If you live in an apartment or share a dorm room, a 55-inch TV is probably the perfect size. It's not so big that you'll need a crew of friends to help you move it or hang it, and most of them are available for under $1,000.
Now, yes, it's easy to spend more than that. I love the LG C5 OLED, Samsung S95D and its newer counterpart, the Samsung S95F OLED, and I'll recommend them to folks who want the very best picture performance at this size. But most often, I'm recommending a TV like the Hisense U8N that only runs you $699 when it's on sale.
If you want a 55-inch TV that produces a jaw-dropping image, I've got loads of suggestions thanks to more than a decade in this industry. Let's find the right one for you.
The quick list
The best 55-inch TVs in 2025: quick list
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Picture ★★★★★
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★★★
If you want the best 55-inch TV without over-paying for it, the Hisense U8N is the screen to go for. It uses Mini-LED backlighting for better contrast and higher brightness, and its Google TV smart platform is excellent across the board.
Picture ★★★★★
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★☆☆
If the Hisense U8N wasn't such an incredible value, the brand-new 2025 LG C5 OLED would be at the top of this list. Fresh out of the testing labs, the C5 OLED delivered better colors and significantly higher contrast than the Hisense U8.
Picture ★★★★★
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★☆☆
The LG C5 is perfect for home theaters, but the Samsung S95F thrives in the sunlight thanks to its matte screen with anti-glare coating. It's incredibly bright for an OLED —1,000 nits brighter than the C5 according to our tests.
About the author
My name's Nick and, for over a decade, I have been evaluating 55-inch TVs for major tech publications. Before I became Tom's Guide's Managing Editor of TV & AV, I was formerly the Senior Editor, TV and AV at TechRadar. Before my days in journalism, I helped folks just like you at a local Best Buy working in the TV department.
My name is Michael, and I’ve evaluated well over one hundred TVs in my day. Many of these sets have been 55-inch models. Previously, I covered TVs for Reviewed, a division of USA Today.
Best 55-inch TV
For two years straight, the Hisense U8 Series has held the top spot on our list. It's our pick for the best 55-inch TV for most people because it delivers outstanding performance for its price. Yes, OLED TVs are going to offer better black levels, but this Mini-LED gets twice as bright while still giving you beautiful colors and a truly fantastic smart platform.
So why didn't it score a perfect 5 out of 5 in our review? Well, two main reasons. We love that it offers a 144Hz refresh rate when connected to a gaming PC (120Hz for sports and movies), we measured its input lag at 13.1ms. That's a few milliseconds higher than the LG OLED TVs below. Also its color accuracy does require a bit of fine-tuning, as some scenes can look a bit oversaturated right out of the box.
When taking it for a spin at home, I was thoroughly impressed by the TV's contrast and black levels. The black bars on the top and bottom of the screen offered nearly OLED-levels of black while still maintaining a bright and colorful picture in the middle of the screen. Vivid mode was a bit too harsh for my tastes, so I recommend going for the Cinema Day or Cinema Night HDR picture modes, as they'll balance color saturation with the TV's 2,000-nit peak brightness.
Yes, a proper OLED TV (like our next pick, the 55-inch LG G4 OLED) is going to look better when you're looking at them side-by-side, but for the price, this is the best TV in the world, and getting anything else close will cost twice as much.
Read the full Hisense U8N review.
Best OLED
You might have come into this guide expecting to see a 55-inch OLED TV at the top of the list — and look, if the Hisense U8N wasn't such an incredible value, the C5 OLED would be the top pick. It's just a little pricey to be our overall winner.
Between this and the Samsung S95F OLED, it's a real toss up for the second spot. They're both pricey OLED TVs for true home theater enthusiasts. The latter is much brighter, which is why it's earned a spot as the best TV for bright rooms, but the C5 delivers unparalleled performance thanks to its support of Dolby Vision.
If you don't know what Dolby Vision is, that's OK. It's a version of HDR, a technology that offers enhanced colors, contrast and brightness. Most 4K TVs support HDR, but very few of them do the format justice the way the C5 OLED does.
So why is it stuck at number two? Well...it's expensive. It's not the TV you just buy on a whim. It's the kind of TV you do the research on, knowing that an OLED is a good fit for your specific setup. I'm not saying that to steer you away, but rather help you understand why it's more than three times the cost of the Hisense U8N. If you can afford it, I highly recommend it. If not, you're getting 80% of the same performance with the U8N at a third of the price.
Read the full LG C5 OLED review.
Best for bright rooms
If you don't spend your life looking at TVs, you might not see much of a difference between Samsung's top OLED, the S95F, and LG's C5 OLED. I mean, they're both top-tier OLED TVs, right?
Well, yes, but there's more going on here. Samsung uses a slightly different technology called QD-OLED that takes an OLED panel and adds a quantum dot filter. (You know, those things that make QLED TVs so great.) What this does is enables the S95F OLED to outperform the C5 in terms of overall brightness output.
Combine that higher brightness with the TV's matte anti-glare screen, and you've got the perfect TV for rooms with lots of ambient light.
So why isn't this TV in the first or second slot? Well, again, price is a factor here. Hisense is just delivering a really great 55-inch TV for $700. Also, the S95F doesn't support Dolby Vision. That's not a deal-breaker as HDR10 and HDR10+ content look nearly as nice, but Dolby Vision is the industry standard in Hollywood for a reason.
If your current TV is hard to see in the daylight and glare gives you a headache, the Samsung S95F will deliver a glare-free experience that will blow your socks off.
Read our full Samsung S95F OLED review.
Best 55-inch TV test results
TV | HDR peak brightness (tested) | Delta-E (tested) | Rec. 2020 gamut coverage | Input lag (tested) |
Hisense U8N | 3,296 nits | 3.2 | 82.07% | 13.1ms |
LG C5 OLED | 1,165 nits | 1.19 | 76.18% | 9.5ms |
Samsung S95F | 2,138 nits | 1.24 | 90.26% | 12.9ms |
Other 55-inch TVs we tested
Not all 55-inch TVs end up on our list of the best, but plenty of them are great options nonetheless. If none of the sets above sound appealing, take a look at the following recently reviewed picks.
How to choose the best 55-inch TV for you
How to choose the best 55-inch TVs for you
Our TV buying guide breaks down the key factors that should go into purchasing a new set, as getting a TV is an investment. It’s a piece of tech you’re likely to own for several years, which is why you want to make sure you’re picking the best 55-inch TV for you.
Size: First figure out whether you’re locked into a 55-inch set. Just because it’s the biggest size that fits on your wall or TV stand doesn’t mean that it’s right for the room. Similarly, consider if a 65-inch TV would better suit your space.
Price: Expect to pay about $500 for a good 55-inch 4K TV. The Insignia 55-inch 4K Fire TV Edition above is the absolute cheapest we’d recommend based on our catalog of TV testing. But if you have a tighter budget, check out our best TV deals for some alternatives. Keep in mind performance will take a hit in lower price ranges, though.
HDR: If you want the most colors, get one of the HDR sets with Dolby Vision compatibility above. This technology is able to deliver more colors, more contrast levels and increased brightness. It could make a set a bit more costly, but it guarantees you’ll still be satisfied with TV as the Dolby Vision format seems to be gaining momentum.
Ports: Another thing to consider is port offerings. Some of the sets above sport 3 HDMI ports, while some have 4. In general, more ports is better, especially if you have a collection of input devices like soundbars or game consoles.
What are we looking for in our testing?
Peak Brightness: The highest level of brightness (measured in nits) that a TV can sustainably put out in a 10% window.
Delta E: A measurement of how accurate colors are right out the box in its Calibrated or ISF Modes. The lower the number, the more accurate the colors are.
DCI-P3 Color Volume: This metric measures the total coverage area of a TV's color output. A higher percentage means better color expression. We also measure a TV's color output against the Rec2020 color space as well.
Input lag: An important metric for gamers, input lag measures the total time it takes for a signal that passes through the HDMI port to appear on the screen.
How we test the best 55-inch TVs
How we test the best 55-inch TVs
Testing the best 55-inch TVs is a thorough process. We put every TV through our custom lab test, measuring color gamut, color accuracy and brightness to objectively see which sets are the best for these key indicators. We also test for lag time, measuring to the millisecond how long it takes for content to travel from the original source to the screen. We use these results to make numbers-based comparisons about color and display quality.
To do this, we run all of these TVs through a series of technical tests designed to determine their performance on a quantitative level. We perform these with an X-Rite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, a SpectraCal VideoForge Pro pattern generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman calibration software that measure and charts the TVs' performances.
In addition, we spend hours with each set to see how our lab results translate into anecdotal performance. We also compare competing sets using a range of content across several sources. With that information, we can tell you which TVs look best, sound best and offer the best viewing experience.
Of course, we also consider the smart TV functions and apps for each TV, looking at everything from the remote control design to the voice interaction.
