If you’re a serious gamer who alreadyhas or
plans to get an Xbox Series X, PS5 or a high-
end AMD or NVidia PC graphics card, you
need to be particularly careful about which
TV you buy. The best features of these new
gaming devices place some pretty extreme
technical demands on the displays they
connected to. Delivering 4 K resolution at 120
frames a second and variable refresh rates,
in particular, require TVs to carry the latest
HDMI 2 .1 connectors capable of handling data
rates of 4 0Gbps or higher.
Practically no budget TVs can provide even a
single sufficiently specced HDMI 2 .1 port to
unlock these next-gen gaming features. But
nor, actually, do many mid-range TVs. And even
mid-range and high-end TVs that do support
4K/ 120 and VRR often only do so over one or
two of their HDMI connections, not all of them.
Which could mean having to switch HDMIs
over if you have more next-gen gaming devices
than your TV has next-gen HDMI ports.
Unfortunately, making sure a TV definitely
supports the gaming features you want is
complicated by the fact that TV brands are
unhelpfully allowed to say they have HDMI 2 .1
ports even if they don’t. Instead you need to
check specifically that a TV’s features include
4K/ 120 and VRR support.
This seems fair enough – until you realise
that TV brands aren’t all great at making it
clear exactly which gaming features their TVs
support. Some brands – LG in particular –
do better than others at supporting cutting
edge gaming features. But ultimately this
is something you’ll need to either look to
reliable product reviews to tell you about, or
else obtain a sufficiently trustworthy/official
answer (sadly, this may not include the advice
of customer service agents) before you part
with your cash.GAMERS
BEWARE
SAMSUNG QE50QN90B
Samsung’s first mini-LED TVs last year were game changers. Shrinking LEDs to just a
40th of their previous size meant thousands more could be used. Combined with local
dimming able to set light levels independently for hundreds of different ‘zones’, this
resulted in levels of brightness and contrast the TV world hadn’t seen before. Now with
the 5 0-inch QE50QN90B, the first of Samsung’s second-gen mini-LED TVs, things just
got even better. The main reason for this is Shape Adaptive Light Control. This adds more
variation to the light within each dimming zone so that bright highlights look punchier.
If there’s a more spectacular 5 0-inch screen for gaming and movies, we haven’t seen it.
£1,399,samsung.com
PHILIPS 55OLED806
Philips’ legendarily powerful picture processing and OLED technology are a match
made in heaven. Rather than energy expended on just combatting LCD technology’s
inherent flaws, Philips processing elements on the 55 OLED80 6 feel like they’re being
used instead to maximise OLED’s potential. Colour, sharpness, contrast, motion... all the
key picture elements feel enhanced by Philips’ latest P 5 picture processor. So much so
that pictures actually look more than 4 K, colours seem to enjoy jaw-dropping levels of
vibrancy, and the brightness peaks of HDR footage somehow hit with more intensity
than the panel should logically be able to reach.
£1,099,philips.co.ukJUNE 2022 T 3 33
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