The 6 Best TVs For Watching Movies - Fall 2024

The best TV for movies we've tested is the Sony A95L OLED. Its nearly infinite contrast ratio makes it a fantastic TV for watching movies in a dark room. This results in deep, inky blacks and bright highlights, with no distracting blooming around bright areas of the scene. Sony TVs are well respected for their accurate picture quality, and this TV is no exception. Its excellent processing capabilities deliver a true movie experience that respects the content creator's intent, with very little banding in areas of similar color.

HDR movies look incredible on this TV thanks to its high peak brightness in HDR, near-infinite contrast ratio, and wide color gamut. Colors look vibrant and lifelike, and bright specular highlights stand out. It also supports features like Dolby Vision and DTS:X audio, ensuring you get the best movie experience possible. It's compatible with Sony's BRAVIA CORE streaming service, which offers a wide selection of movies to stream at a much higher bit rate than most streaming services, ensuring your movies look the best they possibly can.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 QLED is the best TV for watching movies in a bright room. It easily overcomes glare due to its superb SDR brightness and reflection handling, so you don't have to deal with distracting reflections. If you watch movies with the lights off, the TV looks spectacular in a dark room due to its exceptional local dimming feature that provides fantastically deep blacks with very little blooming. On top of that, its exceptional HDR brightness delivers highlights that pop out in HDR content. It's also a standout option for a home theater due to its support for Dolby Vision HDR and DTS audio formats, fantastic image processing, and accuracy in both SDR and HDR. No matter how you watch your movies, this TV truly delivers.

Despite having a wider viewing angle than many other LED models, it's still narrow, so the TV still isn't the best choice for watching movies with a large group of friends. Unfortunately, the TV only comes in a 65-inch, 75-inch, and 85-inch model, so there's no option for those looking for a smaller TV for a bedroom or small living room.

If you like the deep, inky blacks that only an OLED can produce but find the Sony A95L OLED too expensive, the best upper mid-range TV for watching movies is the LG C4 OLED. Like the Sony OLED, it displays perfect blacks in dark rooms without blooming, offering a fantastic movie-watching experience. You don't get the same incredibly vibrant and bright colors as you do on a QD-OLED like the A95L, but the TV still displays a wide range of colors that are sure to impress film buffs. You also get slightly better low-quality content smoothing than the Sony, and the LG's upscaling is almost as good, too.

This TV isn't as bright as an OLED like the A95L, but it's still bright enough to use in a room with the lights on while watching SDR movies, and its great HDR peak brightness is certainly enough to make most highlights stand out. You also still get the same support for DTS audio formats and Dolby Vision, so whether you're watching older movies on DVD or new movies on 4k Blu-ray, this TV has you covered.

If you like the LG C4 OLED but find it's too pricey, the LG B4 OLED is a great mid-range TV and can serve as an excellent entry point into the OLED market. The TV has all the features of the more expensive C4, and it still delivers outstanding picture quality, especially in a dark room, with its near-infinite contrast ratio delivering deep, inky blacks with no distracting blooming. On the other hand, the TV is dimmer than its more expensive sibling, but the difference isn't massive. It's a little bit dimmer than the C4 in SDR, but it's still pretty bright for an OLED and has fantastic reflection handling, so it does overcome glare in rooms with some lights on. It's quite a bit dimmer in HDR, but fortunately, it's bright enough to deliver impactful highlights in HDR movies.

It displays the same vibrant colors as the C4 and has the same support for Dolby Vision and DTS audio formats. You also get similarly impressive image processing, and it runs the same great webOS smart interface as the more expensive LG, with the same point-and-press smart remote.

If you want high-end performance but don't want to spend high-end prices, or if you watch movies in mostly bright rooms, check out the Hisense U7N. It's cheaper than anything recommended up to this point but still delivers excellent overall picture quality. It has a great Mini LED backlight, letting it simultaneously provide incredibly bright highlights and deep blacks, although there's blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. HDR content looks great, and it supports both Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10+ for the best HDR experience possible, as well as advanced audio formats, like DTS:X over eARC.

The TV has very good image processing overall, making it a cheaper option for a home theater setup than the more expensive models from LG and Sony. Unfortunately, its viewing angle is sub-par, making it a bad choice for a wide seating arrangement. It runs the Google TV interface, which is fast and easy to use, and it has a great selection of streaming features, so you're sure to find your favorite shows.

The best budget TV for watching movies we've tested is the Hisense U6/U6N. It's a great TV for the price and has a fantastic local dimming feature that provides deep blacks in a dark room, although there's the same noticeable blooming around bright objects as there is on the more expensive Hisense U7N. It's also very good for watching movies in HDR due to its ability to display a wide range of colors, so HDR content looks vibrant and lifelike. It has just okay peak brightness in HDR, so bright highlights don't stand out as well as on more expensive TVs like the U7N, but it's good enough for a great dark or moderately lit room movie experience. Like the more expensive Hisense, this TV supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and DTS audio formats.

Unfortunately, its low-quality content smoothing is significantly worse than the U7N, so there's visible digital noise when watching low-bitrate content from streaming platforms or DVDs. However, its upscaling is just as good, so low-resolution content is sharp, and the TV preserves fine details well. It even has the same easy-to-use Google TV interface as the more expensive model.