It used to be difficult to find a TV that will work with your Xbox or PlayStation without carefully reading spec sheets. Nowadays, though, the finest TVs for gaming are typically the best TVs you can purchase, so this isn’t the case. Although you don’t need a nice TV to enjoy a decent video game, the appropriate set can help you get the most out of your gaming equipment.
How to choose a gaming TV
All excellent televisions are constructed using the same principles, whether you use it for gaming or not. You want colors that strike the ideal mix between accuracy and saturation, a 4K resolution (which is currently the industry standard), enough brightness, good contrast ratios with deep and consistent black tones, and wide viewing angles. You need a Display with fast motion response, little input latency, and no blur or other unpleasant artifacts behind moving objects for video games in particular. Of course, the hardest part of the process can be locating a set that meets all of your requirements and is within your price range.
The finest visual quality for gaming or other purposes will currently be provided by a top-tier OLED TV. However, good OLED Televisions are still more expensive than comparable LED LCD models, and they still might not be bright enough for people who watch TV in a setting with a lot of ambient light. If you choose an LCD TV, a quantum dot filter can improve colors, while a sophisticated backlight with mini-LEDs and efficient full-array local dimming will typically improve contrast and lighting detail.
Concerning 8K support is one thing you don’t need to. Although the PS5 and Xbox Series X are technically capable of producing 8K video, very few games are designed at that quality, and the benefits of 8K are quite limited unless you plan to sit excessively close to a large TV. In addition to being scarce, 8K TVs are also quite pricey.
Having said that, there are a few phrases you ought to pay close attention to when purchasing a TV for your cutting-edge graphics card or new game console.
HDMI 2.1
Your TV needs to support HDMI 2.1 in its entirety if you want to get the most out of a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S. This is the most recent significant improvement to the HDMI specification, offering a higher maximum bandwidth (48 Gbps, up from HDMI 2.0’s 18 Gbps) and a number of features that are particularly helpful for gaming. They consist of automatic reduced latency mode and variable refresh rate (VRR) (ALLM).
Beyond that, HDMI 2.1’s capacity to transmit ultra-sharp 4K video at up to 120Hz refresh rate is probably its biggest benefit. These high frame rates aren’t supported by every PS5 or Xbox Series X/S game—some only support them at lesser resolutions—but the ones that do will look and feel extremely fluid when moving. The Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC) feature of HDMI 2.1 enables higher-quality 5.1- and 7.1-channel audio to be sent from a connected source device to a soundbar or receiver that supports it.
Your TV should have as many complete HDMI 2.1 ports as possible. The operative word there is “full”. Although HDMI 2.1 is backwards compatible with HDMI 2.0, TV and monitor makers are free to label ports as “HDMI 2.1” even if they don’t fully support the improved capabilities of the specification. If you’re looking to buy a new TV for gaming, be sure your selected set isn’t trying to hide any characteristics you may feel necessary. We propose a few TVs below that include actual HDMI 2.1 connectors.
HDR — High Dynamic Range
The capacity of a TV to display a broader range between the darkest and brightest areas of a picture is known as HDR. With a standard dynamic range (SDR) TV, this wider range can highlight details in both the extremely dark and, especially, the extremely bright regions of an image that would otherwise be lost. In most cases, HDR also improves color reproduction, showing a wider range of more vivid hues that more closely resemble the original intention of the content’s author.
You need a TV that can display that content in order to receive an HDR picture, as well as content that has been optimized to take use of the technology. Moreover, HDR is available in a number of formats, which are typically divided into those that use static metadata (such as HDR10) and those that use dynamic metadata (such as HDR10+, Dolby Vision). In other words, the latter lets a TV adjust its brightness and colors for each scene or even individual frames, whilst the former employs a single set of optimum settings for all of the available information. Depending on the TV, content, and gaming console you use, these formats may or may not be supported. For instance, the Xbox Series X and S support Dolby Vision for gaming, but the PS5 does not.
The good news is that, even on the lower end of the market, the majority of Televisions you’d buy in 2023 are HDR-ready in some way. The problem is that some TVs perform significantly better than others in maximizing HDR. The same holds true for HDR-mastered content itself. Even while the number is increasing, there aren’t as many video games as there are movies that are HDR-capable, and the quality range is typically greater.
HGiG — HDR Gaming Interest Group
The HDR Gaming Interest Group is known as HGiG. In addition to major TV manufacturers and game companies, members include both Sony and Microsoft. This means that, in an ideal world, information would be shared between all the groups so that, when you launch a new game on a console or Computer, the display would be recognized automatically. When that occurs, the game’s internal settings can be modified to take into account the capabilities of that display and provide you with the finest picture quality possible, preserving details in both the brightest and darkest portions of the screen. It might appear as a brightly illuminated environment at the end of a dark tunnel, for instance, rather than an overexposed white blob.
Although this is a positive thing, the truth is a little more nuanced. Only a few PlayStation and Xbox games are aware of and adhere to the rules, and not all TVs advertise HGiG compatibility in their options menu. If your TV’s tone mapping options include an HGiG option, you should activate it before launching the HDR settings on the console. Afterwards, you should be good to go without needing to change the various brightness levels again if you’re playing a game that supports HDR and HGiG. Yet, depending on your TV and the game you’re playing, how all of this seems to you can be different. For instance, owners of specific LG OLED models could like the Dynamic Tone Mapping setting on their TV. Use the settings you deem most attractive.
ALLM — Auto Low Latency Mode
A source can instruct the display to enter a mode that decreases lag between receiving each frame of an image and showing it on the TV via ALLM, such as your PS5 or Xbox. This eliminates extra processing that can take a few milliseconds and determine whether an input is precise or not. When you choose to watch a movie or TV show, a good modern TV can immediately switch to game mode and then exit it.
VRR — Variable Refresh Rate
For PC gamers, VRR is a well-known feature, although it’s still quite new for most TVs. The majority of gamers have encountered slowness, screen tearing, or stutters that can occur when your system fails to produce each frame at the desired speed, which is often 30 or 60 frames per second on a TV. The visual artifact of tearing occurs when the game stutters, causing the TV to either stay on the same frame or show portions of two different ones.
Nevertheless, with VRR, everything remains in sync because your display won’t show the subsequent frame until it is prepared. This can make things feel more responsive and slicker, even if the system doesn’t meet its aim of 30, 60, or even 120 frames per second.
There are several various VRR implementations on the market, including the HDMI Forum’s VRR spec and Nvidia’s G-Sync, AMD’s FreeSync, and the AMD FreeSync technology. For VRR to function, both the TV and the input device must support the same technology, and various devices might only support VRR during a certain refresh rate window. For example, the PS5’s VRR can only operate between 48Hz and 120Hz on a display that runs at 120Hz.
The Xbox Series X/S and PS5 both support HDMI Forum VRR and FreeSync, and depending on whether they use AMD or Nvidia graphics cards, gaming PCs may also support G-Sync or FreeSync. All the major VRR formats should be supported by a perfect gaming TV, however if you only use your PS5 or Xbox to game, you don’t need it to have G-Sync.
