6 Best TVs to Buy in 2026

To help everyone understand it all better, here are a few very brief, very general need-to-know terms. What is QLED? What is OLED? What is 4k? What is the difference between any of these TVs? Well…

LCD: Liquid Crystal Display. The most common type of TV (which includes QLED). A backlight shines through a panel of Liquid Crystal making the colors more refined and clear. It’s pretty basic, but it’s 2025 and we can do better so no LCD screens on this list.

QLED: Invented by Samsung, the Liquid Crystal panel of LCD is replaced with a quantum-dot panel. This innovation gives TVs brighter, more lifelike color images. For many years, competitors would call what they were working with QLEDs, but you may have noticed in recent years that has changed to Mini LED and ULED. There’s a reason for that.

Mini LED: Instead of using hundreds of tiny LED lights, these are made by using thousands of the little buggers. Compared to LCD and regular LED, this local dimming and black levels.

QD-Mini LED: This is a Mini LED with a quantum dot layer applied over it. It’s brighter than a Mini LED, while still taking advantage of the black levels that format provides. Therefore, the contrast winds up being pretty stellar on the ones we’ve seen.

OLED: A distinctly different class of TV. (Organic Light Emitting Diode) Every single pixel creates its own light. There is no liquid or quantum-dot panel, only a shit ton of little lights. The contrast on these TVs is better than what came before it. But the colors are not significantly nicer, and the price is a lot higher.

4K and 8K: These are resolutions, with specific reference to the width of the TV. 4K TVs are 3,840 pixels wide. 8K are 7,680 pixels wide. 8K is better than 4K, and both are better than old HD.