televisions used to cost nearly 10,000 today bucks
and you'd get a tiny little screen in a giant cabinet
but today you can get a perfectly Cromulent TV for just $30.
Okay, it's not exactly a cinema in your home
but we bought this from Best Buy for $35.
So why would you spend more? Well, if you pony up $300, you'll get something
larger, sleeker and high definitioner.
Is this the sweet spot? If you're not a cinephile probably
but if you spend three thousands of dollars
like we used to on TVs, you could get a state of the art
OLED panel that makes everything we've looked at so far look like it was designed for line of sight humans
with very poor eyesight. But what if you could spend three 10 thousands of dollars?
How much more TV do you really get when you spend car money on a television set?
Is it worth it or is this little guy good enough?
After all, even this is practically science fiction technology compared to what your parents grew up with.
I mean, look how clear the picture is. Hey, I can even make out this segue to our sponsor.
Let's kick things off with the best deals that I've gotten in a long time.
This open box 32 inch Insignia NS32F201NA23.
Okay, sure. It's only in fair condition
and it sports just a 1280 by 720p resolution
but it comes with a short open box warranty.
The display itself actually looks pretty good.
And come on guys, 35 bucks is 35 bucks. Who needs the full high definition
when the screen is this small? You probably, even at just 32 inches, guess the PPI.
It's like 45 PPI. 45.
That is small PPI. And the worst part is that because this was an open box deal,
normally you would pay a lot more for this thing.
On Black Friday promo, it was more like $70,
which is about twice what we paid for it. And the value proposition gets pretty questionable
at that point. Let's give it a shot. You know, the remote, it feels okay.
It's better than the Samsung remote we'll try later.
Wow. You can really see those dark areas in the corners.
I don't think that's a defect, sir. I think that's just the TV.
For being a 720p display, the text looks crisper than I expected though.
Smaller than I expected. Yeah, it's tiny.
But growing up, I would have been stoked for a TV like this. We've already run into a problem.
What button am I supposed to press? Okay, I actually can't tell from here.
Oh, it is. It's the home button. Why does it have to do this?
We turned the TV on with it. This is a fire TV. Yeah, you're getting fire TV built in.
It's not the worst smart TV platform. In five gigahertz Wi-Fi,
show me anything else for $35 that has five gigahertz support.
My eyes are starting to dry out. Just looking at this for this long.
Full. Yeah, let's go with, just not installing any of your bullshit is not an option.
All of the ads, it works. Okay, but what's this show called?
Okay, no, from the thumbnail. I know that it is. Only because I recognize.
As much fun as we're having, making fun of the fire TV experience though,
we want consistency as we're evaluating all our different TV sets.
So we're going to switch over to an NVIDIA Shield really quick here. It's got three inputs though,
which all things considered not that bad and does have an optical jack,
which if I was running a TV like this, I would 100% want a soundbar
and that would be extremely handy. Oh, I hadn't even thought of the speaker quality.
Uh-oh, input. I forgot about this. Yeah, there's no input button.
Ridiculous. I expect that on a Samsung TV.
Frustrated with seeing the same ads on repeat. Well, that's how their TV is $35 open box.
Let's go to that spot we like to watch. These are better than I expected.
Harsh, but clear. If you had a child and sat them in front of this TV
and turned the speakers on, they would be stoked. They would not care.
Is it TN? It doesn't seem like it. No, I'm pretty sure this is VA.
So it is, so it is. Like dude, it's kind of fine.
That's not terrible viewing angles. No, I'm downright impressed.
And for only $35, open box fair.
It's normally 70 bucks on sale. And the distance you're at is about the same size.
It is funny how almost the exact same size it is.
And your speakers are probably better. Plus this is OLED. You know, just because it doesn't get
over like 300 nits of brightness, that doesn't mean it's not bright enough.
No, it's very usable. Do you want to know what the color accuracy is? I'm going to guess Delta E average of 13.
In standard mode, yes. But it has a film mode. No.
Yeah, it's got a film mode. Shut up. And in the film mode, it gets an average of six
with a max of like 12. That's not bad. That's not bad. Like it's not amazing.
The only real downside to this TV, aside from like size and pixel density, the latency.
Even with game mode on, it's still bad. It measures at like seven milliseconds
over the theoretical perfect. Even that's not that bad compared to-
Okay, it's not as bad. Not that long ago. I could game with an extra seven milliseconds of latency.
In summary, no, it's not amazing, but it's amazingly better than I expected.
Even at the non-open box price, making it perfect for something like a dentist office
or a guest or a kid's room. Who I would say it's not for though,
is someone who is struggling with affordability and looking for a primary display.
For those folks, I really do think you'd be better off just holding the phone
that you probably already have until something pops up on a local buy nothing group
or if you could pick up something like a used monitor. Full HD units tend to go for about this price
or in some cases even cheaper if you pick one up secondhand
and they're not that much smaller. They are smaller.
Okay, they are smaller, but this is a classic like boots theory of economic situation
where spending money on low quality crap is gonna cost you more in the long run.
And even though this thing looks fine today, I have serious doubts about how long it'll last.
Yeah, any of our TVs, we're not gonna be doing long-term testing. So nothing is necessarily a recommendation.
Did you lift it? Oh yeah, it weighs like nothing at all.
Nothing at all. You're sure this is 720p, right?
Like it's not bad. That's what it's advertised as. Now let's see what happens when we decouple our budget
and pick up the 55R4C5.
This is nuts. I mean, if you told teenage me
that he could buy a 55 inch 4K TV for $300,
he would have immediately dropped his discman, shattered his hybrid theory CD
and sprinted to the local future shop. I mean, sure, it's a pretty basic LCD panel
with pretty basic LED edge lighting.
So don't expect a great HDR experience, but we have not only tripled our total screen area,
we have also jumped to a whopping 80 pixels per inch,
which is gonna result in a much sharper image. We're also getting one of the better smart TV implementations
with Roku built in, which is a bit of a hot take
now that it's clear how much of your data they're stealing. Yeah, but everyone's stealing your data.
Yes, and unlike TizenOS, which also advertises to you on top of stealing your data,
at least Roku is somewhat pleasant to navigate. Hold for five seconds.
Now that is clear instructions. Yeah, TV much bigger.
Is it doing a good process? Hey, oh! Now this is a TV that I could get
behind spending $300 on. Oh, did we just give Roku a pass
for being like kind of awful? I forgot about this part.
You cannot use this TV without an account. Roku, go fuck yourself.
Also, doesn't have a source button.
Is there a home button though? No input button. Yeah, that is annoying. No, we can't seem to reach you at Roku sucks.
Please activate in the next 30 minutes. Wait, oh, shit.
What? I had to select stupid apps on my phone.
Whoa! CBC gem, let's go.
Set up complete. Was there a minimum amount that you had to select as well?
No, could select zero. But maximizing fun factor.
Okay, this is just joking around. Oh, I thought you were pointing at how many apps are on it.
That's why they didn't have to have me select any. They preloaded 44 on my behalf.
Back didn't go back to home. Oh, that is stupid. Why does it just go back?
Because it's Apple logic. Wherever I just came from.
Take me there, take me there. That's why it's called the back button.
I thought it was because baby got it. That's... Like the last set, we've got three HDMI's,
one with EARC, as well as optical audio, but we actually lose the three and a half millimeter jack.
We get a coax jack, an Ethernet port, and a Type-C USB port.
Why is it so damn hard to just find the input?
They don't want you to use anything but the TV.
TV input? It's so buried too. Why is it down here?
HDMI mode? No, just, I just, I want to use it. What's the rocket ship button?
Quick launch. Hold to change this shortcut. Change it to an input button.
I'm going to try. You got to be kidding me.
You can change it so it goes to the Roku channel though.
Okay, home. Maybe it's down here somewhere. Oh my God, it's below the fold on the home screen.
That is some passive aggressive level bulls***. I just want you to use the TV.
Okay, so movie is just warmer. Wow, this is actually pretty well configured out of the box.
Not bad anti-glare. Not great. That's not amazing, but like, it's totally usable.
Oh, very usable. I think we just didn't notice the anti-glare coating
on the previous TV because of how small it was.
This is a wild take. Hold on. Was the last one brighter?
Because I think it was. This one, no.
And the gamma handling is like, bad.
The problem with having all of these like, dynamic contrast enhancer and other settings like that
is it's not going to look amazing until you find the right setting for it.
I mean, it's only on like low. I know, but turn it up to high.
You're going to get less color accuracy, but it'll probably be a brighter image
that most people are going to prefer. Oh, hold on. We're in dark HDR.
Which is the most accurate, I will say.
The bright one looks horrible. It's standards like a little pop here.
But everything in the back is crushed. It's all crushed. This is not supposed to look like this.
There's no full array local dimming. There wasn't full array local dimming on the last one.
I know, but it also wasn't trying to do HDR at all. But my point of comparison is a $30 TV that make,
look how bad that looks. The entire right side of the frame is just black.
Maybe don't use HDR on a TV that's not meant for HDR.
I didn't advertise it as HDR. I know. Oh, display when available.
Oh, okay, sure. Okay, I can turn off HDR.
I would take this over the last image. I would too. 100%, not even close.
This is why you don't get an HDR TV that just says HDR
and then play HDR content on it. You need full array local dimming.
Full array local dimming, which is only going to come in mini LED or OLED.
Cause micro LED is not out yet. Well, not in consumer space. At a price that anyone cares about.
Definitely not at $300. Look how much better this is though. It really is like everything in the background,
you can still make it out. And it's just because the whole thing is kind of lifted.
Yeah, I'd rather watch this. How are the speakers though?
I don't think they're even better than the last one. Not really, no. But like, they're both okay.
You can really tell what they've tuned for. Like right in the vocal range, peak!
Yeah. Everything else, don't worry about it. How is the Labs results?
Not awful. We're getting a little over 200 nits in SDR,
about 320 in HDR. And that lack of brightness,
even compared to our $35, $70 TV, you really see it.
Yeah. Our color accuracy is not bad, both in SDR and HDR.
And our latency is similar to the last TV.
At 60 Hertz, we're getting 5.2 milliseconds over our theoretical perfect.
Very usable. Something to note by the way, is we made these purchases before Black Friday.
So these aren't even necessarily the best deals you can find. We saw a similar TCL for as little as $170
as a door buster sale, which is flipping wild.
As for our TV, okay. It's 10 times the price,
but you are getting nine times the pixels. And in my humble opinion,
other benefits that I think clock it in at over 10 times the enjoyment.
Yeah, as much as certain things weren't that much better. Yeah, the speakers, wow.
But the size and resolution alone. Without question,
this is the bang for the buck Goldilocks right here.
Of course, that doesn't make it absolute cinema either.
What happens if we 10x our budget again?
Whoa, that bigger TV. Damn, what a glorious beast you are.
The Samsung S85F 83 inch.
We're calling this our $3,000 TV, but we got an absolute steal of a deal on it.
And so can you. Just like how a savvy shopper avoids buying an iPhone
in August, savvy TV buyers can follow the industry's
predictable cycle to get amazing deals. See, the new models usually get announced in January,
then they land in the spring or the summer. That means that when fall rolls around,
the discounts come out to play and you can often get something that hasn't even been replaced yet
for significantly less money. Because of this,
we got an 83 inch OLED for under our budget
at just $2,500 US dollars. And it's packed with all kinds of features
that you would expect on a high-end freaking, giant freaking OLED like four HDMI ports.
It's worth noting, by the way, that as good as this thing is, it did have a pretty serious challenger.
Yeah, the LG C5 also had an 83 inch model for sale,
but it was $3,200. So it's over our budget, but according to ratings,
I mean, it's the better TV. Well, before we say that, why don't we fire this up?
Sure. Wow, this thing is a monster. We did get the S85 instead of the 95,
so it's not quite the top-end model. Well, yeah, but like,
I know, yeah. But it's also just regular OLED. Samsung can't make a QT OLED in this size yet.
Thank you for choosing smart things. Did I choose smart things,
or did I have smart things jammed down my throat?
Why is it so trendy to put so few freaking buttons on your remote?
Does this not have an input button either? No, it doesn't.
Neither does my S95V at home. They-
So offensive. You go to the home menu, and then you go to connected devices,
and then you go from there. Just charged on solar, though.
Yeah, and it's got USB-C on the bottom, too. Okay, so I open this app.
Oh, my God. Location, the fuck you need my location for?
Does it want you to tap that button on the remote? Oh, wait.
Did I not have to do any of this? I can just click to the right.
Whoa, and then go hello? Oh, my, okay.
I got dark pattern. That's wild.
It happens for the best of us. The right navigation button,
being how to advance through the menus, is not how that works on any interface
in the history of computing. This is the confirm button.
These buttons are navigation buttons. Right means forward and go.
No. The left to right, it- Not in Japan.
Let's start. All right. Connect to Wi-Fi. This is pretty standard.
This is fine. And thank you for the QWERTY keyboard. Okay, enjoy a wide range of smart features.
Can you just sit next? Can you skip? I can. Okay.
But then it just prompts me to sign in. Later. Later. Oh.
It gave us a later option. Even this. Do it later. Do all this stuff later.
This is kind of cool. Yeah, this is neat. You have the volume structure.
Yeah, I'll enable that now. Turned up our brightness. It knows we're in a bright room.
Hey, this is nice. You can use your smart remote to control your screen
and connected devices. Just picked up everything. Yeah. Explore your favorite content quickly
and easily. A bunch of Christmas movies. Like Die Hard. We're actually not that inundated with ads.
I mean, these are all ads. It is literally all ads though.
I know, but they're like- They're all ads. I mean, they're like movies I might want to watch.
Picture clarity off. Wow. That was actually very simple to do
within this little quick menu here. Live translate. That's interesting.
What is the difference between AI optimized and AI customization?
It's the mode that best suits your viewing environment. What the heck?
I don't know. You know what? AI optimized there. Sure.
Panel care. This is their first OLED. And while they don't burn in to nearly anywhere close
to like plasmas or early OLEDs, you should still probably enable all of the panel health.
This is something that has driven me crazy about HDR TVs since the advent of HDR TVs.
Why is this grayed out? It's grayed out because there's no HDR content active.
Yeah. So what? Let me change the settings. Let me just set it up.
I have to choose a film for it. Go to connected devices. Go to R and video shield.
I'm on it. It should power it on too. Yeah, there it goes. There we go.
CEC baby. Shout out $20 versus $20,000 projector.
That video's coming soon too. $200,000 projector? $200,000.
$200,000. He found a whole higher gear than you.
Are you going to take that? I can't find a 300. Actually, Neil, what? We probably could find a $300,000 TV.
Next time. We got a micro LED. Subscribe for all of that nonsense.
Where are all my picture modes that aren't AI optimized? I don't understand what's happening right now.
I don't know either. You, the motion smoothing is back on.
Why can't I turn film mode on? Where the hell is my filmmaker mode?
Is it because I enabled AI optimization during setup?
I'm factory resetting it. I'm going to not tell it do AI things this time.
Okay. I should 100% be able to change a setting like that
after the fact though, and it should be obvious. I'm so pissed off at this point.
Hey, what was that before?
So don't use AI, whatever, I don't know, but now we can actually change our picture modes properly.
Okay. Which we should have been able to do. Now that we're finally here,
this is far and away the best looking image we've seen.
Yeah. It's incredible that we had to go through that much hassle
in order to get here. But that could have been user error during TV setup.
Look how bright this thing gets though. Yeah. In SDR, it definitely doesn't get very bright,
but in HDR. But that's normal. That's fine.
It's not supposed to. That's fine. I like a popped out like tone mapped SDR actually.
Yeah. But it's not supposed to, but in HDR.
It's good. We're getting over 800 nits, which isn't as much as the flagship.
We're not cracking a thousand, but like. On an OLED. Isn't that for me?
And now we're getting full array local dimming per pixel. Show me those fireworks.
Ah, that looks good. Another thing completely ignoring the image quality
is this is packed with features that we didn't have on our previous sets.
120 Hertz 4K, variable refresh rate, auto low latency mode, very low latency.
I would assume I haven't seen the lab's test results. It's an OLED.
And I'll tell you right now, it's pretty good. All right.
And how's the color accuracy? Also quite good. Both in SDR and in HDR.
That makes sense. Yeah. It's OLED. Oh, we haven't listened to the speakers yet.
Oh, I'm here for you. They're not that much better than the 55 inch TV.
In terms of clarity, I would agree with you.
But they manage that clarity across a greater range.
Sure. If all you care about is you want to hear the news anchor
on Fox or CNN or whichever only source of news
you choose to consume, then any of them is gonna achieve it pretty much the same.
But if I was going to watch a musical, I would prefer to watch it on these speakers
or having spent this much money. Yeah.
I would spend the rest of my $500 on a nice sound bar
or a surround sound setup or a delightful RGB sweater from LTTstore.com.
Would you love having 10 times more to spend on your TV? I would love that.
Then why don't we go take a look at our last display? It's so big, we couldn't transport it here.
So we gotta go to the lab. Here we are.
And here is the Hisense 116UX.
This puppy is pair bragging rights at 10 times the price
and nearly twice the area of the 83 inch TV
that we just looked at. Five times the cost for two times the size.
Yes, sir. See, this bad boy gets hit with a double whammy
of price boosters. First, it uses a brand new emerging backlight technology
called RGB mini LED. Instead of white lights or blue ones,
the backlights on this TV are multicolored for the widest color gamut
that we have ever measured in the lab. You can see it in action in this Hisense factory tour
that we're gonna have linked down below. The second whammy is mother glass.
Now some of you may be familiar with this. Give yourself a cookie.
But for everyone else, every smaller TV comes from a giant sheet of what's called mother glass.
That mother glass gets cut down into the smaller panels.
Now, as mother glass sizes have gone up with each generation of TV production,
so have the sizes of the displays that you can cut out of it.
But the prices for the top sizes in each generation remain very high
because they could have taken that single sheet and they could have cut it up into a whole bunch
of 55 inch or 65 inch TVs.
Also, when you're cutting smaller pieces out, it's a lot easier to salvage usable displays
out of an imperfect sheet. Say you had a bad spot here.
Well, you just make one of these and one of these and one of these.
No big deal. When you're making one giant TV,
well, the entire sheet has to basically be perfect
which just doesn't happen very often even under the best conditions.
I've heard that the yields are so poor on these that even large multinational brands
will make dozens or at most hundreds of these signature flagship products.
So they gotta make sure that the juice is gonna be worth the squeeze.
And then you gotta decide if your wallet can take the squeeze.
And also your back because moving and installing something this big
is a major hassle and it only has three HDMI ports.
But that's actually cool because its last input is a USB-C port
that handles DisplayPort in. Also, those HDMIs will do up to 165 Hertz at four.
Okay, let's give it a shot. We have literally done this before
and yet it still stuns. The small white setup is just so bright.
Dazzling. Welcome to our new theater room, by the way. We built this in the lab
so we don't have to always drag things to and from my house.
How bright is this thing again? Almost 7,000 nits.
That's wild. It'll even do 5,000 nits in SDR.
So you end up with a very HDR-like effect even on your older content.
Oh, wait, this is already set up for the last time. Forget the setup, whatever.
At what point? Whoa!
At what point is it too much? I've talked about this before.
I don't think it can be too much until we reach the point where it looks like real life.
You know, if you're on the bus and the sun catches the glass on a skyscraper.
It can be eye-searing. It can be very bright. I want bright to look bright, not white, you know?
Does it have an input button? Yes.
Oh. 30 grand. That's what it takes to buy an input button.
Also, shout-out high-sense, they have proper on and off for universal remotes
instead of just power toggle, which can be important
for getting everything aligned in there, shutting down and turning off.
Ah, menu, thank you. Apply to all sources, thank you.
Oh, we decided we liked the dynamic color enhancer on this one, didn't we?
I think so. Lower medium, yeah, not on high. It's only 30,000 dollars.
Oh, another big thing. I believe this one supports Dolby Vision.
Yeah. That's a big point we didn't mention last time,
is Samsung is still stuck with HDR 10 and 10 plus.
They do not support Dolby Vision, whereas high-sense has seen fit to implement both.
And that's not just on their $30,000 sets.
Samsung's got to get it together on that, man. This is the first TV
that 4K content looks not quite sharp. I was thinking that too,
because the PPI, we are looking at. Oh.
It's lower, isn't it? This is lower than the 32-inch 720p TV.
We are getting just about 38 PPI or pixels per inch.
Nice. It definitely looks low-res, even though it's not.
But that's our fault, that's not the TVs. Yeah, we're just sitting too close. Way too close.
God, it's beautiful. Yeah, the color is just incredible.
The brightness. Because it's not just the color range.
It's the color volume. You need brightness to really make HDR content
pop off the screen, and this has it in spades.
This isn't even like that crazy bright of a mastered film either. No.
But it's still. TV gets so bright still. And it's pretty darn accurate.
Oh. The streamers, they look so good. Yeah, I know.
And as much as we might have complained because there's only like 3,500 local living zones,
realistically, it still looks really good, especially compared to just about any other TV.
It just happened to be next to one that had way more dimming zones.
But I can see the local boxes and the hair there.
The next generation of this. Oh, yeah.
This is the closest to looking at actual fireworks
that we've been. We didn't quite measure the 95% to BT 2020 they claimed,
but I think we hit like 92 or 93%. It was 93 in change or something.
It was really close. It does have other downsides though.
While the input latency is very good, the pixel response times are not.
So gaming on this set can be a little smeary looking,
especially when you've got high contrast action on the screen.
I was pretty disappointed in that. With that said though,
the speakers are a strong point.
Damn. There's still TV speakers,
but they're way better than all the other TVs we tried.
Yes. But at this budget,
you should get standalone speakers. So yeah. I mean, at this point,
I feel like I'm talking to literally several people.
But if you have this kind of budget and if you are looking at your various options,
OLED mother glass has also been getting bigger over the years.
And LG now has a 97 inch G5 for about $25,000.
It is smaller. And when a regular TV that size can be had
for just a few thousand dollars, it's kind of a hard sell.
But that one is probably the largest display on the market
that manages truly peak flagship image quality
for the discerning cinephile. If you're keen on that
or any of the TVs that we showed off or talked about today, we're gonna have them all linked down below.
And if you wanna spend some money on today's sponsor, well, you're gonna have to wait for me to segue to them.
Thanks for watching. If you liked this video, make sure to check out the $50 versus $50,000 computer video.