A Gamer’s Guide To Buying The Best TV Screens

When you are in the middle of a game, of course, you want the best view. Console gaming must be enjoyed to the fullest extent, and the quality of your television screen plays a significant role. With the advances in technology, choices are endless.

Many television manufacturers have been releasing televisions updated to support the latest gaming console technology. If you’re a gamer or would like to give one a gift, here are simple recommendations that you can follow before buying the best television screen for gaming.

1. Low lag is important

Image quality is something that can be compromised. But, first and foremost, focus on buying a television with low input latency or low lag.

Low input latency minimizes delay between the output from your console and on-screen action. It is important for action games since you would want your commands to perform on-screen in milliseconds. It also matters when you play a fighting or shooting game since a quarter of a second can make all the difference.

Some television brands that perform great on action games and has low input latency are LG, Samsung, and TCL. You need to be looking for a television with less than 25m/s to make sure you will have a great gaming experience.

2. Find the sweet spot on screen size

Your screen size is important, although you do not need the biggest television size. However, it is nice to have a widescreen when you are playing games.

You have to find the sweet spot because too big screens might make you miss some details when playing shooting games like Battlefield. On the other hand, small screens tend to make players miss out on the whole gaming experience.

Typically, a 32” television is a good size for gaming. The PC Gaming Corner can also give you some tips on picking the best 32” screens.

3. Refresh rates

How quickly your screen refreshes will depend on how high your refresh rate is. The higher your refresh rate is, the better your television sets are at showing fast-moving objects.  Also the larger your screen size the higher you want your refresh rate as low refresh rates on larger screen monitors will have more visible “tearing” when playing fast paced action games that have to constantly redraw the screen.  Avoid getting screens lower than 60hz refresh rate especially if you are going to use it for action games. Especially with your headset on, you’d want the events happening on screen to match what you are hearing.  In reality however you want at least 100hz if not 120hz or 144hz depending on the size of the monitor.  144Hz means the display refreshes 144 times per second to show a new image, this makes those FPS games seem more fluid, smooth and far less jaggedness or tearing especially when you up the resolution and screen size.  Note though that you have to make sure you have a graphics card powerful enough to output the resolution and frame rate to take advantage of the monitor refresh rate, if you don’t have a high refresh rate on your monitor but your graphics card is top notch you may end up disappointed.  Refresh rate can now be as high as 240hz in some elite gaming monitors too!

4. LCD versus OLED

Choosing between OLED and LCD televisions will depend on what you prioritize. The former tends to be more affordable and will allow you to spend more features compared to the latter. However, the decision will depend on what and how you play.

Look at these comparisons:

LCD screens:

• Has the brightest panels since it has backlighting
• Well-suited for gaming inside your bedroom compared to a crowd in the living room
• Adequate quality for low-frame-rate content

OLED screens:

• Has a better picture quality since it doesn’t need backlighting.
• The motion blur that can often be spotted with LCD televisions is non-existent with this. With this characteristic, it can preserve details in pictures especially in action games.
• Its quality for local multiplayer game experiences since there is no reduced brightness or color change in wide viewing angles.

Although OLED looks like a better choice for gaming, you should be aware that it is prone in burn-in, which retains images when you leave your screen on idle for too long unlike LCDs which you doesn’t need to worry about that problem.  You will also want to look at brightness and contrast for monitors, a minimum brightness of 300 cd/m2 and minimum contrast of 1000:1 is recommended.

5. Consider Ultra HD (4K)

Basically, Ultra HD 4K televisions have four times as many pixels as a 1080p HD screen, which gives you a new level of detail on your screens.

As of now, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One already offer 4K gaming. Even if you are not playing a game, this television is still worth the investment for watching movie content. Furthermore, getting one of it is very much affordable as well.  Note there are several variations of 4k but 3840 × 2160 is the dominant 4K resolution that should be minimum.  Note, 3840 x 1440 (WQHD) is not standard 4k which is called 4k UHD, even though it is 4k resolution in width, it isn’t in height and that is typically a common widescreen 4k resolution.

6. Choose HDR

HDR, also known as High Dynamic Range, offers a broader range of contrast and color to your pictures on the screen. This gives more color and detail especially at the darker areas of the graphics. One thing’s for sure — HDR gaming is magnificent.

Although it is still growing in acceptance in the gaming community, Xbox One S and Xbox One X already support this type. Moreover, most 4K televisions already support HDR even in their affordable models.

7. G-Sync or FreeSync

If you run exclusive Nvidia graphics cards that support G-Sync you will want a monitor that supports G-Sync which is a proprietary tech to improve and stabilize frame rate and tearing making games just look better.  But monitors that support G-Sync will not support FreeSync which is AMD Graphics card equivalent and you will see that FreeSync monitors are cheaper if you compare the same monitors because FreeSync doesn’t have licensing costs to implement.  So if you have an Nvidia Graphics card but you are using a FreeSync gaming monitor, you won’t be taking advantage of FreeSync at all, or does it?  You will find on Reddit and online that some users have managed to coax there Nvidia Graphics cards to work with FreeSync but this isn’t officially supported.

Conclusion

Now that you know the features and specifications to look out for when you buy yourself or someone else a television for gaming, it would just be a piece of cake to find the best. Follow this quick guide, so you will be able to get the most optimum gaming experience it can offer.