How do you choose a TV with the best image quality?

The image quality of a TV depends on the following properties:

• Sharpness
• Refresh rate
• Color depth
• Brightness
• Viewing angle and reflection
• The processor

For ever TV in our assortment, we look at how well they perform based on these properties. Then we score the TV, ranging from Standard to Excellent. That way, you only use one filter instead of several while you're looking for the best image quality.

Sharper images ensure that you can see small details better. Think of blades of grass, the shirt number of a soccer player, or the bear hairs of an actor. It makes the image extra realistic. The sharpness is determined by the resolution of the TV. Full HD and 4K are the most well-known resolution types. A 4K screen has 4 times more pixels than a Full HD screen, so every image is 4 times as sharp. You can really notice the difference with screens of 40 inches or more.

The refresh rate, or Hertz value, indicates how smoothly movement takes shape on the screen. This is important when you're watching a moving train or the serve of a tennis player, for example. The Hertz value determines how many frames per second the TV can show. The higher the value, the smoother the movement. Think of a frame like an image. When you play the images in fast succession, you get a moving image. A 100 Hertz TV shows 2 times as many images per second compared to a 50 Hertz TV. This means that fast actions look smoother on this TV.

Some TVs show black images with deeper blacks and with more accuracy than others. This means that they can provide a stronger contrast between color and gray tones. As an extra advantage, image errors aren't as visible in darker scenes. An example of an image error is a slight glow around stars in a dark night sky. How well a TV can produce black images depends on the background lighting. OLED TVs can dim or switch off every pixel individually, so that they can render black images perfect. You can read more about that in this article.

The color depth determines how many colors you can see on the TV. An 8-bit TV shows about 17 milion colors, but on a 10-bit TV it's more than a bilion. Simply put, a 10-bit TV has more pencils to color in the image. These TVs are also called HDR TVs, because they can produce the wide color gamut of HDR images. Lately, more and more movies, series, and games are released in HDR quality. That means this feature is getting more important.

In addition to color depth, brightness is also an important feature for the color representation of a TV. A screen needs to be able to reach a high brightness to show bright color tones. This way, a ray of light in a dark forest takes on an extra intense quality. The best HDR TVs reach both a deep black rendering and a high brightness, so that they produce a powerful contrast. You can recognized these TVs by their UHD Premium certificate.

The viewing angle determines the angle at which you can watch the TV without seeing the colors transformed or the brightness lowered. It's also convenient if the screen is resistant to reflections in bright daylight or artifical light. That way, the contrast ratio is kept intact and light sources such as lamps aren't reflected in the screen.

The processor is the motor behind the image techniques of the television. A TV processor does all of the math to make the image as sharp, bright, and colorful as possible. Intelligent processors use a database to recognize images and decide how an image can be improved. That way, a processor can make images with a low resolution extra sharp or it can select the best contrast ratio. With a smart processor, you're watching the best possible image settings.