-focused features these days too, so you can enjoy technologies such as FreeSync or G-Sync on your big screen panel of choice too.
And now there’s almost no compromise. Well, apart from pixel pitch at such large screen sizes. But when you’ve gaming on the sofa that’s less of an issue. With a HDMI 2.1 connection, and a recent AMD or Nvidia GPU, you can game at 120Hz and at 4K on many a TV.
Do I need a TV with HDMI 2.1 for PC gaming?
If you’re aiming for 120Hz gaming at 4K then you absolutely do need HDMI 2.1. And that’s true whether you’re talking about PC gaming or a console such as the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. But if you’re only looking at a 4K TV with a maximum 60Hz refresh rate then you can get by just fine with a standard HDMI 2.0 connection.
It’s also worth pointing out that only the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics cards have HDMI 2.1 sockets on them.
What TV size is best for gaming?
It really depends how much space you have available, how big the room is, and how far away you are from the screen, but as a guide, 43–55 inches is generally considered optimal.
Is OLED or QLED better for gaming
These are both forward-looking panel technologies that look to improve the overall picture quality. QLED can offer better brightness and support larger screen sizes, while OLED can offer better viewing angles and better contrast, particularly better blacks. It’s often down to the individual implementation though, so it’s not as easy as saying one is definitely better than the other.
How do you test gaming TVs?
In figuring out what makes the best gaming TV, we have focused on four main performance elements.
First, input lag: how long a screen takes to render image data received at its inputs. This is critically important to gamers. Input lag was checked with HDR, SDR, 4K and HD game feeds to check there were no major anomalies between different sources (there weren’t with any of our selected TVs).
We checked input lag in two ways: using a Leo Bodnar input lag measuring device, and photographically, where we split a video feed of a running timer into the TV we’re testing and a reference BenQ gaming monitor, take a photo, and then see how far the time reading on the TV was behind the reading on the reference monitor.
The photographic method enables us to spot potential moment to moment variations in input lag that some TVs suffer with, and which the Bodnar device doesn’t provide.
Next, we considered contrast. How well a display is able to reproduce the darkest and brightest parts of a gaming image is essential to a truly satisfying game experience. Especially now many games are supporting the expanded brightness range associated with HDR. As part of the contrast assessment, we also looked for issues such as flickering brightness levels and backlight ‘blooming’ around bright objects.
As part of the contrast testing, we measured each TV’s peak light output using an X-Rite i1 Display Pro light meter. This lets us know how far a set can go towards achieving the sort of extreme brightness levels HDR gaming is capable of.
Colour performance was also carefully scrutinized, paying attention to the richness, balance, consistency, freedom from striping noise and authenticity of the tones being shown. Pretty much all HDR material also carries a wider colour range than the old standard dynamic range format we’ve been stuck with for so many years. This can have a transformative effect on game graphics, making them look both more lifelike and more dramatic/three dimensional.
Finally, we looked a motion and sharpness as markers of the best gaming TV. We mention these together as to some extent they’re related. If a TV suffers badly with judder or blurring when you’re panning around in Fortnite or hurtling into the scenery in Forza Horizon 3, that’s going to affect the picture’s sense of sharpness significantly. We also studied ultra-detailed but relatively static 4K game graphics looking for signs of softness, shimmering noise, ever-enthusiastic edge-enhancements, grain or any lack of depth and three-dimensionality that might be caused by a TV being unable to deliver enough color finesse to ‘match’ the number of pixels in the screen.
