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How to choose the best TV for gaming right now
Plus some recommendations for TVs worth considering for your PS5 or Xbox Series X/S.
These days, the best gaming TVs are really no different from the best TVs you can buy in general. That said, there are a few key features to keep in mind when looking for a set to get the most out of your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S. No, you don’t need a fancy TV to simply enjoy a video game, but a good screen can only make the experience more enjoyable. If you’re unsure where to start, we’ve laid out some helpful advice for buying a good gaming TV and noted a few well-reviewed examples you can buy today, at various price points.
What to look for in a gaming TV
Whether you use it for gaming or not, all good TVs are built on the same foundations. You want a 4K resolution, sufficient brightness, high contrast ratios with deep and uniform black tones, colors that find the right balance between accuracy and saturation, and wide viewing angles. For video games specifically, you want a TV with minimal input lag and fast motion response, with no blur or other unwanted artifacts behind quick-moving objects. Of course, finding a set that has all of these gaming features and fits into your budget can be tricky.
For now, a top OLED TV will offer the best picture quality for gaming or otherwise. But good OLED TVs usually cost more than their LCD counterparts, and some OLED sets may not get bright enough for those who have their TV set in a particularly well-lit room. If you opt for an LCD TV, an advanced backlight with mini LEDs and effective full-array local dimming will usually improve contrast and lighting detail, while a quantum dot filter can enhance colors.
One thing you don’t need to worry about is 8K support. Although the PS5 and Xbox Series X are technically capable of outputting 8K video, very few games are made for that resolution, and 8K’s practical benefits are extremely minimal unless you plan on sitting unreasonably close to a massive TV. The few 8K TVs on the market are also very expensive.
All that said, there are a few terms you should particularly look out for when buying a TV for your new game console or high-end graphics card.
HDMI 2.1
To get the most out of a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, your TV should have full HDMI 2.1 support. This is the latest major update to the HDMI spec, enabling a higher maximum bandwidth — 48 gigabits per second, up from HDMI 2.0’s 18 Gbps — and a handful of features that are beneficial for gaming performance specifically. These include variable refresh rate (VRR) and automatic low latency mode (ALLM), which we detail further below.
Beyond that, perhaps the chief perk of HDMI 2.1 is its ability to transmit sharp 4K video up to a 120Hz refresh rate with modern consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X, or up to 144Hz with a powerful gaming PC. Not every PS5 or Xbox Series X/S game supports frame rates that high — and some only do at lower resolutions — but those that do will look and feel especially fluid in motion. HDMI 2.1 also includes support for Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC), which allows you to pass higher-quality lossless audio from a source device connected to the TV to a compatible soundbar or receiver.
The more full HDMI 2.1 ports your TV has, the better. “Full” is the key word there. As reported by TFT Central, because HDMI 2.1 is backwards compatible with HDMI 2.0, TV and monitor manufacturers have been allowed to brand HDMI ports as “HDMI 2.1” even if they lack full (or any) support for the spec’s upgraded features. We recommend a few TVs below that have true HDMI 2.1 ports, but if you’re buying a new TV for gaming, make sure your chosen set isn’t trying to hide any capabilities you may consider essential.
HDR — High Dynamic Range
HDR refers to a TV's ability to display a wider range between the darkest and brightest parts of a picture. This broader range can bring out details that would otherwise be missing on a standard dynamic range (SDR) TV, in both the very dark and, especially, the very bright areas of an image. HDR typically comes with an improvement to color reproduction as well, displaying a larger palette of more vibrant colors that brings content closer to its creator’s original vision.
To get an HDR picture, you need both content that is mastered to take advantage of the tech and a TV capable of displaying that content. HDR also comes in a variety of formats, which are generally split between those that utilize static metadata (e.g., HDR10) and those that utilize dynamic metadata (e.g., HDR10+, Dolby Vision). In short, the latter allows a TV to optimize its brightness and colors on a per-scene or even per-frame basis, while the former uses one set of optimized settings for the entirety of the given content. Support for these formats can differ depending on the TV, content and game console you use. The Xbox Series X and S, for example, support Dolby Vision for gaming, while the PS5 does not.
The good news is that most TVs you’d buy in 2023 are HDR-ready in some fashion, even on the budget end of the market. The catch is that some TVs are much better at getting the most out of HDR than others. The same goes for actual content mastered in HDR. With video games in particular, there aren’t quite as many titles designed to take advantage of HDR as there are movies (though the number is growing all the time), and the variance in HDR quality tends to be wider.