Best TV features for gaming 🎮
Gamers know that a good TV can make or break their gaming experience. As gameplay is truly ‘live’, being fed by the signal you’re inputting into your controller, a good gaming TV needs to offer fluid motion and be extremely responsive to avoid that ever-feared lag.
This is what we'd suggest keeping an eye out for:
✓ VRR and ALLM: Standing for Variable Refresh Rate and Auto Low Latency Mode respectively, both are important features to look out for when purchasing a Gaming TV. VRR reflects a video game’s tendency to use a varied refresh rate rather than a single refresh speed as with TV and film. This means the gap between each frame may be different from one to the next, so TVs marked with VRR support will handle this content better.
Where ALLM is concerned, this technology is linked to HDMI 2.1 and automatically selects the lowest latency settings on your TV whenever your gaming console is connected. This gives you the most responsive controls for the very best gaming experience.
✓ High Refresh Rate: With refresh rate being the speed at which the on-screen image changes, a higher refresh rate is preferable for gaming as a greater number of frames per second makes the onscreen image much smoother.
✓ Processor: This is quite a general point, as a good processor will facilitate every other feature that makes a TV well suited to gaming. Take Sony’s Cognitive Bravia XR processor for example, this will analyse the content you’re watching and use AI to enhance the gaming content to best suit how the human brain absorbs the image and sound. Look out for processor features and think about how this might positively impact your gaming experience.
✓ HDMI 2.1: Next-gen consoles like the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X require higher volumes of data to be passed between themselves and the TV. HDMI 2.1 supports a range of higher video resolutions and refresh rates, making it perfect for video games that require both.
Our top TV picks for gaming:
- Sony A90L: The A90L’s smaller screen size makes it perfect for gaming, where keeping things smaller makes it easier to concentrate on the screen as a whole. The OLED screen will also help you to make out details even in darker-coloured games due to its expert handling of dark and light.
- Samsung QN90C: Neo-QLED screen technology utilises tiny LEDs to offer many local dimming zones, perfect for gaming that requires high levels of detail. The QN95B also has an HDMI 2.1 port and is certified for 4K@120Hz, ALLM and VRR.
- LG C3: Lauded as the ‘gaming OLED’, the LG C2 has 4 HDMI 2.1 ports, 4K@120Hz, ALLM and VRR. LG have also developed this screen in partnership with NVIDIA G-Sync for delivery of the smoothest and fastest gaming graphics.
For more on our top TVs for gaming, please check out our Top 5 Best OLED TVs for Gaming 2021 blog