10 best 4K TVs for a needle-sharp viewing experience, tried and tested

Panasonic’s OLED TVs have picture quality so rich and detailed it can take your breath away. The Z95A is its very latest flagship. The images are smooth and realistic – from faithful skin tones to detailed shadowy areas – and it’s still good for vibrant colours and deep black levels.

OLED screens are rarely as bright as other technologies but Panasonic has found a way around this with something called ‘micro lens array’, which is better at focusing light outwards, delivering a noticeably brighter image without increasing energy consumption. It also has bespoke heat sinks, which allow brighter results. You no longer need to watch an OLED TV in a darkened room to get the best results. Audio is stronger than on many TVs, thanks to a speaker on the front that acts like a soundbar and upward firing speakers on the back for Dolby Atmos effects.

This 50in TV from Amazon is very competitively priced. While it’s no match for the joys of OLED, the QLED picture here is bright and effective with great colour range and a dynamic look. It’s most successful with HD and 4K content. It sounds good, with good clarity for the vocal tracks, though, as with several TVs here, adding a soundbar ups the ante.

Amazon has its own smart TV platform, which includes something called ‘ambient experience’, which displays art or photos when the TV is in standby. It also has a built-in microphone, so you can control some TV actions with your voice, or by pressing the blue button on the remote.

It’s worth noting Amazon changes its prices regularly – at the time of writing, this screen has become even better value for money, with a price drop to £479.99.

The picture quality, performance and overall design of the bravia 8 make Sony’s TV stand out as a great OLED TV. The contrast and strong, deep black colours, which typify OLED, look especially good here, allowing rich brightness as well as subtle shadows.

It’s brighter than some of the Sony OLED TVs it supersedes and it has a clever speaker system, which sees the display vibrate to create the audio, sounding good without distorting either the sound or the picture. It sounds particularly good in the ‘cinema’ sound mode.

Its operating system is Google TV and the overall design is slim and attractive, with a solid and authoritative look.

Samsung’s neo QLED uses an all-new technology called mini LED. As you’d imagine, it uses LEDs that are much tinier than on a regular TV – one fortieth of the size, in fact, so there are thousands of them behind the LCD screen, with much more granular control. The result is an image that’s spectacular when it comes to brighter elements of the picture, though not quite as impressive in darker corners.

Meanwhile, sound features include something called object tracking sound+, which makes the audio seem to come from the appropriate part of the screen, though this is a subtle effect.

The B3 is a great option: it’s affordable for OLED, having dropped in price since its original launch last year, and it has a great picture quality. LG uses arguably the best smart TV software (webOS) around. It’s easy to use and simple to navigate, thanks to its home screen layout. It also looks great, with strong customisation, handy quick menus and an attractive overall design, though it’s not outstanding.

A feature called ‘quick cards’ puts apps into relevant categories, for easy discovery. As for the rest of the TV, it has a sleek design and thin bezel, so the picture stands out. It’s brighter than some OLED screens and it looks consistently smooth and slick, whether you’re watching a movie or playing games. The filmmaker mode is suitably detailed, with deep blacks and natural colours.

Sky Glass is a clever concept: a TV with access to Sky built in. There’s no satellite dish required – instead, it streams Sky content just as it does Disney+, Netflix and so on. It means there’s no need for a separate Sky box with a hard drive, or even a soundbar, given the built-in speaker. It uses an interface different from the Sky Q box and offers easier ways to start a programme from the beginning when you’re joining a broadcast partway through. The picture quality is strong, though not the best here. However, as a one-stop entertainment hub with seamless access to Sky in just one box, it’s hard to beat. You can also choose to pay £20 followed by monthly instalments of £14 over two years, instead of the whole cost up front. The TV frame comes in five different colours, too.

There are more expensive OLED screens but this one has so much going for it you may feel you don’t need to spend any more. It features pin-sharp picture and excellent brightness levels that look realistic and persuasive. Sometimes shadows can be a little less detailed than on some other screens but, overall, the picture quality is outstanding. It’s also lightweight for a screen this size: 16.6kg without the stand. That’s handy when you’re setting it up but, unless you’re likely to be lugging it from room to room, makes little difference once it’s installed. The LG C4 is also strong for gaming, not least thanks to a game optimiser menu. Audio, however, is unexceptional and, like many screens, benefits from an added soundbar. Overall, this is a great all-round TV at a strong price, given the screen size.

This is a spectacular screen, with OLED amplified by quantum dots – those tiny nano particles used to enhance a display with extra brightness and vibrancy. An excellent image processing chip means the TV can reduce noise and minimise blur for smoother images, while sharpening up detail without overdoing it. It adds a dynamism without sacrificing fidelity – in short, it looks magnificent.

Audio is also strong. Like the other Sony sets included here, it vibrates the display to create the audio, and it’s good at giving the impression of directional sound, so, if there’s an explosion at the right of the screen, that’s where it sounds like it’s coming from.

Note that the stand has feet at the extreme edges of the display, so you need furniture just as wide to hold it.

This is a full array LED, which means the LCD display has LED backlights across the whole screen, with local dimming to make the deep black shades and bright colours possible. This TV is great for both contrast and brightness – without the ‘blooming’ effects that make it look like light areas have halos around them.

Part of the success of this TV is down to the processor, which is smart enough to know when you’re watching sport, for instance, and can adjust both the picture and sound accordingly – Panasonic has a gift for making sports events sound immersive and exciting. Because this TV uses Amazon’s Fire TV interface, it means features such as the ambient experience are on board. So, as on the Amazon omni TV included in this list, it can display artwork or useful details when it’s in standby mode. The TV itself looks good, though lacks the wow design of some competitors.

Though small, this TV is still a decent size, and it is highly affordable. The 43in Hisense lacks the design chops of the more stylish models here, but it looks more expensive than it is. It includes some features, such as Dolby Vision compatibility, which might be surprising at this price point and it has more than decent picture quality. It’s not as bright as some LED models here, and sometimes motion can look blurry, but it has good contrast levels. Sound is good, though it will benefit from the addition of a soundbar. In other words, it’s not outstanding but it delivers a lot more than the price tag suggests.