The State of TV 2021

Choose The Perfect TV 2021: Stay at 4K or Go 8K?

The extra pixels may or may not be worth the extra money — here’s how to decide

The television set industry has been pushing for a new upgrade cycle with 8K resolution models for three years now — is it time for consumers to join or most of them should better wait for a while? (Image: Samsung)

Every year millions of people decide to get a new TV for their home — not just for their living room anymore either — and every year more than a dozen different manufacturers bring out more than a hundred different TV models in total, making the choice between any one of those rather tricky. What’s more, it does not seem to get any easier: new tech jargon gets thrown around in marketing campaigns every year in the hopes of impressing consumers, in practice only confusing them further.

There must be an easier way to choose a good TV set — the perfect one for each and every consumer, even. Indeed there is! This is exactly what 10 concise, to-the-point articles on the subject will help everyone do: learn what they need to know so as to make the best choice for their next TV.

While the previous articles focused on the two different display technologies available in the market today, the viewing conditions and habits that better fit each one, as well as the viewing distance and screen diagonal that must be taken into account, this article’s subject is much easier to examine. There are currently two different screen resolutions available in the market: the now established 4K and the still relatively new 8K (one would have to go all the way down to a 43-inch diagonal in order to find TVs with a 1080p screen).

Chances are that not many people are looking to buy TVs with screens smaller than 48-inch nowadays, as 55-, 65- and 75-inch ones prove to be the most popular. All three diagonals are offered in 4K as well as 8K, but is there a point in going for the latter? Let’s break it all down.

Is 33 more than 8 if you can’t tell the difference?

Televisions sporting an 8K screen offer a canvas of no less than 33 million pixels to express the picture they’re displaying, a spectacular number compared to the decidedly less impressive 8 million pixels 4K TV screens are using. The thinking behind the creation of 8K TVs — well, apart from every manufacturer’s desire to push for a new television upgrade cycle — was twofold: TVs are getting bigger all the time so they need more pixels for their picture to remain solid and convincing while, conversely, said TVs could use the extra pixels in order to offer a much higher level of detail. At least that was the theory (and the marketing argument).

There’s no denying that top-quality 8K televisions offer spectacular picture but one has to invest in big, really big — and equally expensive — models in order to fully appreciate it. (Image: Sony)

The problem is that 33 million are a lot of pixels to cram into TV screens smaller than, say, 75 inches, so they need to be amazingly small. So small, in fact, that humans can only discern them if they walk up to an 8K screen and look for them at arm’s length or even closer. What this means in practice is that from a “normal” or the “ideal” viewing distance (as measured by both SMPTE and THX standards) most people will not be able to make out the extra detail these pixels add to an image when displayed on an 8K TV. They can choose to sit much closer to it, but that is not necessarily something many viewers want to do if they mean to comfortably take in the image displayed in its completeness.

This does not mean that 8K resolution is pointless on televisions. For one thing, TV manufacturers are actually right in the sense that, even from a normal viewing distance, 8K screens offer a more dense, more solid and convincing picture with much more easily perceivable “depth” compared to 4K screens on the same diagonal. For another, 8K is practically necessary for TV screens of 85 inches or more, as 4K really struggles to maintain coherence and clarity with “just” 8 million pixels stretched thin onto such a large surface (home cinema buffs call this “the screen door effect”). As time goes by and giant TVs become more affordable, 8K resolution will become ubiquitous. Just… not quite yet.

Quality over quantity is the way to go for most people, for now

So where do all of the above leave consumers regarding the whole “4K vs 8K” debate? In a place where they can make an easy enough decision, actually. For people thinking of buying a new 55- or 65-inch TV, for instance, 4K is the way to go as they’d have to sit unrealistically close to an equivalent 8K TV in order to discern any difference in the displayed image. For people thinking of buying a 75- or 85-inch TV, yes, 8K makes sense, but only if they plan to offer this television high-quality material to upscale and display (such as UltraHD Blu-ray discs or high-bitrate streaming video). With low-resolution content, such as over-the-air programming or DVDs, even top-end 8K TVs can only do so much.

For the majority of mainstream consumers, it would probably be better to invest in a high-quality 4K TV than in an 8K TV right now. (Image: LG)

Approaching this from a different angle makes things even clearer. 8K TV models command a price premium over their 4K TV counterparts right now, very often a pretty hefty one. For consumers planning to get a new television for X thousands of dollars, it makes more sense — at this point in time — to choose the highest quality 4K TV that amount of money can buy over an 8K TV since there is still almost no 8K content to enjoy. High-quality material looks spectacular in 8K, but then again so it does in 4K. To the “money is no object” people that can have the latest and greatest anyway, the most expensive 8K TVs will grant considerable bragging rights… but that’s just about it.

At the end of the day — in the context of modern display technologies and in 2021 terms — 8K is still young, with a number of issues still unresolved. Content is practically non-existent, many 8K TVs do not offer Internet streaming or local playback for the small amount of 8K material that can be found, the necessary software (such as codecs) is not properly standardized or widely adopted, while true 8K content sources are few and far between (just ultra hi-end PCs and some smartphones). For most consumers who prefer to keep their TV sets for more than, say, three or four years, now is not the time to buy into 8K. Getting the most out of 4K is.