The 5 Best TVs For Watching Movies - Spring 2023 Reviews

The best 4k TV for movies we've tested is the Sony A95K OLED. It's a fantastic TV for watching movies in a dark room, thanks to its nearly infinite contrast ratio. This results in deep, inky blacks and bright highlights, with no distracting blooming around bright areas of the scene. Sony TVs are well respected for their accurate picture quality, and this TV is no exception. Its excellent processing capabilities deliver a true movie experience that respects the content creator's intent, with very little banding in areas of similar color.

HDR movies look incredible on this TV thanks to its high peak brightness in HDR, near-infinite contrast ratio, and wide color gamut. Colors look vivid and lifelike, and bright specular highlights stand out. It also supports features like Dolby Vision and DTS:X audio, ensuring you get the best movie experience possible. It's also compatible with Sony's BRAVIA CORE streaming service, which offers a wide selection of movies to stream at a much higher bitrate than most streaming services, ensuring your movies look the best they possibly can.

If you want something cheaper than the Sony A95K OLED, check out the Samsung QN90B QLED instead. It's an impressive TV for watching movies, and although it doesn't have the same deep, inky blacks as the Sony A95K OLED, it still looks great in a dark room. There's some blooming around bright specular highlights in dark scenes, but it also gets extremely bright, so bright flashes of light in HDR stand out incredibly well.

It doesn't support Dolby Vision, as Samsung focuses on their competing HDR10+ format instead, which is nearly as good but not as widely available. HDR movies still look incredible, thanks to the wide color gamut and high peak brightness. Its processing isn't as good as the Sony, though, there's more banding in colors, and it has worse tone mapping in HDR, so some bright, saturated colors aren't displayed as accurately as they are on the Sony.

If you like the deep inky blacks that only an OLED can produce but want to spend a bit less, then the best mid-range TV for watching movies is the LG C2 OLED. Like the Sony A95K OLED, it displays perfect blacks in dark rooms without blooming, offering a fantastic movie-watching experience. You don't get the same peak brightness or processing features as the Sony model, but that's what you can expect if you want to save a bit of money. Still, it has decent HDR peak brightness, enough to make smaller highlights stand out.

It comes with the LG webOS smart platform built-in, which has a ton of apps available to download, and it's easy to stream your favorite movies. It removes 24p judder from any source, which helps with the appearance of motion, and it can interpolate low-frame-rate content up to 120 fps. It supports Dolby Atmos audio passthrough; however, it doesn't support DTS:X, which is a format many Blu-rays use, so you'll need to connect your Blu-ray player to the receiver instead of the TV.

If you want something cheaper than the Samsung QN90B QLED that still delivers an excellent movie-watching experience, check out the Hisense U8H. It has a fantastic contrast ratio for deep blacks in dark rooms, and the Mini LED local dimming feature is impressive as it improves the contrast while making small highlights stand out, but there's just a bit of blooming around bright objects. Its HDR brightness is also excellent, but it displays most scenes in HDR brighter than they should be.

Unlike many TVs, it supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ formats, meaning you can watch your favorite HDR content in the format they're available in. It also supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X passthrough if you want to connect a soundbar or receiver. Although it's an amazing TV, it's a bit less powerful than the QN90A, so there's more banding in areas of similar color, and motion isn't as smooth.

The best budget TV for watching movies we've tested is the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED. It's a great TV for the price, with superb contrast resulting in deep blacks in a dark room, with fantastic black uniformity and very little blooming around bright objects. It's also very good for watching movies in HDR, as it has a wide color gamut and decent color volume, so HDR content looks vivid and lifelike. It has just okay peak brightness in HDR, so bright highlights don't stand out as well as they do on more expensive TVs like the Hisense U8H.

It runs the Roku TV interface, which is rather simplistic but easy to use, and it has a great selection of streaming apps, including many free channels. It removes judder from 24p sources like an Apple TV or Blu-ray player, ensuring a smooth movie-watching experience, and although it has a quick response time, there's just a bit of stutter when watching movies.