Best OLED TV 2024: the latest and greatest models, tested by our experts

If you’re shopping at the top end of the TV market you’re likely considering an OLED TV, and for good reason.

If you look at our latest What Hi-Fi? Awards winners list and general best TV guide, you’ll see that though they’re expensive, OLED TVs tend to be among the top performing sets we recommend to buyers who are flush with cash. 

This is largely due to their ability to individually charge pixels, rather than rely on a backlight, as LCD sets do. This power lets them generate perfect blacks and, when tuned correctly, wonderful contrast levels. But which to get?

While we know OLEDs holistically offer great black levels, there are still huge disparities between each set that passes through our test rooms. This is why we’ve created this guide detailing the best OLED TVs we’ve tested and recommend. 

You can get a detailed description of how we test OLED TVs at the bottom of the page. But the short version is we check every TV in our controlled viewing room to gauge its picture quality, sound, app support and gaming features, so you can trust our buying advice.

The quick list

You can see a quick breakdown of all the TVs in this list with a short summary of what they’re best at and why we think they’re worth your money in the table below. Or, if you want more detail you can use the skip links to go to our OLED TVs in-depth entry, where we’ll offer more detail about our experience using it.

Written by

Written by

Tom Parsons

I’ve been testing OLED TVs most of my 16-year-plus career as a technology journalist. That means I’ve spent more hours than I care to detail sitting in our dedicated test room, in the dark, comparing each year’s sets for picture and audio quality. While some may find this a little too close to Groundhog Day for their liking, I’ve always enjoyed the experience for one key reason – the tech never stops developing and there’s always something new to check out. Most recently this has been spearheaded by the arrival of brightness-boosting technologies such as MLA and QD-OLED, which have forced us to re-evaluate our expectations at the top end of the already premium OLED market.

The best OLED TVs in 2024

Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best OLED TVs in our list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.

Best overall

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The Sony A80L is the step down option in the Japanese giant’s OLED lineup and the set we recommend to most people.

It may not have the QD-OLED tech seen on its more expensive sibling, the A95L, but the What Hi-Fi? Award winning, 55-inch A80L we had in our viewing room still offers brilliant picture quality and the best holistic home cinema experience we’ve seen at its price. 

The Cognitive Processor XR powering the show offers fantastic upscaling, thanks to the addition of Sony’s XR Clear image feature. This effectively sharpened 1080p content, like True Grit and basic Netflix streams incredibly accurately during our checks.

Accuracy is the word we’d continue to use when we switched to our 4K Blu-ray test discs. Whether it was shadow detail in the neon skyline of Blade Runner 2049 or Dolby Vision HDR performance watching Top Gun: Maverick, the A80L offered wonderfully authentic picture quality. Skin tones look accurate, even in demanding settings, like the incredibly bright, intentionally warm Mad Max: Fury Road. 

The set’s atypical audio system also delivers impressive results by TV speaker standards. The system creates sound by using actuators to vibrate the whole TV panel. Weird? Yes. But during our listening sessions, the system delivered the best sonic performance we’ve experienced on an OLED this price, offering a better sense of direction and controlled low end than its direct competitors, such as the LG C4.

Our reviewers' conclusion says it all: 

“It’s natural that we’re all drawn to the shiny promise of the super-bright new MLA and QD-OLED panel technologies, but the A80L proves that with impeccable processing, truly exceptional picture quality is still more than possible from a ‘standard’ OLED panel. This is a TV that combines the spectacular with cinematic subtlety in very rare fashion.”

Our only minor quibble is that, like most OLEDs, the A80L only has two HDMI 2.1 inputs, one of which doubles as its eARC. So if you have multiple current generation games consoles and a Dolby Atmos soundbar or speaker package, you will have to put up with some cable swapping. If you don’t need an OLED right now it’s also worth remembering the A80L is about to be superseded by Sony’s newer Bravia 8 OLED, which we’re hoping to review soon.

Read the full Sony XR-55A80L review

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Best value

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The LG B3 is about to be superseded by the LG B4 which, based on our early looks at a press preview session earlier this year, looks very impressive. But, until we get the newer B4 in our test rooms, the LG B3 is the best value OLED we’ve fully reviewed and can recommend. This is especially true in the current market, where the presence of the B4 means many retailers are offering great discounts on the B3 as they rush to clear stock.

For your money, you get an OLED that unashamedly focuses on getting the basics right in a bid to keep costs down. The big compromise is that, unlike its C-series sibling, the B3 only has two HDMI 2.1 sockets, one of which doubles as its eARC. This means that if you want Dolby Atmos audio and to run two modern game consoles at full power you’ll need to do some cable swapping.

However, if you’re just after a reliable TV to watch films and sports, the B3 is great. Comparing it with its more expensive sibling in a series of side by side picture comparisons in our test rooms we were amazed how well the B3 compared to the C3. Though it didn’t go quite as bright as the C3, the B3 still managed to deliver wonderfully inky blacks and great levels of contrast. This plus its rich and vibrant colours combine to deliver a truly immersive performance. 

This is helped by the inclusion of WebOS which features app support for all the streaming services you’d expect and gaming-specific apps, like Steam Link and GeForce Now. 

Our only word of caution is to make sure you save enough to invest in a soundbar to go with the B3, such as the Sonos Beam Gen 2. The B3’s inbuilt speakers have a distinctly dull tone, that can drain the fun out of even the most animated of shows, based on our listening checks.

This is why our reviewers concluded: 

“The LG B3 does most of what makes the C3 great, and that makes it an excellent TV. It’s not cheaper by a huge degree, but unless you absolutely must have four HDMI 2.1 sockets or you regularly watch TV in a very bright room (and expect a very high level of performance in such conditions), there’s every reason to buy the B3 and pocket the change – or, preferably, put it towards the purchase of a soundbar.”

Read our LG B3 review

A top tip when buying the B3

A top tip when buying the B3

Alastair Stevenson

At What Hi-Fi?, despite over a decade of searching, we’re yet to find an OLED TV that offers truly immersive, home cinema-level sound. This is particularly true on smaller affordable sets, such as this B3 As a result, we always recommend factoring the price of a soundbar or speakers with your OLED TV purchase. This is particularly important if you’re on a tight budget. In this specific instance, we’d recommend an affordable soundbar such as the Sonos Beam (Gen 2), which is what we generally pair it with when writing our system recommendations.

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The best premium

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If you’ve got money to spare and want the best performance possible from an OLED TV, regardless of whether it ranks highly in our hallowed performance-per-pound/dollar metric, then the Sony A95L is the one to get.

While it’s very expensive, and we think the A80L is better value in most ways, there’s no denying it offers the best picture you can get on an OLED TV, based on our testing. The big selling point is its use of a QD-OLED panel. This is a custom hardware built by Samsung that combines the company’s Quantum Dot technology with OLED in an attempt to boost max brightness levels and generally improve picture quality. If that sounds familiar, it should –, as QD-OLED is a direct rival to MLA, which is built by LG Display and has the same focus.

Whether it was running head to head with its predecessor, the Sony A95K, the MLA-equipped Panasonic MZ2000 or LG G4, our team of testers were united in their verdict that the A95L offered one of the best pictures we’ve experienced on an OLED. 

The additional max brightness was particularly impressive, with bright scenes in the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road and Pan displaying noticeably brighter peak whites, and holding significantly more detail than rivals. On top of this, colour accuracy is noticeably improved, with skin tones having a pleasingly authentic feel, especially when compared to the A95K which we found had a warm, red tinge to it.

If that wasn’t enough to tempt you, its in-screen sound system offered great results by TV standards. The 2.2-channel actuator-based sound system, which creates sound by vibrating the screen, is backed up by two woofers that help it deliver more low-end heft than we expected.

As it stands, this combination of factors make it the best premium OLED TV we’ve tested. As noted by our reviewers:

“Be in no doubt; the Sony A95L is a stunning TV. Not only is it capable of going astonishingly bright and producing incredibly vibrant colours, but it also uses those abilities to recreate movies and TV shows more accurately than the TVs with which it is competing. On top of all of that, it's one of the best-sounding TVs you can buy.”

Read the full Sony A95L review

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Best new

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It tends to take us a while to shift our buying advice to newer OLED TVs. This is because they tend to launch with a fairly high price, and bring with them hefty discounts on the outgoing models. But if you insist on getting the newest model possible then the LG C4 is a great choice.

We were initially concerned it wouldn’t be a big upgrade on the older C3 when it was unveiled at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas, as the spec sheet doesn’t paint such a pretty picture. The MLA hardware debuted on the G3 and set to appear on the G4 didn’t trickle down as we’d hoped and LG was very conservative with its answers when we asked about picture quality improvements at launch.

Thankfully our concerns proved unfounded when we got it in for review. Running it head to head with the C3 and A80L we found the C4 to be a suitable step forward for LG’s mid-range OLED line.

The headline feature is that, while it can’t go as bright as MLA or QD-OLED sets, the C4 is noticeably brighter than the C3. This lets it deliver a punchier, more immersive picture. We also found that, though we’d still recommend getting a soundbar, its audio has been improved. 

During our sound checks it dealt a lot better with demanding scenes, like the booming Spice collection scene in Dune. The harshness and distortion we noticed on the C3 didn’t occur on the C4.

This plus its stellar gaming features and inclusion of four HDMI 2.1 inputs led our testers to conclude:

“The C4 is a surprisingly large upgrade on the uncharacteristically dull C3 of last year. Big improvements to brightness and sharpness make for an image with lots of pop and dynamism, and the rich tone and vibrant colours are a delight.”

Read our LG C4 review

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Best gaming

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If it was still retailing for its original RRP, then the LG C3 wouldn’t still hold a place in this list. But thanks to the appearance of the LG C4 and a subsequent flurry of price drops, the LG C3 remains a fantastic option and most cost effective OLED available to next-generation gamers.

While the C4 offers undeniable performance improvements, and we’d recommend the Sony A80L to people who need an OLED primarily for movie watching, the C3 has two big things going for it that make it better for gamers.

First, its gaming specs are flawless. For starters, you get four HDMI 2.1 sockets rather than the standard two we find on most OLED TVs. On top of that each supports every major feature you’ll need to make the most out of your PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, including 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM. Finally, the set atypically has Dolby Vision Gaming support and a clever HGiG mode. This let it offer brilliant HDR performance when gaming during our tests. 

Second is the fact its price is coming down fast. We’ve already seen great deals on the C3, letting you pick up smaller sizes of it for surprisingly little. We expect to see yet more great deals appear during events such as Amazon Prime Day in the near future. 

This means that, while its picture and audio don’t match its arch-rival, the A80L, and the newer C4 is better in many ways, from a performance-per-pound/dollar perspective it’s the best option available for gamers right now.

Read the full LG C3 review

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Best Samsung

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We know a lot of What Hi-Fi? readers and home cinema fans in general have strong brand loyalty. If you feel that way about Samsung and insist on your TV coming from the company, then the S95D is the set to get. 

The S95D is Samsung’s third generation QD-OLED and, based on our experience, its finest OLED to date. The moment we set it up in our viewing rooms our testers were blown away by quite how much better it is than the older S95C, which has a tendency to overbake colours.

While we think the Sony A95L offers a more realistic, 'as the director intended', picture in most instances, there’s no denying the S95D is a very compelling OLED, especially for Samsung fans and gamers looking to spend a little more.

Comparing it to its predecessor, the S95D proved to be noticeably brighter, and a lot more controlled with the way it handles its picture. 

Even when we ran incredibly demanding titles, which inherently have been mastered in an extreme way, such as Pan, Mad Max: Fury Road, and It Chapter One, the S95D delivered a balanced and authentic picture. We were particularly impressed with its ability to blisteringly high peak whites, which retained a wonderful amount of detail and resulted in industry leading contrast levels during our checks.

For gamers, it’s also close to perfect, featuring as it does four HDMI 2.1 inputs and being atypically capable of 144Hz frame rates, on top of the more standard 120Hz. However the latter will only be relevant to PC gamers with a modern graphics card. The only reason it’s not ranked quite as highly for gamers as the C3 is its price and the lack of a Dolby Vision Game Mode, which will be an annoyance for current generation Xbox owners.

Despite this, the stellar picture led our reviewers to heap praise on the TV, with them concluding:

“Samsung’s latest QD-OLED hero isn’t just better than its already technically impressive predecessor – it’s so much better that it might just be one of those genuine ‘moments’ in TV development that alters traditional thinking about the roles different types of TV technology have in today’s AV world.”

Read our Samsung S95D review

Best 8K

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The LG Z3 is the latest 8K OLED to pass through our viewing rooms. Our advice to most people is to wait a little longer before investing in 8K as there’s next to no native content at that resolution available. But if you really want to get in on 8K early and insist on your TV being an OLED, this is the best available.

The set shares a lot of the same features as LG’s non-8K sets, including the use of brightness boosting MLA tech. During our checks this let it offer a wonderfully punchy, bright picture. It also showed off native 8K’s potential with the test footage we used during testing looking wonderfully detailed and showing how much more immersion the extra pixels can add. 

Minus native 8K, its upscaling proved to be a solid step up on what we experienced with the older LG Z2. 4K material we ran with our reference set-up connected looked wonderfully sharp and had none of the artificial look we experienced reviewing earlier 8K sets. The only downside is that the Z3 proved to be slightly less bright than the LG G3, which has the same MLA tech, during our checks.

This plus its higher price is why we only recommend it to very early adopters. But if that doesn’t put you off, it is an excellent 8K TV, hence our reviewers’ conclusion:

“Viewed in isolation, the LG OLED77Z3 is in many ways a thing of beauty. Its 8K resolution both brings out the best of OLED’s self-emissive technology and enhances the appearance of any decent HD and 4K content you throw at it – as well as looking next-level sensational with native 8K sources if you can find any.”

Read our LG Z3 review

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Also consider

• Philips 808: If the LG B3, or C3, don’t appeal to you then the Philips 808 is a fantastic value OLED that comes with the company’s Ambilight bias lighting.  
• Samsung S95C: The Samsung S95C’s price is rapidly coming down now that the S95D is out. If you want a punchy, home cinema experience it remains a fantastic choice, though users who prefer a more balanced picture may find its colours a little too overcooked, hence its omission from the main list. 
• Panasonic MZ2000: Panasonic’s first ever MLA-equipped OLED is an interesting beast that comes with a Technics-tuned speaker bar attached to its bottom. During testing we found lots to like about it, with the set offering the same 'as the director intended' experience Panasonic is famous for. Were it not for the presence of the A95L which offers marginally better audio and an equally great, albeit slightly cooler, picture it would likely be in this guide’s main list. 
• LG G3: The LG G3 was the first MLA TV we tested, and while the LG G4 is fast approaching, it’s still an excellent option for gamers thanks to its inclusion of four HDMI 2.1 ports, and wonderfully punchy picture. Just be warned, you will need to invest in a soundbar or speaker package as its speakers are weak performers, even by TV standards. 

What we look for in an OLED TV

Value for money: Even though OLED TVs are by nature a luxury item, whenever we review any product we put performance-per-pound (or Dollar if you’re in the US) first. This is a key metric we use to determine if something is good value for money – which is why if an OLED costs thousands more than a direct rival we expect it to perform significantly better.

That said, we still base our recommendations on performance and expect every set to achieve a baseline. To decide what this is we always see how they perform directly against rivals and step up or down models in our dedicated viewing rooms in London.

Picture quality: This is a primary point we look at when reviewing any OLED set. Key factors include: are the colours accurate? How good is the motion handling (which is a fancy way of saying do movements look natural and free of the dreaded Soap Opera Effect)? Is the picture vibrant and enticing? Is the HDR performance up to scratch in all the common standards, such as HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG? Are blacks deep enough and is there plenty of shadow detail?

Audio: On top of that, we gauge any OLED’s audio performance. There are plenty of OLED TVs doing the rounds with attached speaker bars purporting to “remove the need for a soundbar or speaker package”. We’re yet to find one that delivers on this promise so we still check key things such as how they handle bass-heavy scenes, dialogue, and (where applicable) surround sound formats and/or Dolby Atmos.

Gaming: Given that many people now regularly play games on their TV, when reviewing an OLED we always make sure it features the connectivity required to run a current generation console or PC at full speed. Key things include the ability to run games in 4K at 120Hz, whether or not it suffers from input lag and support for gaming-specific HDR standards, such as Dolby Vision Gaming. Of course, we also go beyond the specs and test whether games look and feel good when played through the TV on test.

How we tested OLED TVs

How we test OLED TVs

What Hi-Fi? tests OLEDs using the same approach it does with any category of products. 

As a starting point, we always test OLEDs in controlled conditions, which is usually our London viewing room, and directly against the other TVs that we think buyers looking at this specific set should also consider or be upgrading from. This is to ensure our experiences are uniform among all the TVs we test. We never review a product in isolation or gauge performance based on memory. Every review will feature conclusions we’ve made directly comparing the TVs we mention.

As part of this, we use a reference system for the TVs. This includes a Panasonic DP-UB820EB Blu-ray player, which we use to run our test discs and a Sony TA-AN1000, which we use to split the same source material simultaneously across the OLED TVs we’re comparing. For gaming features, we connect current generation Xbox Series X and PS5 game consoles. If there are any changes to the reference setup we will flag them in the review.

For picture quality, we always use an ever-changing portfolio of test discs to gauge specific aspects of the TV’s performance. For example, we may use a 4K Blu-ray of an incredibly brightly mastered movie, such as Pan, to gauge peak brightness. Meanwhile, we will watch scenes from an incredibly darkly mastered movie, such as The Batman or Oppenheimer to check shadow detail. 

We do not professionally calibrate TVs during testing as this is beyond what most normal buyers would do and requires specialist equipment and knowledge, even on expensive OLEDs. However, we do not just use the out-of-the-box settings. As a rule, when testing an OLED TV we will experiment with all the settings, using a mixture of test patterns and ‘real’ content, until we feel we have got the absolute best picture possible out of it.

Recent Updates

• Updated 09/05/24: All entries replaced with new buying advice and recommendations for cheap, Samsung, gaming and 8K OLED sets.
• Updated: 06/03/24 to add new tips, author bios, also considered entries, intro, FAQ answers, how we test and how we choose sections. 

OLED TV FAQ