What are the best TV brands?

When thinking about the best TV brands, if you're still laboring under the idea that it's “Sony or nothing,” it might be time to update your notions.

It's true that in the 1990s, Japanese brands like Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba were dominant in the TV marketplace around the world. Even though Sony does still make some of the best TVs, there's been a lot of changes in the TV manufacturing industry since then.

Nowadays, Samsung and LG are two of the most popular TV brands in the world, while old mainstays Panasonic and Toshiba have all but exited the US market.

China’s TCL and Hisense are gaining footing every year, and California-based Vizio has become one of the most competitive in terms of picture quality for your dollars.

Sony has maintained its premium TV status, of course, but it has a lot more competition these days. We laid out what you can expect from each of these top TV brands in a number of categories, to help you pick a brand and model that’s right for you.

(Note: the list below is not in any order of quality—we let our reviews and roundups do the talking there.)

Samsung

Samsung has been one of the top TV brands for many years, thanks to a combination of advanced picture quality, innovative technology, and highly polished design aesthetics.

While Samsung may be moving toward a new technology called microLED, the time when such TVs will be affordable for the average shopper are still a ways off. Folks shopping for a Samsung TV right now are still going to find a range of top-tier LED TVs that exhibit class-leading brightness and color.

Samsung is also one of two brands that debuted QD-OLED, a new display technology that blends OLED’s perfect black levels with the improved brightness and color volume from quantum dots. The S95B was the very first of these displays released and it’s one of the best TVs we’ve ever seen. But quantum dots aren’t limited to the S95B. Samsung’s QLED lineup—which also incorporates quantum dots—is where you’ll find the best LED TVs the company has to offer. Samsung’s Neo QLED line includes a range of high-performance 4K and 8K resolution HDR TVs like the flagship QN90B or the more affordable Q60B.

Generally, Samsung TVs tend to be more expensive than some of the competition, not only because of their picture quality, but also because Samsung polishes everything to a sheen. The company’s TVs are carefully sculpted, aiming for the thinnest of bezels around the screen, smooth-patterned chassis, and elegant tabletop feet. Many of them don’t even require screws to assemble anymore.

If you’re looking at smart TVs for your living room, Samsung televisions run on the Tizen OS smart platform. Like most smart platforms, it integrates all of the TV’s software-based features: picture, audio, and network settings; streaming apps like Disney+ or Prime Video; built-in internet TV content; and even occasional extras like calendars or web browsers.

When it comes to buying a Samsung TV, you’ll get the most punch from the QD-OLED, QLED or Neo QLED models. The company also manufactures entry-level/midrange models. In general, though, we’ve discovered better performance-to-price value from brands like TCL and Vizio in this category. That said, Samsung offers high-quality design and a name many have come to trust.

LG

If LG is famous for anything right now, it’s OLED TVs, lauded by cinephiles, gamers, and—maybe most of all—TV reviewers. Thanks to the way they operate—with each pixel in the screen acting as its own light source—OLED TVs can deliver perfect black levels on screen, which makes for amazing picture quality.

LG, which deserves the credit for pushing this technology into the mainstream, continues to offer the widest range of OLED TV options to consumers, from the hyper-fancy Gallery OLED (the G2 series), meant to look like art on the wall, to the more practical (but no less jaw-dropping) C2 series.

LG doesn’t just offer OLED TVs, of course. You can also find a wide range of LED/LCD options, including a combination of mini-LED backlights and quantum dot color that LG is calling QNED.

As design goes, LG is more subdued than some brands on this list: The company’s entry-level and mid-range LED TVs utilize a soft gray plastic for their chassis on standard tabletop feet, while the super-popular OLED models tend to exhibit their wildly thin OLED panels (roughly the width of a pencil) atop a variety of minimalist or “invisible” stands.

LG TVs are bundled with a remote called “Magic Remote,” which works with motion like a Nintendo Wii remote. LG’s webOS is designed with this functionality in mind, presenting a huge array of features—streaming services, games, a browser, and all of the TV’s picture or audio settings—as big, colorful wedges that are meant to be easy to click on.

Like Samsung, LG produces a wide range of entry-level and midrange LED TVs every year as well. The most affordable models include the UQ9000 4K TV series, but we’re much more excited about the QNED models that combine mini-LED tech with quantum dots. However, if you’re shopping LG TVs, it’s our opinion that you should be checking out the company’s top-tier OLEDs first and foremost.

Sony

Sony may not be the household TV name it once was, but the company’s BRAVIA televisions have continued to populate Best Buy’s AV-nerd “Magnolia” shopping spaces and the viewing rooms of serious cinephiles everywhere over the last decade.

These days, Sony not only produces powerful LED TV options like the mini-LED X95K and X80K, but Sony, alongside Samsung, is also one of the first companies to release a QD-OLED display—the A95K. Not only is the A95K one of our favorite TVs, it’s the best TV we’ve ever seen, and it has the price tag to match. With models closer to “high end” than “entry-level” and hardly any screen sizes smaller than 50 inches, you can usually expect to fork over a decent amount of money for a Sony TV.

Like many competitors, Sony also utilizes quantum dots in many of its higher-end LED TVs (a fixture usually called “Triluminos” or “Triluminos Display”). However, after years of testing, what we’ve found most fetching about Sony TVs is that their out-of-the-box settings tend to be very accurate, requiring little or no calibration for ideal viewing.

Sony has also continued to experiment by way of stock TV audio: the company’s premium TVs utilize a technology called “Acoustic Surface,” which turns the screen of a TV into a sound-producing device. While this technology hasn’t revolutionized TV audio nor replaced the general need for a quality soundbar, it’s a cool Sony feature that might just seal the deal for some folks (though we recommend trying to listen in-store if you can).lol

Because almost every Sony TV available right now slots into upper-midrange or high-end price brackets, the designs tend to follow suit, favoring sleek, no-nonsense builds with tabletop feet that can be fitted into more than one orientation along the bottom of the panel. The latest Sony TVs also feature the Google TV smart platform, a shift from the Android TV platform of recent years, primarily delivering searchable (and castable) content within a zippy, cleanly designed interface.

The takeaway for Sony is that you’re unavoidably buying a more premium product, but for many buyers, getting a Sony is well worth it.

Vizio

Vizio has long been a brand that prides themselves on TVs that deliver high-end performance at an affordable price. Previously, the P-Series included premium displays, like the P-Series Quantum X, and they dabbled in OLED technology as well.

Vizio has gone back to its roots with a range of reliable and affordable LED/LCD TVs. Rather than using alphabetic or numeric systems, Vizio uses a letter system. For example, you can buy the entry-level Vizio D-Series, value-facing V-Series, or midrange M-Series TVs. This can be confusing when multiple years’ models are still on the market at the same time, and you can still find the P-Series and OLED for sale at some retailers.

Vizio has broken ground when it comes to bringing fancier TV technologies like quantum dots and full-array backlights with local dimming at affordable pricing. In fact, Vizio was the first company to release a quantum dot-equipped TV for less than $500. To get there, the brand tends to cut some corners to keep their costs low from a design standpoint. Their full-array LED backlights—a staple of Vizio’s picture quality—make them a bit thicker from front to back than some of the competition. However, they often don’t skimp on picture quality, delivering great local dimming across multiple price brackets.

Vizio’s smart interface, called SmartCast, is a Chromecast-like smart platform that offers a mix between onboard apps like Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ and the ability to stream video directly from apps on your phone. Vizio’s latest TVs also let you stream content from iPhones via Apple AirPlay 2. SmartCast makes casting from your phone to the TV exceedingly easy to do, but it also skips out on things like an app store, browser functionality, or smart home integration.

The main thing to know about Vizio is that the company tends to put picture quality first and foremost. If you’d rather not spend any money on flash and just want key features like full-array backlights, quantum dots, 4K resolution, and gaming enhancements, there’s almost definitely a Vizio TV that’ll fit your size and price needs.

TCL

TCL is new enough in the US marketplace that many of our staffers remember when the company debuted its tech products big-time at CES, but in the few years since the company has made some notable waves in the consumer TV space. To everyone’s surprise, TCL quickly became a major player, delivering 4K/HDR TVs with performance metrics that were almost too good for their price tags.

The company’s 6-Series TV has been a perennial favorite: our review noted that the 6-series “delivers a heaping helping of value without compromising too much on performance or features.” TCL also impressed with its value-forward 5-Series, which has some of the best picture quality you can get for under $500.

From a design perspective, TCL’s TVs tend to deliver perfectly modern sets with the same wide-set tabletop feet that are so ubiquitous in the industry, but like Vizio, TCL eschews fancy design elements in favor of performance to keep prices low.

However, it’s TCL’s mix of impressive picture performance for the money and a great smart TV platform that has helped the brand stand out most. Many TCL TVs utilize a built-in version of Roku. Getting a top Roku TV right out of the box is one of the top-selling points for many TCL TVs. TCL began producing TVs equipped with the Google TV platform with its 2021 models, but that has yet to extend to the 2022 TV line.

We expect TCL to continue bringing future-facing sets replete with 4K and 8K resolution, quantum dot color, layered mini-LED backlights, and awesome built-in Roku smart platforms.

Hisense

Hisense TVs have come a long way in the last few years. Generally, Hisense TVs (which include Sharp-branded sets in the states) offer good quality for the money.

On the lower end of things, Hisense TVs frequently compete with the best budget friendly TVs, including the Hisense U6H. Improvements in motion handling over last year’s models has also made the U8H a stellar standout and one of the best TVs you can get under $1,000.

Like Vizio and TCL, Hisense TVs keep TV design generally simple. The higher-end models sometimes iterate interesting tabletop stands, but chassis and bezel details tend to be fairly standard for LED sets—there’s less of an emphasis on the thinnest possible bezels or sculpted chassis plastics a la Samsung. The latest Hisense TVs now include Google TV, the spiritual successor to Android TV and a welcome improvement. It doesn’t quite equal Roku in its usability (and limited ads), but it’s a faster and more intuitive OS than Samsung’s Tizen or LG’s webOS.

Hisense’s relatively low pricing and excellent HDR performance, which relies on high screen brightness and expanded color saturation to showcase a more robust form of content, may end up being the best reason for most to consider the brand going forward.