# New TV LED or QLED



## shane_ctr (Dec 17, 2006)

Hi all,

I am looking to buy a TV for my kitchen. I haven't bought a TV for a number of years. I currently have a 50" Panasonic Plasma in my lounge so new to all this Qled etc. I have narrowed it down to these 2 TV's but keen to understand is the Qled TV worth the extra £150 i also notice it comes with a 5 year warranty as well.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...ixby-alexa-google-assistant-10206272-pdt.html

-

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...ixby-alexa-google-assistant-10206275-pdt.html

Thank you :thumb:


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## shl-kelso (Dec 27, 2012)

I would recommend taking a look at Richer Sounds too - you get a price promise/price match and 6 year warranty for free too. 

QLED does offer some performance advantages compared to the cheaper Crystal range so you need to consider if it’s worth it for a kitchen TV, especially if you are using it for just a bit of casual TV viewing. Ideally you would want to go and take a look at both so you could make an informed decision, but that’s just not possible now we are in lockdown again.

For me, having recently replaced a broken Samsung plasma in one of my rooms at home, I chose QLED, but also chose the Q70T model with “faster” processor - 70T range and above use the Quantum 4k processor, whereas the 60T range as a “lite” version of this. How much difference that makes in the real world is difficult to judge, but as I got a deal at the time that made the cost difference relatively small so I was happy to move up the range. Also note that certain models are eligible for a cash back deal based on you and a friend buying a screen within a certain time period - there is a thread on AV Forums in their Samsun TV section to share these codes, and it means you potentially could get £100 cash back if you can find someone happy to share their code with you.


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## MDC250 (Jan 4, 2014)

Got a QLED last March in Lockdown V1.

Fair improvement on the outgoing Samsung LED which to be fair was quite old and was still happy with but wanted smart TV functionality.

Despite messing around with settings it is fairly dark especially when using say Disney+ or Netflix in UHD, and have to usually alter a preset (for convenience) or can miss a fair bit, Mandalorian is very dark. Suspect in no small let it is positioning in the room. 

Got a cracking soundbar and subwoofer with it, as was a 2019 model. Might be the same going with 2020 models now.


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## Andyblue (Jun 20, 2017)

shane_ctr said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I am looking to buy a TV for my kitchen. I haven't bought a TV for a number of years. I currently have a 50" Panasonic Plasma in my lounge so new to all this Qled etc. I have narrowed it down to these 2 TV's but keen to understand is the Qled TV worth the extra £150 i also notice it comes with a 5 year warranty as well.
> 
> ...


Personally, wouldn't buy from Curries, I'd choose either John Lewis or Richer Sounds - have used both and can personally recommend their customer care, esp RS. Both give a comprehensive 5 or 6 year warranty.

The question first is what size are you looking at for the kitchen ?

I went through this the other year and decided on a 32" for the kitchen as it was plenty big enough for the room, without over powering / standing a mile out of place...

If you're looking and sure 55" is going to be fine for your room, then the OLED /QLED new versions are well worth a look, but as with anything, there are also different specs in each range... I'd buy the best you can afford to, would recommend a look at some of LG's new models...


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## MDC250 (Jan 4, 2014)

QE55Q80RA was the model I got. If I remember correctly there was one up on that maybe a 90 and one or two below in the range. I can't remember now but there was something the one I got and the one up had over lower models. I must have though it was worth it at the time 

I wanted to get from Richer Sounds but there were stock issues locally and couldn't travel to collect. Currys basically knocked money off and did a deal on a warranty package to broadly match Richer Sounds. If you don't ask you don't get. The soundbar and subwoofer bundled in to incentivise moving the 2019 stock was still selling at £250 or thereabouts on its own.

I'd also have a look at Costco, in terms of hassle free returns they are very decent.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Personally I'd avoid Samsung right now. They have terrible panel QC And uniformity and apps like Disney+ which support Dolby Vision which is far superior to HDR10+ and support by literally every other brand, Samsung do not (as HDR10+ is their version they are trying to push)

Personally, for that money, go for a LG Nanocell. My opinion but Samsung have been slipping the past few years.


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## shane_ctr (Dec 17, 2006)

Andyblue said:


> Personally, wouldn't buy from Curries, I'd choose either John Lewis or Richer Sounds - have used both and can personally recommend their customer care, esp RS. Both give a comprehensive 5 or 6 year warranty.
> 
> The question first is what size are you looking at for the kitchen ?
> 
> ...


I will take a look at John Lewis and Richer Sounds as the comprehensive 5 or 6 year warranty is a bonus.

Yes ideally would like 55" as its quite a large room 7.5 x 4.7m



Excuse the flooring it was a visual as we haven't chosen the flooring yet and also the room isn't fully decorated.


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## MDC250 (Jan 4, 2014)

Ha, I'd avoid John Lewis but then again Currys have also let me down before now 

I had terrible experience with JL years back. TV packed in 1 month after purchase. It was bought using wedding money vouchers

They were looking at a rubbish loan TV after I'd subscribed to Sky and sending off for repair etc. At 1 month old and what I paid for it at the time it was a new TV or nothing as far as I was concerned. The Manager in Audio Visual Dept hung up on me on the phone, which was the last straw, so I went down in person with the TV boxed up and shortly afterwards was on my way to Richer Sounds with the money refunded to my bank instead of vouchers.


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## AnthonyUK (Jul 25, 2018)

I would check the viewing angle of the QLED suits your room before buying.

I have one and think it is very good and have no issues with it having overly dark scenes in Disney+/Netflix or Prime. The Mandorlorian looked stunning for a stream compared to the LED it replaced (2019 Samsung 7000 series) which was awful for HDR content.



MDC250 said:


> Despite messing around with settings it is fairly dark especially when using say Disney+ or Netflix in UHD


I would check the RTINGS settings as a starting point for your TV.

E.g. - https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/q70-q70r-qled/settings


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## shane_ctr (Dec 17, 2006)

AnthonyUK said:


> I would check the viewing angle of the QLED suits your room before buying.
> 
> I have one and think it is very good and have no issues with it having overly dark scenes in Disney+/Netflix or Prime. The Mandorlorian looked stunning for a stream compared to the LED it replaced (2019 Samsung 7000 series) which was awful for HDR content.
> 
> ...


Thank you for the advice. The Sofa will be inline with the TV about 4m away. It would be nice to be able to view it from the bar stool areas as well.


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## AnthonyUK (Jul 25, 2018)

shane_ctr said:


> Thank you for the advice. The Sofa will be inline with the TV about 4m away. It would be nice to be able to view it from the bar stool areas as well.


The weird thing with QLEDS is they do not get as dark at wide viewing angles so much but the colours get washed out.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Samsung are mostly (if not all are VA Panels).

LG uses mostly IPS panels which retain their colour and look at any angle.

There are pros and cons to both, such as VA panels get better blacks but the viewing angles on them can really suffer if you are more than even 20 degrees away from centre viewing. There are things to combat the poor blacks such as full array dimming but then you're climbing up the price ladder.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

I would just like to say, we have numerous brands of TV in this house, I am not fanboying LG, our new main TV isn't an LG.

I just think for the money, a nice IPS display that can be viewed from any angle for more occasional viewing would be a better choice than a VA Panel. Plus it may not bother you about DSE, Banding, Uniformity etc but Samsung have unfortunately been very poor the past few years.


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## Mikesphotaes (Jul 24, 2016)

Starbuck88 said:


> Samsung are mostly (if not all are VA Panels).
> 
> LG uses mostly IPS panels which retain their colour and look at any angle.
> 
> There are pros and cons to both, such as VA panels get better blacks but the viewing angles on them can really suffer if you are more than even 20 degrees away from centre viewing. There are things to combat the poor blacks such as full array dimming but then you're climbing up the price ladder.


My Samsung is not VA, it is IPS and viewable from most angles.

It is certainly the best picture I have yet seen!


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Mikesphotaes said:


> My Samsung is not VA, it is IPS and viewable from most angles.
> 
> It is certainly the best picture I have yet seen!


That's the beauty of an IPS Panel.

Both the OPS choices and all the Q range are VA.


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## AnthonyUK (Jul 25, 2018)

Starbuck88 said:


> Samsung are mostly (if not all are VA Panels).
> 
> LG uses mostly IPS panels which retain their colour and look at any angle.
> 
> There are pros and cons to both, such as VA panels get better blacks but the viewing angles on them can really suffer if you are more than even 20 degrees away from centre viewing. There are things to combat the poor blacks such as full array dimming but then you're climbing up the price ladder.


Samsung's QLED panels of recent years have some sort of prismatic layer that increases the viewing angles while still retaining the superior contrast over an IPS panel.

As I mentioned earlier, mine does not suffer the traditional problem but at extremes, the colours do get a bit washed out.


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## roscopervis (Aug 22, 2006)

LEDs and QLEDs are pretty much the same, with the Q being a type of filter to increase the colour reproduction from each pixel. If you are going to look at the panel head on, then you should get a VA panel, if there will be viewing from many angles, then an IPS panel would be best. Even the best filters from Samsung aren't great at increasing viewing angles.

Hisense's Q7 and 8 tv's use the same Q filter and use VA panels. I'd be looking at getting one of these as a Samsung QLED owner, if you don't want to stretch to an OLED.


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## Brian1612 (Apr 5, 2015)

Sorry to hijack the thread but can some of you tech savvy TV guru's provide some info on Phillipa tvs? Really interested in purchasing this for our living room but I'm usually a Samsung fanboy, I just really like the look of the ambilight feature that comes with it.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...ed-tv-with-google-assistant-10212932-pdt.html

Sent from my SM-G986B using Tapatalk


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## JoeyJoeJo (Jan 3, 2014)

I got ambilight two years ago and can't see me going back, I love it. If I got a non Philips TV, I'd be looking for the kit to add it.

Had a 9002 that came from AO via ebay, it developed a line across the screen about 20 months in and Philips replaced it with a 934 so that bought them a lot of goodwill. I was surprised they honoured the 2 year warranty to be honest with it coming through ebay. I understand things develop faults, the measure for me is how it's dealt with and they were great.

They have a software issue at the moment with some apps due to some changes in streaming service protocols that mean a couple won't play in their highest resolution/quality but expected to be fixed by an update. Not an issue if you're using other boxes as your source.

If I was in the market today, Philips Ambilight would be top of my shopping list.


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## AnthonyUK (Jul 25, 2018)

Brian1612 said:


> Sorry to hijack the thread but can some of you tech savvy TV guru's provide some info on Phillipa tvs? Really interested in purchasing this for our living room but I'm usually a Samsung fanboy, I just really like the look of the ambilight feature that comes with it.
> 
> https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...ed-tv-with-google-assistant-10212932-pdt.html
> 
> Sent from my SM-G986B using Tapatalk


The Philips OLEDs are highly rated but I think their software is a bit lacking in supporting some services which is not a big issue as there are plenty of options to add them.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...art-4k-ultra-hd-hdr-oled-tv-10197234-pdt.html

You can add ambilight features to other TVs.


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## bigbrother (Jun 30, 2011)

I have a Panasonic 50" plasma and also in the market for a new tv, the problem me and you have is to find a tv that is as good as the Pana, these are very good tv's, i have even spoken to a Panasonic rep and was told that in that price range there is not much on the market to match it.
I borrowed it down to 2 brands the Panasonic and the Sony oleds, don't touch the led you will be disappointed,Qleds are ok (good for gaming) but not quite up there with the oleds.


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## St Evelyn (Mar 15, 2019)

We bought the original 42" Panasonic Freesat plasma TV when it came out just under 13 years ago and are still using it! 

For the last year or so I've been thinking of upgrading and had settled on the Philips 55OLED805 with ambilight as it had pretty much everything I wanted. In the end I upgraded our ancient home cinema system to a Denon 3600H receiver with B&W MT-50 speakers - not cheap but awesome sound quality. I then discovered that the Philips sets don't support the latest audio standard, although it's believed the 2021 iterations will (the amp supports them so I figured I may as well wait and get a TV that supports it as I tend to keep TVs for a long time).

I'm told that I'll notice a massive improvement when moving from old plasma to modern OLED, but bigbrother's comment has me wondering now... 

I don't do gaming or suchlike, the TV is purely for watching - broadcast content and streaming.


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## bigbrother (Jun 30, 2011)

St Evelyn said:


> I'm told that I'll notice a massive improvement when moving from old plasma to modern OLED, but bigbrother's comment has me wondering now...


I'm assuming Shane has the ST series Panasonic plasma which was their flagship tv at the time.

Yes you will read a lot of conflicting theories about any tv but we don't have the luxury of being able to compare tv's side by side, the problem we all have is that you get used to your tv and think it's great colours (guilty as charged) then you see a new one and it's a lot better, what you will find with an oled is that it will be much brighter and will have a lot more features, i suppose you have to say to yourself is it £1000+ better.

All the shops run a generated screen for you to see which is not a true repersentation as to what you receive back home.

At this moment in time our tv is running great was looking to get something bigger but with the present climate we are holding off the money might be needed somewhere else.


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## St Evelyn (Mar 15, 2019)

bigbrother said:


> ...but with the present climate we are holding off the money might be needed somewhere else.


I'm with you there.
I've been off sick for the last 10 months and am extremely fortunate to still be getting paid full wages, but I'm not sure how long this will continue for. Hope to be able to get back to work within the next 2-5 months and start getting back to normal, but I'm not keen to go spending £1500+ replacing a working TV if there's a risk that the wages will stop and I need to be focusing on paying the mortgage instead.


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## roscopervis (Aug 22, 2006)

Brian1612 said:


> Sorry to hijack the thread but can some of you tech savvy TV guru's provide some info on Phillipa tvs? Really interested in purchasing this for our living room but I'm usually a Samsung fanboy, I just really like the look of the ambilight feature that comes with it.
> 
> https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...ed-tv-with-google-assistant-10212932-pdt.html
> 
> Sent from my SM-G986B using Tapatalk


A few things - Ambilight is great, but you can now get lights that do that for quite cheap for any TV.

That Philips was £849 Black Friday so it's over priced at £1149. Especially so because it's peak brightness is only 400 nits which means it won't be very good at doing HDR. The aim is to get 1000 nits or as close to it. 250-270 is SDR brightness so 400 isn't much more and HDR material won't really pop like it should.

The software in this range is also not the slickest and quite buggy.

This is a better TV https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-an...r-qled-tv-with-amazon-alexa-10207168-pdt.html


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

If you're willing to pay to get a newly released TV all the 2021 tvs are currently being announced ready this release in a few months


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Anybody buy any new TV then?


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## St Evelyn (Mar 15, 2019)

Haha, not yet.

I'm definitely waiting for the 2021 sets; no news from Philips around their 2021 TV lineup yet, but that's what I'm waiting on. I like the idea of ambilight but don't want the hassle of external add-ons so will likely go with their updated OLED set once it's available.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

St Evelyn said:


> Haha, not yet.
> 
> I'm definitely waiting for the 2021 sets; no news from Philips around their 2021 TV lineup yet, but that's what I'm waiting on. I like the idea of ambilight but don't want the hassle of external add-ons so will likely go with their updated OLED set once it's available.


Do you do a lot of watching news or anything that has any static areas bars for long periods of time?


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## St Evelyn (Mar 15, 2019)

Not really; most of our watching is BBC1, although I sometimes get pulled in to Quest if there's a day of Wheeler Dealers so suchlike. Otherwise it's streaming from Netflix or the like.


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## GG441 (Aug 31, 2020)

Actually, TV technology has gone far from Qled nowadays. Oled tvs are currently the best and it is improving. They are a bit expensive from the Qled tvs though. I'd suggest you research a bit more about oled tvs and finally select one. Here some oled tvs are compared along with some qled tvs. You may check
https://mediaelites.com/best-65-inch-4k-tv-under-1000/


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## GeeWhizRS (Nov 1, 2019)

LG are reportedly releasing a cheaper A1 version of their OLED models so I'd maybe wait until more news about that. This model will have stripped back features to reduce costs but should still show backlit TVs a clean pair of heels.


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## roscopervis (Aug 22, 2006)

GG441 said:


> Actually, TV technology has gone far from Qled nowadays. Oled tvs are currently the best and it is improving. They are a bit expensive from the Qled tvs though. I'd suggest you research a bit more about oled tvs and finally select one. Here some oled tvs are compared along with some qled tvs. You may check
> https://mediaelites.com/best-65-inch-4k-tv-under-1000/


Of course OLEDS are the best, but they are expensive. The list you linked is American. We can't get those TCL's or Vizio's.

The advancement that is happening now is mini LED so using QLED filters but with many many more light sources/dimming zones so you get the brightness, but also the ability to finely tune the backlight so it turns of precisely. LG are investing heavily into this even. Those TCL's above are early examples of it.

In the UK the LG OLED's are the best, the Philips, Sony, Panasonic all make excellent OLEDS too. It's the price that is the pain.


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