The 4 Best Sounding TVs - Spring 2023 Reviews

The best sounding TV we've tested is the LG G1 OLED. It's an impressive TV that delivers fantastic visuals with good sound quality. It has a very good frequency response, with one of the best bass responses we've measured on a TV, so unlike most TVs, there's a bit of thump and rumble. It also gets very loud, but there are some compression artifacts at max volume. It has an extremely well-balanced sound profile at moderate listening levels, so dialogue is very clear and easy to understand. It also supports eARC, which is great if you plan on connecting it to a home theater system or soundbar.

It also delivers fantastic picture quality thanks to its OLED panel. Blacks are perfectly deep and uniform in a dark room, which is great for watching movies as there's no distracting blooming or haloing around bright objects or subtitles. It can display a wide color gamut with HDR content, which looks incredibly vivid and lifelike. It's been replaced by the LG G2 OLED, but the new model has a worse frequency response overall, with slightly less bass and a less balanced sound profile.

The best sounding TV we've tested in the upper mid-range category is the Sony X95K. It's a great TV overall that sounds good. It has a well-balanced sound profile, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand. It doesn't get as loud as the LG G1 OLED and has less bass, but it has less compression and very little distortion at high volume levels. Like the G1, it supports eARC and supports a wider range of audio formats than the G1, including DTS:X via DTS-HD MA, which is great as that's the most commonly supported format on UHD Blu-ray movies.

It delivers fantastic picture quality, but whereas the LG delivers perfect inky blacks with no blooming thanks to its OLED panel, the Sony relies on a Mini LED full array local dimming feature to achieve deep blacks, so there's more distracting blooming around bright objects. It still looks great, though, and with its excellent peak brightness in HDR, bright highlights stand out. It also has a wide color gamut, so HDR content looks vivid and lifelike.

The TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED is the best-sounding mid-range TV we've tested. It's a great overall TV available in a few different sizes, from 55 to 75 inches, and it combines its great picture quality with good sound quality. It has a decent frequency response with a well-balanced sound profile that delivers clear dialogue, which is great for watching the news or TV shows. It also gets very loud as it's one of the lowest TVs we've tested, with very little distortion, even at max volume. If you're planning on using an external soundbar or home theater system, it supports eARC audio passthrough with all major formats.

It delivers similar overall sound quality to the Sony X95K but has slightly worse picture quality, as it's not as bright as the Sony and has a narrow viewing angle. It performs well in dark and bright environments thanks to its great peak brightness and very high contrast ratio. It uses the user-friendly Google TV smart platform, which is easy to use and has a huge selection of streaming apps, so you can easily find your favorite streaming content.

The Insignia F50 QLED is the best budget TV with decent sound quality that we've tested. It's a simple TV with okay overall performance, and it offers good value for its cost. It surprisingly has an alright sound quality for a budget-friendly TV, as most other low-cost options have mediocre sound. It gets fairly loud and has a well-balanced sound profile, meaning it's a good choice for listening to dialogue, but like most TVs, it doesn't produce much bass, so get a soundbar for the best sound possible. If you do, the TV supports Dolby and DTS audio formats for passthrough.

The built-in Fire TV platform is user-friendly, and navigating through the menu feels smooth. It has a bunch of apps you can download, and the mic built into the remote gives you access to the Alexa voice assistant feature. It also has decent overall picture quality with deep blacks if you want to use it in a dark room and decent peak brightness and reflection handling in bright rooms. It's a bit difficult to find, as it's been discontinued, but the 50-inch and 65-inch models are still readily available.