First TV in 10 years. Please recommend one for £300-400 :)

Associate
Joined
20 Jun 2009
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218
Hi guys.
Didn’t have TV for about 10 years. Looking to buy one 40-50” for use with on demand TV and gaming when new Xbox is out. Would like to be able to view media from Apple devices if possible.
£400 is my limit.
Can you recommend any please? Will be wall mounted.

thank you
 
Man of Honour
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29 May 2010
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Cheshire
£300-£400 for a 40"-50" TV isn't quite bottom-budget money, but it's not far off.

You'll be tempted (and possibly advised) to go for the biggest screen you can afford because "you soon get used to it" or "you'll wish you went bigger". There's truth in both statements, but it leaves out the important fact that this applies far more to TVs in much higher price categories where all the essentials and a lot of the nice-to-have features have already been covered. That's not your situation. With the money you've earmarked, you're still in the territory of which-essential-can-I-afford-to-sacrifice.

Where you plan to game, and you're going to the expense of purchasing the next-gen XBox to do it, then one essential you definitely want to have is low screen lag. If you're not sure what this is, it's the time delay between you pressing a button on the controller and your FPS character or car etc reacting to that command.

The best way to get low lag is with a TV with a high-end LCD panel that can display more images per second than the standard 50 or 60 fpor most TVs. It's not the complete solution, but it's a big part of it. This is called the Native Refresh Rate. It is not to be confused with the electronic picture processing sometimes referred to as the motion processing rate. As a very rough rule of thumb, you'll often see that the motion processing rate is double that of the native refresh rate. i.e. The motion processing rate is 100/120Hz, but the panel itself is only capable of 50/60Hz.

TVs with these faster panels generally start to appear at double your budget, so you need a second way to get low lag. What you should be looking for then is a TV with Game Mode. This switches off as much of the picture processing as they can get away with so that there's as simple a signal path as possible. Not all TVs have this, so if gaming is important, and your budget means you're looking at TVs with 50/60Hz panels, then ask or look up the feautures in spec sheet.

TL;DR version
For your budget, buy a smaller set to get a better chance of higher performance. Avoid the really cheap models such as Bush, Toshiba, Hitachi, Linsar, JVC etc. Only buy a major brand such as LG, Samsong, Panasonic, Sony if you know for sure that the specification gives you all you need. Most of these brands only have a token presence in the budget arena. They save their 'good tech' for their higher-priced models.

I'd recommend you have a look at the Hisense 43AE7400. This is available for around £380. You get 4 HDMI 2.0 inputs (that's very good) and means there's plenty of input capacity for your ATV box and other sources. There's Alexa compatibility too. The input lag is a decent <20ms according to the specs, and there's a full compliment of HDR formats: HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby VIsion (DV). It even handles DTS and DTS:X audio which is a feature sadly missing from some higher-end TVs.
 
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Soldato
Joined
30 Nov 2003
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3,386
I know the budget is £400, but if you can stretch to £449 then you can get the 50" Panasonic TX-50HX580B

The only reason I say this, is at least you are future proofing yourself for probably another good 10 years as it comes with the latest formats - HDR: Dolby Vision / HDR10 / Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG). Quite a lot of TV's even the high end priced ones won't do both Dolby Vision and HDR10 as tends to just be the Panasonic offering both.
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2002
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Stockport / Manchester
I know the budget is £400, but if you can stretch to £449 then you can get the 50" Panasonic TX-50HX580B

The only reason I say this, is at least you are future proofing yourself for probably another good 10 years as it comes with the latest formats - HDR: Dolby Vision / HDR10 / Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG). Quite a lot of TV's even the high end priced ones won't do both Dolby Vision and HDR10 as tends to just be the Panasonic offering both.

They almost all do HDR10 and Dolby Vision these days, apart from Samsung.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2010
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21,902
I'd watch panasonic ebay store - they've had 55fx700 £449 gx820 £379; I've had no problems with a set I bought from them;
it's worth keeping an eye on hotuk too, for comments/bargains.
 
Caporegime
Joined
21 Jun 2006
Posts
38,372
Go for an LG or a hisense.

Panasonic don't make panels anymore as far as I can remember so I'd avoid them.

If you can get a Samsung for that price then should be good.

Again Sony don't make their own panels either so their budget models will have crap in them.

LG or hisense are your friends possibly Samsung. Buy from richer sounds or John Lewis if you can.
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
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25,666
I would agree with the Panasonic HX but don't expect real HDR, most TV's in the budget price ranges don't have panels good enough to make HDR anything but a check box feature.
 
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