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Advice: 55 inch 4K TV ~£500 from Currys with Freesat

nimdy

Pro Member
I have an aging LG 55 inch 1080p TV from 2012. It is a heavy beast but has done us well. I recently took out two iD phone contracts that have each come with £100 Currys vouchers after the first months service. I thought this might be a good time to replace the old faithful.

I'm looking at Currys website and they have loads to choose from, but everything I look at has bad reviews on other review sites. I don't have £1K+ to spend on an OLED TV, so have been looking at other technologies like Nanocell and QNED. Also have a requirement for Freesat built in so we can do away with our Freesat box and cut down on the wires in the corner of the room.

Any suggestions? I've been looking at these two, but each have bad reviews online. My initial thought was that any modern LG TV should be better than my 2012-13 TV, but I've also read that LG build quality has fallen over the years:


 
Don't know specifically about these two TV's - however remember they are LED based and the viewing angle is likely to be quite narrow, so if you aren't sitting directly in front of the TV the image can become "washed out" from quite a shallow angle...
I got a QLED TV last year and I am surprised at how poor the image is when viewing at an angle.... but it's actually a very good image when you're directly in front at 90deg to the screen.
 
so have been looking at other technologies like Nanocell and QNED.
I'm sure QNED is just a better Nanocell(Mini LED) mix Quantum Dot

But per above I don't think has the best viewing angles, not too sure. Might be best visiting a local Currys see if they have them in store
 
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My current TV is LED based, so I'm hoping neither will be worse than my current model in terms of brightness or viewing angles. I just want to get with the times - my current TV doesn't do 4K or HDR and is over 10 years old now.
 
Might be best visiting a local Currys see if they have them in store
Absolutely go and view one if you can... also check how responsive the remote control and smart software are.
But LG have a good reputation and are supposed to make the best display panels (used by other manufacturers) so the picture ought to be good. The nano cell panels I have seen look really stunning - just beware of the viewing angles.
The QLED I bought on Amazon because it seemed cheap has a great picture. However the remote is awfully slow to react and the whole things dreadfully slow and the software is buggy - given the choice again, and with hindsight, I would have spent twice as much on a decent LG TV.
 
I have a couple of LG TVs, one of them was given to me so I didn't get to choose it. I agree with the viewing angle comments on the nano LED screen but it is what it is, and depending on your room/environment then it might not matter.

The general comment is that when you buy any smart TV you should

1. be aware of all the data any smart TV will encourage you to share, and even if you reject all offers of information sharing be skeptical that there is still probably a dial tone of stuff being reported back to various entities.

2. The smart functions will over time get slower and/or decommission themselves when they are/can no longer be updated. It will probably be a lottery as to how long it will last. 3 years? 5 years? At which point you probably need to be prepared to move to an external box

3. Also be aware that Freely is coming along as an IP platform to replace both Freeview and Freesat. I don't think there's a date agreed for terrestrial or satellite turn off but the range of channels may decrease over time as they go to IP only distribution.
 
I'm looking at Currys website and they have loads to choose from, but everything I look at has bad reviews on other review sites. I don't have £1K+ to spend on an OLED TV, so have been looking at other technologies like Nanocell and QNED. Also have a requirement for Freesat built in so we can do away with our Freesat box and cut down on the wires in the corner of the room.
Go and look at some in a showroom. I think once you had compared the OLED with the alternatives you could start to feel the extra money was worth it. You kept your old tv for twelve years - amortize the extra over a similar period.

As regards brand most are based on LG screens. That was what encouraged me to buy the LG itself. Buy what you see rather than what you read in a mag.
 
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Also, something to watch is some TVs have a satellite DVB-S2 tuner but don't support the Freesat EPG, my TCL one is like this, it can pick up the channels, but it tries to shoehorn them into the Freeview EPG not all that successfully I may add which leads to horrible channel numbering and things in the wrong places.

That said I hardly watch broadcast TV so I haven't bothered to put much effort into trying to get them into a more sane ordering.
 
But LG have a good reputation and are supposed to make the best display panels (used by other manufacturers)
My LG TV went purple after 2 years as the backlight failed... Seen it happen on 3 separate occasions now too 🙃
 
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2. The smart functions will over time get slower and/or decommission themselves when they are/can no longer be updated. It will probably be a lottery as to how long it will last. 3 years? 5 years? At which point you probably need to be prepared to move to an external box
This is definitely true. Our Samsung TV used to work with BBC iPlayer, but over the years the iPlayer app has got more and more bloated to the point it won't even start. We now use an Amazon Firestick which sits unobtrusively in the back.

Therefore, you might as well start with a dongle today (e.g. Firestick, Roku - pick your poison) and ignore what the TV has built in.

As for getting one with a built-in satellite decoder: the advantage of an external box would be that you can record + skip adverts, which to me is a huge plus. Some TVs might be able to record though, if you plug an external hard drive in.
 
What I can't recommend is Hisense ULED. They have bad picture quality, picture don't have realistic colours. Even, Nvidia Shield can't save picture.

As I using Shield, prefer Philips TV's. Heard, Sony is also good.
Samsung also, maybe good, but don't have Dolby Vision.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I think I need to stop by a Currys and have a look around.

The TV I have now (I think) was considered mid-to-high end for its time. I got it second hand from a company that used them for digital signage at events (pack them in a flight case, unbox them set them up for an event then take down and move on to the next event).

In terms of smarts and TV tuners, I don't use any of the in-built smarts as they are a bit primitive now, so use a Chromecast with Google TV for all apps and media. To be honest I'd probably do the same with whatever new TV I get. I also have a Freesat recording box but it gets so little use (preferring streamed content and watching 'TV' through the iPlayer app). The reason for wanting it in-built is to avoid having another device plugged in and needing to change sources on the remotes. At the moment the LG soundbar doesn't always change source, the Freesat box doesn't seem to implement HDMI-CEC properly so we end up having to get three different remotes out of the drawer just to put the news channel on! The other 95% of the time we just use the Chromecast remote alone as this can turn on the TV, set the volume and control the apps.
 
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Well I have an LG and a Samsung upstairs. I prefer the Samsung.
Both are Smart Tvs and easy to use for iPlayer and other apps. I think the Roku and Hisense tv's look like great value but I have not owned one as yet.
 
Me too...mine and my Mum's. I would go Samsung. Or Roku.
Roku is in hot water over a forced arbitration prompt that you must accept, wouldn't recommend. Samsung is your best option, only TVs that don't come with the Freeview Play disease

Had a 2014 Samsung TV do me well until late 2022 when ITVX didn't work and YouTube started to slow down. One of our 2014 Samsungs was given away and it's living a new life now being perfectly fine for live TV watching.
 
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