OLED TVs are the pinnacle of picture reproduction, offering phenomenal motion processing and top-of-the-line upscaling. With unbeatable black levels and perfect contrast, they offer a cinema-like experience for not that much more money than a traditional LED-LCD or QLED TV.
Having tested them since their rollout in 2012, OLED TVs are my go-to choice when building a home cinema. Because of their price, I don't put one in every room of my house, but I love using one as my main TV.
As for which OLED TV wins the title of "best OLED TV", it changes every year. Some years it's an LG OLED like the LG C3 OLED, while other years it's a Samsung like the new Samsung S95D OLED. On occasion, it's been a Sony OLED and once, a few years ago, it was a Vizio OLED when those were still a thing. In short, I've been in the OLED game for a long time and I've seen 90% of all the OLED TVs on the market.
Right now, I personally think the LG G4 OLED is the best OLED TV available. It uses LG Display's cutting-edge META 2.0 OLED panels alongside an AI processor. This results in a bright, colorful picture that looks super sharp in 4K. Don't get me wrong, the Samsung S95C, our runner-up, is a great OLED TV, too, given its price, but the G4 is as good as I expect we're going to get in 2024.
The quick list
The best OLED TV you can buy: a visual guide
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Picture ★★★★★
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★★☆
The new LG G4 OLED is the best OLED TV of 2024. Featuring an enhanced MLA OLED panel from LG Display, it's brighter than previous LG OLEDs and its picture processing is top notch.
Picture ★★★★★
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★★☆
The 2023 Samsung S95C OLED is a great runner-up choice that's available for a fraction of the price of the G4. Its QD-OLED panel makes it bright and colorful, and its price is hard to beat.
Picture ★★★★☆
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★★★
The LG C3 OLED is a great choice if you want a rock-solid OLED TV without overspending. It's available for under $1,000 and in multiple sizes, which is very helpful if you're shopping for a bedroom or office.
Picture ★★★★★
Features ★★★★★
Value ★★★★☆
Panasonic has returned to the US market and its newest OLED TV is a shining feat of its innovation. Despite eight years of a hiatus, the new Z95A by Panasonic is a world of wonder and hard to beat with its 144Hz refresh rate and gen two MLA panel.
Picture ★★★★☆
Features ★★★★☆
Value ★★☆☆☆
Gamers are going to love the LG C4 OLED. It's one of the first TVs with an Nvidia-certified 144Hz refresh rate, and it offers four full-spec HDMI 2.1 ports, plus LG's signature Game Bar. Oh, and it's great for movies, too.
Picture ★★★★☆
Features ★★★★☆
Value ★★★☆☆
If you own a PS5 and want an OLED to make the console look its best, consider the Sony Bravia 8. It has a few PS5-exclusive features like Auto HDR Tone Mapping (for optimizing HDR settings during PS5 setup) and Auto Genre Picture Mode.
About the author
My name's Nick and I look after our guides to the best TVs, best OLED TVs and best 4K TVs. OLED TVs are, in my opinion, one of the biggest revolutions in display technology of the past 20 years. They offer perfect black levels and wide color gamuts, while seeing incremental upticks in brightness every year. Lots of research goes into making an OLED TV look the way it does, and the same amount of care, time and research has gone into assembling this list. Why trust me? I have 10 years of experience covering AV, and before I joined Tom's Guide I was formerly the Senior Editor, TV and AV at TechRadar. If you've read a story about the breakthroughs of OLED TV sometime in the last decade, it probably has my name on it.
The full list: Best OLED TVs in detail
The title of best OLED TVs can swing back and forth between LG, Samsung and Sony. But this year, the honor belongs to LG with the LG G4 OLED. While Samsung and Sony are pushing QD-OLED in their flagship models, the LG G4 OLED offers an enhanced version of WOLED with 2nd-generation Micro Lens Array technology. That's a real mouthful, but the basic idea here is that this new panel can produce better brightness than any other LG OLED previously, and it does so safely for long periods of time.
In our lab tests, the LG G4 OLED reached a peak brightness of almost 1,500 nits, while maintaining a color accuracy of 1.4041. That's a heck of a lot better than any other OLED TV. Add to that its low input latency of 9.2ms in Game Mode, and you've got the recipe for an award-winning OLED that can both play cinema-quality movies perfectly and give gamers an amazing experience.
Our test results and our anecdotal testing have proven to us beyond any doubt that this is the best OLED TV available to buy right now, bar none.
Read our full LG G4 OLED review.
Best QD-OLED TV
I never get tired of looking at Samsung OLED TVs. Most of them use a quantum dot OLED panel designed by Samsung Display, and they offer both beautiful contrast and expansive color gamut coverage. These are the kind of TVs that will wow you with their pop of colors and shockingly bright highlights.
The reason it doesn't sit at the top spot is two-fold: It's no longer new in 2024 (this is Samsung's 2023 OLED TV) and LG's MLA technology offers similar boost in brightness to Samsung's QD-OLED while offering support for Dolby Vision and the more robust webOS smart platform. These are minor qualms, admittedly, and only someone with a decade of experience (ahem) might find them to be an issue.
If you don't necessarily care about Dolby Vision because you don't pay for the highest tier of Netflix and don't have a 4K Blu-ray player, then the Samsung S95C is basically just a cheaper version of the LG G4 OLED with similar specs.
Read the full review: Samsung S95C OLED
Best Value OLED TV
For years, OLED has been synonymous with words like "expensive" because of their lofty sticker prices. These days, though, OLED TVs aren't significantly more expensive than their mid-range Mini-LED counterparts. The LG C3 OLED proves that point by costing under a grand for the 42-inch and 48-inch models, while keeping pace with the competition's pricing at 55-inch and 65-inch screen sizes.
The variety of screen sizes and the myriad price points is what makes the C3 a good pick if you're on the fence about dropping a ton of money on an OLED. You can dip your toes in with a smaller model to see what you think before trading out the 65-inch TV in your living room. The good news is, besides some minor differences in peak brightness, all the models have similar specs. They all are 120Hz native refresh rates and sport four full-spec HDMI 2.1 ports. In our tests, the LG C3 hit around 820 nits at peak brightness and covered 98.98% of the UHDA-P3 Color Gamut. That's a drop down from the LG G4 mentioned above, but still quite admirable.
It can't overtake the leaders in the category like the Samsung S95C or LG G4, but the LG C3 OLED is a fantastic screen that you can buy for a lot less than you'd think.
Read our full LG C3 OLED review.
Best new OLED TV
The Panasonic Z95A is a true stunner. In its return back into the US market, Panasonic has delivered with incredible bounds bringing an utter performer to the foray that's built on LG Display's META gen two MLA panel. With a 144Hz refresh rate and all the latest gaming features, you're looking at a true beast.
It's a powerful HDR and SDR display, making entertainment pop from the likes of general blockbusters to even anime. Its low Delta-E score of 2.33 makes it ideal for colorful content, but even more impressive is its 1,625 nits of brightness in SDR. This helps to mitigate glare, as well, which is barely noticeable on the Z95A.
But a slew of HDR support, including Dolby Vision and HDR10+, make it ideal for this type of content, as well. An HDR brightness of 2012 nits, the highest we've tested on an OLED TV yet, makes it a promising new addition to the market and one worthy of its pricey investment. The only issues? The Panasonic Z95A comes at just over $3,000, so it's not exactly cheap, and only comes in a single 65-inch screen size.
Read our full Panasonic Z95A OLED TV review
Best For Gaming
If you don't follow them closely, it can be hard to know which OLED TVs are new and which ones have been sitting on store shelves for the last 12 months. The LG C4 OLED is the newest 2024 model and just became available in April of this year.
Because it's so new, it's more expensive than last year's C3 OLED, but our lab tests show that it offers a higher peak brightness (1,049 nits on the C4 vs 820 nits on the C3). If you plan on watching mostly HDR content from sources like Max, Disney Plus, Netflix and Amazon, then it's worth forking over the extra money. If you still watch HD/SDR content from your cable box, then save some money by picking up the LG C3 OLED instead.
While movie lovers will certainly enjoy the C4, it's gamers who will get the most bang for their buck with this screen as it packs all of the best gaming features from the flagship G4 OLED into a more affordable TV. 144Hz refresh rates, HDMI 2.1 ports galore, Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync support are all here, as is the LG Game Bar. It's so good, one of our staff uses it as his gaming PC monitor.
Read our full LG C4 OLED review
Best For PS5
The LG C4 OLED is the best for Xbox and PCs, but if you're a PS5 gamer, you'll likely want to stick with a Sony TV. The best OLED (well, really, the only new one released in 2024) from Sony is the Bravia 8 that we reviewed in September.
The Bravia 8 brings to bear all of Sony's great picture-processing technologies, and adds a few specific features for the PS5 like Auto HDR Tone Mapping (for optimizing HDR settings during PS5 setup) and Auto Genre Picture Mode. Unlike the C4 OLED, the Bravia 8 only has two HDMI 2.1 ports but that should only be an issue if you want to connect both the PS5 and new PS5 Pro.
In our lab tests, the Sony Bravia 8 scored decently well, hitting 815 nits in HDR and 287 in SDR. That's not quite as good as the competition, but it's a big improvement on the older Sony A80L from 2023.
If you want a TV that optimizes the PS5 experience, the Bravia 8 OLED is a great option.
Read our full Sony Bravia 8 OLED review
Also Tested
Here are all the OLED TVs that either are a bit too old to make it to the top of our list, or just missed a spot due to a few issues. Despite their flaws, however, they're still worth researching if you're in the market for a new OLED TV.
OLED TV FAQs
How much do OLED TVs cost?
The majority of OLED TVs in the 55- and 65-inch range sell for between $1,500 and $2,000, but premium models will often cost more, and larger screen sizes can routinely sell for $3,000 or more.
What is OLED?
OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, a display technology that uses organic compounds to create clusters of red, green, blue, and white points of light to make up the individual pixels of the TV. On a 4K TV with 3840 x 2160 resolution, that means a single OLED panel will have 8.29 million pixels. And unlike standard LCD TVs, each one of those pixels produces its own light, and can be individually turned on or off, brightened or dimmed.
That pixel-level control of brightness lets OLED offer the best contrast of any display technology, with neighboring pixels delivering everything from intense brightness to true black, and every color imaginable.
As a result, OLED TVs consistently outperform the majority of LED-lit LCD TVs, whether they use standard LCD panels or boost the picture quality with enhancements like quantum dots (also known as QLED) or discrete dimming zones.
You can find similar-performing technology out there (microLED is another display type that uses microscopic light-emitting diodes for perfect contrast) but OLED is still the most mainstream option out there.
Are OLED TVs worth buying?
If you want a truly excellent TV, OLED is absolutely worth considering. It offers better picture quality than standard LCD TVs can match, and with prices coming down every year, they're no longer prohibitively expensive either. In testing and reviews, OLED TVs have consistently offered some of the best picture quality available.
There are areas of performance where LCDs offer better performance. Brightness on OLED TVs is no match for the greater intensity you can produce with an LED backlight, and LCD sets don't have the same risk of burn-in or color drift that OLEDs have to contend with long-term. But in virtually every other area, from viewing angles to color accuracy, OLED sets match or beat LCD-based competitors hands down.
But there is some question of whether that improved quality is worth the added expense. When there are 4K models selling for under $500, why spend $1,000 or more on an OLED set? There is definitely a case to be made for spending less for quality that is comparable, if not exactly the same.
But if you want the best color, contrast and overall quality you can get from a TV today, OLED is the way to go.
How to choose the best OLED TV
How to choose the best OLED TVs for you
The above selection of OLED TVs offer an embarrassment of riches for TV shoppers to choose from, with everything from basic functionality to advanced smart features and premium designs.
The biggest factor in most shopper's decision making will be price, but other differences include physical designs.
Smart features are also a differentiator. LG sets offer a pretty consistent experience across all of its models thanks to the webOS platform, but Sony's Google TV and Samsung's Tizen sets have strengths and weaknesses of their own.
Interested in a specific TV brand, price range or screen size? Check out our picks for the best TVs in each.
Best TVs | Best 4K TVs | Best smart TVs for streaming | Best TVs for gaming
The best TVs under $1000 | The best TVs under $500
Best TV brands | Best Samsung TVs | Best TCL TVs | Best LG TVs | Best Roku TVs | Best QLED TVs | Best 8K TVs
The smallest smart TVs | Best 43-inch TVs | Best 50-inch TVs | Best 55-inch TVs | Best 65-inch TVs | Best 70-inch TVs | Best 75-inch TVs | Best 85-inch TVs
How we test the best OLED TVs
How we test OLED TVs
Every OLED TV we review goes through a thorough testing and evaluation process, starting with rigorous lab testing and finishing with eyes-on evaluation by our reviewers. There's a lot more to it than just putting on a couple of 4K Blu-ray movies or hooking up a game console.
In our TV test space, we submit every TV to a number of lab tests, using industry-standard equipment, such as a calibrated spectrophotometer, calibration software and a dedicated test pattern generator. We measure for several indicators of picture quality, but these are the main metrics used in all of our reviews:
Color gamut, which measures how much color a given TV can produce. Expressed as a percentage rating, most OLED TVs meet or exceed 100% of the Rec709 color space.
Color accuracy, which measures the average deviation from perfect accuracy, expressed as a number (Delta-E), with higher numbers indicating less accurate color.
Contrast, measuring the difference between the darkest darks and brightest brights that a TV can produce, which is expressed as a ratio.
Brightness, measuring the peak luminance of a panel or display. This measure is reported in nits, an industry term for candela per square meter (cd/m2).
Lag time is the interval between a signal, such as button press on a game console, and the subsequent change registering on-screen. Measured with a Leo Bodnar Video Signal Input Lag Tester, this is measured in milliseconds, and provides a good indicator of how well-suited a TV is to modern gaming.
We pair this lab testing with hands-on time, viewing video samples and movies to see how these numbers translate into real-world performance. With that information, we can tell you which TVs look best, sound best and offer the best viewing experience.
Finally, we also evaluate the smart TV software and menus, getting a feel for the navigation and functions of each TV. We look at everything from the remote control design to the voice interaction to let us meaningfully talk about the smart features and overall ease-of-use for a smart TV.
