Sometimes the best way to watch your favorite sports team is in the living room, with a few friends around and the game streaming on your TV. Although manufacturers don't focus on making their TVs only for sports, many modern 4k TVs have good all-around performance making them suitable for watching sports. When looking for the best 4k TV for sports, you'll want to look for great motion handling and good gray uniformity. If you tend to watch games in a bright room, peak brightness and reflection handling are important, and you'll want a TV with a wide viewing angle if you watch in a wide seating area.
We've bought and tested more than 380 TVs, and below are our recommendations for the best TVs for sports to buy. See our picks for the best 4k TVs, the best budget TVs, and the best outdoor TVs. Most brands have started releasing their 2023 lineups, so make sure to vote on which ones you want us to buy and test first. If you want to find out more about the 2023 models, check out our 2023 TV lineup page.
The best TV for sports we've tested is the Samsung S95B OLED. It has an incredibly wide viewing angle, making it a perfect choice for watching the big game with a large group of friends in a wide seating arrangement, as everyone will see the same thing. No more fighting over the best spot on the couch, as the image remains consistent even at a very wide angle. In addition to the wide viewing angle, the S95B has a near-instantaneous response time, so fast-moving players and balls are crystal-clear, with no distracting motion blur behind them.
This TV has superb reflection handling, so you don't have to worry too much about the glare on a sunny day. However, it's still not that bright, so glare can be distracting in a bright living room. It upscales lower-resolution content well, which is great as most sporting events are broadcast at a lower resolution. If you don't have cable, the Tizen OS interface has a great selection of streaming apps, and you can easily find your favorite sports channels.
If you're in a bright room and don't care about deep blacks, a premium TV with an LED backlight like the Samsung QN90B QLED is a better choice than the Samsung S95B OLED. It gets significantly brighter than the other Samsung, so it's a better choice in a bright living room or outdoors. It also has a very wide viewing angle, making it a great choice for watching the big game with lots of friends.
The user-friendly Tizen OS platform has a large selection of streaming apps, including the most popular sports apps, meaning you can stream the big game without an external streaming box. It also upscales lower-resolution content like from cable boxes well, with no noticeable issues. It has a great response time, ensuring you can clearly see the action, and it has decent gray uniformity, with just a bit of dirty screen effect in the center.
If you want something cheaper than the Samsung QN90B QLED that still delivers great picture quality, a mid-range TV like the Hisense U8H is a great choice for sports fans. It gets exceptionally bright, and combined with its excellent reflection handling, can easily overcome glare in a bright room. It has excellent motion handling, so it's easy to make out the fine details in the game, and it has great gray uniformity ensuring the playing field looks uniform.
It has an okay frequency response and gets decently loud, so you don't necessarily need an external sound system if you're throwing a party. On the other hand, it has a narrow viewing angle, so if you are throwing a party, it's best to sit directly in front of it. Those watching from the sides will see a faded and washed-out image, so it's a bit worse than the Samsung QN90B QLED. It also doesn't upscale lower-resolution cable sports channels as well as more expensive models, and motion isn't as fluid. As long as you're watching from a high-quality source, you won't have any issues.
The best LED TV we've tested in the budget category is the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED. It's a good TV for watching sports, with good picture quality and high peak brightness. It can handle moderate glare in a bright room but has worse reflection handling than the Hisense U8H, so it's not as good in a bright room. Uniform areas like the playing field look good thanks to its decent gray uniformity, and it has a quick response time, so fast-moving objects (like the players) are clear and easy to make out.
Unlike more expensive TVs on this list, like the Samsung QN90B QLED, it has poor audio quality and can't get very loud, so you'll need a soundbar or audio receiver if you're planning on hosting a large party. It also has narrow viewing angles, so it's not a good choice for a wide seating arrangement. If you mainly watch sports with the family and sit directly in front of the TV, this won't be an issue, and it's good for sports.
The LG UP8000 is the best budget TV for sports if you have a wide seating area. Most variants have an IPS-type panel with a wide viewing angle, so unlike the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED, the image remains consistent when viewed from the side. It makes it a better choice for watching the big game with a large group of people, as you don't have to fight over the best spot in the house. However, the 50, 60, and 70-inch models use a different panel type with a worse viewing angle, meaning they perform differently.
It has an easy-to-use interface and comes with LG's Magic Remote, which has a point-and-press feature, making it even easier to play your favorite apps in just a few seconds. It has good motion handling thanks to the quick response time and a motion interpolation feature to smooth out low-frame-rate content. However, its backlight flickers at 120Hz, which causes image duplication with 60 fps content. It doesn't have any trouble upscaling lower-resolution content like cable box channels.
Apr 03, 2023: Verified our picks for accuracy and consistency, and refreshed the text. Added the Samsung S95C OLED as a Notable Mention.
Jan 24, 2023: Verified our picks for accuracy and refreshed the text. Replaced the Hisense U6H with the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED, as it's a bit better overall.
Nov 25, 2022: Completely restructured the article, replacing the LG C2 OLED with the Samsung S95B OLED and moving it to the top of the review. Replaced the Samsung QN85A QLED with the Samsung QN90B QLED, which is newer and performs better for sports.
Sep 26, 2022: Replaced the Hisense U8G with the new model, the Hisense U8H, as it's a noticeable upgrade over last year's model.
Aug 19, 2022: Restructured the article to better match users' expectations. Removed many Notable Mentions that are no longer relevant.
Our recommendations above are what we think are currently the best TVs to watch sports for most people in each price range. We factor in the price (a cheaper TV wins over a pricier one if the difference isn't worth it), feedback from our visitors, and availability (no TVs that are difficult to find or almost out of stock everywhere).
If you would like to do the work of choosing yourself, here is the list of all our reviews of TVs. Be careful not to get too caught up in the details. While no TV is perfect, most TVs are great enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you really look for them.